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- [00:00]
Jameson Olson
This is your story. No one else is ever gonna make you the main character in their story. At best, you'll be a side character. So if you really want to have a fulfilling life, it's up to you. The same rules that authors, screenwriters, any storytellers use to create a great character for a great story can transfer over to how you visualize and execute your life. The reason those became the rules for great storytelling is because they represent the greatest and most resonant truths that humans have discovered about a good, fulfilling life.
- [00:38]
Liberty
Hello, everyone. I'm not Jim Moshansi. I'm Liberty. Jim is writing a new book and while he was knocking us, snuck in the studio and decided to record this conversation about what we can learn from fiction and fictional characters. So who better to have a talk about this than my friend Jameson Olson? He's building the school of protagonism. It's a life philosophy built from the mechanics of great stories. Jameson, welcome to the show.
- [01:02]
Jameson Olson
Hey Liberty, it's great to be here.
- [01:03]
Liberty
Maybe we can begin, begin like a good story at the beginning. If you could tell us a bit about yourself. But like the Jameson origin story, like why did you need protagonism? How did you arrive to this?
- [01:15]
Jameson Olson
That's a great way to start. I think like a lot of people, I found myself years post college graduation and just feeling like life wasn't going where I thought it would have been going at that point in my life. You know, until you graduate college, you basically are told exactly what step to take. And as long as you're getting the grades and you know, you're, you're hitting the benchmarks you need to make, you just know, like, oh, I'm doing fine. You enter the real world and things can go a little differently. And so I had a period of a big chunk of my 20s where I just was living a pretty small existence in terms of what I was doing. My career was, was moving forward, but not nearly as quickly as I thought it would. But in that meantime, I was consuming a lot of self help, content, personal development. I got into philosophy. That was the first time I started reading some of the, the Ancients. And so I was feeding my brain all these ideas and that was all layered on top of my love of stories from the beginning of my life. I mean, I attribute my, the beginning of my love of stories to the fact that my parents, I have, I'm the youngest of four siblings and my older brother was like the problem child, if you'd even call him that by most standards. He really wasn't even that problematic. But out of the four of us, he was.
- [02:42]
Liberty
It's all relative.
- [02:43]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, exactly. And so they. He was. He's such a social butterfly that my parents were conditioned that, like, oh, to punish him, we send him to his room. That is like torture for him to not be able to interact with people. And so then after him, they just were like, oh, like, send him. Send James to his room. Like, if he's being bad, like, put in there. Problem was, that's where my Legos were. And I would spend hours with my leg. They were basically condemning me to just, like, go into my own little world. And I had all the pirate. This is before the IP Legos came out of, like, Harry Potter and Star Wars. It was just, you know, the pirates or the.
- [03:20]
Liberty
Use your own imagination like an animal.
- [03:23]
Jameson Olson
And so it started young, and I've always been very interested in just understanding what makes a great story great and what makes others. You know, why do you forget some movies as you're walking out of the theater, whereas others, you think about them for days after you see them. And most of that during that period in my 20s, most of that effort of understanding stories came through film analysis, watching video essayists on YouTube, reading books here and there. That's right.
- [03:52]
Liberty
If I did my research correctly, you were way more of a film buff and only started reading classic literature and all that when you started your podcast.
- [04:02]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, I mean, I. That's why. I mean, I. I think that also works to the advantage of I bring the enthusiasm to my episodes because I've just read this book for the first time. But, you know, I. I never claim to be a trained expert on classics because I. I have not spent that much time reading fiction until the last three to four years. I just watched movies. You know, it's beginner's mind. Like, you just sit down and turn it on and, like, consume. Whereas a book, it takes effort. Right. So it was kind of transition, but the opportunity came along and this idea of just a podcast to talk about the greatest stories ever written. And I couldn't go down that road without infusing it with. Of marrying my two greatest interests, which are like, what. What makes a good story good? And how can I find a better meaning and a more fulfilling existence in my own personal life? And it was the fusion of those two things, and so is the combination of the years spent reading all of the personal development books and studying philosophy with all of the years of watching movies and analyzing why the great ones work and stuff like that. I've set my sights on bringing the classics to the 21st century Consumption habits through a podcast.
- [05:26]
Liberty
I'm curious because we kind of had the inverse. Like, I used to be all fiction and move into nonfiction. You were probably more into nonfiction. What surprised you most when you dove really deep into these, these great stories? What was your expectation going in and did it kind of match what you expected or was it, you know, something else?
- [05:47]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, I don't know if I really had severe expectations either way. But one thing I will say that I've noticed is I think I used to carry kind of the, the pragmatic view that a lot of people who only read nonfiction have of just like, I get real value from nonfiction, whereas fiction is just like entertainment.
- [06:12]
Liberty
Yeah, it can't be profound because it's fun, right?
- [06:15]
Jameson Olson
Yeah.
- [06:16]
Liberty
As if those things are opposed.
- [06:18]
Jameson Olson
One thing that I was kind of surprised by was this realization of my anxiety levels were higher reading the nonfiction because reading that put more on my plate of this is what I should be doing, or like, this is what I need to fix about myself. And so I would leave with great, with great ideas. But yeah, basically I'd leave with homework. Whereas fiction, you know, partially because the, the fact that it is more entertaining to consume a narrative. But I think also, you know, reading about these situations where you're like, oh, yeah, it could be worse. My life's not so bad. So that was one thing I wasn't expecting to piece together is that reading nonfiction, it's incredible. It's necessary. And that's one thing I think I should get straight right off the bat. I am never taking a stance that, like, fiction is better than nonfiction. I think both are essential to a well balanced life. And I still, I still read a lot of nonfiction now, but most of the nonfiction I'm reading these days is less personal development. It's more like narrative theory and understanding, like how to, how to craft a great story. I think both are essential. And I think because I've been there, I've been that person. I think there are a lot of people who have kind of boxed out fiction because they think the real value is only in nonfiction, where I think both are important.
- [07:43]
Liberty
I think the takeaway here is balance, right? If someone is only reading nonfiction, they can probably get a lot out of even adding a little fiction to the mix. And if someone is only reading fiction, I would recommend the inverse. Like, get some nonfiction, get some history, get some biographies, whatever. But. But both have so much to contribute. I'm curious because we all have favorites. Is there a character, a fictional character that has changed the most how you think about your life that has had the biggest impact? Or maybe even someone that at first you kind of judge, you kind of like, ah, that guy's an asshole, or whatever, and then you later understood better and could get more out of.
- [08:20]
Jameson Olson
I'll share two. The first one is the one that I resonated the most with at a personal level. And then the second one is just. I don't know if it fits any of the setups you just shared, but it's the one that I can't stop thinking about almost two years later. So the first one, ironically, was the very first episode I ever did, which was Hamlet. But you know, I read Hamlet in high school. But that's kind of been part of the fun is so many people, a lot of the books I cover, someone or another had to read that book in high school. And which is the best way of
- [08:53]
Liberty
making you not get it and not right.
- [08:55]
Jameson Olson
Exactly. The problem isn't the literature. The problem is the way you're forced to see a certain perspective based on your teacher's perspective. And that's why when I present my thoughts and lessons from episodes, I'm very clear, this is what I took from it. If you take the same thing, great, but maybe you read it and you get something else. That's where the real value comes, is if a story is so well structured that you take what you need from it at that time in your life. And I may take something slightly different. But so rereading Hamlet as, as an adult on my own terms, essentially. And, and you know, for anyone with Shakespeare, I do think it's very much worth having a side by side of the. The original with a more modern modernized. I was using a service called Lit Charts for that, which is basically Cliff Notes on steroids. So for the most part they just have these massive PDF files of like analysis of a book, but they have a whole part of their website that is Shakespeare with side by sides of like where they highlight in different colors like exactly which text they're. They're interpreting with modern there. So that, that helped me see it more deeply as well. But you know, I resonated a lot with Hamlet and his overthinking tendencies. That's always been, that's always been something I struggle with. And I used to, I used to frame it in my personal narrative as, I mean, I guess to even use a term that is used to describe someone like Hamlet, my Martia, like the Greek idea of Your tragic flaw, which is also tied to your greatest strength. I used to try to frame that as, like, yeah, there's downsides to it, but because I'm an overthinker, there's also these upsides you overthought yourself into thinking over. Yeah. So, I mean, luckily, in recent times, I've been challenging that notion of, like, why do I have to justify that? There are strengths to this? Why can I not look at how to remove it and maintain the strength anyway? And in particular, the scene that. That sits with me so much from Hamlet is. I think it's. It's act four, and I believe it's scene four of act four. And it's when he is traveling and Forten Brass, the Norwegian prince, is marching through with an army of 20,000 men or something, and he is marveling at the realization of, like, this is a. Like a. This is an equal to me. Like, we're both princes of these nations. And here he is leading 20,000 men to fight for a scrap of land that's not even worth the bodies that will be buried in it from the war. But he's leading men on this cause. And I have been running around, unable to even stick with one decision that I make. And, like, just how frivolous has my life been? And there's a line where he says something about how, like, if man is only good to eat and sleep, he's no better than a beast. And so, anyway, Hamlet has really stuck with me at a personal level. The. The story that I was so surprised by and I think about all the time was actually Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. And part of it is because Hollywood has never done it justice. The. The Del Toro is the best we've ever had. It's. It's better than anything else by a mile. It still makes one little change. That is classic Hollywood, that. I hate it.
- [12:18]
Liberty
What is it?
- [12:19]
Jameson Olson
Because to me, the beauty. The beauty of that story is that you have two opposed forces in Frankenstein and his monster. And obviously, like, Victor made choices. He is responsible for choices that created the situation. So he is guilty in a sense. But the beauty to me is in the book is as soon as the monster wakes up, it's literally the moment it starts breathing, he's just like, oh, no, what have I done? Like, this was a terrible mistake. And. And he spends the rest of the book trying to grapple with how to live with that. And. And he's constantly trying to figure out how to stop it. Like, he. He wants to take responsibility. He just doesn't know how. Whereas every portrayal just is like, oh, he's running away from his problems. He's just, you know, classic, classic white male. Like he causes issues and then doesn't want to have to be like responsible for them. And so they paint him as the villain, whereas early Hollywood painted the monster as truly monstrous. So we've always had one or the other. It's like one of them has to be a villain in a sense. But to me, my, my read on the book and you know, of course there's a lot of theories that talk about because Mary Shelley had, was descended from one of the original feminists, like the story is really has ties to themes of feminism. And you know, again, I'm not here to say definitively. In fact, that's one of my biggest pet peeves is people who say definitively like this story is about this. And it's like maybe for you can
- [13:55]
Liberty
be many things at the same time.
- [13:57]
Jameson Olson
And so to me, the beauty of Frankenstein is you have these two opposed forces. You have the innocence of the monster who. It's crazy when you have grown up with the idea of him being this big, slow, lurching guy with bolts in his neck and you realize in the book he's actually like a kind of zombie looking Captain America. Like he's, he's physically formidable, he's fast, he's super strong. He is kind of a superhero because Victor used all the best parts to build him. So he's got all this and he's got the, the tenderness. And I basically describe him as if you put a three year old in the body of that creature because he's sweet and innocent, but when he's hurt or when he doesn't understand what's going on, he lashes out. And that is terrifying when he's as big as he is. And then you have Victor who made the choices that created the situation. So he's responsible, but he is trying to figure out what to do. And it's the two of them just butting heads and they cannot coexist. And that tension is something so unique to me that, you know, for me the takeaway of that book is just the double edged sword of ambition. Like Victor wanted to do something great, but because he became obsessive about it and basically wasn't in control of his actions because he was consumed by this need to do something incredible that he kind of, you know, in the same way, Jurassic Park's biggest moral is like, if you're so consumed with can you. You may end up making a Huge mistake that you shouldn't have made. So anyway, I, you know, again, because early Hollywood was just so simplified of like, oh, he creates a monster and the monster terrorizes everybody. To realize how much depth and how much room to explore, like moral complexities in that book really took me off guard. And it's, it's one of my favorites to this day.
- [15:53]
Liberty
That's great. No, I need to read it. I've actually never read that book. And you're selling it very well. Let's get deeper into it, into what protagonism is. I love that name, by the way. What is it? And also what is it most likely to be misunderstood at by someone who just hears about it? Right. Like there could be someone hearing this and like, oh yeah, main character syndrome. Right. How is that different from narcissism? Thinking that the whole world revolves around you and you're the main character. Like explain what, what it is so. And what it isn't.
- [16:26]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, so I'm glad you bring that up because main character syndrome or main character energy is actually. They're terms I hate because they just bring these assumptions of people who lack complete self awareness are very, as you put it, like narcissistic. They don't care about anybody else but them. And to that I say show me a story where that is actually the case where the main character acts like that. I mean, you know, there's another disclaimer I should put is. I'm not claiming all fiction is incredible, like there's a lot of trash out there, but of a story that is. It resonates deeply with a human experience. And so for me that's. Most classics fall into that category because that's why they have survived. Where other books didn't is they resonated on a very deep level with people. So show me a main character that is supposed to be a heroic figure from any of these books who acts like that. Like that is not, that is literally not what a main character does. But it is interesting how just the term main character brings this, this assumption of kind of egoism into, into things. Whereas when you, when you look at stories, the hero is always somebody who starts from a much more humble or a much more collectivist. Like they're, they're doing something for other people or they're just trying to improve themselves. Like, like that. That is much more accurate of what a main character does. You know, one of the, the best parts in the Lord of the Rings, which the movies cover, but they change it and I think they're Actually, both good. So I'm not here to dog on it and say the movie version's bad. But at the near the end of Two Towers, it's the speech that Samwise gives to Frodo about like. Like about the. The heroes from the great tales. He. He says how when I was younger, I used to think that the heroes were the people who wanted adventure, they were seeking after it. And he's like, now I know that the heroes are the ones who didn't choose to end up in the places where they were, but they just decided to keep going. And how. There are plenty of other stories that exist, but because the people gave up, we never hear about them. The ones we hear are only about the ones who keep going. And that's such a beautiful way to frame it, in my opinion. The heroes, the people we really uphold as the ones we want to emulate, they're not people who acted brashly or disregarded others. They were the ones who were trying to improve themselves, trying to improve or protect other people. And they are willing to undergo a lot of sacrifice or transformation in order to do that. And so for me, protagonism. So first of all, it's still very new. And that's kind of the fun is like, I'm building a school of philosophy as I go. And some people may hear this and think, who is this guy to think he can build a school of philosophy? And I'd say, you're right, but also at the same time, like, who could stop me? You can. You can tell me you don't agree with my ideas, but there's like, there's no benchmark of, like, you have to have these degrees to start a school of philosophy. It all comes down to, like, do your ideas stick? Like, do your ideas hold truth in them? And it's just been a very fun way to frame what I'm trying to state or prove the truths of is through a school of philosophy. So to me, protagonism, who it's for, is where I'll start. And it's for people like me first and foremost, which are the people who think they've got more in the tank. They. Wherever they're at in life, they just think I am capable of more. But I feel stuck. I don't know why I am not where I thought I'd be. I don't know how to get traction in the direction where I want to go. Because basically, the way I looked at it when I was coming up with these ideas in this beginning was most of the most of the stuff I saw online went into one of two extremes. Either it was very much kind of this victim mentality of, like, other people are the problem. It's not fair. Other people have to change, so I have a fair chance. Or it was the other extreme of kind of the. The hustle porn alpha culture of, like, just do it, like David Goggins. And. And the thing is, I. I like to consume some of that content sometimes because it gets you going. Right?
- [21:04]
Liberty
Like, it's useful, but it's not enough. Right.
- [21:06]
Jameson Olson
But it wasn't. It wasn't actually doing it for me either. And so I was like, I need. I need a system for improvement. That's. It's more centrist than either of those, and it's more about recognizing it's on you. You know, the whole, like, nobody's coming to save you. Yeah, this is your story. No one else is ever gonna make you the main character in their story. At best, you'll be a side character. So if you really want to have a fulfilling life, it's up to you. So it's about taking that ownership, accepting a level of agency is required to get a satisfying life, but then also doing in a way that accepts, like, you're probably not Superman. You're not. You're not gonna be able to just, like, flip a switch. And then all of a sudden, your life is completely different. It's gonna be a journey. It's gonna be a narrative of the ups and downs to get from where you are to where you want to be. So I. You know, people in those extremes may resonate with what I. I talk about, but I'm not making it for them. And so if. If I ever have some. Some, like, alpha bro who's just like, oh, I don't agree with your lesson. You should just, like, whatever. Like, yeah, it's cool. Like, I'm not. I'm not talking to you, so that's fine. But then the actual approach, as you alluded to in the intro, is that my theory is that the same rules that authors, screenwriters, any storytellers use to create a great character for a great story can transfer over to how you visualize and execute your life. And, you know, I. My theory that I'm. There's no way I can just prove it now. It's more just an exploration. But my theory is the reason those became the rules for great storytelling is because they represent the greatest and most resonant truths that humans have discovered about a good, fulfilling life over millennia. And because otherwise we wouldn't care about the movies that use those rules or we wouldn't read the books that use those rules because they wouldn't, you know, the same reason that we'd put down bad stories now. They don't feel, they don't connect with us enough because there's not enough truth buried in there.
- [23:20]
Liberty
This reminds me of something I've long believed, that in great fiction you can smuggle in wisdom and lessons that would not stick if they were stated directly. Right? We, we remember a good story. Way better than a PowerPoint slide with, like, the lessons as bullets on it. Charlie Munger used to have this anecdote, and he said why he's telling the story, right? So he had this thing about this, the shoe button complex. And this guy made a fortune during the war selling shoe buttons. And he was so successful in this one thing that it made him believe that he was an authority now on everything else. Right? Because he was so great in this thing. And so you understand the principle as he's telling the story, but you remember the story, and the payload is in the story. Our brains have evolved to be around the campfire telling each other stories and great heroic poems or whatever. And that's how ideas and wisdom has always been communicated. And now nonfiction may be great, but if you look at the best type of nonfiction, self help, Morgan Housel or whatever, it's full of stories. It's almost like trying to use the same infrastructure. So we may as well go back to the original or at least use it well, right?
- [24:34]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, yeah. Humans are wired for story. No, no two ways of, of looking at it. There's a reason why we don't find cave paintings of Excel sheets like, that's. It's just how, how we make sense of things. And so the irony to me is even the people who may claim, like, oh, like I'm not. I don't care about stories. I don't watch movies, whatever. You're still living a narrative, but your narrative just isn't as rooted in traditional stories as it is like, oh, look at Elon Musk. I want to emulate him. Like, you're, you're picking a real figure and you want to emulate their story. Here you're still using stories as the framework because we just can't help it. The.
- [25:18]
Liberty
Ironically, you may actually know more about fiction, about someone in fiction, because you can hear them thinking. You can know every, everything that goes into a decision. You can live the consequences. You have the whole epilogue, and you can learn from all that while in real life, you only have what people will show you. People can fake it, people can lie. When things go badly, they disappear, and you never know it went wrong. You only see the highlights on Instagram or whatever. So, ironically, real life is often faker and more curated than fiction, which can show you more.
- [25:54]
Jameson Olson
That's a great point. There are studies that have shown who. People who read fiction rank higher in empathy. And, I mean, even for me personally, there are a lot of people who, you know, don't really love the idea of empathy because it feels, you know, soft. I guess.
- [26:09]
Liberty
You're so angry.
- [26:11]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. But as I talk about in I Know, which is one of your favorite episodes of my podcast, in the Hound of the Baskervilles, I distinguished that there's actually what's called cognitive empathy, which is understand the ability to understand how someone else thinks differently from you and understand why they think differently without you going to the level of emotionally sympathizing with that. And. And so that's why, like, Sherlock is an empath, which sounds ridiculous if you think of any adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, but he's a cognitive empath. He is incredible at understanding, like, oh, this person, because of, you know, their situation growing up and because of, like, their personality, they're going to think this way and make this type of choice, but he doesn't need to bog himself down by feeling what they feel in order to do that. And so there's. There's incredible value to what you said. Like, whether it's because other people are wearing masks and they're not being truthful to us in real life, or it's just because we really, really struggle to truly get outside of our perspective and see things from someone else's point of view. We just filter what we see them doing through our point of view. And that's how we arrive at, like, you're so stupid. Like, why would you do that? It's because we're filtering what they're doing through our mindset, and that just doesn't work. You know, when I was young, 19 or so I heard at some lecture, a phrase that stuck with me the rest of my life. And it's so simple, but it's just that the things people do make sense to them. So the people you hate, the people you think have completely just lost the plot, the fact is, their life experience has led them to a point where that is what makes sense to them. And you don't have to agree with it. You don't have to say, like, that's as true as Mine. But you have to acknowledge there is truth for them in that action.
- [28:08]
Liberty
And someone's not a total psychopath, a total dark triad type.
- [28:12]
Jameson Olson
The rest of us are doing our
- [28:14]
Liberty
best and see ourselves as the heroes of our own stories. And even if from the outside, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. Having this cognitive empathy of placing yourself in other people's shoes is a superpower, because so many people don't. Don't even take the time to learn that skill.
- [28:33]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. If you want to get better at, like, whether you want to get better at your relationships with spouse, children, whatever, or on the far more tactical side, if you want to become a better negotiator, there are all sorts of skills that will improve if you can just develop the ability to truly see through other people's perspectives instead of filtering them through your own. And fiction is great at doing that because you are forced to not only hear the actions of other people, but you're forced to get inside their brain and see how the dots connect from the first time you're introduced to them to why they take the actions they take later. And so in that way, it's the only real format of truly getting inside. There's memoirs where someone you admire who's a real person is sharing their experience. But again, the question is, like, is their memory faulty? Are they covering up the real truth and masking it to make them seem better in this story? Like, we can't fully know, but when we just assume, like, well, it's a fictional character and so the author has full reign of, like, what they say. But again, it all comes down to me of just, we feel it. Like, you read a character and you decide this feels accurate or it doesn't. And that's where, again, it comes down to just if it feels true or not. Like, we have a BS meter in our head of, like, this doesn't feel accurate.
- [29:57]
Liberty
Very finely tuned by evolution.
- [29:59]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. And as long as the character feels truthful in its portrayal, then it's a good enough representation of a different perspective from our own to use as data to consider. You know, one of the ways I frame it is every story is a simulation in the Matrix. It's a way of understanding a potential circumstance without you having to physically live it yourself and seeing how choices play out and seeing how a choice has reactions from other characters. And. And so that's one of the other values to me of just consuming stories, is that it's letting you get a better understanding of people in the world without you having to pay the price. Of experiencing everything yourself. But, yeah, to kind of close up this section, you know, we talked. We kind of made fun of. You know, they don't have cave paintings of Excel sheets. But to me, also, the. The best truths are ones that have a narrative that the numbers back up. You know, like, it's kind of the two of them combine are what created the best. But one thing I think of, and one thing I've paid attention to in my own life since I started this show is when I'm in the heat of a moment, when I'm feeling tension, when I'm feeling pressure, when I don't know what to do, what comes to my mind. And it's never statistics. It's never like, oh, well, if I react this way, then 73% of the time that will be favorable. Like, I may internally know that stuff, but that's not what comes to mind when you're feeling more emotional in your reactions. But because I know the story of Hercules at the crossroads, which is one of the best stories about Hercules in all of Greek mythology, I talk about how if I were to try to place this in the animated. The Disney animated Hercules, this is the scene that takes place right before he starts singing. I can go the distance because that's what this sets up, honestly. When he's a young man, he's walking towards a crossroads, and he sees, coming from each of the paths, he sees a woman coming towards him on the left side, she's, like, running towards him. And the other one, she's just walking, you know, she's taking her time. So when he gets to the crossroads, the one who's running is there. And her name is Kakia, which is in Greek mythology. She's the goddess of vice, or, like, moral misbehavior, essentially. And so she gets to him first. And she's gorgeous. She's wearing fine jewelry. She's very made up. She just. She's. She's a smoke show for all intents and purposes. And she's telling him, like, come with me. And, like, you'll never have to work again. Life will be nothing but, like, pleasure and enjoyment and you won't have to worry about a thing. And so he's just kind of like, whoa, like, taken aback by this promise. And by the time Kakuya has finished her pitch, are the goddess of virtue has reached the crossroads. And she's a beautiful woman, but she's not extremely made up. Her clothes are much more plain, but she holds herself with a certain kind of regal ness to her. So she makes her pitch of, you know, I promise you nothing except a life of. Of the fruits of your labors. Like, I promise you. I cannot promise you that you won't experience hardship, but I can promise you that, like, what you do experience will be the highest you can. And there's one line from whatever interpretation I read that stuck with me. She says, the gods have set a price on every good and noble thing. Like. Like, nothing is free. You have to. You have to give in order to receive. And so whatever Cocky is telling you, like, that luxury, that lavishness comes with a cost, which is you. You won't experience the lack of meaning.
- [33:49]
Liberty
Right.
- [33:49]
Jameson Olson
Noble things. Yeah. And so, ultimately, obviously, Hercules chooses to follow Arete, and that's how he became the hero that he became. So I share that whole story, because I'm not gonna. If I find myself in a situation where I'm being offered two paths. One seems easy and just, like, way more lavish, and the other one feels like a lot of work, but has a lot of potential upside. If I put it in, I'm not gonna remember statistics, but I may remember Hercules at the crossroads. And all of a sudden, that story races through my brain, and it makes that choice a lot easier because I'm just like, yeah, like, that story rang true with me when I read it. And so the recall I have of that story in my moments of the crossroads makes it a lot easier. Just be like, of course this is the path I have to take. And there are other situations where a lesson or a quote I took from a book comes to my mind in key decision moments in emotional or stressful situations. And so I think that's not every book I cover really sticks with me that much. Like, I'd have to go back and look at my notes to remember the lessons I took from a certain book that I covered. But every few books, there is one that just bam.
- [35:10]
Liberty
Like, and that can be life changing. Right? One can be enough what the right one at the right moment can all through a whole. The course of a whole life.
- [35:18]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. And that's the same with nonfiction, right? Like, you'll read 10 books and maybe two of them really have any impact on you, but you have to go through them to know which ones are going to have impact on you. And so I'd say that's the same for fiction as well.
- [35:30]
Liberty
And speaking of cognitive empathy, I can hear the listener wonder, okay, that sounds good, but is it about great ambition? Right. Do I need to be a hero to do this? To be a protagonist is it about like, great courage and all that, or can it take other shapes? Can it be more, you know, a smaller scale version of that?
- [35:54]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, that's an incredible question because it's one I think about a lot because people I know in my own life, we have different visions of what our best life looks like. And I see no reason to label one as better than the other. The commonality between the two of them is they both take intention. Neither of them will happen by just existing. And so whether you want to be a CEO of a billion dollar company or you want to be some sort of celebrity in some. Right. Or on the other end, if you just want to have a job that pays the bills and lets you have plenty of time with your family because your ultimate goal is to raise kids that you're proud of, those are both incredible aspirations. And I've tried to, like, come up with a way to distinguish the two types without one of them sounding different than the other. Like, or sounding lesser than the other. Like a type A protagonist versus a type one protagonist. I haven't come up with terms that I. That I feel like because if I just say like A and B, then everyone's like, well, b's not as good.
- [37:02]
Liberty
Yeah, it's almost like once you've picked what you want to do, whatever that is, then these tools can help you live the fullest version of that, the best version of that, be the best protagonist for that story. But the story itself is for you to choose. And if you try to live someone else's story, right. And it doesn't sync up with who you really are, that's another problem. Having someone else's ambition sounds great in theory, but you can't borrow someone's ambition or someone's confidence or someone's whatever. Right. You have to live your own thing. But then I think these things can help you take that to where it can go.
- [37:41]
Jameson Olson
I 100% agree. And in fact, one of the foundational principles that came from my studies before I was building this is a concept from Carl Jung where he talks about the only two things any person needs to be happy. And the first is, is to define your values. Like, maybe you grew up with a value system from your culture, your religion, your political affiliation. Like, you probably, you've definitely had values imprinted on you. And some of them will resonate, some of them probably don't. And so we all need to do the work of actually defining what are my personal values. They're nobody else's. It's just me. This is What I believe makes a good life, this is what I want from life. And then the second part is living in accordance with those values. He's like, that's all it takes to have a happy life.
- [38:33]
Liberty
Easy, right?
- [38:34]
Jameson Olson
The problem is most people never sit down and define their personal values. And even those who do, a lot of them aren't living up to that expectation. And so that's where all the discord, that's why all the despair and lack of satisfaction comes from, is either you're living someone else's code or you know what your code is, but you keep making choices that violate that code. And so to me, protagonism is very much rooted in, you need to take control of your story by defining what is the code you live by. And then the hard, probably the harder part is making sure everyday choices are in line with that. And so that opens the field wide up of like, what are the end results? Right? It doesn't have to fit one exact specific type. And it doesn't have to be heroic in the sense of looking an action hero and thinking, I've got to, you know, I've got to be this, this macho, you know, like Jason Bourne, Ethan Hunt kind of guy. But it does mean, you know, so one of my favorite books that's informed the way I talk about protagonism and I reference it on the podcast all the time. Donald Miller wrote a book called Hero on a Journey, and it's one of the only books that I've come across that actually does the same thing I'm trying to do where it uses fictional story or it uses story principles on how to map a real, a real life. And so he talks about how there are villains, there are victims, and there are heroes. And the similarities they have is that they all experience pain, which is an absolute truth about human life. It doesn't matter if you're impoverished in a war torn nation. It doesn't matter if you're, you know, born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You in what you experience, you will experience pain.
- [40:26]
Liberty
Yeah, the human condition is inescapable, but
- [40:30]
Jameson Olson
the difference comes in how you respond to pain. A victim feels powerless to do anything about it. They just accept like, this is, this is all my life is unless someone else steps in and takes care of it. For me, a villain becomes obsessed with making someone else feel their pain. Whether that's the person that they blame for their pain or they're just passing it on to other people. But their whole thing is just, I feel pain. Others need to feel pain as well. And so the hero, the only real difference from the hero is that they decide, I don't want to feel this pain again. And I don't want the people I care about to ever have to feel this pain. So I will take on the sacrifice. I will transform into what I need to be to make that happen. And so, you know, an example of. There's so many examples of this story in real life, right? Of, like, the parents who. They grew up pretty impoverished and had a pretty rough life because of that. And they just say, I don't want my kids to live like this. So they work two, three jobs so that they can send their kids to college and break that cycle of poverty for their line. That's an amazing example of a hero saying, this is the pain I felt. I don't want my kids to have to feel that pain. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to fix that. That is as much a story of a hero to me as someone who, you know, is actually a war hero or someone who has created a massive industry that is benefiting millions. The scope is different for everybody, but the same principles are true of everyone about to be heroic. All it takes is saying, this is the pain I feel. I don't want to feel it again, and I don't want anyone I care about to have to feel it. So I will take on the responsibility to become the person who stops that pain from happening.
- [42:27]
Liberty
That's a perfect segue, because I want to ask you about what you call the principle of becoming and how all of this sounds like a verb, right? A journey, it's not a destination. And one of the main difference between a story in a book and real life is that in the book, it's very clear where the beginning, the middle, and the end is. And you know that if the hero is suffering, it's for something, right? It means something. In real life, sometimes it's a lot harder to find a meaning. It's a lot harder to know where the end is, right? To have a clear moment where, okay, we've won. Let's wrap it up. Let's have the epilogue party. It's done. We've won, right? Life just keeps going on. So whatever this is, I think it has to be more of a constant thing, right? A never ending, an infinite game, so to speak. So tell me about this. I think it's fascinating.
- [43:19]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. So principle becoming is the first and at this point in time, the only principle that I have codified as, like, this is an official principle. Of protagonism, which is just the idea that this is not about setting a standard of like, I'm trash unless I reach this. Of like, I have to do this or else my life is worthless because that, that is such a burdensome way to live. And thinking that I don't have value unless I X, like, do X like, to live like, that is a really rough way. And. And the thing is, there's always going to be great achievers who talk about, like, that's. That's how I live. Like, I lived with constant insecurity. But again, I if kind of hustle culture people resonate with my stuff, awesome. But I'm not making it for them. I'm making it for the people in the middle who are like, I just. I know there's more in me, but I don't know how to go about it. And so the principle of becoming is just the idea that you are. You're approaching life with almost a curiosity above anything else of just what am I capable of? Like, if I. If I got rid of a couple vices that take up a lot of my time and I applied that to a couple hobbies or a couple skills that I'm curious about, what could I become then? Like, what is. What is the highest version of me that I could achieve? And approaching that with, With a patient love for yourself of knowing you're going to trip up, knowing you're going to make mistakes, but just never yielding that curiosity that is asking you, you know, whether you're 20 years old or 60. It's like, I've still got decades left. What can I do with that? Like, what can I achieve? What kind of existence can I create? What kind of legacy can I leave in terms of my descendants? Are they going to look at me and think, like, oh, man, all he did was like, slave away for the man to make a buck. Or are they going to be.
- [45:21]
Liberty
I love the idea of being a good ancestor. I don't remember who said it. Maybe Alex Petkiss, maybe someone else. But I love that looking at your life from the point of view of someone in the future looking back, was that person a good ancestor? Right. That feels a lot more. A lot healthier as a drive comes from a place of almost like. Of peace, of aspiration rather than insecurity, of, like, I said, this goal, and I'm a failure until I reach it. And the moment I've reached it, and then I need to set another goal and be another failure until I be like, I think it's Better to be like a vector going in a direction rather than just looking at this point on the line. And in the meantime, like, feeling like, yeah, I love that.
- [46:00]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. So the last thing I'll say about the principle of becoming is it's about not living in a deficit where you feel like, I am not whole yet until I achieve whatever. It's about living in a place of contentment, of like, hey, I'm where I'm at because of my choices, for better or for worse. But this isn't the finish line. So if I apply myself a little more or if I just focus again, it may not be about, like, what. What skills can I learn at night so I can start a business? Like, it doesn't have to be something like that. It could be, how can I be more present in my children's lives? Or how can I, you know, be a better contributor to my community? It, again, it comes down to you defining what matters to you and what you want out of life, and then just having a curiosity that you take with you to the grave of, how can I dive a little deeper into this? How can I become a better version of what I think is important in life? And, you know, there will be seasons where you're more doggedly just attacking that and trying to achieve something. And there's seasons where you're maybe resting a bit more, but you're always thinking about it just like, what can I do to get a little bit more out of this? Instead of living the life of an npc, which, for any listeners who aren't familiar, npc is a video game term, non player character, that is about a character that you, as the player, interact with, but they don't do anything on their own. They're just there. And so to me, the. The people who are not pursuing a protagonism life, they're kind of NPCs. Like they're just clocking in and out of life essentially because they. They don't. They're not holding the pen of their story. And they're just like, well, this is what life dealt me. And so I'll just, you know, I'll just follow that script. Whereas a protagonist is always curious about what am I capable of becoming if I just am intentional about how I live my life?
- [47:56]
Liberty
Yeah. I have a lot more to ask about NPCs, but first I want to ask about something else. You wrote about. You wrote about the danger of training montages, right? What do they get wrong about transformation?
- [48:09]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, yeah, that's a fun thing for Me with this pursuit is I can just look at things in stories or storytelling formats and then look at it through this lens of protagonism. And so one thing that I thought about was funny is just, you know, these training montages are. They're effective in conveying to a moviegoer of like, oh, they put in so much work and we're compressing it into 60 seconds of time. That gives us the visual cues of Rocky or whoever it is. It's like, oh, yeah, he's been grinding
- [48:48]
Liberty
the Karate Kid Washington cars.
- [48:51]
Jameson Olson
But it's dangerous for us to. To be exposed to that because just kind of makes it seem like it's not as big of a deal as it really is. If you truly, you know, let's take the Rocky example. It shows him working out and especially, you know, like in Rocky 4, it shows him working out in the snow and, like, just pulling logs and, you know, whatever. And. And it, you know, it'll show one scene of him drinking raw eggs or whatever. Like, it shows a variety of things. But what it doesn't show is him doing that every single day and how many years of grinding competitive it is how. How even when he's sick, he's having to do stuff that just is miserable. And so kind of makes. It makes the idea of a training arc glamorous because it's only showing you 60 seconds worth. Whereas the reality of any sort of arc training arc in real life is I am signing up for a suffer fest. And what I just watched in this training montage are literally highlights of that. They're the best moments essentially of the training montage. But the truth of the training montage is that there are times in life where you need something like that. You need to kind of buckle down and. And say, like, yeah, I'm going to remove distractions for this period of my life if I really want to achieve this thing. But there. There were a few other things in the article, but the biggest one is just the idea that doesn't show how monotonous and how boring it is to actually achieve something that great.
- [50:32]
Liberty
That's the counterproductive aspect of this, right? Because it's fun to watch. But if it sets your expectation, expectations where you think, oh, yeah, it's gonna feel so satisfying and I'm gonna see the progress, right? Like, it's almost like a time lapse, right? It compresses time so much that it gives you the wrong impression of how slow real progress is and how not fun it is as you're doing it. A lot of the time. So if you come in expecting that and you start training and you don't see much progress, it feels crap. You may stop. Right. If you come in with the wrong expectations. It could also. It could actually do the opposite of what you would think going in.
- [51:10]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. And it just makes you get really frustrated really quickly when you're not seeing a similar level of change or you're bumping into way more obstacles than you thought you would. You know what I'd love to see is as a training montage that more shows the person eating their Tupperware of chicken and rice while they're surrounded by people eating pizza. And just show that scene, like, dozens of times would be a more accurate representation of a training montage. Or. Or show them having to wake up to the 5am alarm day after day and dragging themselves out of bed. We don't need to see the. The log pulling or the deadlifting 500 pounds, because, again, those are the highlights. Like, show me the true lowlights of what this journey is if you want me to have a more realistic expectation of what it's like.
- [51:56]
Liberty
And in this world of social media and influencers and all that kind of stuff, people are getting advice from every direction all the time. Right. Tell us about what is advice from. With unshared consequences or why should be we be careful with advice from very confident people.
- [52:15]
Jameson Olson
So, yeah, this was a lesson I took from True Grit, which I covered recently. There's a scene. It's about halfway through the book. So, you know, it is a spoiler, but it's not necessarily a big plot. Spoiler. There's a scene where Rooster are. You know, in some ways he's a main character, but he's definitely not. He's not the narrator. Who's. Maddie Ross is the young girl's name. But they've cornered these two outlaws, and in a scuffle, Rooster has shot one of them in the leg and he's bleeding out. And the other outlaw is telling the one who's wounded to not say anything. Rooster's, like, dangling this in front of. He's like, tell me where your boss is. And, like, I'll get you to a doctor. And, like, you won't die. But the other outlaw is just, like, telling him to, like, can it, like, don't say a word. Just, you know, whatever. And. And it got me thinking about how. Yeah, it's easy for him to say. Don't talk like he's not gonna die, regardless of the choice. In fact, he's gonna. He Benefits more from you not talking because then the boss won't be angry at him. But this poor, this poor. And the kid who was shot is portrayed as like a young, like maybe 18 or 19 years old. And he's just scared and wide eyed and he doesn't know what he's gotten into by working with these outlaws. And he's just panicking and he's impressionable. And so when this, this colleague of his is yelling at him like, you shut it, like, don't you dare say anything. He, he's kind of believing him, even though he is. His life is draining from him as he does it. And so that got me thinking about this idea of people will always give you advice. And there are a lot of times where they're giving you advice that is only beneficial to them because they won't share the consequences of you following their advice. And so, you know, unless it's from a source you completely trust, a mentor, a family member, your oldest friend, something like that. If you're getting advice from someone who is not that deeply connected to you, that you trust implicitly, you have to think through what are their motivations, what do they get out of me following the advice they're sharing that might benefit them regardless of what happens to me? Because that is, that is just, you know, this world is a tough place and there are people who will take advantage of you at the drop of a hat if it means them getting what they want. And so to be able to sit back for just a moment and think, okay, why is he telling me to do this? Or why does she want me to not do this thing that I was talking about? And you know, sometimes you may not come up with a thing that is detrimental. So it's like, okay, maybe they just really meant that. But there might be times where you're just like, oh yeah, yeah, like they would look really good if I do this, but I'm carrying all the risk for them. And so that's. It was such a random thought. You know, it's not tied. The actual lesson isn't connected to any of the main characters in that story. Except for one of the main characters shot the kid. But that's one of the reasons this project has been so fun for me is that the lessons can come out of nowhere. They aren't necessarily like, oh, main character did this and then that happened. So here's a lesson. It's just inhabiting the world of that story exposes me to thoughts and ideas that I can extrapolate concepts that are important to think about in modern life.
- [55:24]
Liberty
Let's get back to NPCs. I think this is another great mental model to have. And you mentioned it's from video games, but I think before that it was from role playing games like D and
- [55:33]
Jameson Olson
D. That's true, that's true.
- [55:34]
Liberty
And then you get in some inn somewhere and there's a bunch of people there, but they're all NPCs. Right. They're not fully fleshed out. They're just there for a small purpose. They're not actively changing the story. So that's kind of, that's the way to think about it. How do you transfer that to real life? What are the signs that someone is living like an npc? How could someone like maybe realize their own NPC tendencies? How do you fight that? And even like what are your own NPC tendencies that you've discovered and dealt with them? Right. To be bring that to, to your own story arc.
- [56:09]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. So one of the, the, the ideas of an NPC that I think is very interesting because it translates to real life pretty well is, is if you find an npc, most games are only going to program a few lines of dialogue for that npc. And so if you keep going back, they'll end up just repeating the same line because they don't have more in the tank to share with you. And, and so that, that to me translates to real life in the sense of an NPC is more likely to be running off of a. Only a few scripts and they're not open to new information. They've just decided, oh, this is life. You know, I'm, I'm 25 years old, I've figured out life. And they spend the next 50 years of their life like assuming they, they have a grasp on the entirety of truth and that everyone who disagrees with them is wrong. And, and yada yada. Like an important aspect of living a fulfilling life is being open to new information at any given time. It doesn't matter if you're old. In fact, that's one lesson I took away from Dracula is the fact that you have Van Helsing, who is the most educated character, he's the most learned, and yet he's the one that's having to tell these other characters, like, I need you to open your mind. Like I need you to consider things that you have thought impossible for, for your entire life. And so to be able to constantly be taking new information and not let that turn you into someone who thinks you know everything is a crucial detail. Of. Of being able to pursue, like, the life of a protagonist, in my opinion. And so an NPC is incapable of that because it's just easier to run on fewer scripts and say, no, I've experienced enough to say, this is what life is.
- [57:54]
Liberty
And if you don't think for yourself and create your own scripts, there are plenty of people out there will be very happy to supply you with a script that helps them. Right from consumerism, politicians, whatever. Right. There's always someone else that's very, very happy to tell you how to think if you don't do it for yourself.
- [58:11]
Jameson Olson
Exactly. And actually, that brings up something that. I did not assume this at all when I started this project, but it's been amazing to me how much as I'm analyzing stories and lessons, this idea has come up, which is the idea of tribalism and how it is ingrained into us. We are all part of tribes even in the 21st century. You're part of your political tribe, you're part of your cultural tribe, your religious tribe, your neighborhood tribe, whatever group it is you identify with. And the purpose of the tribe in ancient times was, we survive better when there's more of us together, but we have to make sure that the only ones who are with us are ones we can trust. And that's why, you know, for a long, long time, being ostracized from the tribe was basically a death sentence because you wouldn't have access to their resources. And so even though we have grocery stores now, like, I can get access to food without some tribe granting me access to it, there are still definite needs that are filled by tribal instincts, social needs, things like that. And so I just witness how often people's choices are dictated by the need to make sure they can maintain membership in a certain tribe. And so tying this back to NPCs, part of that is that it is exhausting to actually think through how you feel about every single thing. It is a monotonous and. And terrifying task to actually think, no, I'm gonna decide for myself.
- [59:48]
Liberty
And if you're wrong, you're wrong. Yeah, someone else, and it's someone else's fault.
- [59:53]
Jameson Olson
And so it's easier to just adopt a belief system from a tribe and say, oh, if Democrats think this way, then that's how I feel. Or if Republicans feel this way, or, you know, if. If I'm trying to think of other.
- [60:07]
Liberty
My family, my.
- [60:08]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, yeah, true. Yeah, exactly. It can be as granular as, like, my family, whatever tribe you're part of, like, if they believe this, it's easier to just say, okay, I guess I believe this too. And you cling to the parts that actually resonate with you, and you just kind of bury the ones that don't resonate with you under a rug and say, like, well, no, no, I agree enough that it's better for me to just say I'm part of this group and, like, bury the things that actually are friction points for me. But so to me, an NPC is someone who has largely just found two or three tribes that they just outsource all of their thinking to, and they just say, okay, if that's what they believe, then great, that's who I am. Because I just want to be a part of the tribe in a way that I can lie low, that I don't have to worry about tension in my key relationships. And I, you know, I don't want to have to, like, worry about my ability to keep moving forward. And that's easy as done if I just partake in a certain amount of tribes and play by their rules. And I'm not like, you know, I'm not saying that's bad, but what I am saying is you can't have that mindset and then at the same time complain about how you're not getting what you want out of life because you're not living according to what you want or what you believe. So there is a certain amount of isolation that comes, I think, with truly pursuing, you know, whether it's. Whether it's the famous CEOs who talk about their. Their years of no one believing them or whatever it is, and tying this again, to true storytelling frameworks, you know, the hero's Journey. Joseph Campbell's. One of the most foundational concepts of what a good story is, one of the first steps is leaving the tribe. Like, literally is leaving the tribe. You have to separate yourself from the people who are doing the normal in order to go do something extraordinary. And so there. There is a conflict. While I'm not here to just say, oh, an npc, life is bad, there is an inherent conflict that cannot be avoided between you trying to fit in to your tribes perfectly in a way that doesn't rub any feathers the wrong way, and you actually going out and achieving what you think you are capable of becoming. And the trick with that is, you know, again, using the Hero's journey as an example, the trick with that is recognizing that if you don't want to be completely ostracized from the tribe, your journey out has to come back to somehow Benefit the tribe in the end, or else they will decide he's a liability, get rid of them. And so whether that's, you know, you went and slayed the dragon that was threatening the crops or like, whatever it is, the only way to maintain relationships within your tribe, but also do your thing, is that your journey out of the tribe has to somehow come back to benefit them. Whether that's, you know, your family is very traditional, and they don't like that you want to go off to a big city and have a big career. If you do that long enough, then they may be like, yeah, like, he's not really as, like, dialed in of a family member as the rest of us. But if you do that so that you can then come back and, like, elevate the existence of your family members, all of a sudden you're the hero. All of a sudden, you're the one who makes everyone proud. But there are some people who will go out on the journey. They achieve the great thing, but they don't make the loop back. And then they wonder why everyone hates them.
- [63:37]
Liberty
Yeah. And to be clear, being an NPC or borrowing ideas, values from the tribe is not all bad. Right. It's kind of a floor because some of these ideas are probably great and, you know, it's better to have that than nothing. But it's also ceiling, because if you do like everybody else, you can't expect to have outcomes that are too different from everybody else. But one question about this, like, the, the flip side of this mental model is that is there a danger that it could be dehumanizing a little bit, that you could look down on other people? Oh, they're all. They're all NPCs. And I'm. I'm not. Right. How do you avoid this turning into something negative or a bad way of interacting with others?
- [64:21]
Jameson Olson
I mean, I guess the first thing I'd say is every belief system comes with risks of downplaying the other, of categorizing the people who don't see things the way you do as being lesser than. So, yeah, I definitely think there are risks with it, but it's not like other more traditional ways of thinking are not this way. But, you know, I. For me, this is a great question. I haven't spent a ton of time thinking about this before, but from. From the thoughts I have had, I guess I would just say that part of the way I try to frame this is maybe it kind of ties back to the thing I said of what people do make sense to them. And so if they're not living as purposeful and as particular of a life as me, someone who's trying to, like, you know, pursue greatness in one way or another, that's because their life experience hasn't taught them that they're capable of it or they genuinely may just not desire it. Like, that's. That's a huge thing that honestly freed me up in my personal life, was just recognizing that it doesn't. Like, if people see the world so differently from me and. And they're not doing something that's actually detrimental, they're not harming other people. That's an important caveat, I think, then, like, it's no skin off my nose. Like, I don't have to. To hold them. What's funny is, like, I would say I'm actually a very judgmental person in the sense that I do look at people's situations and make a judgment on it, but I don't then carry this extra layer of like. And so therefore they are bad because I make this judgment about them. It's just saying, oh, that's. That's what they're up to. Like, that's their situation. That's what they think is important. It may be frustrating if. If I need something from them that they're not willing to give because of their worldview. There are definitely situations where it's like, I wish they would see the world a little differently, but it's accepting, like, that's they're living their story. I can't control that. They wouldn't want me to control that for them, the same way I wouldn't want anyone else writing my story. And so, you know, you try to elevate, you try to assist where you can, but ultimately your story is the only one you have a modicum of control over. And so you should focus on that in a way that, you know, I guess one idea to tie, and this connects to several of the things I've said, including, like, coming back around to the tribe at the end of the story. But I do believe. Truly heroic figures in one way or another are always doing what they do for more than themselves. We like to idolize a lot of people who are truly just, you know, at least from the outside, it truly looks like they're just out for themselves. And there's a lot that's admirable about what they achieve. They accomplish incredible things, but at the end of the day, we don't revere them the same way that we do. People who have sacrificed, who have done A lot for the benefit of others. And so I think that's an important way to evaluate what's worth pursuing with your protagonist life. Like, what are your goals? Purely just to make you rich or make you famous or whatever it is you say you want? Or is it because you have a vision of how you can help other people by achieving these things, and so you're doing it for something bigger than yourself. Not only is that a more harmonic ending to the story if, if you benefit others, but also that can be the motivation to stick through the hard times if you know other people are being impacted by your success or your failure. And so having. Whether it's your family. I try to categorize the characters, the main characters I talk about into different clusters. And so I have this matrix that is partially the Donald Miller framework that I talk about. Like, are they a hero, villain, victim, based on how they're responding to their pain. And then the thing I added to it is who does this person care about? And the three categories that create this matrix are, are they who I call a champion? Who. They just, they're. This is Captain America. This is just someone who's like, everyone is worth protecting. And like, I will put myself on the line for anybody. Then there's the, the Guardian, who has a select group of people they care about. So maybe that's their family, maybe that's, you know, their, their city. Whatever it is, it's Frodo caring about the Shire. You know, that's. The Guardian has a certain number of people they care about, whereas the Champion is just like, I am here to defend everybody or serve everybody. And then the Maverick, I actually used to keep it on the same level as the other heroes, but then I've ultimately separated it because I'm like, this is not the same thing. So the Maverick is someone who's willing to undergo transformation, but ultimately they only care about themselves. And. And so I'm like, this isn't truly heroic, but at the same time, these characters do do the things that heroes do. They make self sacrifices. Yeah, definitely the same way you can learn from a villain in certain regards. So they're worth analyzing, but it's just worth pointing out like, this person only cares about themselves. They are burning bridges left and right. Like they, they ultimately will only have themselves or the people they can pay to be around them at the end of the day, you know, so it's worth evaluating, like, who is it that I care about? And is how is that motivating me to go down the path that I want to go down to transform into what I need to be to serve this group of people.
- [69:54]
Liberty
Beautiful. And as I was thinking about NPCs, it reminded me of something I wrote a while ago about how there's an asymmetry there. And because you can't see into other people's heads, but you can see into yours, you should treat others and yourself kind of differently. Right. I have different expectations. And so I think you should never expect others to change. If they do, that's great. But you should always remember that you can change and always try to improve. You should filter what other people say through the most charitable interpretation, but you should pre filter everything that you say through the least charitable interpretation. I think this asymmetry, if you think about the NPC principle that way, you should always look for your own NPC tendencies and try to fix them. And if you notice them in others, you should be very charitable with it and say, oh, it may look like that from the outside, but I can't know what's going on inside. I think, I think that's, that's one way to kind of balance it out.
- [70:51]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, that's a great point. And the only layer I'd add to that is to me, there's a certain layer of I can't know for sure their intentions. And even if I had the ability to be positive about their intentions and it is like a bad interpretation, so what, like you cannot, as you said, like, you can't change them. And so a lot about being willing to be, to transform is accepting the truth of your circumstances. If that means you have an unsupportive spouse or unsupportive parents, like, there's no need to villainize them to be able to say, like, this is the reality of my situation. So I have to factor this in if I want to achieve this thing. I have to assume I'm not going to have the support of these people. That's just how it is. Like, that's, you know, a big key to being a high agency person is being willing to 100% accept the reality of where you are. Because it's only then you can start making the choices to change that situation. Yeah.
- [71:59]
Liberty
Looking at hard truths and being lucid about it is like, yeah, that's part of agency.
- [72:04]
Jameson Olson
Right.
- [72:04]
Liberty
If you have your head buried in the sand and you pretend everything's okay, are you gonna make the decisions, the sacrifices that cause change if you think they're not needed? Yeah, totally.
- [72:13]
Jameson Olson
Yeah. Because I mean, I, they're definitely going to the Start of this conversation where I talk about, like, that chunk of my 20s. I was very much like, oh, this isn't fair. My boss isn't giving me the opportunities that I deserve. Like, I. I was very much kind of playing that victim mentality, that NPC mentality of just like, it's, it's out of my hands. So there's like, what's the point? It's such an unhelpful. You know, you're asking me about, like, what is. What are the traits of NPCs? I think it's that they have a backpack full of limiting beliefs of these things they've assumed to be 100% true and 100% unchangeable, whether that's about themselves. Like, oh, that's just the way I am. Like, that's one of the most annoying phrases for me to hear. It's just like, that's the way you have been. Like, there's, there's nothing that says you have to continue to be this way. But, yeah, so they're limiting beliefs about themselves or they're limiting beliefs about the opportunities that they can expect to find out in the world. And. And I definitely have had my fair share. All of us still, even, even people who, if we wanted to, like, claim are enlightened enough to. To see that the world is more under their control than they think they. We all still carry limiting beliefs that we need to challenge on a regular basis. But there's a big difference between saying, I have limiting beliefs and so I try to catch myself and work through them when I see them in action or not recognizing that they are limiting beliefs and you are instead labeling them as concrete truths that you have no say over.
- [73:46]
Liberty
Yeah, that's why it's a journey. That's why it's not a destination. How about villains? Anti heroes? Right. Like, protagonists are not always good people. Like, Walter White is a protagonist. What separates a hero from, like, a villain? That. With tons of agency. Or what about admiring characters for their intensity? Right. Their cleverness rather than their wisdom. How do you think about still learning from people who you may not want to be like or you wouldn't want in your life? But how do you think about all this?
- [74:18]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, that's another area where there's so much more to mine than I've had time to so far. But I definitely, you know, I cover a lot of characters who fit into the kind of anti hero or even just very compelling villains sometimes in stories. And, you know, Walter White's a great example. He's A. He's a perfect example of the. The Greek term I used earlier, the hamartia, The. The tragic flaw. Because at the surface level, people just think, oh, it literally just means tragic flaw. But the deeper meaning of a hamartya is that your tragic flaw is actually tied to your greatest strength as well. It's like the downside of your greatest strength. And so Walter White is a great example because, like, his greatest strength is his genius with chemistry. Like, he's. He's able to do things that have never been done before and he creates a product that is worth more than anything that's ever been on the market before. But that makes him pretty prideful to the point where he creates unnecessary risk because he's unwilling to have his genius not be recognized. And, and you know, there's so many Shakespearean characters are Macbeth. You know, he was. He was very ambitious. And because he didn't have the value set in place, when opportunities to achieve ambition through shady means came around, he jumped on it, even if it took his wife kind of convincing him to. And that led to his downfall. And so to me, anti heroes or people who are villains, that had a more promising start. Whether we hear about that in the story or it's just kind of assumed of like they evolved into this, this bad character. I think they just are beautiful ways to. Again, simulations. The Matrix, It's. In fact, I love stories where it's like the hero and the villain have similar origins because then you can track which choices separated them, like which ones, especially if they did. Yeah, it really is. And so like, if you have characters that. Especially if it's. I'm trying to think of an example of this right now, but a movie or a book where the hero and the villain actually were like on the same side and they experience the same. So one principle of stories is just like there's always the inciting incident, right? Like, the first little bit of the story is establishing the world as it is currently, and then something happens that changes everything. A lot of times it may be the pain point. Like, it's the thing that creates the pain that starts them on a journey or not. But yeah. So if you have a story where the hero and the villain actually start on the same side and then the inciting incident impacts both of them, but it's their like responses that really diverge. Like, that's a really fascinating case study in my opinion, because you're witnessing in real time almost like how you end up on different paths. But so I think they're very Valuable because they, they serve as the warnings. They serve as like the. Okay, like, especially if it's a story where you. You get, you know, old Hollywood and a lot of more kind of dime store novels, like just kind of higher level themes. They simplify the villain by just making them truly evil. They. They have no redeeming qualities. Yeah, they wear. They wear black. They only talk disparagingly to everybody under them, you know, so they simplify the villain by just giving them no redeeming qualities. Which for the most part is not true of real life. Like, everyone who we. We struggle with or see as a bad person, in our personal lives, at least there's. There's more to them than that. But we're just honing in on the things we don't like or the things that we disagree with. And so a story that's. I do love that evolution of Hollywood where we're getting more complex villains and we're seeing the backstory. You know, I think one of the best examples was the first Black Panther movie where we see his. I can't remember the character. It's Michael Jordan's character or Michael B. Jordan's character. I can't remember his actual character in the movie, but we see his origin, we see the pain that he felt. And so even if we're like, okay, but you took some really radical choices and ended up on the wrong side of stuff, we at least understand, like, oh, look, this is where stuff happened to him that led to him feeling betrayed, that led to him feeling like justice was not done unless he took these actions. And so those stories are really interesting to me because they serve as way better litmus tests for us of, okay, where was the key choice that he made to end up on this path versus a, you know, someone? The one that came to mind was Darth Vader. I'm like, well, the prequels actually do show his journey, but if we take the original trailer, just the original trilogy, like Darth Vader, it's just. I mean, he does redeem himself at the very end, but, like, up until the end of Return of the Jedi, it's just like, I am here to do, like, my master's bidding. Yeah. So like that type of hero, they're just more flat. They're a cardboard character is a term that I hear not so much authors use, but critics of writers will be like, oh, his characters are so flat. They're like made of cardboard. But yeah. And so now, to me, the funny thing is we have so much of a push to like, show the depth and complexity of villains, that when we get a more traditional just. And in the same time, we have to show the flaws and elevate the flaws of our heroes and show how complex they are, which, again, there's value to it. Like, it's really important. But it's funny how we've pushed so much in that direction that now when we get a more straight up story of just a good guy trying to do the right thing, it feels like a breath of fresh air. I mean, you and I recorded an episode of your podcast for Night of the Seven Kingdoms where it's just like, oh, man. Like, yeah, he's, he's not a perfect being, but his intentions are 100% good. And that, that was like my favorite thing about that story compared to the other things we've gotten in the Game of Thrones universe, where it's like we've got to have 50 different characters and we're showing all their motivations and they're all corrupt in one way or another, yada, yada. Yeah, exactly. So to me, it's like we need both. You need, you need the complex characters so you can see how you may have been headed in a right direction, but you slowly start. I mean, speaking of Game of Thrones, Daenerys really impressed me in the kind of mid seasons where we see her transformation from being this savior of the enslaved and just like she's out here to right the wrongs that she, in her mind, her vision has not changed. She's still doing the same things, but we see how her choices and her tactics evolve into much more sinister paths. So I think that's a great example of the evolution of a villain or just a character with villainous traits. But at the same time, we need the more pure examples as well as just aspirational. You know, if we only are given stories of, oh, everyone's flawed, then we don't have the inspiration of like, but I could be more than I am. It's like, well, I've got good qualities and that's good enough. Like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna settle where I'm at. There's no need. Whereas we have the, the Hercules at the crossroads, and we have these other characters who are fictional, but they are these idealized versions of what a human could be. They give us something to, in fact. Okay, one little fascinating thing for me is the way that terms that are used to describe fiction and we assume, we just naturally assume that means fake. Like, that's what that means. It's just like, it's fake. It's not real. Several of them, the origins actually don't. They're not nearly as simple as that. They have a better purpose than just saying, oh, this is not. This is not real. And so recently I learned that the etymology of pretend is actually tied to the idea of stretching forward. It's about, like, reaching. And so to pretend is like, okay, so this is what we know, but let's imagine, like, let's. Let's stretch forward a little bit and visualize what could be.
- [82:33]
Liberty
So stories are simulations, right?
- [82:35]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so to me, like, having the. The perfect hero characters are something that needs to be in the rotation because they give us the visual so that we can pretend. We can extend forward our assumptions about ourself. And like, okay, but what if I could embody that more than I currently do? What if I could approximate, like, this, this character more than I am now? How much better off would I be? And so the same way I say fiction and nonfiction are both necessary. I think we need the complex stories that show that heroes have flaws and villains had, at some point in their life, better intentions than they're showing at this point. But we also need stories that just give us that, like, gold, that shining star of, like, how cool would it be if I could become more like this?
- [83:21]
Liberty
And as we approach the ending of today's story, okay, someone who's been listening to this and they sounds good, but they feel like they've been drifting, right? Maybe they've been hearing about this NPC stuff, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's a little me, a little too close to home. What is the first small protagonist move that they could make today? What are the small first baby steps towards higher agency? What would you recommend they think about? Or they. Or maybe don't think, just do. And then as you do, you. You start to, you know, integrate it.
- [83:55]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, I mean, I. In. In one of the more recent episodes I've covered, one of the takeaways that I had from it was that idea of, like, don't. Don't try to think your way into becoming. Just start making the choices. And then you becoming. That is what follows kind of the same concept of, like, you don't. You don't learn your way into being brave. You take some courageous actions, and then once you've got those in your bag, it's like, okay, I guess I am more courageous. But, like, a specific exercise for people who are as overthinking and neurotic as I Am sit down. Preferably with pen and paper. Like, preferably. You don't have any device that could distract you in the room. But just sit down and challenge the assumptions. Okay, what do I value based on the tribes that I'm a part of and what are the sticky points of those assumptions? Assumptions of my tribe that maybe I need to make a choice that's more personal to me. Sit down and decide what is it I want from life? Like, I feel the pull to be uber successful and make tons of money, but is that really what I want? Because if you're just chasing money because you know it'll give you a more comfortable lifestyle. But you know the, the old proverb of the fisherman and some guy comes to me is like, oh, like you should start a fishing business and, and you keep scaling it and the guy's just like, why? Why would I do that? And it comes full circle back to saying like, well, if you make all this money and you have other people do it, then all you, you can take the day and just go fishing. So yeah, like we the the modern life of social media which is only projecting these shiny versions of life 24 hour news cycle. Like everything in our existence is working towards pressuring you to thinking that the good life is only a certain selection of pathways. And that may not be true for what you want out of life. And so I think the number one thing is you need to just decide what is it that I think I would be the most fulfilled by in life? And if that is becoming an entrepreneur, awesome. If that is finding how to retire early so you can just spend more time with the people you love equally, awesome. Like the only thing that matters is you have decided this is what your story, the best version of your story is, and you take the responsibility to recognize it's up to me. Like I will never be the main character in someone else's story. I've got one shot at this just because I'm not there yet. And maybe I'm even in a much worse spot than I thought I would have been at this point in my life. It's never too late to take some control back. If you just grab the pen and start rewriting the script that you're currently living. It. It's not easy. It's not. Okay. The thing I'll share that could be maybe this is how we wrap up. I've talked to you about how I recently discovered William James and I've become obsessed with him and he might be on what I would call the Mount Rushmore of protagonism. So the brief kind of concept. William James, interestingly, is the brother of the novelist Henry James. So he was an American psychologist from, I believe, late 19th century into the early 20th century. And he. He had a lot of kind of philosophies that are very in line with protagonism, of just agency and deciding what to make of your life. But what makes him so fascinating to me is he's not some academic who just wrote about this from a cushy life. He actually had a complete breakdown himself, where he spent years bedridden, questioning existence, considering ending his life, I think sometimes. And so he has. He went through it personally. And then one day he just decided because one of the things he was struggling with was like, do I have free will? Or is like, is determinism? Like, am I just destined to do what I do? And so he was struggling with these thoughts, and one day he just decided, you know what? I don't know which it is, but I'm just going to act like my choices do matter. And if that's determinism, I don't care which. I love that because I literally have said that in one of my episodes. I'm like, you could argue either one. As long as I, in my consciousness today can look at my options and say I have the choice to do something I think is a better choice than the other, that's all that matters. Like, it doesn't matter if I was predetermined to do this or not. Like, all I care about is in the here and now, I can look at my options, and I have the option to choose what I think is going to contribute to a better life. So anyway, William James decided to do that, and he eventually built himself up into one of these very prominent psychologists, philosophers, who had a very meaningful life. And so the detail. I haven't shared this with you yet, but the detail that ties into this, of it being a journey, is I learned about that story about him, and then I learned there was, like, controversy about it. And I was like, oh, no, is the controversy like, this never happened, like, he never had a breakdown. But no, every source agrees. Like, he had a breakdown. Like he. He went through it. The controversy comes around from some versions, romanticize that he had that thought one day and just boom, like, his life was changed. And the people were saying that's not true. The only contention is they're saying it took him a while to, like, figure that out. It took him a while. He had that thought. He wrote it down somewhere but he stumbled his way to what we eventually see him as. And so when I learned that, I was like, that's even better. That's a much more relatable story. The whole point is he got there because he just decided, it doesn't matter how low I am right now, where I'm at in life, my choices from here on out matter. And I'm going to live under the assumption that I can impact where I end up based on my choices. Because that's the thing is, like, I will never say, like, oh, everyone can be billionaires if you just choose. Like, you know, your circumstances do have certain limitations to them, but within your fixed circumstances that are truly outside of your capability, there are millions of possibilities of how your life ends up that you do have some sway, some control over. As long as you decide that your choices will impact the way your story
- [90:21]
Liberty
plays out, you have some props, you've been dealt a hand of cards. Right? How you play them is what matters. We all have a different hand. But then what do you do with it?
- [90:33]
Jameson Olson
Yeah, so what? I. And, you know, I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the most pessimistic that someone could be about these ideas, my answer to that is actually something that I've thought about, and I was validated by it when Matthew McConaughey was on Hot Ones because he. He talked about this idea of just.
- [90:53]
Liberty
You're.
- [90:54]
Jameson Olson
You have desires, you have these things. And. And if. If you are questioning if. If. Man, I'm really butchering trying to remember it. I just remember the line, the zinger. The line that he said that I was like, yes, this is exactly what I'm trying to say is he just kind of points out, he's like, it doesn't matter how bad things are for you right now or whatever. He's like, what else are you gonna do? Like, what else? Yeah, are you gonna just sit there and do nothing and be like, well, this is life. Like, I'm just gonna survive for the rest of my existence on this planet? Or are you gonna say, what can I. What can I control? Like, what can I become? Like, I may have robbed myself of certain opportunities because of choices I made 10 years ago. I may have certain limitations purely because of where I was born and, like, my parents socioeconomic status? Like, yeah, but so what? Like, what are you gonna do about it? Like, what are you going to try to create with your beautiful life? No matter what dealt what hand of cards you've been dealt with, there are people who have been dealt almost an identical hand who have turned it into something amazing. And there are people who have been dealt an almost identical hand who have just suffered through the rest of their life. And that is the difference between being an NPC and choosing to see your life as a story that you can actually impact with the choices that you make.
- [92:19]
Liberty
I think that's as good a place as any to close it. We're gonna put all of your links in the show notes. For people who want more, check out becoming the main character in your podcast player. I'm gonna close. I'm gonna steal Jim's question. If you could be made emperor of the world, you're the cosmic writer of the novel of life and every human are characters in it. And you can incept two things in all those characters, two things that they will believe and they will act on. What would those two things be? And they can be. From what we've discussed. Right. What. What stands out?
- [92:54]
Jameson Olson
I would instill that the two most important things any person can have to achieve a meaningful life is curiosity. Both about what am I capable of becoming and also about why do people act differently than me? Like being willing to. To see things outside of yourself. So curiosity and then grit. The grit to grind out the vision you have to actually live. The painstaking training montages that are. That are glamorized in 60 seconds in a movie. Those two things combined. The curiosity to explore what you're capable of and what's possible, and the ability to stick it out when it's not fun, when it might feel like it's not going to work out, but you know that the only way to know if it works out is to stick with it. Grit and curiosity. I think if people just held those as important virtues, it would be an incredible place to live.
- [93:54]
Liberty
I love that. Thank you, everyone. Goodbye.