The Philosopher CEO | Clay Co-Founder Kareem Amin

But I’ll give you an insight that I had about living in the future. I was on this silent retreat and, like, you know, crazy things happened and I had these big realizations. And I was just imagining it and just completely letting go of the place that I was at. And then I realized every time you’re picturing the future or living in the future, you’re just accelerating your own time that you’ve got here and you’re accelerating towards death. So to me, that kind of feels like the Freudian death wish where you’re just imagining something that is not here, that is going to happen in the future, and you’re always there. And then I instantly kind of had this felt experience of …

Yeah, there’s a lot of CEOs that have the—or come to these thoughts at different moments. I think it just depends when do they come to it, by the way. Sometimes people come to it after they sell their company. Or, you know, you have a lot of star athletes or Olympic athletes who are like, after they’re done, they come back and recognize this. But I do think a lot of people actually have some forms of these thoughts. It doesn’t mean you’re—it means you have clarity of mind for the ambition, for the future thinking. And then I try to carry that with me. I think it actually leads you to make better decisions that are less rushed, less confused about, like, the nature of what’s happening.

And those things need to align.