What did I lose in the Philippines?

Hey YouTube, Alex here and in today's video I want to cover this topic.

What did I lose in Thailand or what did I lose in the Philippines?

The first thing I lost was that constant hustle and pressure mindset that I had from living in the Bay Area.

In American culture, it used to be that I think anyway people were more family oriented.

But these days, as the country has gotten poorer due to inflation, people have to work harder to attain less.

But some people don't really want to admit that or to acknowledge that.

I think some see it as an acknowledgement of failure.

There's a lot of different examples I have of the United States being poorer, but one of the responses that I see is people getting into this hustle bro mentality.

And I think I had that myself for a while.

I wanted to work extra hard all the time.

I was always in a rush, hurry, hurry, hurry.

And I still catch myself in a hurry sometimes, but I've really left that behind after spending a couple years and a more calm and relaxed environment.

I've noticed that a lot of people when they get into that mindset, they don't really think about the tradeoffs.

They don't really think about how they are paying in other ways for this hustle culture.

One is their health.

You know, I would say a lot of people they push themselves to achieve such that they may not sleep very well.

They may take medications to perform better.

uh such that they don't need to sleep as well or maybe they build muscle faster, whatever it may be.

They are constantly unhappy with where they're at and they make sacrifices in an attempt to optimize.

I think in some ways a lot of people also pay with their mental health and well-being.

I'm not suggesting that people should not try, rather that sometimes effort here seems to be a bit misplaced.

I was just at Costco earlier here in Reno and I see this guy rushing around people, darting in front of people and trying to grab this and trying to grab that.

and he had this anxious twisted up look on his face.

And I thought, man, I can really relate to that guy, you know, that he's probably got some kind of side business he's running.

Maybe he works a 9 to-ive corporate job during the week and then on the weekends he's uh running some kind of additional catering business.

And I'm not saying it's not good.

Like I respect the hustle.

I just wonder where it crosses from wanting to get ahead to self-hatred.

And I don't know where that line is.

Let me know what you think down below.

Maybe you totally disagree.

I definitely remember that from Bay Area tech culture where it seemed like people wanted to do things to avoid dealing with their own thoughts.

I remember I remember I lived above a bar and I would see people get off really late at night and I go into this bar and really be partying it up trying to I guess like forget about their thoughts or whatever it may be.

And I just thought, you know, I know there's a lot of people like to have fun in Thailand, but I never felt pressured to engage in that culture in Thailand.

In fact, a lot of that left my mind.

Personally, I drink maybe once or twice a year and that's about it.

And even then, I usually feel horrible afterwards and regret it.

Usually, it's for like a holiday or special occasion.

But I noticed that drinking to excess seems to go handinhand with that hustle bro culture that I gave up.

I have actually found a line of work where slowing down is a good idea.

There's many instances, my new line of work, which I'm not going to mention right now, where going too fast, trying to hurry, can lead to real consequences.

It's not easy to find work these days where actually taking your time and doing things right is appreciated.

I think a lot of industries, of course, I used to be in sales, really pressure you to grind at both ends.

One of the realizations I had was I was pretty sure I was washed out of the tech industry.

This is a realization I had in Southeast Asia and I needed to pivot.

I needed to find a different line of work.

And it was hard for me to get over that because in America we attach our self-worth to our job, our career, our success materially.

And I thought, you know, I'm going to go a different direction.

I'm going to find something else that can pay the bills, but something that is not so hyper competitive.

Competition and the competitive mindset in the US leads people to just do a lot of strange things.

A friend of mine explained, I don't think people do this anymore to get ahead.

I think they do this to not fall behind.

And that's where I think a lot of the stress is here in the States is people really just trying to not fall behind economically to make their car payment, to make their taxes, their fines, their fees, all these factors that are a big thing here in the West.

I want to retire in Southeast Asia eventually.

I don't want to live here forever.

I think you probably need like 5 million plus to retire here.

Maybe not quite that much, but if you want to live in a really nice place and to travel around, you do need to hit that goal.

Uh where over there, I think you can do it on like one to two.

I think that that's an amount of money that you're going to be able to rent a nice place to live because of the 4% rule, right?

If you have a 4% withdrawal rate, 4% of a million is 40k.

But I think you could do it on less.

In Southeast Asia, I think you could do it on like a million.

I think you could do it on like a million dollar portfolio.

4% it's 40k a year.

Safe withdrawal rate.

That's my target anyway, at least in the short to medium term.

Verse, like I said, 5 million to stay here in the States.

That's assuming you've got a paid off house.

good insurance that's not reliant upon having a high paid job.

I know a lot of people will say, "Oh, these young men going to Southeast Asia are under ambitious." But I think for most of us, we recognize not everybody is capable of supporting a family.

In fact, very few jobs today actually pay enough where you can reasonably support a family.

So, if you're assuming that you need to grind hard for that, but you run the numbers, whatever career you have, then you're going to realize, okay, that's off the table.

So, what am I doing this hustle and grind kind of culture when I don't have generational wealth?

I don't have a very high paid skill set that's very unique where I'm going to command a two or 30 hund,000 a year income.

and you start to try to sort out what's attainable, what can I reasonably achieve and Southeast Asia becomes much more appealing.

And then you're like, okay, how do I deconstruct or work backwards from that goal?

Because this goal of finding a quality partner in the US and then supporting that person to start a family is off the table.

you have to pivot if you want to maintain happiness or you want to feel like you're moving towards something.

And so for me, that's been okay, I need to save, live below my means and eventually move to Southeast Asia.

And so that's where I've stopped being like, oh man, my target is 5 or 10 million and it's more like 1 or 2 million, which is much more attainable without driving yourself insane.

I mean, I noticed when I worked in sales, substance abuse is very common because to make that kind of money, you have to work long hours.

You have to deal with a lot of pressure.

You're constantly worried about getting fired.

It's not like a lot of other jobs.

Like any high paid field that has a really high potential upside is going to be very stressful because companies, businesses, customers don't pay a lot of money for you to just be relaxed or calm.

They want you to be hustling.

They want you to go above and beyond for them.

Not to say that what I'm currently doing is not working hard, but I'm not lying awake in the middle of the night because I've had five cups of coffee trying to get in additional metrics or KPIs or whatever they are as far as how they measure what it is that you're supposed to be doing.

So, yeah, the first thing I lost was this hustle and grind culture, this hustle, bro mentality.

I still plan to work hard.

I still plan to save and live below my means, but I'm not constantly feeling inadequate and like I need to push people out of the way to get mine in the same way that I did when I was working in sales and in the corporate sort of lifestyle.

Point number two is harsh social comparison.

So I think before I left being in that corporate lifestyle, people are constantly comparing their purchases, their consumption.

People are trying to one up each other on vacations.

People are trying to go to the hottest and greatest destination.

You always hear about these things.

You hear about, oh, he just bought a $2 million house or she just bought a $4 million.

I'm serious.

I had these conversations where I've worked in the past where people are talking about like, "Oh, you know what?

I I just sold a bunch of stock and now we're moving into this $5 million house and you feel really inadequate." A lot of people say it's social media.

This is at work.

This is not social media.

This is conversations I've been exposed to or been part of in a working environment.

In a working environment.

A lot of people throw around social media, social media, but the culture of social media has the culture of social media has also come into the real world.

And because I can't speak Thai, I can't understand Thai.

And even in the Philippines, I can't understand Bayiah very well.

I can understand little bits and pieces, but I can't really understand it.

You don't really feel inadequate in the same way you do in the West.

A lot of my Thai friends live in condos or apartments.

They drive normal vehicles.

They're not trying to buy a supercar.

They're not trying to go and have a week-long bender at the vacation hot spot.

They don't need to fly out and do international trips multiple times per year.

They don't need to buy multi-million dollar houses.

And same in the Philippines.

You just don't have that.

So, you don't really have that same sense of I'm inadequate because I'm not doing all these things.

I don't come from generational wealth.

I don't have the same opportunities these people have.

I think that's an issue we're seeing in America is due to wealth inequality, the divide between halves and have nots is so much more extreme that you're more exposed to people that have a lot more than you.

It's very different from countries with a stronger middle class or where there's more homogeneity in the culture.

Wow.

Some people are way more virtuous than others in the United States.

Some people are way more thrifty.

Some people are way more skilled.

I didn't like in sales being encouraged to lie to people where other people feel, you know, it's totally normal to lie to people.

It's it's fine.

I think it's harmful.

But, uh, there's not necessarily the same relationship in modern America between being good and being bad.

I'm not saying that all people building wealth are unethical, but working in corporate, I was more and more exposed to some of the deceptive or dishonest practices that businesses would do to make a dollar, to get a contract signed.

They would change language around to leave important information out.

They would make it difficult to cancel.

They would pester people into frustration.

Leave me alone.

look, I don't want to buy it.

That kind of culture, yeah, it can lead you to wealth and prosperity, but it can also lead to social and societal harm.

And so, I feel glad that I have this opportunity like, look, I'm going to go live over in these other countries.

I'm going to go retire over there.

I know there's some expectation of material wealth.

I'm not saying that most people around the world would like a house.

Most people would like a car, but there's not this immediate he or she has a nicer house or car than me.

At least because I can't speak the language.

I'm not really fully integrated in the way that a local is.

I just don't feel that pressure like I do here where I've had somebody like I my car went through a hail storm.

I had a I remember I was in a parking lot of uh Whole Foods when I lived in Denver, Colorado, and this salesman was pestering me and making fun of my car to try to sell me uh repair services, dent repair, something like that.

And he was following me around and I had to yell at him, stop harassing me.

And so, if America is selling itself as the best country in the world, why does it still have this pestering culture?

And I think it's cuz people compare themselves to other people and they see things they want to buy.

And a lot of these people are willing to do these things because they have their eyes set on a certain outcome.

Some of this is also the debt culture where people have a lot of student loan debt or homeowner debt or car debt and they buy what they cannot afford and so they get stuck doing demeaning things to try to make this up.

There's this lawyer Joma.

He's in Houston and I think his content is extremely entertaining.

But he talks about needing to be a I'll just say it a stripper to basically pay for his law school and that's degrading.

And I get it.

He's a successful lawyer now.

I don't knock his success at all.

But I just think gez that's that's embarrassing.

That's that's tough.

I don't know if I could bring myself to do that.

And I guess it's because I'm just comfortable with having a bit less if it means pursuing work that I feel is more honest.

I'm not really sure.

The next thing that I lost was rigid life expectations.

I think this is changing as the country gets poorer and people realize, hey, home ownership is out of reach for a lot of young people that without significant family assistance.

Most young people are not going to be able to buy a home.

And it often doesn't make financial sense either.

If you compare the ability to save and invest the excess versus home ownership where you've got to pay for insurance.

If you have a mortgage, you're required to have homeowners insurance.

You want to have it anyway.

But there's all these costs that go into that.

And so a lot of people in the West, they're not really used to apartments.

And so they don't want to raise a family in an apartment, which I understand.

I wouldn't want to do that either.

Definitely.

When I was growing up, my assumption was I'm going to grow up.

I'm going to go to college.

I'm going to get a good job and I'll start a family.

At least that's what a lot of people, especially like in the boomer generation, no offense any boomers watching this, but a lot of them had that assumption.

I'll give my grandma who's in the silent generation credit.

She always said, "Don't get married.

Don't have kids." I now understand why she said that.

It makes sense.

But I definitely noticed social pressure start to finally fade away.

On my most recent visit to my hometown, I was used to every time I go back to my hometown, I'd see friends, parents pestering them, when are you gonna get married and have kids?

When are you gonna move out and buy a home?

And now they're starting to see, okay, that's unlikely for a lot of my generation, especially kids that I grew up around that grew up in dysfunctional families.

They didn't develop the social skills.

They didn't develop the academic habits to get a quality education to develop sales skills, business skills, organizational skills, talking to people necessary.

Like if you want to own a home and you want to get married and have kids, you need to have all of your ducks in a row.

You need to have a bunch of things lined up to be able to pull that off.

And even if you have generational wealth to make a purchase, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have the income to maintain, right?

like, okay, yeah, let's say I go buy a $400,000 house, that doesn't mean if somebody gives me $400,000, that doesn't mean I have the income to then pay for maintenance, to pay for upkeep, to pay for taxes, to go and make additional money needed to have the nice things, to buy the lawn mower, to buy this, to buy that.

And so, we're at this point in much of the country where the average person is simply not desirable to start a relationship with.

And it bothered me for a while that you're not living up to these expectations of the generation of my parents.

And eventually now it's like, oh, it was a good decision for me to go to Thailand and figure out, hey, I don't need to try to meet that expectation.

It's not realistic.

It's not practical.

It's not something that is likely to be attainable.

And I need to pursue a different dream.

And so my dream, and I think the dream for a lot of my generation is to just retire early, make enough money, live below your means to move to a cheaper country where you can enjoy some nice comfortable years, living in a nice place, having a nice community, being around people who have upward social mobility, right?

A lot of these countries are improving.

The Philippines, I think, is improving.

Thailand, I think, is improving versus the United States and a lot of the Western countries seem to be going downhill.

So that's something that Thailand and the Philippines taught me as well is, hey, give up those expectations.

Give up the thought that you have to do all those normal things.

Very few people in my high school have managed to obtain or attain those things.

And if you take out those with family support, very very few have managed to do that.

And I grew up in a decent area.

So with predominantly two parent households, I did not grow up to a two parent household, but most of the people in my area had that came from that background.

So this is something that I've come to terms with that I lost in Thailand.

That's been very positive.

It's been kind of freeing in a way to be like, you know what, I don't need to buy a $500,000 house.

I don't need to go and have a $40, $50,000 car with accompanying payments.

I don't have to have all that.

other people can pursue that if that's what they want, if that's what they think will make them happy.

But I don't need to feel inadequate because I'm not chasing that.

And I find more and more of my friends are also coming to that conclusion.

Maybe not necessarily with the move overseas component, but they have some sense that man, you know what, I'm coming to terms with it.

That's probably off the table, and that's okay.

I can still have healthy self-love and self-acceptance that I need a different dream.

Another thing that I lost in Thailand is the social aggression component.

And I found growing up, guys would compete over women, they compete over video games, they would compete over sports, whatever it may be.

And there's this underlying sense of hostility.

I was constantly pressured to compete over grades until I burned out.

I lost that.

I realized I don't need to be a hardcore, socially aggressive person.

And this goes into the hustle, bro culture, giving that up that I mentioned earlier in the video.

I don't need to be some hot shot.

I don't need to be some uh pushy guy.

I reflect with embarrassment on some of the times in the past where I was overly aggressive, hostile to people.

I regret it.

You do have to set boundaries in the West.

People are constantly testing your boundaries in the West.

It's something that I I don't miss.

I won't miss feeling like I have to be nasty to other people and to constantly assert myself and to constantly try to push people out of my way.

I've chilled out my driving habits a lot.

When I was younger, I used to drive aggressively at times and I felt like I I'm going to race.

I'm going to race.

And I see people driving this way a lot here in Reno and I see it in California as well.

Bay Area in particular has a lot of aggressive driving, but not as bad as as Reno.

I noticed Reno has a lot of really bad driving.

And I think it's a lot of these people that maybe they can't express their hostility at work.

Maybe they're in a situation they need to kiss up to the boss, but I don't really feel the need to constantly trying to push and shove and this is why I'm right and this is why you're wrong and da da da da da.

And I don't think it really does anything for me anymore.

And I'm glad I don't know if that's a thing with age.

I don't know if that's a factor of my testosterone leveling out, but I found that a lot of the people that engage in that it's another blind spot where I don't know if it's compensatory.

I don't know if it's unwwelleness up here.

I don't know what that is.

Let me know down in the comments if you notice that shift when you moved to Southeast Asia or you moved outside of United States.

If you deal with less aggressive behaviors, it's something that is much less common for myself.

If I see somebody that's in a hurry, oh, all good.

I'll let you in front of me.

I notice when I commute, there's people that like to drive aggressively.

I'll pull over.

I've noticed that I won't try to speed up, tailgate the person in front of me.

I just think, you know what?

If you got something on your mind, maybe you got a problem, maybe there's something going on in your life that I don't know about, then I'll let you on by because I'm not in a hurry, right?

I don't have a family, so I'm not trying to get the kids to soccer practice.

I don't have some crazy corporate job where if I don't get there exactly on time.

I plus I leave early, right?

But if I don't get there early, then it's going to be a problem.

I try to schedule my day around where my top priority is just getting to work at a decent time and being prepared to work.

I don't worry about all this other stuff.

Man, you know, I want a nicer car, so I better pick up a part-time job or I better work extra hours.

If I work extra hours, I'm going to put that money into savings and investments.

But it's not going to be a situation where I need to work extra hours just to make a car payment, which is what I sense from a lot of these people.

I noticed a lot of people around Reno, they drive really big trucks.

they may not be able to afford.

And that's why they drive so aggressive is they're trying to squeeze every little drop out of every little hour such that they can work extra or make extra money to pay for that truck.

And I'm glad I don't relate to that.

I drive like a 10 12 year old vehicle and it's fully paid off, insured, up to date on maintenance and I intend to drive it another 10 years.

I hope nothing happens such that knock on wood that I have to replace it.

But I don't need to drive a big truck, a fancy truck.

I don't need to buy into this consumerism to compensate for insecurities and I don't need to get aggressive with people because I no longer seek to pursue some of these status symbols.

Now, when I do retire in Thailand, would I like a car?

I don't know.

I'd prefer to live in a area like a neighborhood or a city where I don't need to own a car.

Driving in Thailand appears to be stressful to me.

I've tried it on a bike a couple times.

It wasn't for me.

Same with Philippines.

I just don't really see myself wanting to drive a lot.

I'd rather have that extra money and savings for some other thing.

And likewise, I don't need a really big space.

I'd rather have an apartment in a more walkable area where I can walk to the different things that I want to do and have that accessibility.

I find walking is good exercise for me.

Reason I gained weight coming back to the US is I went from walking 10 20,000 steps a day to walking a few thousand steps a day.

And so that's something I've got to work on back here.

But yeah, giving up that social aggression has been good for my mental health.

I still feel stressed.

I still of course have things that I need to work on or trauma.

I'm far from perfect.

But giving up that attitude has helped me a lot.

I do have sometimes people try to get into that with me and I always try to deescalate where I used to try to oh I'm going to tell them this and that not get physical but you know just like verbal meet them where they're at.

But now I'm like hey whoa whoa whoa you don't need to do that let's chill out let's figure out some kind of resolution here if I feel like that's a situation.

But I I really learned to deescalate in Southeast Asia.

And also that component really came off my personality to where there were times in Southeast Asia where somebody would irritate me.

I'd learned to just, you know what, let it go.

Come back with more money.

So that typically it was a thing where okay, if you spend more money on this specific problem, this specific problem will be fixed.

Noise was an issue.

You want a quieter place, come back with more money, you'll get a quieter place.

Losing that hostility was really good for my peace of mind.

The fifth and final thing that I lost in Thailand was the someday culture.

And I'll put a caveat on this because it's really a mixed bag here.

I still trying to advance my position in life in various ways.

But I find that in the US, and I think this is probably true in Canada and Australia, there's a someday culture.

Someday I'll do this.

Someday I'll do that.

Maybe someday.

Living in Southeast Asia, my life was much more in the moment.

I had a greater sense of spontaneity.

I had this sense of just go out and who knows what will happen.

where here because life is so expensive and stressful, people defer gratification in some cases until it's no longer possible.

I had so many people try to discourage me from going to Thailand, from going to the Philippines to make passive aggressive comments on why they wouldn't do that or they're afraid for me.

And I found that the crabs in a bucket culture has really increased as the west becomes poorer and fewer people can hit certain milestones.

You see and hear more of you just need to put that off.

You just need to do that someday.

I found in Thailand and the Philippines that culture doesn't really exist.

Let's do it now.

Let's sing now.

Let's dance now.

Let's go enjoy a nice meal now.

There's much more of a living in the- moment culture.

And I think a lot of Western people would benefit from that.

None of this is to say I don't love America.

I love my country, but I do think it has been mismanaged.

Let me know what you think down below.

I'm going to go and wrap this video up.

It was good to chat with you guys today.

Comment, do you agree?

Do you disagree?

and subscribe if you want to see more content like