Twenty-nine minutes into an episode of Armchair Expert, the host, Dax Shepard looks up to his guest and says something that resonates, “another thing I chase and maybe do is competence. Competence is so hot.” His guest, Brad Pitt, agrees. 1
Throughout the podcast, Brad drops hint after hint about learning from actors before him, from the people he surrounds himself with, and from simply spending the time it takes to master his craft.
It is very easy to look at Brad Pitt and see the obvious, he’s handsome, he’s a movie star, and in a visual industry like Hollywood, that goes a long way. But look closer at his Wikipedia page and you’ll notice something else. He also co-founded the production company Plan B Entertainment, a completely different skill set from acting.
Up to this point, Plan B Entertainment has produced around 58 films and has more in the pipeline. Building a successful production company takes its own education, its own steep learning curve. Brad Pitt didn’t just get lucky. He had to learn and apply himself.
As I’ve written before, celebrities and high achievers rarely hand you the secret to their success outright. But if you listen closely, you’ll hear it. And one of the most consistent secrets is this. They learn, they apply what they learn, and eventually, they teach it.
I’ll come back to Brad Pitt in a bit.
Why Learning Matters
Many people don’t know this. Many people have never even thought about this. But the truth behind achieving your goals, becoming a better version of yourself, and happiness is learning.
You need to understand this fact. Life doesn’t stand still. The Earth rotates. It rotates around the Sun. Animals move constantly in search of food and reproduction. Standing still isn’t an option. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind, because life keeps moving whether you do or not. You can grab it with both arms and see where it takes you, or you can watch it pass by. The choice is yours.
The same thing happens when you stop learning. You don’t just stop. You fall behind. What you know becomes outdated. And what worked yesterday, stops working today. You have to learn, continuously, and consistently.
So, how do you know what you need to learn?
Learning
Well, learning can come from books, articles like this one, coaches, mentors, conferences, classes, online courses, YouTube, social media, even conversations with family and friends. The sources are endless, the harder question is knowing what to learn.
One way is to look at what you’re passionate about, then turn that passion into service for others. But passion isn’t always obvious. There’s a faster way to find it, one I picked up from an episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast with guest Jay Shetty. One way to know what you want and then learn is to look at what makes you jealous. That’s right! Jealousy.
Two years before Mel started her own podcast, she would listen to Jay Shetty’s On Purpose. As she said on the show, she was stuck. Tired of the travel, tired of corporate motivational speaking, and every time she listened to Jay’s show, she felt jealousy. Not because she disliked him or envied him. She admired his work. Jealousy, for her, has always been a signal that she’s found the next thing she wants to do.
When she met Jay, he turned that jealousy around. At one point he asked her directly:
“Mel, you know what you should be doing! When are you going to launch a podcast?”
That single question reframed her jealousy into direction. As Jay put it, “weak people envy the people ahead of them, strong people learn from them”. 2
That’s the trick. Jealousy isn’t a character flaw. It is a compass. Whatever you feel it pointing at, that’s worth learning. Worth noting that it only shows up for things you actually want. Mel has said she’s never once felt jealous of somebody driving a Lamborghini, because she doesn’t want one. Jealousy is specific like that. It only shows up when you truly want something.
Once you’ve found the thing, through passion or through jealousy, the first stage is to simply learn it. Go buy a book about it. Listen to a podcast about it. Go to that event. Just Start.
Apply
Learning on its own isn’t enough. No learning is complete until you apply it. And this is where most people quietly stop. The learn some new information. They get excited because of novelty. But, they will use any reason not to apply it.
In my twenties, a colleague told me something that changed the trajectory of my life. She shared that to buy her first home. She and her husband had saved for their first home deposit by living entirely off one income. It was such a foreign idea to me that I called my wife (girlfriend at the time) the moment I heard it.
Later, I came across the same idea again, this time in a book The Millionaire Next Door. From memory, a single paragraph was dedicated to a couple, both doctors, who lived on one income while banking the other. It confirmed what I already suspected, that this wasn’t a fluke, it was a proven method. 3
Not everyone agreed though. When I mentioned it to another colleague, he dismissed it outright, “Oh, they can do that because they’re high-income earners.” He wasn’t wrong that it’s easier with a bigger income. But he missed the point entirely. He wasn’t ready for the idea, so he explained it away instead of testing it.
My wife and I, on the other hand, applied it. When my wife and I moved in together, we built our entire life around this one principle. We rented a modest granny flat. We sold both our cars. She had a Honda Integra Type R, I had a Skyline 250GT (I still miss that car). Sold them both and bought a very economical Honda Fit Hybrid. The savings were great! And we lived as frugally as we reasonably could, all while banking one full income. We were nowhere near high earners. Combined, we were barely scraping into six figures. But we had intentionally designed our lives around this savings principle.
Within a year and a half, we’d saved over six figures. I couldn’t believe it. I remember when I did the calculations, we were saving around 70% of our total household income.
I was sitting at a family dinner around that time and my parents were giving me a hard time about my goals of buying a house. But they didn’t know what was sitting in my bank account. It didn’t matter what anyone thought. We’d learned something, and then we’d actually done it. It worked.
But I missed one crucial step, let’s continue
Teach
Here’s my confession. I learned this proven method. Yes, I applied it. But for years, I didn’t teach it to anyone. I hoarded the information because I didn’t want anyone else to know. My insecurities stopped me from teaching others. At the time my scarcity mindset would not allow it. I would’ve probably thought that by teaching it to someone else, I would’ve had less. Zero-sum game. Not true.
I have no idea how much further I could have gone. How many other people it could have helped. If I’d written about it or shared it with others back then. It’s never too late, though, which is exactly why I’m teaching it to you now.
Brad Pitt teaches too, in his own way. In his conversations with Dax Shepard, he encourages young actors to learn from the greats who came before them. The same principles he lives by himself, now passed forward.
Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty have built entire careers around teaching what they’ve learned. It’s how they give back, and it’s also how they’ve built such successful businesses with millions of followers.
Teaching is the part most people skip, but it’s what completes the cycle. You don’t just keep what you’ve learned, you multiply it by passing it on. Had I taught the savings principle to people online, would I have continued saving into seven-figures? Yes. Would teaching others encouraged me to learn more, research more, go beyond wealth preservation and into wealth creation? Yes.
This is the truth behind achieving your goal. You learn once by finding the information. You learn twice by applying it. And you complete your learning, by teaching someone else.
Where This Leaves You
You could be twenty-years old reading this, or eighty. Age is never the limiting factor, inaction is. Learning removes jealousy, because once you’ve learned something, it stops being a mystery and starts being a decision. Now you get to choose whether it’s really something you want to pursue, instead of just wishing you had it.
So, here is what I want to ask you. Think of one thing that’s made you jealous recently. Something someone else has that you quietly wish was yours. That’s your sign. This week, take one small step toward learning it. Read one article, watch one video, message one person who’d benefit from learning it too. Don’t wait for the perfect plan. Just start.
Learn it. Apply it. And when you’re ready, teach it. That’s the whole truth behind achieving your goals. And it’s the same one that took Mel Robbins from stuck to podcasting, and my wife and me from renting a granny flat to a 4-bedroom home.
Where will it take you?
