Peter Diamandis & Jay Shetty ON How to Stop Worrying About The Future

Peter Diamandis is no stranger to higher learning. Raised in a family of doctors, it was expected he would be a doctor. Nine-year-old Diamandis, however, told his mom he wanted to be an astronaut.

She replied that he could be an astronaut then become a doctor. While his mother only wanted what was best for Diamandis, the expectation for him to follow in his father’s footsteps was set. While Diamandis did not follow in his father’s footsteps, he did find his purpose and passion. His goal in life is to help others find their purpose.

Diamandis holds degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from MIT and an MD from Harvard Medical School. As an entrepreneur, he has started more than 20 companies in space, longevity, education, and venture capitalism. Recently, Diamandis released a new book called The Future is Faster Than You Think. This book maps out how technology will help shape the future, from how you eat to the way you think and communicate. Diamandis believes the world is getting better on almost every level at an extraordinary rate.Diamandis and Jay Shetty sit down together to unpack their thoughts on the future and how you can stop your fears of what it may look like.

Massively Transformative Purpose

Many people are continuously seeking their purpose. Maybe you are one of them. Diamandis tells Jay Shetty that he believes there is nothing more important than finding your purpose and establishing your mindset. Mindset is critical when you are trying to discover and live your purpose. Diamandis shares with Jay Shetty that how your mind thinks and processes information is ultimately the most important thing.

“When I talk about a massively transformative purpose, I question the impact you want to leave on the planet,” Diamandis tells Jay Shetty. “It is not necessarily what makes you happy or what you want to do. I think of your massively transformative purpose (MTP) as the canvas upon which you're going to paint.”

Diamandis’ first MTP was opening the space frontier. He spent 30 years working on that endeavor. He likes to make it clear that you do not have to have just one MTP in life. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and you can change your mind at any time. You need to try different things on to see how they work for you. Jay Shetty agrees with Diamandis and thinks that when it comes to passions and purposes, you try to figure it all out on paper but rarely try it physically to see how it feels or if it needs to be adjusted. A multitude of companies and projects were born from Diamandis’ success in the space field. This success led Diamandis to dive into how we as individuals can solve the world’s biggest problems.

“There is no problem that cannot be solved, period,” Diamandis explains to Jay Shetty. “It might be hard. It may take a decade. It may require technology that needs to be invented still, but it’s clear that's what we as humans do. That's what we as entrepreneurs do. So my second MTP was really focused on solving the world's grand challenges.” Diamandis’s latest MTP is extending the healthy human lifespan. He is working on adding 10 to 30 years to a person’s life, making 100 years the new 60. Diamandis is proof that you are capable of more than one purpose in life. Whatever your MTP is, use that as your canvas for what you want to achieve. The moon shots you take are targets you aim for on that canvas. Unfortunately, many intelligent, hard working people fail to live their purpose because a passion does not drive them. “When I say the word driven, I mean your MTP has to connect with a deep emotional energy and that emotional energy fuels your MTP,” Diamandis tells Jay Shetty. “It can come from amazement, it can come from fear, income, or from being pissed off about an inequality. It can be from a sense of just deep seated childhood desire to create something, but there's got to be an energy level there because doing anything big and bold, any moon shot you take, is ultimately going to be hard.”Diamandis jokes with Jay Shetty that there are only overnight successes after years of hard work.

The Future

Why do most people fear the future? They fear the unknown. They do not know what the future looks like and do not have a sense of what is possible for the future. As the future changes at increased speeds, there is a reasonable ability to predict what we will see in the next decade. In Diamandis’ book, The Future is Faster Than You Think, he outlines what he expects to see in the areas of computation, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology, augmented virtual reality, blockchain, and breaks down the implications those technologies will have on areas like retail, health, education, finance, insurance, and real estate. “There's some variability in when things will happen,” Diamandis explains. “But we can be clear, we're going to have autonomous cars, we're going to have flying cars, we're going to have hyperloop-like services, we're gonna see higher and higher quality 5G with VR and AR transforming how we interact with ourselves and our environment. All of these things are going to change every single industry.”

Shifting your mindset from a fear of the future to excitement of how future changes will empower you allows you to make your dreams come true and change the world. Jay Shetty says it all comes back to your massive transformative purpose and what you do with it once you get the power to do it. What impact do you want to leave on the planet?

Cognitive Bias

Our senses can only minimally process all the information we receive, says Jay Shetty. We are getting thousands of times more data than we can process, so we create what we call cognitive biases. These cognitive biases come from the ability of the brain to use shortcuts. When we feel overwhelmed or pressured, we tend to make bad decisions. Most people are not good at processing everything, so it becomes overwhelming. “We haven't had a hardware upgrade in our brain in over 200,000 years. Parts of our brain have not upgraded to keep up with the advancement in technology that we've created,” Diamandis explains to Jay Shetty. “So the challenge is that our brains are limited, as beautiful and brilliant as they are. Our ability to process the information that comes into our senses is very limited.”

There are many types of bias. One is negativity bias. You are likely to pay more attention to negative news than positive. This is one reason why the news can put you in a negative mindset.

There is also a recency bias. If you hear a whole bunch of data, the data you heard at the end, before you make your decision, has a higher impact on you than the original data you heard. These biases are created to enable you to deal with the massive amount of information exploding at you most efficiently.

Meta Intelligence

Diamandis writes in his book about meta intelligence, or the ability to connect our brains with the cloud.

“Our brains have 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections, everything you ever heard, seen, feel, or thought is resonant in those synaptic connections in a couple of kilograms of tissue,” Diamandis tells Jay Shetty. “Our cell phones do a limited amount of computing on the actual phone. The majority of the hard work goes from the phone to the edge of the cloud. The answer gets calculated there then comes back to the phone. We're going to connect our brains to the cloud in that same fashion.” Imagine being able to connect to other’s thoughts through the cloud. The ability to problem solve as a team would be limitless. The connection of people and the level of empathy would be like never before. It may sound crazy, but if you showed someone who lived a hundred years ago what life is like today, they would not be able to cope with it. Time marches on, and things evolve, says Jay Shetty.

“I think artificial intelligence is going to play an important role in who we evolve into,” explains Diamandis.

Future Loop

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. The content you consume regularly impacts your life on a massive scope.Diamandis started a project three years ago called Future Loop. Future Loop is an AI platform that scans all the mainstream news, scientific journals, and social media and filters the news in a positive, future-forward way. For Diamandis, it is essential he be vigilant about the content he absorbs. “Future Loop looks at exponential technologies, reinventing whatever industry you're interested in,” Diamandis tells Jay Shetty. “So you plug in shoes, or bananas, or whatever, and you'll see the future forward news of how that area's being reinvented. You are able to create a digital avatar of anyone, meaning it can create a digital avatar of Elon Musk or myself or Ray Kurzweil. And it can then say to that digital avatar, what news is out there that you're most interested in reading? The system can identify what article is recommended by virtual Ray Kurzweil or uploaded by virtual Peter. You can see the news you want to filtered in that fashion. It's meant to be a means for reinventing the views you receive and help to shape your mindset.”

Jay Shetty adds there are multiple ways to be informed and know what's going on without having to sit in front of a TV. If you want to change your mindset to be an exponential and abundance mindset or a solution-oriented mindset, you need to choose something that will feed your mind.

Diamandis feels that part of his purpose is helping people find their purpose.“I think people who have found their purpose are now able to solve more and more problems,” Diamandis tells Jay Shetty. “It’s the reason the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate and people can find and solve problems greater than any time ever before, making the world extraordinary.”

Things move so fast, and sitting around complaining about or wishing for it to slow down will not stop it from happening, says Jay Shetty. You need to buckle up and prepare for what is to come.

More From Jay Shetty

Listen to the entire On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast episode with Peter Diamandis ON “How To Stop Worrying” now in the iTunes store or on Spotify. For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out Jay’s website at jayshetty.me.