The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Overcoming an Addiction to Money and Success with Sam Polk

Sam Polk’s childhood ambitions of becoming rich led him to a career on Wall Street in which eventually he discovered that he had become addicted to money and success In this episode we discuss overcoming that addiction an the similarities that success and addiction have in common.

The influence that Sam’s dad had on his view of the world
A period of loneliness and depression in college
The challenges of pretending to be what we’re not
The disconnect between who we are and who we want to be
A series of inauthentic reinventions that failed
A relationship that made Sam choose a different path
What happens when we see the world as a dark scary place
Losing the belief that we’re inherently valuable
The exploration of core beliefs about your life
Why living your life from a complete deficit doesn’t lead to true success
A look at the meaning that we give to having money in our lives
The similarities between the pursuit of success and addiction
Dealing with two conflicting views of the world
The challenge of choosing between two paths
Choosing the path on which you can’t see the end
The motivation for creating the Groceryships non-profit
Why we can all create things that don’t exist

Sam Polk is a former hedge-fund trader and the founder of the nonprofit Groceryships.

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Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 18 Jun 2014
Audio Format:: other

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And with Instacart helping deliver the snack time MVPs to your door, you're ready for the game in as fast as 30 minutes, so you never miss a play or lose your seat on the couch or have to go head to head for the last chicken wing. Shop game day faves on Instacart and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three gross reorders, offer valid for a limited time, other fees and terms apply. To learn more, visit 1-800-flowers.com/acast, that's 1-800-flowers-dot-com-slash-a-cast. Give it a try at midmobile.com/switch, whatever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first three month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes of CDTails. Sam, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative, thanks for taking the time to join us. Thanks for having me, I'm super excited. Yeah, my pleasure. So, yeah, as I had mentioned to you before we hit record here, I came across your story by way of one of our listeners in an op-ed piece which was all about money becoming this addiction. And so, I'd love for you to tell us a bit about your story, your journey and how that has led you to where you're at today. And so, where do you want me to start? I guess it's the very beginning of it, to be honest. Like the beginning of how I got to Wall Street in a sense? Yeah, yeah, I guess that's a good place to start. Okay, so I grew up in Los Angeles and, you know, I didn't come from money, we sort of lived in like a, you know, middle-class neighborhood, we were always kind of struggling to make ends meet. My mom was a nurse practitioner and my dad was a kind of guy who had like 1,000 ideas about how to make it big, he was like trying to write a script and he would start these businesses. But from the core of my childhood, I just remember his sort of dreams about what it was going to be like when we had a bunch of money. And I even remember that like even in so far as like when I was 12, I went with him to a coffee shop and somebody asked like a neighbor came up and asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And I just said, "Rich," you know. And my dad like smiled at that, you know, like that's what he wanted more than anything. And he was sort of like a willy-loem-type guy like tortured by his inability to make it big. And so anyway, so I got into Columbia, I was a wrestler, got into Columbia sort of because I had gotten on the wrestling roster and then, you know, kind of got into all this trouble at college. Like I sort of, I had this idea of what college was going to be like in terms of, you know, I wanted to kind of reinvent myself as a super cool guy who was really, you know, popular in a ladies' man and none of that came to pass. What did come to pass was like total loneliness and depression, which ended up in like drugs and, you know, like a 2.0 GPA and getting kicked off the wrestling team and getting kicked off, getting kicked out of school for a burglary. And so anyway, so then I went out to San Francisco and got this internet job. It was during 1999 and 2000 and the sort of dot com boom was taking off and I got this great job and I ended up actually messing up that job too. But the reason I tell you about that job was because when I applied to Wall Street and all these, you know, all these kind of companies come and recruit on Columbia's campus, I kind of put on my resume this thing that was like, look, my grades might not be good, but I have all this business experience, including this Austin internet company that I was a big deal in, you know, leaving out the fact that I had been fired for getting in a fight in the middle of the office and so that's kind of what led me on to Wall Street. Wow. So, you know, I want to go back to the beginning of this. There's a lot of stuff here that, you know, really kind of want to take apart and tear apart. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned having this sort of set idea of what you wanted your life to look like when you got to college and I can completely relate. And you know, the thing is that it seems like it sent you into sort of a downward spiral almost and I'm really curious. I want to do a bit more digging here. I think that we all have these things that we feel inadequate about, you know, whether it be money, whether it be, you know, sort of status, whether it be how we're perceived by the world around us because I can relate to a lot of what you're saying. And I'm wondering, you know, one, how you kind of overcame all of that. And then sort of two, you know, how do you keep it from becoming this self-destructive path because I see this over and over again? I mean, I've seen, you know, it's interesting. I almost seem it seems like you have to destroy yourself in order to build yourself. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely true for me. And like, you know, let me just say like from, you know, from almost as early as I can imagine, I was always, I was never sort of myself. I was always trying to pretend to be the kind of guy that I thought was sort of super awesome. So, you know, in high school that meant like trying to like lean on rails in the way that the cool kids did and kind of hold my cigarette in the way that they did. And I was always just like, I never really had a sense of me. I had a sense of like an image of who I wanted to be. And I was trying to kind of live up to that. And so that sort of led to all these different reinventions, you know, in high school, I sort of became a tough guy and then in college, I was trying to be really popular. And you know, as you sort of point out, like, it never worked. You know, first of all, I was never authentic, right? So I think people always, well, my guess is, you know, I've never been one of the kind of people that, you know, people just love. Like I think people can like read that on me. And then, and I think that in a sense, like Wall Street was sort of like really about that, at least in my dreams of what Wall Street would be, it was like, you know, in high school, what's super cool is being quarterback of the football team, but in adulthood, what's super cool is being a really rich guy with a lot of, with a big job, you know? And so that's sort of why I headed to Wall Street. But then, and whether this is like, you know, whether this is a chicken or egg problem, but like, you know, I, I think because I had this like total dissonance and like sort of lack of authenticity, I was forever getting drunk because, you know, getting drunk was the only time in my life that I could sort of feel like I was me, you know, all my inhibitions were gone. I was no longer acting. I was just out there sort of being myself. And of course, that worked for a while until it came kind of crashing down. And for me, and this goes to what you were saying about hitting like sort of, you have to destroy yourself is, you know, three weeks after I started my first Wall Street internship, I was dating this girl that was like, so far and above, beyond sort of what I thought I could get in a woman, which is how I thought about it. And she broke up with me. And it was that sort of devastation of that sort of first love breakup was what sort of led me to sort of start kind of, I don't know how to put it, like choosing a different path. So, let's go back to this idea of the sense of me, you know, like you had no sense of yourself. And I think we lose that, you know, I mean, I think everybody has it as a child, but then you have all these influences, you know, like you said, your dad loved the idea that you wanted to be rich and that just made him smile, you know, I mean, how do we get back to that? I mean, how do we uncover all the crap that we've, you know, used to shield ourselves from what people will think of the real version of this? And I think there's so much fear associated with all of that. Dude, I mean, first of all, I couldn't agree more. And second of all, I think what you're touching on is like actually this, like a bigger sort of idea than, I don't know, like one can contemplate. And what I mean by that is like, you know, I think we are, I think we're born this like whole, you know, sort of perfect being that is sort of in touch with who we are and what our purpose is and our sort of humanness. And then, and I think this goes for almost everybody in our culture, somewhere along the way, we get broken, that connection to ourselves and to our purpose gets severed. And I think it's usually by sort of what you're talking about, you know, people injecting their fear into you, you know, like my dad was terrified about the future and my dad sort of saw the world as this like dark scary place. And so, pretty soon he started teaching me that the world is a dark scary place. And, you know, I sort of came into the world, I believe sort of knowing that I was valuable. And then through a thousand different ways was treated in such a way as to be like, oh, maybe, maybe I'm not inherently valuable. Maybe I actually have to achieve something in order to be valuable. And that is like, I believe that's the sort of bedrock belief of our culture. And so by the time, you know, you get to be 18 or 19, then you no longer believe that you're sort of inherently valuable, but you're sort of looking for all these other things on the outside to, you know, fill the hole that has been created inside. Yeah, that's a really, really interesting point. You know, my business partner, Greg Hartle and I were having a discussion the other day. And he said, you know, because we've got a steady stream of some pretty interesting successes, you know, with a book hitting the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, a conference that sold out, but, you know, suddenly my confidence got a bit shaken. And he said, he said, well, he said, listen, he said, you can't have confidence based on something external that is happening in your life. He said, that's actually fake confidence. It's not real. And you know, I think that the question for me becomes when you say that is, is how do we fill that hole? I mean, if we've constantly looked for external accolades and, you know, it's funny because I know this on a level, I've even written about it in my book that these external accolades, they are often the byproduct of an internal sort of shift mentally. And I'm really curious, you know, how we start to make that shift or how you did. Well, look, I mean, you know, the thing for me, right, was like, these things I'm talking about of like, you know, believing that I was worthless and believing that achievement is, you know, the marker of success. Like, I was just, I didn't know that I believed that. That's just sort of who I was, how I thought about the world. And what happened when I first started on Wall Street is I got dumped by this girl. And because I was so sort of devastated that I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. And like, I was in the middle of this internship and I couldn't go into work because I was so, you know, bursting into tears all the time. And so I called this woman who my girlfriend and I had seen together as a couples counselor years before. And she was this like, I mean, if you can imagine, like the least likely person that I would ever sort of talk to. I was this kind of like Ivy League Wall Street guy intent on success. And this woman was a Native American spiritual counselor who lived in Santa Monica and didn't have any psychiatry or psychology degrees. She was just like, she, I mean, she said she had some degrees that I had never heard of them. And she was just like, I'm a spiritual teacher. And I was like, what is that? You know, what are you talking about? But because I was so broken and I didn't have the phone number of any other counselor, I called her. And what we started doing is like, you know, she started like we helped, she helped me process the breakup and get over that. But then she started getting into what I was talking about earlier, which is like, what are the core beliefs that you have about your life? And I, you know, it's not like she said it in that language. And this took me years and years to figure out. But I came to see that these were these beliefs that like, I did believe that that success equaled achievement. And I did believe that I was worthless unless I made a lot of money and was sort of famous. And sort of with her sort of influence, I started to really question those beliefs. And so you ask like, what you have to do. And I don't think there's an easy answer to it. I think it's like, I think it's honestly like, you know, neo in the matrix, you know, taking the blue pill. And I think that you have to first see the rules that you're living by and then transcend them and how you transcend them, at least how I transcended them was like, you know, marginal improvements on a daily basis of like changing the kind of synaptical structures of how I thought about things in the world. And so literally what I mean, like the best example I have of that is me like literally sitting, you know, lying in bed at night with my eyes closed, saying, I am enough. You know, I have, and it sounds so ridiculous. And yet, you know what my truthful, like what it really, what it usually says in my head is it says, you're not enough. You better get to work. You haven't achieved it. You have to go harder. You have to make more money and blah, blah, blah. And so like, and that still comes back, you know, it's like so much less than it was. But what it used to feel like was that I was living my life from a complete deficit. And that if I reach all, if I reach Bill Gates level, Barack Obama level, it wasn't like that would be all surplus. Like to me, that would almost be like, okay, you finally made it back to even, do you know what I mean? And so for me, it was about shifting that to be like, okay, if we start from a completely opposite belief, and the opposite belief is I am enough, I don't have to do anything to be valuable. And in fact, no matter what I do, I will never be as valuable as I am right at this moment. And then the world, you know, when I can shift into that mindset, which is not all that easy, but when I can, then all of a sudden life looks like an adventure. It looks fun. All these things that I'm working on are joyous projects and gifts to the world as opposed to, you know, what I've been trained to believe they are is like deadlines for me to just break even. Wow. That's such a, it's such an interesting way to look at all this. I mean, it's funny because I can kind of relate to, you know, I feel like I'm going through what you're talking about to some degree because we've, you know, we suddenly reached a lot of the goals that I had set for, for many years. And you know, our, our former guest, Sean Acore, he had said, he said, what happens when that woman that goes on is that your brain changes the goalpost for what success looks like each time you achieve something. Every time I know it's like, it's, it's honestly, it's like, I, no matter how much I have worked on this, and, and, and I mean, like I've been seeing this counselor still for 12 years now, every week, once or twice a week talking about this stuff, working on it myself. And still, you know, for the last four years, I was focused on getting a book published. And I really believe that as soon as I got that book deal, everything would be okay. And literally two days after that deal was signed, I was completely on to like my next speech that I have to give. And that's got to be enough. And like, I barely even remember that the book was a big deal for me to get done. And funny to say that, I, I kind of was the exact same thing about our event, which had been, you know, the greatest creative product of my life. And I realized, it was like, wow, I didn't take enough time to just savor how awesome it was. Yeah, totally. Well, let me ask you a minute, sounds like you left Wall Street quite some time ago. And I remember, you know, that what, what got me was the op-ed piece. I mean, it sounds like it, before the realization and before leaving Wall Street was still quite a journey. I mean, it seems like you didn't leave and you, you got to this point because I remember reading the article thinking, wow, like this guy made a lot of money and, you know, your life would be perfect and all set right after that. Yeah. Well, so first of all, I made less money than people think, which I sort of like chuckle about like all the Wall Street guys would call my friends and be like, man, this guy made it so easy for you to say with this amount of money, blah, blah, blah. And my friends would turn to them and be like, well, actually you have way more money than Sam does, you know, and so I guess not to be, I mean, this is always a dicey subject because I have way more money than most people, but at the same time, based on what people thought about that article, I have way less money. But the whole thing, I guess the point I'm trying to make is like, you know, walking, people think about money, right, as it's, as if it's some like objective thing, right, with that it's something that you use in order to purchase resources for yourself. But I, in my belief, I would say that 97% of money is actually all the kind of projections and fears that we in hopes that we put on our lives sort of put on to this, you know, little piece of paper effectively that has nothing to do with whether we can eat or not. So I guess that's a long way of saying that like, man, my journey with money, like my, whether I have, you know, whatever amount of money I have in the bank, my journey with all this stuff and achievement and whatever is just like lifelong thing that I get better and better at and I still struggle every single day with, you know, it's, well, I love that you brought up that it is a journey. I mean, I think that that's, that's kind of the common story I find with anybody here. It's not that you reach some point of achievement and you get to sit back and do nothing, kind of as we both realized you, your, your goalpost changes when you achieve something, which is unfortunate in a lot of ways. But you know, one of the things that I want to talk about in quite a bit of detail is sort of the psychology of addiction to all of this, because that was what really intrigued me about the article was that this actual sort of pursuit of the path just became an addiction for you. And I'm really curious, you know, want, I'd like to do a deeper dive into the journey and even some of the really dark parts of where it's taking you. Well, look, man, like, you know, we can talk about, we can really, I'm an open book. We can really talk about whatever you want. Like, as far, I guess what my point is though is that we have been talking about addiction. And what I mean by that is like this feeling, like if you think about what it feels like to be an addict, right, then they are not right until they get their hit. But then as soon as they get that hit, it's not as much as they wanted and they want more. And so they feel like they're not going to be right until they get the next hit. And so that's how I felt about my bonuses on Wall Street. But that's also how I felt about getting my book published. And it sounds like that's how you felt about getting your book or your conference done as well, you know. And so that's the whole thing, which is like it's hard to fathom the amount of like, like, I think the reason people connected with this idea of an addiction is because it all of a sudden, I don't know, changed the paradigm from like looking at people who are successful as like, you know, you know, world, you know, life winners who are going out and claiming what is their sort of like talent and birthright, you know, due to them. And more like what it actually feels like, which is like, it's people trying to make up from this deficit that is like deep inside them, which is sort of what I think addiction is. You know, it's interesting, right? Because when we look at addiction or when we typically think of addiction, we don't think of people who are successful as being addicts. We think of people who have drug problems. We think of people who have alcohol problems or psychological issues. But somebody who's successful very rarely comes to your mind as, hey, this person has a serious addiction. I know. I mean, that's the whole thing. And I think that's one of the reasons that article went so crazy is it's like such a bizarre, like it's it, you know, our pursuit of success so clearly looks like addiction, although because as you put it, we like, we, we loud that success and we put that as the aspiration. And not just ourselves, but for anybody in the culture, you know, it just, you know, we just sort of ignore the fact that, wow, it actually really does look and feel exactly like an addiction. And that's the thing is like, all these happiness guys will tell you, and I'll tell you, like, you know, when I was on Wall Street, like, you know, if there was a lot of things that felt good, you know, like it felt good to, you know, be able to call a broker and go to a world series game, you know, and not even think about it and call, you know, this person and go to Nobu, you know, and not even think about it, but at the same time, like the flash of positive feeling I got from that was so minuscule compared to this sort of like overwhelming tidal wave inside me of like, you know, need and desperation that is sort of that I think is the same thing that you and I are talking about, which is like this need for success and this need to be important, you know, which is like, how would the world look different if we all just sort of understood that we were all inherently valuable and important and didn't need to do anything? You know, it's a it's an interest, especially in the world we live in today, right? I mean, we have there's an it's becoming very easy to be addicted to validation. I mean, social media definitely helps amplify that totally, you know, because I always jokingly say, I'm like, everybody's life looks more epic than yours does when you're online. And as an aside on that, like, I struggle like because it's like, what do you post, you know, like, I only I sort of post when something good happens to me, but I don't have that, but I don't have the relationship with social media that's like, you know, I'll never put on Facebook. Oh, man, I had a really depressing day today, and it's I'm really not trying to curate this thing. I just feel like it's like, solipsistic to post that, but then it just feeds into this beast that you're talking about, which is like, my wife literally gets depressed every time she goes to Facebook and she'll come to me and be like, we should do something else and we need to do more of this and I'll be like, God, I've even looking at Facebook again. Spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. The busy holiday season is here and uncommon goods makes it less stressful with incredible hand pick gifts for everyone on your list on one spot. Gift of spark joy, wonder delight, and that it's exactly what I wanted feeling. They scour the globe for original, handmade, absolutely remarkable things. Last year, I found the perfect gift for my nephew, periodic table building blocks. These blocks were a big hit and considering he was talking in full sentences before he even turned to, I'd say that's a pretty good win. 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So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right. We're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at MintMobile.com/switch. 45 dollars up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first-three-month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, there's no question that addiction to validation is actually a very, very... It's tricky, right? So let's actually break down kind of... I mean, obviously, there came to be a breaking point for you. And I'm not sure if it was the girlfriend, but because it sounded like there were several years before... Look, the girlfriend was the beginning, right? I had been raised with this consciousness that said all these things that we're talking about, that success equals money and power and prestige and the more of that you get, the better you are and the more of that you get, the more valuable your life is. And so it wasn't until this girlfriend dumped me and caused me enough pain that I was willing to accept new information that came in the form of this spiritual counselor. And to all of a sudden, I'm living for the next... I was on Wall Street for eight years and it was almost like I had two paths, right? One was my Wall Street path, which was what I had set out to do from the beginning and I was just trying to climb the corporate ladder and I was going out to dinner every night with clients and I was like, I was obsessed with people respecting me in the industry and how much money I was going to get paid and whether or not this was the right bonus offer and blah, blah, blah. But then I'd come home at night and I would do this spiritual work. Like I'd literally meditate and write in my journal and most importantly, just talk to this woman whose beliefs came from a Native American belief system that is really the exact opposite of ours. It really is this belief system that says everybody's valuable and everybody has something unique and important to contribute and their job in life is to find out what that is but the thing that you know for sure is that everybody's contribution is equally important. And it was so sort of crazy to me and so at first I would sort of like dismiss her but still talk to her and I would be focused on Wall Street. And then say three or four years into Wall Street I'd be like, well Wall Street is really important to me but also what she's saying is sort of making sense. And then I got to the point where I was like seven years into Wall Street where what she was saying and that way of looking at the world that said everybody's valuable, that you don't need to achieve more to be successful, that started to really make sense to me and that was right around the time that the market crashed. So you were just graduating business school and we were sort of watching all these things melt down and it was this really like you know crazy time in Wall Street for me because it was like all of a sudden everybody's masks were pulled off. You know it was like first of all you know people that you thought were sort of masters of the universe and so great at their jobs all of a sudden we're like hey you know we couldn't have seen this coming it was impossible to see this coming and you're like okay well that's weird because you're my hero and you're sort of saying that you couldn't have seen this coming but isn't that sort of our job to see it coming. But then the second thing was like you know people started like people got really scared and so for example I had one boss that went out and bought a gun and he bought a gun because guys on Wall Street were fearful that like the masses were going to revolt you know what I mean and so like it was just this time where I was like watching everything happen on Wall Street and how defensive and crazed Wall Street got about sort of losing their position and their power and their wealth and then I went into this meeting that I wrote about in the New York Times article where my billionaire boss said when talking about hedge fund regulations being proposed by Congress he said you know I don't have the brain capacity to think about what's good for the system as a whole I can only think about what's good for us and our company and I promise you it wasn't like I sat in like moral judgment of him but that was the moment where I saw like oh you know what this isn't right you know like I you know people portray Wall Street folks as being evil they see the Wolf of Wall Street and these guys are like criminals and depraved and whatever but Wall Street's not like that right like Wall Street is people you know just like you and me who happened to get a job at Goldman Sachs and now trade mortgage bonds for a living and they don't understand how how that you know they're not making you know these like criminal decisions that that people think that they should be put in jail they're actually just doing their job right and so that's what I was doing and then all of a sudden my billionaire boss said that and I was like oh I see it now like I see it now like I am in my desperate search to fill this hole in my soul with money and success I am participating in a structure that is deeply oppressive to everybody who's not part of the in crowd of Ivy League elites you know who work on Wall Street and I'm just all I'm trying to do is get to the best lifeboat so that I can sort of feel safe and I saw this billionaire and he was 20 years ahead of me and he had literally over a billion dollars and he was still doing the same thing and I said you know what like life's got to be about more than that it cannot be just about self seeking so that we can protect ourselves with money it's got to be about something deeper and more meaningful so a couple of other things that come from this you know to me that one of the more fascinating things is that the dichotomy of sort of two paths going on at the same time both which are wildly different you know sort of the Wall Street path in the spiritual path and I'm wondering you know if you're conflicted at times throughout this entire journey and and you know how you dealt with those conflicts because I think that you know the idea of spending your life doing something with meaning and purpose maybe the underlying theme of this show given everybody that we profiled here and yet there's also reality for people to deal with because I can tell you a lot of people listen to this would be like you know what like I'd take the Wall Street job in the million you know million dollars and you know take it all the way to the bank and all the things you talked about like you said that make you feel good I think also make you feel secure I'm just curious you know one how you handle the dichotomy and then what do you think it is that separates the people who finally can sort of see the light and say you know what I'm gonna go down the path that is the one that's deep and meaningful and fulfilling from the ones who don't and just keep grinding it out I mean I think that's all like like super fascinating like the one thing that I will say like I got an email today from a college kid and I've been getting a ton of emails from college kids that are effectively saying what you're saying which is like you know they see this sort of like dichotomous path right they can you know they see Wall Street and they say you know gosh I don't want to get sucked into the money and I think there's more to life than that but at the same time that money sure looks good and maybe I'll do that for 10 or 15 years get a little bit of money and then do something else and my response is not that it's an easy choice and that you should go join a nonprofit it's like that this is a really difficult choice for sure but the one thing that I will say is that like when I was about to quit Wall Street and I it was like the hardest literally the hardest decision that I'd ever made and I was like you know with my twin brother one day and I said to him like I was just distraught because I could see this line of like million dollar bonuses stretching out in front of me as far as I could see and I knew that if I stayed on this career path I could have everything that I ever wanted this big house big car second house in Sun Valley you know I could be important I could be a you know leader guy profiled in the Wall Street Journal or whatever and what else was there going to be what was I leaving for and my brother said you know you're going to look back in 10 years and thank God for the fact that you left because of everything that you created since then and I guess the point I'm making is like I think that people they just see the path ahead and they think that's all there is and they know that there's another path that they can take but because they can't see what's down that path they sort of discount it very heavily yeah do you know what I mean oh yeah but like I've liked then you know I'm four years from leaving you know Wall Street and you know I've written that New York Times article and I wrote a book and I started grocery ships and I wrote to this kid and I said look you know so you know imagine that in those four years I probably could have made ten million dollars in bonuses and so I'm not saying it is so obvious that writing a book and you know starting a nonprofit is way better than making ten million dollars I'm just saying I mean it is for me and I would do it again in a heartbeat but what I am saying is that like something came that I could never have seen and those things that came were profoundly more illustrative of who I am as a person then whether I could have made ten million dollars you know it's it's really interesting you say that because I think about I mean you know like we said I graduated business school and I had a very set idea of what business school life was supposed to be like you know the $90,000 job at least you know a nice office and commute to work every day and buying a bunch of things that I probably don't need but living very comfortably and I think maybe the most revealing thing that you said was that you can't see what's down that path and that's why people don't choose it but that's also one of the things that makes it so fulfilling that's where you get to do things that are deeply meaningful because you get to actually shape what's on that path even though you can't see it. Yeah I mean it's like it's like we undervalue that path but then we also overvalue the other path and that's what like you said that there was probably people listening to this that would say like yeah well I take the money and you know whatever and and and I know that people believe that right and that's why and then imagine like think about all the people that are rich and successful right that you know have their bent leaves and have a house and bellaire and you know I would bet that there's a large percentage of those people that still feel lost and they still feel trapped and empty but they're in this sort of like terrible bind right because the world thinks that they're successful and so to admit that they still feel upset that they don't feel happy is the sort of discount their own success and every now and again we see evidence of this right we see Philip Seymour Hoffman still using heroin we still we see the guy from wedding crashers trying to commit suicide you know like it's clear that money and success and power doesn't fix everything and we all sort of pay lip service to it and then we say just what you said your listeners would say but you know if I can make a million dollars I would and so that's another reason I think that my article went sort of so crazy is because I was really like saying like I don't know man I'm not saying like you know somebody finally said it I'm just saying that I was out there and saying look this is all bullshit like you guys think that this life is so awesome and successful and yeah there are some really cool things about it and yet here I am at 30 years old making a million dollars a year racked with envy and jealousy about the guys next to me making ten million dollars and that to me is like I don't know I don't think I was any happier then than I was before I started making a million dollars yeah that's actually a really interesting way of looking at it so let's do this let's shift yours a little bit and let's talk about kind of what happened after you left and what you've been up to since you mentioned the book and like I said we found you via the New York Times article I think that's the thing that that leap is one of those sort of transformative moments for people and I'm very curious about yours I mean did you have an idea of where it was going to lead or was it just you know what I'm done with this I know it was like I had no idea what I was going to do and it was really like scary and like you know while I was leaving people would tell me all these stats they'd be like you know people when people retire and they leave their jobs and three years later they're often dead you know like you know and I'd be like ah shit and then you know I'd think about like you know I'd think about how crazy it was and the thing that I was really most afraid of was was what I most wanted you know which was to not have anything to do every day to like choose what I wanted to do during a day and I was equally excited about that and terrified and in the beginning it was really hard like you know at first I started like surfing and I'd go see movies and read books and I was like okay this is great you know I don't have to wake up to an alarm clock but then after a while I just felt that old sort of feeling that you and me have talked about of like God you're not doing enough you know life is passing by you know I'd read in the paper about guys that I used to know getting you know promoted to these jobs and I'd be like oh my god you haven't done anything in six months you know like and it was just this like really hard process of like because you know what I wasn't just leaving Wall Street I was like really trying to symbolically leave behind a belief system and that is that belief system is so deeply entrenched in me that it's like you know they say that every time like you know whenever you see a book every couple of years from people that like interview people are dying about their like biggest regrets and it's always it's always that people work too much you know and so we have these lives where we work so much and then we get to the 80 and then we go oh I wish I could have gone back I wish I you know I would have had more time and I was actually doing that in my early 30s and it was really terrifying it was really hard and then what happened over time and I'm sure you sort of had this experience in your journey is like you know you make one decision and you know I started going and you know to sort of fill my time and try to find some meaning I started going and talking in jails and talking about you know getting sober and trying to live a different kind of life than the one I was trying that I used to live and and that led me to sort of see the world in a different way and kind of understand that like you know that that you know I had been from the top on Wall Street which was like in a in a meeting with billionaires and now I was at the bottom with prisoners in a jail and I just started to like see the you know my perspective just began to widen and I started to see you know things that I couldn't see when I was on Wall Street and that led me to start writing a book and that led me to also start this nonprofit Wow you know there's there's a couple of things you said there you know what what's really interesting is that you can go down the second path and you can become a victim of the same belief system is what I've realized as I heard you say that and talk about it because it can become a similar sort of trap you know where you're watching people publish books you're watching people accomplish all these things but the other thing you said was that this was about leaving behind a deeply entrenched belief system and I think that's such a fundamental key to making changes in our lives and I'm curious you know if we're to really look at that and say you know I want to leave behind a deeply entrenched belief system how we do it. 1 800 flowers dot com knows that a gift is never just a gift a gift is an expression of everything you feel and helps build more meaningful relationships 1 800 flowers takes the pressure off by helping you navigate life's important moments by making it simple to find the perfect gift from flowers and cookies to cake and chocolate 1 800 flowers helps guide you in finding the right gift to say how you feel to learn more visit 1 800 flowers dot com slash a cast that's 1 800 flowers dot com slash a cast Ryan Reynolds here for mid mobile with a price of just about everything going up during inflation we thought we bring our prices down so to help us we brought in a reverse auctioneer which is apparently Think mobile unlimited premium wireless have it to get 30 30 30 30 but you get 20 20 20 20 20 you get 15 15 15 15 just 15 bucks a month So give it a try at mid mobile calm slash switch forty five dollars up from payment equivalent to fifteen dollars per month New customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees extra speeds lower above 40 gigabyte CD tail Therapy no, but I really believe that's true. Like I mean look at and this may be even a little contour or maybe I don't know but like in the end of the day like I had my parents were not the worst people in the world by any means and they were like good in so many ways and yet they had their problems right like my dad was a super rageful guy and he would just lose it and when he lost it it was like deeply terrifying and he was also like, you know, he he was so sort of stuck in his own race for success and him and my mom had a rough marriage and so he was sort of checked out and my mom was also super checked out too and she would always like, you know, I would always be the last one picked up from, you know, baseball practice and just like standing on the field like kicking the dirt, you know what I mean in the dark waiting for my mom and I don't mean like at all to play like a pity card. I'm just saying that there was like a lot of ways that like I sort of like learn like that I was worthless as a kid and so in order to change and then and what do you do if you're worthless right if you feel worthless then at least what I did is I tried to find these other things that would prove that I was worthwhile and by the way I still do that and I think that you made like a really good point which is like I think it's a huge improvement that I left Wall Street and started writing a book and but but at the same time, even in the process of writing that book, some days I'd be doing it and I can say this honestly some days I'd be doing it because I wanted to share something with the world and perhaps help a few people and give a gift to the world and some days I was doing it because I wanted to be on the New York Times bestseller list and it was just, you know, the same Wall Street mindset just put on a different profession that was maybe marginally better but still the same. And so I guess what I'm saying is like my task today is the same as it was the day I left Wall Street which is to continually build up this sense of core self-worth that has nothing to do with achievement and enough so that I can stop trying to be this perfect guy that tries to impress the world and you know I have my wife and I had our first child two months ago and we have this baby girl and I'm sort of like I'm proud of a lot of things that I've done in my life and I'm proud of leaving Wall Street and I'm proud of all this change that I've made in my life but I look at her and I know that I'm not as far along as I'd want to be like I want to teach her from the beginning that she is valuable that she doesn't need to do anything that she will be loved by me and by her mom no matter what she does and yet I know that the best the way you end up teaching your kids is by what you do. And I still wake up some days and I feel like I'm not enough and I think well maybe when this grocery ships nonprofit is a million dollar a year nonprofit then I'll be enough or maybe when this book hits the bestseller list and I become a worldwide speaker then I'll be enough. And I know like I'm going to work on that every day of my life and try to communicate to her that she's valuable but I still don't you know maybe there's probably no goal there like there's no end point to this journey but I know that I'm still going to be I know that she's going to see me and be like her dad sometimes doesn't believe that he's enough. Yeah, it's funny you say that. Yeah I mean there are days when I wake up and I do this work because I feel it's world changing and somebody listening is going to be incredibly moved by it and you know I get to put a ripple out into the world that might change somebody's life in some meaningful way. And there are plenty of days when I wake up and think I want to be validated. You know and that's that's why I you know that's why I'm behind the mic and that's why I'm excited that thousands of people listen because it gives me a sense of validation and that's that's that's a troubling realization to come to but also an important one I think it's having the self awareness to know that you're still wavering between those two past. And I you know I think that all of us do that to some degree. Absolutely and it's just like the more that we can stay conscious of that that fact then the less like I don't know dangerous we become you know it's like it's it's more humble that way to remember that we're never fixed. Yeah. So talk to me briefly about what grocery ships is so our listeners can you know learn a little bit more about what you've been up to and you know it's kind of where you're taking this journey next. Sure well like you know I've sort of struggled with food all my life my family was sort of obese and I have you know family members that have struggled with that and I was like a heavy kid. And so like I was always sort of like aware of food and health and and you know over the years kind of got into nutrition and whatever it but then we watched my wife and I watched this movie called the place at the table that was about hunger in America. And it was sort of the same realization that I had the jail which was sort of like. God you know it feels hard for me to be like make it in the world in some sense and yet you know five miles from where I live there are these families that live in food deserts where they can't buy produce and there's. You know a disproportionate amount of fast food restaurants and you know the grocery stores are like slammed with like like in Westwood you walk into a whole foods and there's all this produce. And in south central LA you walk into a food for less and there's not a lot of produce but there's a lot of pies you know. And so I just started to like kind of get a sense of like. I feel like a better word like how tough it is for some people you know. And so over the past couple of years my wife and I created this program called the grocery ships which is. It's a play on words it's like scholarships for groceries and so we find families in south LA that are. That want to get healthy amidst a toxic food culture. And we provide them 10 families at a time go through a six month program that consists mainly of weekly meetings where the first of the two hour meeting the first hour is focused on kind of nutrition education and. And not like the sort of you know blame the victim usual nutrition information that's sort of like you guys need to be eating smaller portions. But more like more like the stuff frankly that came out in food ink and forks over knives and stuff about like how messed up the food system is and how if you sort of eat like. You know quote unquote normal that just leads to all these sort of diseases and overweight and pain and whatever and so we teach them that. But then the second half hour is really like a support group where it's like. You know honestly it's this beautiful space where you know families are sharing about their struggles with health and. Family in the midst of you know a really difficult environment. And yeah it's really this it's really this idea about like you know food being this like really you know important sort of critical thing to everybody's life but also this like. You know a chance to sort of like the beginning of this step towards you know a better sense of value for yourself and your family. I love it. Well Sam this has been just really really fascinating as I expected it would be so I want to wrap with one final question. Our show is called the unmistakable creative and this is kind of how we close everything with everybody. What is it you know that you think based on your experience and your life and everything that you've gone through that makes somebody or something unmistakable. It makes something you know I think it's like I think the simple answer is authenticity and it also goes with with creativity in a sense which is like why I like that you guys paired that word. And what I mean is this like you know when I was on Wall Street like you could see that path ahead right and you know there was ups and downs and I get one bonus I wasn't that good that one year and a better bonus the next year and I thought that was like a lot of risk. But really I could see the path and I knew that my job was to come in and trade distressed bonds and if I did that well I'd get to be up here. But then this path I'm on now where it's undefined and it's all about me sort of making the choice that is best for myself or my vision. It is so much more terrifying you know there is so much more fear and not knowing what to do and panic that I'm doing it wrong. And to me that is what sort of like creativity is and I've like gotten a lot better with like learning how to deal with that. But I believe that once like the people that are willing to face that fear and really put themselves out there, not in the sort of standard way but in the way that is unique and true to their own heart. You know then they can create things that have never existed in the world before and I think that we all have within us the ability and the potential to create something that has never existed and will never exist again. And you know the courage to do that and the fortitude to do that is what I think you know leads to people becoming unmistakable. I love it. Well Sam as I said this has been just amazing and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share some of your insights and your story with our listeners here at the Unmistakable Creative. Well thank you so much for your time and it was really a pleasure talking to you. And for those of you guys listening we'll wrap the show with that. 1-800-Flowers.com knows that a gift is never just a gift. A gift is an expression of everything you feel and helps to build more meaningful relationships. 1-800-Flowers takes the pressure off by helping you navigate life's important moments by making it simple to find the perfect gift from flowers and cookies to cake and chocolate. 1-800-Flowers helps guide you in finding the right gift to say how you feel. To learn more visit 1-800-Flowers.com/acast. That's 1-800-Flowers.com/acast. At Sprouts Farmers Market we're all about fresh, healthy and delicious. 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The influence that Sam’s dad had on his view of the world
A period of loneliness and depression in college
The challenges of pretending to be what we’re not
The disconnect between who we are and who we want to be
A series of inauthentic reinventions that failed
A relationship that made Sam choose a different path
What happens when we see the world as a dark scary place
Losing the belief that we’re inherently valuable
The exploration of core beliefs about your life
Why living your life from a complete deficit doesn’t lead to true success
A look at the meaning that we give to having money in our lives
The similarities between the pursuit of success and addiction
Dealing with two conflicting views of the world
The challenge of choosing between two paths
Choosing the path on which you can’t see the end
The motivation for creating the Groceryships non-profit
Why we can all create things that don’t exist

Sam Polk is a former hedge-fund trader and the founder of the nonprofit Groceryships.

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