Why Ambition Without Gratitude Leads to Burnout | Jack Wagoner

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.646)
What happens when everything, when you get everything you wanted and it still doesn't feel like it is enough? We really optimize for achievement and not for feeling alive. If more, it's always the answer. Why does it still feel empty sometimes? Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Salomon.

Today conversation is different. It's not about systems, not about frameworks, not about AI tools. It is about what happens inside of us when everything outside start accelerating. My guest today has been writing and thinking deeply about performance, gratitude, and what it actually means to feel enough, right? And today we're gonna explore also what AI does to that feelings because really,

If you look into the future and if machines take over executions, what happens to meaning? So, Jack, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Jack Wagoner (01:08.961)
Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for having me.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (01:11.982)
Appreciate you taking the time and having this conversation with us. And to kick things off, Jack, I would like to ask you if you can give us a little bit of overview, introduction of who Jack is, where you have been, and where you're going next.

Jack Wagoner (01:30.007)
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Thank you so much. So I am a lot of things right now, but most of you in the way that we connected is being a podcast host. I host the Grateful Podcast. And I came up with this idea when I was around 17 years old. I'd started a business. had four employees. I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing. I had everything I was supposed to want. I thought I should be happy, but I was empty.

And I came up with this idea, this realization that if I kept going like this, if I kept just achieving and achieving and achieving and thinking that at that achievement, I would feel the way I wanted to feel, I would never feel the way that I meant I was meant to feel. So I started interviewing people that were happy and successful because I wanted both. And I've developed this idea of the duality of gratitude and ambition, or you can be

both grateful for what you have right now while being ambitious and still achieving your goals and achieving it out of one, not a necessity, building on top of a feeling, not for feeling. And that's really driven me to do so many things. I recently gave a TEDx speech on this topic. I've coached individuals, young entrepreneurs, older founders on this exact topic and how we can enhance our performance.

It's through gratitude and I'm still learning about it as well. I'm a learner first. I read so much. I talk to as many people as I possibly can and I'm always looking to learn.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (03:02.262)
Awesome. Thanks for sharing all that. And that feels like it's a lot. And can you share with us? Not that it matters at all, but how old are you, Jack?

Jack Wagoner (03:10.455)
I'm 19.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (03:12.406)
Okay, for those watching, let that sit with, okay? And don't let that number fool you because you're gonna hear next what's gonna happen, all right? So thanks again, Jack, for taking the time to be with us. And I would like to start with the feeling that nobody talks about, right? Which is the emptiness behind achievement. when did you first notice the gap between achievement and fulfillment?

Jack Wagoner (03:16.832)
Hahaha

Jack Wagoner (03:43.767)
I think that I subconsciously noticed the gap for a long time. I was always an achiever. I was one of the perfect students in school. I would get perfect grades. And on the sports field, I was always trying to outperform my previous self and my peers. I was very, very competitive growing up. And there was some element subconsciously in my mind that noticed that no matter how much I achieved, I still wasn't necessarily fulfilled.

I was still looking for a feeling in that achievement that never came, but it really didn't hit me consciously until this moment I described very briefly in my introduction where I was in France and I moved to France for this reason where I kept feeling I needed to increase my bar, right, in order to be enough. There was this feeling of perpetually not being enough that drove me to do so many of the

amazing things that I did. Accomplishments that looked incredible on paper, but didn't feel good inside. So when I was 16 years old, I said, all right, I'm going to go to France. I'm to study abroad. No one from my town has ever done this before. I'm going to leave behind everything I know, my friends, my family, my language, and I'm going to go to this new country where I barely speak French. mean, I was

at the top of my French class, but I very quickly realized that meant nothing when it came to actually speaking and communicating. On my first day in France, or my first day of school, the teacher called me out in front of everybody, and she just started asking me question after question, and I did the only thing I could. I just sat there and stared at her until she stopped, and I said the only thing I could, which was, ne comprends which means I don't understand. And that very quickly became my motto. There was this weird big

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:11.596)
You

Jack Wagoner (05:34.711)
beginning of this realization at the beginning of the year in France where I honestly was doing worse than I'd ever done before. I didn't have friends there. So I went from having a ton of friends to having no friends. I didn't know a single person in the country. I went from having a great job I love that was managing a rock climbing gym resetting to having no income at all. I went from having great grades to having terrible grades.

and because I couldn't even speak the language, but I was super fulfilled in this moment because there was novelty in my life. But I remember sitting there and being really confused with this and then realizing that it started to go away. And by the end of the year, the three things I noticed that I was doing really bad at, I completely flipped. I was doing good in school now because I'd become almost fluent in the language. I actually got certified a month later and

I had an incredible group of friends and I had a business of four employees. I was running from my bedroom, but there was this moment where I recognize all of this consciously in the mirror, but I realized looking at myself in my own eyes that it was the emptiest I'd ever felt. This was the best I'd ever been doing, but it was the emptiest I'd ever felt. And that's when I realized that no matter how much I did, I couldn't do enough to feel like enough.

It wasn't about how much I did. It was about what I was doing and how I was feeling before I even did it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:08.002)
Hmm. So interesting. makes me think and then and why this happens to especially to high performance, right? We see again and again, high performers struggle more with this issue than most people. It's the need to be chasing them more, right? Why do you think that happened, especially with high performers?

Jack Wagoner (07:33.643)
Because the feeling that we get when we accomplish something is incredible. It's very fleeting, but it's incredible. I mean, Michael, what's the best accomplishment you've had?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:38.221)
Okay.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:46.122)
I think launching this podcast and finding my mission, really.

Jack Wagoner (07:50.751)
Okay, so that's a very mature answer of you because the launching the podcast was completely in your control, right? And it was a decision that you were able to take a lot of high performers. They they love the wins they a lot of content creators is right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, people people love the wins. Nowadays, people love the views people love the money in their bank account.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:58.839)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:06.988)
the instant gratification that brings with winning, right? With achieving something, right? Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:18.35)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jack Wagoner (08:19.925)
And the feeling they get when they have that is, it's a crazy dopamine hit, right? I people talk a lot about dopamine, but it's true. That's what's happening. Your brain is flooded with these achievement and pleasure molecules that are like, give me more of that. And so that's what that's what they go after next, because there's no real base there. They just they they achieve something really quick. And that's the closest they've ever been to the feeling that they want to have.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:26.68)
Right.

Jack Wagoner (08:49.277)
And so the only logical explanation for them is that they just have to achieve something bigger in order to get that feeling at a bigger scale. Even though we know from research that often that bigger achievement actually doesn't bring you more of the feeling you're craving.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:07.346)
what would that be that bigger achievement, right? What would it be more than what we just achieved? It's something that I, you know, sometimes I challenge myself because yes, I do agree with you. We are always looking to kind of feel the best way we have felt based on what we have achieved, that instant gratification. It feels good, right? Especially if you are in social media doing digital.

the views, having people to follow you. All that is part of, you know, we are human beings. At the end of the day, we want to be seen, we want to be heard. But sometimes it's a when it's enough, enough. Right?

Jack Wagoner (09:48.129)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the thing that I emphasize that I think differentiates what I'm saying is I don't want people to not go after bigger goals. Because going after those bigger goals is so important. People like me and you and your listeners, we're very ambitious. And that's great. Because that progress is what makes it's a part of our fulfillment. If we were just grateful, and if we're just saying like,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:59.372)
Right.

Jack Wagoner (10:17.045)
I have everything I need now, then you're going to become complacent. You're going to become apathetic. It's when you're saying, my life's just fine and there's no real drive to improve and grow. That growth is such an important thing. But it's important to have the gratitude with the ambition as well, because if you just have the ambition, that's when you burn out. That's when that's the protocol that I was running.

When I was in France, where I was just chasing the achievement for the sake of the feeling I thought it would get there. But when you have both the ambition and the gratitude, when you're both chasing something, and you're saying that right now is great. That's when you can have this fulfillment where the growth and the progress is fueling you. But it's not a necessary thing for the feeling that you want to have if that makes sense to you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:11.626)
It does and it also, you know, it is as important to understand what happens inside of us when we are achieving those, right? What is the state of the body, the dopamine, as you mentioned, the biology of it all, right? Because it's really important for us to discuss those things because that's where things are coming from, is the energy, how we feel like we can conquer everything and we want to get back to that state and...

And people sometimes are thriving and looking for to get somewhere, but the arrival, right, as I call it, doesn't ever materialize. Because at the end of the day, sometimes they are looking to achieve something that they really may not feel it and may not fulfill them completely.

Jack Wagoner (11:51.905)
Hmm.

Jack Wagoner (12:04.821)
Yeah, and that's another issue. It's the idea that so many people are chasing goals that they've never actually ensured or what they really want. It's so easy in this day and age where we're surrounded by so much information to go after things because you think that's what you want. You think that's what you should want, right?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:24.447)
Yeah, if your brain is only looking for rewards, right, that's the only constant, then at what point are you gonna feel good about where you are today and not to be chasing constantly where you can go next? And this is something that I always tell to my friends, my family and everybody, it's a...

How are you gonna enjoy where you are today if you're always chasing for more? And you've probably seen that over and over, right, Jack?

Jack Wagoner (13:00.467)
Yeah, I see it all the time. And one of my favorite, favorite Buddhist quotes is, if you're thinking about vacation, while working, you're going to be thinking about work while on vacation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:10.946)
I am thinking about vacation. I've been thinking about vacation lately. So it's funny you mentioned that because I vacation though.

Jack Wagoner (13:13.078)
Hehehehe

Yeah. But it's true, the Buddhist principle is that if you can't be present where you are now, you're not going to be present where you're thinking about, right? And we need to learn to, I presence is, I think it's an over talk, it's a saturated topic. And it's just a spectrum where if you're familiar with math, like, hey, I think it's an asymptote where you can never fully become present. And I don't think it's even a one we should have.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:21.995)
It is true.

Yeah. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:42.254)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Wagoner (13:45.525)
because we're not present for certain for cognitive offloading. And if we were fully present with everything, we'd go insane. But we should try at least to learn how to accept the moment that we're in and give as much attention as we can to where we are. Because if not, then the moment that we're glamorizing in our heads is just going to feel the same as what we feel right

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:15.66)
And it is a problem, think. Some people, they just stop appreciating where they are and the moment that they are in their lives and just thinking about what it should be, where they want to be. And know, dissatisfaction can happen in a way that maybe that next step never happens. And they still haven't enjoyed where they are. And the next step never materialized.

So I also see that the satisfaction issue as something that challenges us as humans.

Jack Wagoner (14:52.095)
Yeah, I think that there's there's specific language where I think dissatisfaction in itself is actually somewhat important, but we should never be unhappy. And I think there's there's a important difference where sometimes people are like, Jack, why does it matter? What's the language here? But I think satisfaction can be

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:06.35)
Mmm.

Jack Wagoner (15:16.343)
complacency. If you're saying I'm satisfied with what I have, again, it's somewhat rejecting growth. But I think you can be dissatisfied and grateful. I think you can say I'm grateful for everything I have. I have everything I need to be happy. I have everything I need to feel joy. But I don't have I haven't accomplished all I meant for I still have service to give.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:17.934)
Mm.

Jack Wagoner (15:41.653)
I haven't given all I can. And that's what dissatisfaction element can can drive us. But I do think that a lot of people feel like they haven't achieved enough to earn the feeling that they want to have. They haven't achieved enough to earn the joy or the peace. I was just interviewing a billionaire on my show, and she said that she finds a lot of her friends that are massive founders that we all look up to. They don't actually want the money anymore.

They want the you piece is what she called it. And we struggle to get the F you piece. And the reason that we don't get that is because we have said we need to we're only going to get that piece after we achieve something. And when we are constantly telling ourselves that something's going to come after we accomplish it, we create an internal gap in our subconscious mind where we're always going to have

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:14.488)
The F-U piece.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:18.958)
Okay.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:26.35)
Mm.

Jack Wagoner (16:40.215)
to achieve another thing to get there. And it's only when you start acting as if you have that already that you are able to obtain that feeling.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:51.19)
is accepting again, right? And be grateful, as you always said, of who you are and where you are. And that's where everything started, because then everything that happens after that, it's only positive, right? And I like that example that you just brought right now, because a lot of people are always chasing for more, and it's never enough for them. And then they achieve that next step. Okay, but they want more.

Jack Wagoner (17:21.409)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (17:21.47)
And they never appreciate or even grateful for the journey and who they are in a way that can make them feel like, know, really as a whole, as a human being.

Jack Wagoner (17:36.321)
Yeah. And what's interesting to tie AI into it is AI is actually accelerating this process because with AI, get to reach our goals faster. And it actually accelerates hedonic adaptation. For those who don't know, hedonic adaptation is this idea that there's an actual baseline on our happiness. There's a reset point. it's evolutionarily

necessary, because without it, our ancestors would have hunted one animal and then feasted in the cave and never hunted again, and we wouldn't be here. So it's important that hedonic adaptation exists. The problem is that the survival mechanism is still controlling us in a world where most of us here. For most of us, survival is not the issue, but fulfillment is. And so it's actually keeping fulfillment away from us because when we when we achieve one thing,

going to feel good for a second, then we're going to come back. the interesting part about hedonic adaptation that Dr. Sonja Liubomirsky found is that it actually resets faster for positive things than it does for negative ones. And when we achieve it faster, this is even further, like moving this achievement gap further, it's even further accelerating this process of coming back to our reset point.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:04.94)
Yeah, this was a perfect way to get us into our next segment, which is really AI acceleration and the identity crisis that I want to talk to you about. And a few things that I'm seeing today, especially both of us and a lot of people working with AI. AI main use case right now is removing friction, right? It's removed the struggle. And for many people, the struggle was where they found meaning.

Jack Wagoner (19:12.321)
haha

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:34.038)
in the past. So if we are removing meaning, What happens to our identity, right? When really the output of achieving something becomes so easy because of AI.

Jack Wagoner (19:35.404)
Hmm.

Jack Wagoner (19:50.081)
Yeah, think that to start on removing the struggle, by removing the struggle, we're removing the growth. And we already said that growth is where we obtain a lot of fulfillment. As humans, we crave growth, we crave progress. And it's like, I bet your listeners can relate to this, at least some of them. But when I was younger, I would play like video games where I'd be in a sports, would be a sports player. And I would basically get to have a

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:02.648)
there.

Jack Wagoner (20:19.927)
career. And it would be sometimes I just go on easy mode and I'd be a baseball player, for example, and I'd hit a home run every time I was up to bat. And it was fun for a few games, but it never ended up feeling good because I'm like, well, anyone could do this. So then I would up the difficulty a little bit. And that's where I would start to struggle a bit. I might strike out. I might not hit a home run every time. But when I did, it felt good. I felt like

I actually was responsible for something. And I think it's an interesting way that we could relate to AI in the workplace right now, where the same things that we used to have to put time and effort into, we're now getting easier than ever. And so it feels less rewarding for people. And then on the same end of things, people then feel like they need to do more. Because although they're having the same output as before,

They need to compensate that in some way to feel that the rest of the meaning. So AI ends up making them do more work. They expand their jobs and they end up getting more burnt out faster. And this isn't just me saying this. There are multiple studies, UC Berkeley did a big one that have actually corroborated this and found that AI is expanding the workload of many people.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:31.542)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:35.305)
Absolutely.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:44.372)
It is indeed, it is. Some people, think it's plug and play. There's a lot of work to make AI works as efficient as people wants it, depending on your use case. But you just start on something that I've been thinking about because historically, hard work for humans have been working eight or nine hours a day, whatever it is, doing work, performing task. And we feeling efficient.

right? By doing the task. Now, with AI removing parts of the tasks that we historically have been done, as you are saying, people are trying to find how to fulfill their work, and the eight hours that they have to work in a day. And that means probably, you know, learning new skills, finding meaning to their work in a different way, right?

so they can adjust to this new reality. So there is a lot of things that AI is bringing as positive, but there's a lot of things that we also need to discuss as humans and what's gonna happen with our jobs. And especially, Jack, I'm interested on listening from you, especially your generation, right? How do you see that shift and where we're heading next?

especially if AI is taking jobs and how do you see college? How do you see this interaction of your generation with AI and your future?

Jack Wagoner (23:21.975)
Yeah, I don't see there being much of a middle ground. When I look at AI, and I'm no AI expert, but I'm around it a lot in multiple different formats. And the two extremes that I see, which is really all that I see, is they're the people that are super into AI, and they're using Claude code, and they have Mac minis, and they have OpenClaw, and they're creating incredible apps and incredible software. And they're making a lot of money, and they're making a difference. And then...

I see the people that are offloading everything they have to AI. And sometimes this can even be the founder with open cloth, right? But they're offloading everything they have to AI. I'm mostly talking about school right now when I say this, and they are getting dumber. They're actually remembering less and getting less intelligent. I recently did a, wrote a paper on this and I studied a ton of different data.

that is coming out about AI and how it's affecting our memory, especially college students' memory. And there's this interesting progression when you look at history, where as we've gotten certain technology, we've become overall better at doing tasks, but the human has become worse. So a good example of this is GPS. It's proven that humans are now...

worse directionally than they were before the invention and the mass implementation of the GPS. All right, then the next step on from this people often like to talk about Google, there's something called the Google effect, where when, when we have a memory, when we're encoding a memory into our brain, it encodes what's called an engram. And an engram is kind of the neurobiological thing that is our memory, right? It's like the physical storage point for memory.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:17.294)
Mm.

Jack Wagoner (25:17.735)
And we used to, before Google, we used to remember the information. So the Engram would be the information. Now, or after Google, the Google effect is us remembering, encoding an Engram for what we would type into Google to find that information. AI is accelerating this at an incredible rate. Because now it's not just information. Now it's tasks.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:23.586)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:38.606)
Mm-mm.

Jack Wagoner (25:41.935)
it's much more complex things. It's literally, you can use Cloud Chat CPT and you can get answers for almost everything. so students especially are seeing a very low rate of recognition memory or of recall memory, sorry, where they're finding it a lot harder to recall actual information because they just are remembering what

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (25:48.622)
Yeah.

Jack Wagoner (26:08.949)
they can type into chat GPT or Claude or Gemini or whatever they're using to get that information. yeah, the kids are becoming overall, they're able to produce better outputs than ever before. But if you take all the technology away, people are getting worse. And it's this weird sacro, I don't know what's right. Personally, I don't think I'm the person that gets to say what I believe what is right and what is wrong.

But it's a really interesting dynamic we have at Play that needs to be considered when we're looking at the future of stuff, because AI is just going to get better. And people are always going to use the technology they have to make better outputs. It's not an individual problem, right? It's just the way humans are wired. So there's this really, really interesting dynamic at Play. I don't know what the future looks like.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:52.117)
Always.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:05.035)
Yeah, it's very interesting times we're living. Especially some people say this is just like any other technology. Well, I disagree. It's not like any other technology. is that's why it's artificial intelligence, right? Because the intelligence part of it, it becomes better and learns from it and has this powerful infrastructure behind of it that will continue to learn and improve.

And it's not like any other technology. This can rewrite code. can tell. mean, it's a totally different animal. And when I feel like this new reality, I don't think we have enough time to discuss what is the future that we want for us. I think people are just rushing to talk about ASI and AGI, right? And it's what's coming next.

Jack Wagoner (28:01.463)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:04.982)
without really discussing from a human point of view, what is the future we want for us humans and why this AI stuff is really what we want to go next. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of pros on the use of AI in healthcare. And I would like to see AI accelerating discovery of, for example, cancer and vaccines and stuff. I think we're going to see a lot of that there.

but it's still, know, sometimes it makes me a little bit afraid of what is that future will look like if we don't have a say on it.

Jack Wagoner (28:42.087)
Yeah, 100%. And it comes back to earlier, we talked about how a lot of people don't really think about what they want for themselves. And they don't take the time to think about what goals they truly want to want to want to chase, because they're so focused on what they think they should from societal pressure. And I think at a macro level, we're at that point right now, where at a macro level, we're not really thinking about what what the humans want.

What is it that we're truly craving? What is the best possible life? What's the best culture look like? No, we're just riding the wave of AI. And again, can we really blame people for that? Because that's the way it's always worked. And we're chasing progression. But at some point, it catches up to you. It catches up to culture just as it does a human, a human who chases something that they're not truly emotionally connected to, that they're not truly wanting.

ends up burning out. They end up saying, how did I get here? Why didn't I take the time to think about this before? And I fear that's what we're going to do as a society unless we collectively look at what we're actually doing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:54.466)
Yeah, there's something special about earning, you earning with your efforts, you achieving something by, you did something. And with AI, everything becomes easy to achieve. I mean, it's not everything. I don't want to make it as a general statement, but for the most part, AI can really achieve a lot of great things. it's a, if every,

thing becomes so easy to achieve, then we're not gonna be earning, really feeling the joy that is going through a process and with your efforts and achieving something. And our identity is built around that as well. That's what had made us humans being humans for the most part.

Jack Wagoner (30:45.247)
Yeah. And I think AI is great in so many ways. I mean, I use AI for my business and for my life in so many aspects. I use it every day for a good amount of time. It's sped up so many things that I don't actually get fulfillment from. building out a speaker one sheet or a CRM to reach out to podcast sponsors. AI has done that very effectively and very efficiently for me.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:53.622)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jack Wagoner (31:13.673)
as I've learned how to prompt it, to use it. And I'm so grateful for being able to do that for me. But that's in the right places. I don't think AI should be generating the ideas for my content. AI shouldn't be asking my questions for me. AI shouldn't choose who comes on my show. There are certain things where it's like it comes down to the human to make that decision.

because humans resonate with human decisions, humans resonate with human ideas. And we can tell. I mean, I don't know about you, but I know when something's AI written, most of the time, it's getting good now. But I think that humans are better AI detectors than AI detectors are.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (31:55.981)
Yeah, I think so, at least right now. And I want to double down on what you just said, especially us that we do podcasts. This has been a game changer. I couldn't see myself doing the podcast and a lot of work that happened behind the scenes without the help of AI and having AI as a co-pilot to write us things, to help us visualize things. So it has been a game changer. That's why we say there's a lot of positive.

It's also important for us to discuss the things that we are concerned and how we want to shape the future with. Yeah, totally agree with you on that. So, Jack, we'd like to get into the next segment with you, which is thinking about gratitude really as infrastructure, right? And curious to see...

And I know that you're very passionate about that, but how, why do you see gratitude as a competitive advantage?

Jack Wagoner (33:01.595)
That's a really important question I think that we need to be asking because a lot of people do see gratitude as a sort of complacency, right? They see it as, I've got here just by driving away hate and why would I change that? And honestly, this was one of the first things that really made me dive and commit to this topic because

I started off like a lot of people reading books by people like David Goggins and David, he's accomplished so much in his life. But the way that he frames his motivation is running away from a life that he was afraid of, running away from a life that he hated. And when you're constantly running away from something, you're always just going to be doing that.

You're pushing, you're pushing yourself away from something. But when you use gratitude, I believe you can pull yourself to a better life. And when you're truly grateful for what you have right now, I think that in the long run, it's so much more sustainable. And the way I like to think about this is let's say you're very grateful for your life right now, or you hate your life right now. You have to make a big decision, a big risk to get to the next level.

If the risk fails, you end up right where you are right now. Okay? A lot of people, before thinking about this, think that the person that's trying to run away from something is more likely to take the risk. But think about it. The person that's doing this because they hate their life, they can take the safe option where they are guaranteed to not have to live this life that they hate anymore. Where the person with complete gratitude

where they are, they can take this risk, and they end up in a life that they already love. Okay? And this is where I think it's very important to understand this distinction. Because oftentimes, you're able to achieve so much more from gratitude, because you're not afraid of failure. You're not afraid of failure, because the worst case scenario is something that you already know you love. And this can sometimes

Jack Wagoner (35:25.589)
kind of come into tension with this idea of, you know, burn the boats, don't have a backup plan. You go all in, I think that you can go all in. While still believing that that right now is enough right now I can be grateful. I'm grateful for who I am for being in this place right now. And if you are just running away from a life that you're not enjoying, you're focusing on the lack of limitation.

You're gonna be afraid to do anything that might bring you back to that life.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:59.06)
And let's say I'm a person, Jack, that nothing feels enough and I'm stuck right now. How do you practice that? What you're saying right now, how do you practice gratitude when you are in such a place that nothing feels right? And I think a lot of people struggle with that thinking that gratitude in a way that for them to feel grateful, they need to be on a state that everything surrounding them is fine.

Right?

Jack Wagoner (36:31.807)
Yeah, and I understand that gratitude can feel very fluffy and it can feel like, well, I need things. It feels like you're dependent on things outside of you to be grateful for them. And I think that's where we have a completely wrong lens on what gratitude is. Because most people, they'll say, I'm grateful for my house. I'm grateful for my car. I'm grateful for whatever the water bottle that I have here.

what what that thing creates is this internal dependency upon external things in order to be grateful. Right? So by saying if I'm grateful, I'm grateful for my car, what happens if your car gets taken away? By saying I'm grateful for this water bottle? What happens if it? I don't know just gets lost. Then the gratitude goes away with the things that it's attached to. And

for people that feel like they need something to be grateful for in their lives, they can look at their lives and everything they have actually has something that they can be grateful for it. And I'll get back to the water bottle and all of that in a second, but Bob Proctor, who I did one of his training programs and incredible man, he's one of the part of the old guard of success and like.

along with Jim Rohn and the people that train Tony Robbins. Here, hold on. Let me pause for a second because I don't know why my light went off.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:06.926)
Okay.

Jack Wagoner (38:12.087)
I'm sorry about that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:18.37)
That would make us being real human beings. So people are going to be watching real human beings having a conversation.

Jack Wagoner (38:25.695)
Yeah, exactly.

Jack Wagoner (38:32.555)
There we go. Bob Proctor talks about this idea of the law of polarity, where everything has both a positive and a negative side to it. And we're just going to do this. I why that turned off. Everything has both a positive and a negative side to it. And when we're grateful, we're recognizing the positive side. And when we're in the mindset where it's like, I need more.

to grateful, we're focusing on the negative side. And so we can look at the things in our life and say, all right, what's one thing that happened today that, you know, I'm not unhappy that it happened. All right. So let's say it's just that I woke up this morning. I love that I woke up this morning. All right. That's one thing that I'm not unhappy it happened. I'm not comfortable saying I'm grateful for it yet, but I'm not unhappy that it happened. All right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:18.113)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Wagoner (39:28.855)
And now we're gonna say, we're gonna look at it. And what I help people do is I'm gonna say, right, you're gonna take that and you're going to, you're gonna just tell yourself, I'm happy that that happened. I recognize that that was a good thing. And you're gonna do that for a bit. You don't have to write it down. I don't like the idea of just writing things down and doing and adding more because so many people already feel burnt out. They already feel like they're doing so much. Why don't we add more to the routine?

Gratitude doesn't need to be something that adds stress to your life. It's supposed to subconsciously reframe the way you're thinking about things. So if we just, for a bit, focus on when that thing happens, when you wake up, I'm kind of happy that happened. Then eventually we can start to say, all right, I'm comfortable saying I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that I woke up. I know what that means. And then we can start to apply it to different things. So that's like our first level of gratitude. We're grateful for the things. We're grateful for the water bottle.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:04.802)
Hmm.

Jack Wagoner (40:27.425)
But like I said, that creates this idea of dependency. So what we want to get to then is this idea that we are grateful for who we are that created those things. So it can be a little bit abstract when we're talking about things such as a water bottle.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:44.268)
You mean for our existence.

Jack Wagoner (40:47.627)
for our existence and the traits that we have about ourselves. So for example, I imagine that you're grateful for your podcast. But if you want to go a step deeper than that, because your podcast, it probably won't, but it could somehow go away, right? By being grateful for your podcast, you're grateful for something outside of you. And that's showing yourself your your gratitude is a little bit dependent on the things exterior. So

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:04.802)
Right? Yeah.

Jack Wagoner (41:15.945)
If then you were to say, I'm grateful for my ambition and my willingness to step out of my comfort zone and create this podcast that I feel serves people in a way that's necessary. Then you have these traits that you control. You have the ownership of your gratitude. And even if the podcast for some reason went away, you're still grateful for those traits and you can focus on those and maybe create another thing out of that.

Does that make sense? It's a very long-winded answer to your question, but it helps us create this ownership around what we're grateful for that doesn't allow it to get taken away by things outside of our control.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:56.694)
It does make total sense. the end of the day, we are kind of the creators of what's happening with our lives, right? And that's within our control. It's our willingness to put in the work and taking things to the next level that really achieves having a podcast, for example. But the achievement of it really came from you making a decision that that's where you really wanted to go.

And I totally agree with you, and I like this perspective that feeling grateful for the things that you control, right, and the things that comes from who you are and the power within you, it's really what makes life even more beautiful to be enjoyed instead of just being grateful for the things that we achieved, because we are always achieving something. And that should not be the destination where we're heading.

That should be just something that we got and we got there. But really, what came from you, it's what we should be grateful about.

Jack Wagoner (43:09.217)
Right. Yeah. Be grateful for things that and the other thing is don't just be grateful for things that are just yours. Sharing gratitude also amplifies it. When you can when you can tell someone you're grateful for them. That's another thing. If you're struggling to be grateful, most people that don't feel like they have things to be grateful for in their lives, they at least have one person that's been a big help, a big influence in their lives. so send them a text.

I love starting off a morning thinking of someone random and just saying, hey, man, thinking about you, hope you're well, grateful for you, something like that. And you instantly you feel great. You feel you're able to embody that gratitude because then the person is going to reciprocate that. And that is so important, especially if you if you're in a company environment right now. That's also a really important way that you could better your company culture, especially with gratitude or

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (43:50.089)
Absolutely.

Jack Wagoner (44:07.031)
just AI accelerating things and accelerating this achievement gap. If you have people, the people connecting and saying, hey, thank you very much, you grateful for you. It might sound cheesy, but it's going to create a bond that is going to be harder to break. Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:22.24)
It definitely makes you feel good. It definitely makes you feel good. It's when you feel appreciated, right? And I think I feel like when we're talking and feeling grateful for others, we are kind of really appreciating for who they are, right? Sometimes what they have done. So it definitely we as humans, it make us feel good if someone tell I'm grateful for you. And like you say, it may feel and sound cheesy, but

Jack Wagoner (44:28.375)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:52.01)
it's how you start feeling grateful, right? And what grateful really means. And I think sometimes the problem is people look at being grateful or feeling grateful in a way that is too distant from us, from our reality. When it's not, it's on those small things that we really find what being grateful actually means.

Jack Wagoner (45:17.013)
Yeah, yeah, it can be the simple things. And it's with so much where there's so much in our lives right now that we feel like we need more in order to in order to feel happy in order to feel grateful. But we can just slow down for a bit. I encourage people to just slow down for a bit because one of the one of the studies that came out about AI is that people are now taking much less breaks.

during the day, because they're just replacing it with AI. What in what used to be their work breaks, they're now just prompting. They're now like, all right. No, the people people are, people are like prompting on their lunch breaks, or when they go to the bathroom. And these times when we used to just have time to slow down and appreciate. It's hilarious. But it's it's saddening. Yeah. It's like,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:48.344)
THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:53.614)
No one wants to lose to AI, I guess.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:08.278)
It's hilarious. It's reality,

Jack Wagoner (46:15.516)
my God, people need to slow down.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (46:16.526)
How can you compete against a 24-7 system, Jack, that doesn't sleep, doesn't go on vacation? Imagine you feel that rush, you feel that challenge every day that you have a co-pilot, a co-worker that doesn't sleep. I mean, I'm sure there are many people out there thinking, how?

and we're gonna compete against those systems that they don't sleep, they work non-repeat. I mean, there's so many things to think about that I guess we will figure it out as we go, right? So, yes.

Jack Wagoner (46:58.539)
Yeah, but I mean, we're comparing ourselves to a literal robot. It's like, well, AI doesn't need downtime to comprehend things. If we want to perform at our best, if we want to feel the way we want to feel, if we want to remember and learn what we've been doing, we literally need breaks and downtime to get better. Yeah, yeah, it's how we learn.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:03.054)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:20.14)
We need to relax and chill.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:27.796)
It is, it is. Now this brings me back to my next question, which is looking at the other side of the spectrum. We're looking and we know all the challenges with AI, but supposedly AI makes everything possible, capable, infinite capabilities, right? So.

Usually, we have a target and we achieve it. That's how we humans we have, you know, for the most part, interacted with what a meaningful life look like. We put target and we put goals. But in a world in a future, Jack, with everything is possible. And it's really, you know, endless possibilities. What does a meaningful life look like?

if everything is possible.

Jack Wagoner (48:24.791)
Well, I think that everything's always been possible. There's just never been a lower barrier to entry. And that barrier to entry is going to continue to go down. And what that means is humans are going to be able to try out more and more and more things without investing as much time. And this can be seen in two different ways. One, it's easier to, I guess, figure out what you want.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:41.326)
Hmm.

Jack Wagoner (48:54.193)
by just trial and error. But again, if you think about infinite possibilities, you're probably not going to get there. And so it's also easier to explore different areas that you'd want to go in forever without ever truly committing to one thing without ever truly finding something that really lights you up because you're just going to try everything. You're always going to quit before you truly see the next outcome. mean, we saw this with the internet.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:56.238)
Hmm?

Jack Wagoner (49:22.615)
Right. we so many people I've talked to at least are like, yeah, I tried whatever drop shipping and Amazon, all these different like get rich quick, different internet fads to make money. And that's just going to keep getting easier to do. And a lot of those people and they never succeeded because they never waited long enough. They never tried hard enough to succeed. And when there's so many different opportunities, it's going to get harder and harder for people to

feel fulfilled in one because they're going to see other people succeeding in other ones. They're like, I could do that. Before, we used to think, yeah, we used to not compare ourselves as much to other people because we're like, they invested all this time in that. They deserve that. I wouldn't have done that. I'm in my thing. But as the barrier to entry gets lower, it gets easier and easier to compare with other people and feel bad about ourselves because of someone else's success. So in this new world, a meaningful life means getting

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:56.227)
Mm.

Jack Wagoner (50:21.619)
really, really, really clear with ourselves about what lights us up, about what makes us feel fulfilled, about the things that bring value to our lives, about the people that bring value to our lives. What do I want to spend my time doing? If I did this thing, if I spent my time with these people for the rest of my life, would I regret it?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:35.438)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:46.03)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Wagoner (50:48.191)
asking these questions and spending this time with ourselves, doing the things that nobody else can do for us before we truly do things, before we make commitments. Those are the prerequisites to what a meaningful life is gonna look like. And that's always been the case, but it becomes even more important now when it's easier to compare and feel bad about ourselves because of other people's success.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:14.37)
Yeah, and I also think that with AI removing and robotics in the future removing a lot of the work that we have to do, I really think that a meaningful life will, you know, will look like spending more time with our loved ones, experiencing the joy of being surrounded by other humans, feeling more, right? Because we have been, you know,

Jack Wagoner (51:36.353)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:39.778)
very laser focus on achieving things and executing tasks and working hard, putting a lot of effort, physical effort, mental effort. If it's really what the future will look like, and with AI and robots taking a lot of our mundane work, know, the work that we used to do, and we have more time to enjoy ourselves, I really hope that that's really what a life will look like for us.

that possibility of us interacting with each other more and feeling more. Right, Jack? think we are a generation, we are a society that we need to feel more. We all need to experience life in a different way that we have been used to, in a way that we feel more than actually anything else. So that's my hope.

Jack Wagoner (52:22.134)
Hmm.

Jack Wagoner (52:36.319)
Yeah, I think that that could be a realistic hope. That's one of the possible outcomes I see. that's a great one. Because human connection is the most important thing in our happiness long term. Like that's the famous Harvard's longitudinal study, right? So if we can free up more time to connect with humans and build deeper relationships, that would be the ideal.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:52.92)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (53:00.13)
That would be, we'll see what's gonna happen next, which future it goes to. We need to fight for it, Because it's gonna be our future, all of us. So Jack, I want to get to the last segment of the show. And it is one question made for different groups. And what it...

what I'm going to ask you, it's your piece of advice on each of those groups that is intended to go to. So I'm going to start with the first one. And what would be your piece of advice for individuals chasing success? What should they rethink?

Jack Wagoner (53:44.011)
I would ask them why they're chasing success. What is it that they've attached to the meaning of success? Because I think in the end, all of us really are simple. We want to feel fulfilled. And if we've attached fulfillment to success, then we're never truly going to get it. I tell those people, figure out why you're chasing success. Understand that you can feel the way you want to feel.

right now and attach less to the outcome than to the progression toward the worthy ideal.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:21.772)
All right, beautiful, thank you. Your piece of advice to companies building AI, what responsibility should they carry?

Jack Wagoner (54:32.823)
At this point, I don't know how much companies are building AI and AI is building AI. But I would say, consider what's happening. put thought into the steps that you're taking and don't just keep chasing the carrot. I mean, what are we doing it for?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (54:40.706)
Fair enough.

Jack Wagoner (54:59.607)
It's similar to the people that are just chasing success. What have we attached to this? What's our ideal outcome? What do we think is coming from this? And what do we want to happen? Are we building toward what we want to happen?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (55:13.39)
All right, to business leaders, tech leaders, of it all, how do we protect human meaning?

Jack Wagoner (55:25.951)
I think it's important to facilitate a culture in which people don't feel like they need to compete with AI, which a culture where people feel safe and they understand what their role is, how it's separate from AI. And they feel like they can come closer to their coworkers, come closer to the company culture where they understand the goals of the company, where they're bought into the ideal of the company.

because that's where people are going to perform the best. That's where you're going to make the most money and have the most fun doing it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:03.682)
And last but not least, Jack, your piece of advice to society. What are we at risk of losing?

Jack Wagoner (56:14.089)
I think that right now we're at risk of losing our human ability to do a lot of things on our own. We're becoming increasingly dependent on technology. And my advice to society is to once again consider if that's what we really want. If it is, then I guess keep going. But if it's not...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:42.178)
Is it?

Jack Wagoner (56:44.201)
I don't think it is. So I think we need to reconsider a few things and even just turn the boat a little bit to a society in which we get to keep some of our human attributes that lead us to the goals that we actually want to have, which is fulfillment.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (56:45.491)
Okay, me neither.

Jack Wagoner (57:11.625)
And we can accelerate that in certain ways with AI, but not outsourcing the things that create that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (57:19.33)
Yeah, thanks for that. And if we don't define what's enough or when enough is enough, the world will probably define it for us. And that's something that we really don't want to happen. And as you all heard today, this conversation wasn't all about AI, but of course it had AI on it. It was about us. So I want to take a moment to appreciate you, Jack, for coming to the show one more time. This has been a very

inspirational conversation that we have had today.

Jack Wagoner (57:51.457)
Thank you. Yeah, and I think the most important thing in these days when people hear things like this is to truly be inspired, not just motivated. Take action on what they hear. Actually take time to think about what it is that they want that they're working toward. And don't just leave with a nice little feeling in their stomach that goes away after five minutes. Like make a change in their lives. That's what differentiates people.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (58:20.256)
And if this episode made you pause this conversation, made you reflect or made you feel something you haven't named yet, share it with someone who's chasing more but questioning why. Follow the human protocol because the code may change and it will probably change, but our humanity is the constant. Thank you all. We talk again next week. Thank you, Jack.

Jack Wagoner (58:46.146)
Thank you, Michael.