Modern Wisdom

#1058 - 4.1M Q&A - Health Update, Sobriety & Finding The One

February 12, 2026

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  • The lifestyle required to achieve a definition of success must be consciously accepted, otherwise the pursuit guarantees misery. 
  • Quitting alcohol is strongly recommended for high performers, as the temporary social benefits of drinking are outweighed by the multi-day loss of enthusiasm and motivation. 
  • Unfulfilled potential and dissatisfaction, even after achieving success, is a common human condition driven by the perpetual chase for quantified status, which can be mitigated by celebrating micro-wins. 
  • Optimization should prioritize long-term compliance and enjoyment, as over-optimizing areas like sleep or training can paradoxically lead to worse outcomes or abandonment of the habit. 
  • People who leave relationships when the challenge disappears are revealing their own underdeveloped emotional state and low self-esteem, not a judgment on the partner's worthiness. 
  • The host is regaining mental clarity and confidence after a period of health struggles and is planning to significantly increase his work output, thanking the audience for their continued support during his difficult time. 

Segments

Uncomfortable Success Questions
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(00:00:40)
  • Key Takeaway: The primary uncomfortable question before pursuing success is whether one desires the required lifestyle to attain it.
  • Summary: If the lifestyle demanded by a definition of success—like years of struggle, uncertainty, or separation from community—is undesirable, the desire for that success must be relinquished. Not wanting the route to success guarantees misery if the goal is still pursued. Success requires defining the route and being willing to endure it.
Carnivore Diet Experience
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(00:02:29)
  • Key Takeaway: A six-month meat and fruit diet improved mental clarity but severely elevated cholesterol levels, indicating individual sensitivity to high-cholesterol diets.
  • Summary: The host followed a strict meat and fruit diet for over six months while detoxing from mold, which resulted in mental improvement. However, this diet annihilated his cholesterol levels, revealing he is a hyperabsorber sensitive to dietary cholesterol. He has since returned to a more balanced intermittent fasting approach (16:8).
Feeling Lost at 25
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(00:03:42)
  • Key Takeaway: Feeling lost after achieving a goal that brings no joy is a common challenge, but at 25, there is significant runway to pivot without fear of judgment or wasted time.
  • Summary: It is important to grant self-empathy when a dedicated career path proves unsatisfying, recognizing that others quickly forget major pivots. The host started his podcast at 30 and moved to the US at 32, illustrating that it is never too late to restart. If succeeding in a hated life is miserable, attempting one that is loved offers immense potential upside.
Health Vlog Response Analysis
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(00:06:53)
  • Key Takeaway: Sharing health struggles without visual evidence of illness garners less sympathy online due to the internet’s default to scrutiny.
  • Summary: The second health vlog, lacking the ’throat-clearing’ evidence of struggle present in the first, received less sympathy because the host looked outwardly healthy. Many viewers dismissed the fatigue as normal aging, which the host views as ‘Stockholm Syndrome for bad health.’ Conversely, many people with chronic issues like mold, ME/CFS, and Lyme felt seen and validated by the shared experience.
2026 Plans and Studio
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(01:04:47)
  • Key Takeaway: Future plans center on extensive international touring, launching a new studio designed for diverse episode styles, and collaborating with high-caliber designers for new merchandise.
  • Summary: The host is embarking on tours in Australia, New Zealand, Bali, and the UK/Ireland, with tickets available at chriswilliamson.live. The new studio is highly anticipated and will enable many new episode formats, though its launch has been delayed due to ongoing design changes. Merch is returning in March/April, featuring designs created in collaboration with the designer for the band Sleep Token.
Sobriety Worthiness
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(01:04:02)
  • Key Takeaway: Quitting alcohol is unequivocally worth it for high-output individuals, and social opportunities can be retained using non-alcoholic alternatives.
  • Summary: For someone working 18-hour days, sobriety is 100% worth it because drinking severely impacts enthusiasm and motivation for days afterward. Social connection can be maintained by using zero-alcohol beers (LARPing beers) to avoid appearing socially awkward. Outsourcing life decisions based on what is ‘socially correct’ risks regressing to the average, undesirable outcome.
Maintaining Good Vibe
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(01:06:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Despite feeling emotionally and professionally challenged in the past year, maintaining a good vibe relies on strict adherence to foundational health protocols like morning sunlight exposure.
  • Summary: The past year was the most challenging of the host’s life, involving significant emotional difficulty, but he is now feeling his brain ‘finally working’ again. Key protocols for maintaining well-being include getting 15 minutes of morning sunlight (even with specialized glasses when dark), avoiding caffeine, increasing vegetable intake while avoiding oxalates, and prioritizing movement.
Academic System Failure
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(01:13:40)
  • Key Takeaway: The formal education system failed the host by not providing a clear career path for philosophy/psychology, leading him to choose business out of fear of unemployment.
  • Summary: The host felt he failed the academic system because he was too sheltered to see a direct career path from philosophy and psychology, forcing him into business studies. He later created his own curriculum by interviewing world experts, repurposing academia on his own timeline. Despite this, he values university for the surrounding life lessons learned, like negotiating tenancy agreements and relationships.
Advice for Health Struggles
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(01:18:38)
  • Key Takeaway: The most powerful driver through debilitating internal health struggles is the absolute refusal to quit or settle, viewing life as a necessary fight against universal entropy.
  • Summary: Internal health issues are difficult because they lack external validation, making it easy to doubt their reality despite objective data. The core advice that helped the host is the choice between staying put or continuing the fight for better health; he chooses to keep pushing. He prefers dying while trying to feel better than surviving by letting entropy win, embracing the scrap against the universe’s drive to break down order.
Dating Scene in Australia
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(01:22:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Dating struggles are likely a modern Western problem stemming from shifting expectations and high standards for intellectual/emotional connection, not unique to Australia.
  • Summary: The host cannot speak specifically about Australia but believes the dating difficulty is a broader modern issue involving shifting expectations for men and women. Listeners who are educated, driven, and value deep connection naturally have higher standards for partners, making the search harder. The solution is to keep going, as giving up guarantees staying in the current situation.
Hobbies Without Obsession
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(01:25:20)
  • Key Takeaway: To enjoy a hobby without turning it into performance anxiety, choose activities with less clearly defined outcomes, like yoga or dance, over competitive sports.
  • Summary: Overachievers often turn hobbies into homework by immediately researching gear and seeking coaching to improve, judging their worthiness by skill level. The goal of a hobby should be the experience itself, not creating another metric for self-judgment. Activities with a spectrum of performance, rather than binary wins/losses, help bypass this obsessive drive.
Finding Moral, Ambitious Men
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(01:27:08)
  • Key Takeaway: To find a partner with specific values like ambition and morality, one must frequent the physical locations where people embodying those traits naturally congregate.
  • Summary: The obvious solution to finding a specific type of person is to go where they hang out, such as business masterminds, yoga classes, or run clubs, rather than relying solely on apps or bars. The host notes that the low birth rate in Australia (1.4) suggests broader societal challenges in coupling. One should assess if their current environment, like their workplace, selects for the desired values.
Unlearning Habits
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(01:30:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Unlearning a habit is significantly harder than learning one; the most effective method is overwriting the old pattern by building a new, stronger habit groove.
  • Summary: There is no neutral habit; every action drills either the desired or undesired pattern, making unlearning a continuous process of relearning. The best approach is to build a new habit groove so deep that it becomes the path of least resistance, even if the old habit lurks. The critical rule is to never miss two consecutive days of the new desired behavior, as two missed days start a new negative habit.
Hustle Culture Critique
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(01:34:13)
  • Key Takeaway: Hustle culture’s primary flaw is its total disregard for long-term emotional well-being, leading to successful but miserable outcomes if one ignores internal signals to slow down.
  • Summary: Ignoring feelings to work harder is a temporary superpower that leads to misery if one achieves success without learning to enjoy or regulate their emotional state. A secondary flaw is the transactional nature of networking, where people are treated as commodities to be traded up, which ultimately fails. Success should not be measured by accumulating miserable achievements.
Unfulfilled Potential vs. Contentment
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(01:37:26)
  • Key Takeaway: The conflict between unfulfilled potential and contentment arises when high achievers fail to celebrate milestones, leading them to chase the next goal out of momentum rather than genuine desire.
  • Summary: The feeling of being subjectively absent despite objective achievement is a core human challenge, as the brain is wired for perpetual chase. If one fails to celebrate wins, they create a cycle where the next achievement is also unfulfilling, making it harder to motivate for future work. The listener must determine if they genuinely want the next level or if they are deferring action due to sunk cost fallacy or fear of admitting the current path is wrong.
Morning Routine Details
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(01:04:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Resonance breathing using OM.health lamps is described as ‘hypertrophy training for your vagus nerve’ and a key component of the host’s morning routine.
  • Summary: The host details his morning routine starting at 6 AM, which includes walking with turbo-tinted glasses, breathwork, and 10-20 minutes of resonance breathing. He uses Shinzen Young’s Five Ways to Know Yourself for unguided meditation, or Sam Harris’s Waking Up for guided sessions. Stacking these habits in the morning prevents phone distraction and supercharges the day.
Value in Relationships
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(01:07:54)
  • Key Takeaway: Attraction loss when a partner becomes too available stems from the partner’s undeveloped self-esteem, not a flaw in the person being loved.
  • Summary: A dynamic where women leave once they feel a partner is no longer a challenge is attributed to an undeveloped approach to human value, rooted in the desire for what is hard to get. This pattern will surface during any major life stressor, indicating the partner is not emotionally developed enough for commitment. The listener is advised to scrutinize their selection criteria, as they are choosing these partners.
MECFS Advocacy Plans
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(01:12:04)
  • Key Takeaway: The host plans to actively campaign for MECFS research, focusing on making mold testing and treatment protocols more widely known once his health stabilizes.
  • Summary: The host acknowledges MECFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) as a ruthless and silent epidemic that is often misattributed to normal aging. He was motivated to release his first health vlog after seeing a video by Physics Girl (Amy). He intends to focus advocacy efforts on toxic mold exposure, which he believes is a significant, often undiagnosed, contributor to chronic fatigue.
Forearm Genetics and Training
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(01:14:12)
  • Key Takeaway: The host’s large forearms are attributed to genetics, having only been directly trained twice, both times with Mike Israetel.
  • Summary: The host confirms his forearms are genetically predisposed to growth, noting that everyone has one body part that develops disproportionately regardless of training. He finds this feature inconvenient when wearing fitted shirts or suits. He has only trained them directly twice, both sessions captured on video with Mike Israetel.
Friendships in Transition
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(01:15:15)
  • Key Takeaway: Transitional phases in personal growth, such as moving from ‘active to emotional,’ inherently cause a loss of congruence and support structures, making intellectually engaging friendships difficult to form.
  • Summary: Forming intellectually engaging friendships is hard because thoughtful people are rare, and it is especially difficult during transitional periods where old social circles no longer resonate. The journey of personal growth involves significant doubt as old skills become useless and new ones are unmastered, making congruence difficult. The host is currently navigating the difficult transition from ‘active to emotional,’ which feels like devolution compared to the ‘passive to active’ phase.
Optimization Pitfalls
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(01:20:11)
  • Key Takeaway: Optimization goes too far when it removes enjoyment, as compliance is the biggest determinant of long-term results, making ‘right-ish’ enjoyable practices superior to perfect, unenjoyable ones.
  • Summary: Trying harder often makes things worse in areas requiring relaxation, such as sleep, leading to insomnia spirals. The stress of trying to be perfect can be more detrimental than imperfections themselves. The host suggests optimizing for enjoyment to ensure compliance, citing the example of switching training times from enjoyable evening sessions with a friend to less enjoyable morning sessions for a marginal physical gain.
Financial Success in Dating
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(01:24:16)
  • Key Takeaway: While exceptional financial success is not required to keep a girlfriend, the host advises the questioner to actively increase his financial inflow (side hustle) to address the fear of lacking industriousness.
  • Summary: The questioner, who possesses many positive subjective traits (fit, funny, attentive), fears his lack of industriousness pushes women away after the initial phase. The host suggests texting ex-partners to find out how much financial success truly mattered to them, as this feedback is crucial for self-improvement. He believes fixing the financial/industriousness aspect is easier than fixing core personality traits like attentiveness or caring.
Paying Off Gambling Debt
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(01:27:51)
  • Key Takeaway: For large debts like £60,000, the most motivating strategy is increasing cash inflow through side hustles rather than solely focusing on reducing the burn rate.
  • Summary: The host strongly congratulates the listener for achieving four years of sobriety from gambling, recognizing it as a massive, often unseen epidemic. He suggests that increasing income (e.g., becoming a PT or working retail) is a better antidote to anxiety than just cutting spending. Hard work provides a moving target for anxiety and reduces the likelihood of relapse into gambling.
Future Book Plans
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(01:38:06)
  • Key Takeaway: The host is hesitant to write a book titled after the podcast because it risks diminishing his legitimacy as a writer by appearing to just repurpose existing content.
  • Summary: The host has a standing book deal but struggles with defining the ‘idea set’ for his first book, as Modern Wisdom covers too many disparate topics to fit a single thrust like ‘The Psychology of Money.’ He has written over 350,000 words in private notes, confirming he is a writer, but fears a podcast-titled book would undermine the perception that he has crafted a unique thesis. He asks the audience for suggestions on a singular direction he should pursue.
Health Update and Gratitude
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(01:41:26)
  • Key Takeaway: The host is experiencing a significant return of mental clarity and confidence after a prolonged period of illness, feeling like he has ‘a tiny little bit of me back.’
  • Summary: The host notes that his recent podcast energy reflected his personal struggles, leading to a ‘dour, sad undertone’ in conversations from the previous year. He is now experiencing breathing room, improved cognitive function, and a return of confidence, moving away from the fear of being ‘found out.’ He expresses deep gratitude to the audience for supporting the show during his down periods.