Visakan Veerasamy - On Creativity, Introspection & Being a Good Reply Guy (EP.149)

Visakan Veerasamy is a prolific thinker, writer & creator. As well as being the author of the books ‘Introspect’ and ‘Friendly Ambitious Nerd’, he is known for weaving huge, interconnected Twitter threads and for his mission to build “the greatest social graph of friendly, ambitious nerds that the world has ever seen.” Important Links:

• Visa's Website
• Visa's Twitter 
• Visa's Youtube

Show Notes:

• The origins of Friendly Ambitious Nerd
• “The most heroic thing you can do is not hate yourself”
• Confronting the minotaur
• Introspection & Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Overriding human OS
• Humor is the cure
• How to demonstrate the power of humor
• Dealing with judgment & criticism
• Responding to requests for help
• Enforcing a no-assholes rule
• "Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of”
• “School is bullshit”
• Question defaults & screw around
• MUCH more!

Books Mentioned:

• Friendly Ambitious Nerd; by Visakan Veerasamy
• Introspect; by Visakan Veerasamy
• The Science of Storytelling; by Will Storr
• The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It; by Will Storr
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces; by Joseph Campbell
• Shantaram; by Gregory David Roberts
• The Art of War; by Sun Tzu
• The Tao Te Ching; by Laozi
• The Lord of the Rings; by J. R. R. Tolkien