Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1233 Scott Adams： The News is Boring so I Will Take You to a Higher Level of Awareness Instead

00:00:00.000 Yes, I am an organizational mess this morning. I overslept. I wanted to do a little experiment

00:00:12.660 this morning to see what normal people are like. I regard many of you to be normal people,

00:00:19.560 and so I said to myself, what would it be like to be like you? And what I mean by normal people

00:00:26.220 is people who have sleep, for example. People who go to sleep and sleep a good eight hours. And I

00:00:34.760 thought to myself, I'm going to give that a try, because I'm good for four hours, and I just hate

00:00:41.760 sleeping. So I thought, I'll sleep a regular amount of sleep because it's a holiday, and what the heck.

00:00:48.640 I feel terrible. I don't know how you people sleep so much. I feel like I literally have a hangover

00:00:55.580 from sleeping something closer to maybe six or seven hours. And your clock is five minutes fast.

00:01:07.720 Well, for those of you just joining, I didn't actually intend to be live already. I'm so hung

00:01:15.040 over from too much sleep. I don't drink alcohol, but I'm hung over from too much sleep, and I just

00:01:21.480 hit the wrong button. So that's enough of the explaining. If you would like to enjoy today to

00:01:26.500 the maximum amount, and some people are going to be really mad if they miss the simultaneous sip.

00:01:32.400 You realize that people will be mad if I do this right now, don't you? Okay. I'm really going to

00:01:38.220 have to wait till seven, because if all the people who always wait, or 10 a.m. Eastern, if all the people

00:01:44.240 who wait, miss the simultaneous sip, they're going to be pissed. I have unfortunately trained thousands

00:01:53.580 of people around the world that their day will start correctly if they do this little ceremony.

00:02:00.760 So I'm going to have to wait, if you don't mind. But before then, I will take some questions,

00:02:08.060 if you have any. Has anybody had any Christmas experience that sounded even a little bit like

00:02:16.660 Christmas? Am I the only one who felt that we didn't really have Christmas this year?

00:02:24.240 Right? It didn't feel like Christmas at all. We did decorations. I saw presents. I saw Santa

00:02:32.700 clauses. But not once did it feel like Christmas. Can anybody explain that? Is it because our routine

00:02:42.240 was just different enough? You know, we didn't do enough going to stores. We did it all online. There

00:02:47.900 wasn't enough family traveling. Is that all it was? Because didn't it feel like it was a lot more than

00:02:54.140 that? It felt like there was something happened that just took Christmas away. I know I'm not.

00:03:02.360 I know I'm not the only person who felt it. So I've been kind of in this weird daze for the

00:03:10.540 whole week. I don't know what day of the week it is. And it's definitely not Christmas. But it is

00:03:17.300 Christmas. But it isn't. So yeah, let's talk about Kamala Harris and Kwanzaa. So for those of you just

00:03:28.080 joining, I'm waiting, I'm waiting until the appointed moment for the simultaneous sip. So

00:03:32.640 Kamala Harris, and I guess it was her husband, was doing a little video in which they were talking

00:03:38.920 about their, she was talking about her love for her childhood tradition of Kwanzaa. Now, I have no idea

00:03:46.440 what Kamala Harris's actual childhood looked like, right? So I don't have any idea whether this is real

00:03:54.400 news or fake news. But it's funny news, if you call it news. And the funny news is that apparently

00:04:02.060 her background is both black from Jamaica and Indian from India, right? So she has the dual background.

00:04:11.960 But I saw a picture of her family during her youth, and they were full on Indian culture.

00:04:19.240 So she was basically raised in the Indian culture. But she's claiming now that Kwanzaa was her big

00:04:27.760 love, one of her big loves of her childhood. And I'm thinking to myself, maybe, you know, maybe,

00:04:35.360 I'm not saying that she didn't also, you know, have a love for Kwanzaa. But it was pretty funny to see

00:04:43.400 her and her family all dressed in their Indian traditional garb. And then next to the story

00:04:49.880 about her love of celebrating Kwanzaa. And I think most people said to themselves, maybe,

00:04:57.340 maybe, I mean, you could have two completely different cultures and respect them equally,

00:05:05.780 I guess. But have you ever seen it? Have you ever seen anybody who just picked two completely

00:05:12.900 distinct cultures and just said, we'll do them both? Probably, actually, probably, there's there

00:05:18.380 probably lots of examples of Jewish Americans who do, you know, all the Jewish stuff, and then they do 0.79

00:05:24.440 all the Santa Claus stuff for the tradition part. So probably that does happen. So I'm not going to say

00:05:30.000 that she doesn't do it. But I thought it was a funny story, because it makes her look like a hypocrite. 1.00

00:05:34.980 What time is it? It's time. It's time for the simultaneous sip. That's right. And if you came

00:05:41.200 in early, you got a little extra. But those of you joining on time, well, you're going to get the

00:05:46.860 real deal now. And all you need to enjoy it to its maximum extent, there's a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:05:53.320 a tank or a chalice or a steiner, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your

00:05:58.260 favorite liquid I like, coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the holiday gift

00:06:06.580 of the world. It's called the simultaneous... I don't even know what it's called. I overslept.

00:06:12.580 It's called the simultaneous sip. It happens now. Go.

00:06:19.300 Oh, wow. That was good.

00:06:23.740 So I've decided the news is just all so ugly and stupid. It's barely worth talking about.

00:06:31.940 So apparently, Congress did something incompetent. That's it. Congress did something incompetent to

00:06:41.020 screw the people for no good purpose other than politics, I guess. Do you know what the news will

00:06:48.820 be tomorrow? So that was today's news. Let me tell... I'm just going to use my psychic powers and predict.

00:06:54.860 Tomorrow, Congress will do something that screws the public, but is good for them, they think,

00:07:01.580 politically. And then wait, watch this. That's just tomorrow. I can do this further. I'm going to go

00:07:08.260 all the way to next week, folks. Watch this. It's next week, psychic powers. Congress is incompetent. 0.92

00:07:14.860 They're doing things that screw the people for political purposes. Now wait, wait, wait. One year.

00:07:20.840 One year. One year. We're going to go deep. One year for now. All my psychic powers. Got it. Locked in.

00:07:30.080 Congress is incompetent and doing something stupid to screw the American people for political purposes.

00:07:37.140 Now I'm going to go out on a limb, and I'm going to put a lot of my personal reputation on those

00:07:44.060 predictions. You just watch. You think I'm going to be wrong, but you're going to be surprised. I'll bet

00:07:50.160 I'm dead on that. Yes, I'd like to do some more predictions from the future, if I may.

00:07:57.660 This will be my most difficult one. Concentrate. Concentrate.

00:08:03.820 In the future, the Pope will denounce violence and say we should be better to the who? Is it the rich?

00:08:16.840 No, no, it's coming in clearly. The Pope says we should be better to the disadvantaged and the poor.

00:08:25.220 Pretty good, huh? Well, you don't know if that will actually come true. But by the end of the year,

00:08:31.480 you're going to say to yourself, I think he nailed it again. Look at that. He got the Pope's prediction

00:08:38.340 dead on. He nailed the Congress. Oh, yeah. He got that one right. How about this one?

00:08:47.560 Take a deep breath. Psychic powers online. Joe Biden will continue to make verbal gaffes

00:08:58.560 that make you wonder if his brain is still all connected to its own parts. We don't know. But I

00:09:08.880 feel good about that. I feel good about that prediction. All right. Let me take you down a

00:09:14.520 little road here that I think you're going to enjoy. Because the news is boring, and so let's

00:09:21.800 ignore all of it, because nothing's happening there. Here's a little framework for you that I put

00:09:28.580 together this morning. This is how I kind of see the world. And let's see where you are on this. I

00:09:34.700 call this the levels of awareness, where at the lowest level, let's say you're a little kid,

00:09:39.300 and you're four years old, and adults tell you something is true. And if an adult tells you

00:09:46.800 something's true, when you're four years old, you say, well, it's probably true. They haven't lied to

00:09:52.060 me yet. But then you learn about that whole Santa Claus thing. I hope there are no kids. Are there any

00:09:57.920 kids watching? Put the earmuffs on the kids. If the kids are watching, kids, earmuffs.

00:10:05.180 When you learn that Santa Claus isn't real, then you go to the next level, where you learn, well,

00:10:17.600 maybe sometimes adults can say things that aren't true. That's your next level of awareness.

00:10:25.120 The one after that is that, oh, crap, they don't do it once in a while. They do it a lot.

00:10:31.800 Adults don't just lie sometimes. They lie a lot. In fact, the only thing that will predict whether

00:10:40.720 an adult will tell the truth or a lie is whether they can get away with it. Yeah, that's the only

00:10:48.540 thing that predicts. If they can get away with it, it's probably going to happen. So once you reach

00:10:56.000 this level of awareness, you're in full cynicism. All right? Cynicism, and it's kind of a depressive

00:11:04.840 place to live. And I know that place because I lived there for a long time.

00:11:11.240 Eventually, I, of course, became cocky as I gained more knowledge about the world and got

00:11:17.920 older. I was probably a teenager by this point, where I realized that, hey, I could be right.

00:11:26.000 And other people that I trusted, even experts, could be wrong. And it's like a big awareness

00:11:34.380 change. You say, wait a minute. Even though I'm, let's just pick an age and say, even though I'm 17,

00:11:41.940 or maybe you're 25, or whatever you are, even though I'm young, I'm pretty sure I can detect

00:11:49.300 that I'm right on this particular question. I'm not right every time. But there are these occasions

00:11:56.400 when I'm right, and even the experts are wrong. When I say you're wrong, I don't mean just you

00:12:01.760 personally. But you, backed by your experts, could all be wrong on really big stuff. I'll give you some

00:12:10.160 examples. And then I would argue that most people are here if you're watching this, if you're watching

00:12:15.640 this live stream, you're probably at least up to here, because I know you're not here, or here or

00:12:21.260 here. But you're at least up to here. And I would say that where I want to get you is here, to the

00:12:28.320 point where you realize the full subjectivity of reality. Oh, yes, there is a real right and wrong

00:12:34.840 as some base level of reality. But it's not really available to us. You can't know if you're

00:12:43.680 right. Sometimes you can know you're wrong, but you can't know you're right. Now, let me give you

00:12:50.960 some examples in which I have experienced this full flow, if you will. And by the way, this one,

00:12:58.460 the one where no one is right, would be compatible with, it's not the only thing it's compatible with,

00:13:05.120 but it's compatible with simulation theory. The idea that we're a big simulation, and that there's

00:13:10.820 some subjectivity to our reality, and that there might be a base reality, an objective reality, but

00:13:20.060 we don't have access to it. Our brains are not designed to even see it or understand it.

00:13:25.120 Now, oh, this is a good comment. I'm seeing the comments. I'm saying that a whiteboard and glasses

00:13:33.920 make one an expert. Well, that's not far away. I got the glasses. I got the whiteboard. I got a

00:13:41.140 live stream. If that doesn't make me an expert, I don't know what does. So let me give you some

00:13:47.400 examples of subjective reality that informed my path here. One of them was when I joined corporate

00:13:57.160 America. Some of you know this story. And as a corporate employee, I would experience many absurdities

00:14:05.140 in my daily life. And unlike the rest of you, I decided to take those absurdities and frustrations of

00:14:12.840 off his life and turn them into a world-famous comic strip called Dilbert. Now, here's a part

00:14:20.180 that probably a lot of you don't know, and most of you are not going to believe.

00:14:26.460 And so I'm not even sure if I believe it, but I know there's a strong correlation. So if you're

00:14:33.260 too young to remember this, Dilbert's now over 30 years old. But in the early days of Dilbert in the

00:14:39.400 90s, there was a trend of just absurd management consultant trends, just crazy stuff, where there

00:14:48.220 would be some consultants who would come in, and they would train the staff in these weird practices

00:14:53.060 and beliefs. And it was just so obviously a bunch of BS. But nobody really was talking about how

00:15:02.360 management was largely astrology and guessing and a scam game. Because managers needed to do something

00:15:10.320 to make it look like they were managing. But the job of managing often doesn't have many moving parts.

00:15:16.840 If you're a really good manager, after you've hired and trained your staff, not a lot to do.

00:15:23.020 All right? If you've trained your people and you've hired them, and you're fully staffed,

00:15:28.180 there's not much to do. So if you're a manager, you have to make it look as though

00:15:34.100 you're putting in the work. So managers learned that since things were going to go well on their

00:15:39.940 own, you know, if they were in the right industry with the right kind of market, and they had good

00:15:44.140 people working for them and making stuff, they would become more profitable next year than this

00:15:49.760 year. But the trick was that the manager needed to look like it was the manager's work that made the

00:15:56.120 difference. It wasn't the workers, because the manager needs to get a raise and promoted and 0.66

00:16:00.400 everything, right? So they want to make it look like they did something that was connected to all

00:16:05.640 this good news that was going to happen on its own. And so they would create these programs of

00:16:10.820 leadership, this and this workshop, that. And they would say, yeah, because we did this workshop and

00:16:16.860 this leadership, that's what caused all these good profits. Now, do you remember what it was

00:16:24.620 that changed all that BS? Like, it was really bad in the 90s. Those of you of a certain age 1.00

00:16:31.440 backed me up on this. If you're 30, you missed this whole thing. So you have to take it from

00:16:37.840 anybody older who's watching this. There was this crazy, just ridiculous amount of management BS. And

00:16:44.800 there was one book after another, best-selling book about how to find your excellence and, you know,

00:16:50.900 how to do the right thing. So you're seeing all the yeses coming through in the comments.

00:16:55.320 Do you remember what stopped it? There was something, a counterforce. There was a big counterforce in

00:17:04.300 society that just took all of that gigantic industry BS leadership stuff and just stopped it.

00:17:13.480 What was it? It was Dilbert. Yeah, it was me. It was accidental. It was nothing I set out to do.

00:17:23.960 But because Dilbert was so, let me say this without acting like an egomaniac, because it's just part of

00:17:31.980 the story, right? So there's some things you just can't communicate without sounding like an egomaniac

00:17:37.980 jerk. So just deal with it, okay? Because Dilbert was, it's hard even to say, insightful. Can you say

00:17:48.720 that about yourself? It's necessary for the story, so just deal with it. I know it's obnoxious. But Dilbert was

00:17:56.740 sufficiently insightful that it just dismantled an entire industry. If you were to track, and I've

00:18:04.560 actually seen this graph, by the way, if you were to track the business book market, you would see

00:18:09.880 that in the early 90s, it was just like a rocket. It was like business books were like selling and

00:18:14.920 business books and leadership and how to manage and how to be a successful CEO. And then Dilbert hit.

00:18:22.340 Boom. Boom. Boom. Right to the floor. So the peak of Dilbert coincides exactly with the

00:18:31.280 peak of the business BS. And it just drove it to nothing. Because once it was clear that it could

00:18:39.100 be mocked, people were a lot more circumspect about doing crazy stuff. Because they realized they would

00:18:46.260 actually be mocked in public in a big way, because I, in fact, mocked all of those weird practices. And I

00:18:54.940 basically mocked them out of existence. Because a lot of that stuff just doesn't even exist anymore.

00:18:59.820 All right. Now, there is a, so I would say, it would be fair to say that the entire industry of this

00:19:09.340 management leadership stuff turned out to be a completely ridiculous BS. I kind of was a big

00:19:16.940 factor, and I feel like I can say that, a big factor in destroying that illusion. It was an illusion

00:19:24.600 illusion that I largely destroyed, almost single-handedly. And there are other illusions

00:19:33.340 similar to that. There's another one that I've worked on for a long time. I don't think I've quite

00:19:37.760 destroyed it. But the financial advice industry. I've tried for years to get people to understand that

00:19:46.820 none of that's real. The whole financial advice industry is just a fraudulent industry. But it's a

00:19:53.640 multi-trillion dollar industry. So if you don't actually dig into it a little bit, you don't really

00:19:59.500 believe it's all fake. You think, well, that's got to be real. I know so many people personally.

00:20:06.660 You might say to yourself, I know people are in that industry. They seem like nice people. It's my

00:20:10.780 neighbor. My neighbor does that. It's a fraudulent industry. The whole thing is. The whole advice

00:20:17.680 part of it is ridiculous. Do you know what the entire financial industry should be?

00:20:25.200 The whole industry. All of the advice part of it, where somebody is a professional

00:20:29.280 telling you what to do. The whole industry. Do you know what it should be? It could be an app.

00:20:34.500 Yeah. I tried to write a book on the financial industry years ago. I tell this story sometimes.

00:20:40.840 And the reason I didn't write the book on how to invest, and this is not a joke, because the whole

00:20:46.540 book would only be one page. If you actually did it right, and got rid of all the stuff that you don't

00:20:52.560 need to know, and it's BS, and it's only presented so somebody can figure a way to scam you out of money.

00:20:57.840 If you take away all the scams, the whole practice of finance is one page, and that's not an exaggeration.

00:21:06.720 It's not even a little bit of an exaggeration. One page, never two. You don't need a half a page more.

00:21:14.700 One page, everything you need to know. Now, that's why I didn't write a book, because you couldn't make

00:21:21.000 it a book if you did it honestly. And I didn't want to write another dishonest investment book,

00:21:26.260 because that's what all the rest are. So you can't actually publish the book. It's one page.

00:21:32.040 Now, am I being cocky and saying that I wrote a one-page investment book that was as good as a book?

00:21:42.360 Well, I can tell you that CBS Money reprinted it, and it became hugely popular. I can tell you it's

00:21:49.840 still on the internet. I think if you Google my name and something like 10 investment advices or

00:21:59.400 something, it still pops up. Burton Malkiel, who wrote one of the most famous investment books and

00:22:06.600 actually just broke the mold about... Yes, thank you. In the comments, somebody is telling me that

00:22:13.300 Burton Malkiel's book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which is one of the most famous investing

00:22:19.260 books in the world, which largely did what I'm trying to do, and did it first, of course.

00:22:25.340 He's really the most famous first economist, Princeton guy, who said, you know, all of this

00:22:31.880 investment advice isn't real. All you should do is just put it in a well-diversified fund and just let

00:22:38.880 it sit there, and you will beat the experts every time. And he demonstrated that that was true.

00:22:43.680 So he's considered one of the most important voices in all of economics, very famous economist.

00:22:52.180 He wanted to write the same thing that I wrote in my one page to update his famous book, A Random

00:22:58.280 Walk Down Wall Street. And he contacted me and said, I was going to write this, but you basically

00:23:03.520 captured it all on one page. Can I just put your one page in my book? And I said, sure. Now, I don't know

00:23:12.700 what made it into the book. I never followed up. But I say that only for those of you who are 0.55

00:23:18.340 watching this and saying, I'm not really buying that the cartoonist wrote some important economic

00:23:24.760 piece. If you don't know, I have a degree in economics. I have an MBA. So I have a little

00:23:29.560 background in that work. Now, I saw a comment I wanted to comment on, but I won't.

00:23:37.680 This is all by way of telling you that there are two fields that I have entered with no experience

00:23:46.160 and dismantled. I would say that I dismantled the management leadership BS industry with Dilbert.

00:23:55.540 Wasn't trying to. It just, that just worked out. I would say that I at least helped Burton Malkiel

00:24:03.060 dismantle the investment advice industry that is largely an illusion and a bunch of, it's just a

00:24:09.360 fraud, basically. Okay. So you've also read my book, Win Bigly. Many of you have. And you know

00:24:17.940 that I've successfully, if you like that book, you think it's successful, dismantled a lot of what we

00:24:24.880 understand about facts and the news and our whole understanding of reality. If you haven't read that

00:24:32.180 book, you don't know what I'm talking about. But the point I'm trying to make is that I have a track

00:24:37.020 record of coming into a field that I don't have any background of or don't have much and dismantling

00:24:46.360 it. You know, basically showing you that it was a fraud. I'm going to do that again. And I'm going

00:24:53.380 to tell you that everybody who criticizes me for that, because I'm going to do it for you in a moment

00:24:57.840 on the other side of the whiteboard. Everybody who criticizes me for it says the same thing.

00:25:04.480 They say, well, what kind of expert are you? Why should we listen to you, cartoon boy? And the point

00:25:10.640 is, I apparently have developed, accidentally, a weird expertise of debunking fields that I don't

00:25:17.980 know that well. It wasn't anything I set out to do. But if you look at the track record, it's starting

00:25:26.480 to look pretty clear that you can debunk fields that you have no experience in. Let me give you

00:25:33.740 an example of how you could do it. I'm going to give you an example of how you personally could

00:25:38.500 debunk a field that you don't know anything about. Bigfoot is real. Go. Right? You don't have to be

00:25:48.900 some kind of scientific expert, because you kind of know Bigfoot isn't real. Right? You don't have to

00:25:57.040 be an expert in the field to recognize BS. If somebody tells you that, if your neighbor tells

00:26:02.720 you that they invented a fusion reactor for unlimited clean energy in their garage, and they're not even a

00:26:09.820 scientist. It's just something they worked out. They just figured it out. And now it's clean,

00:26:15.080 unlimited energy, and they built it in their garage. Well, you're not a physicist. Could you debunk that?

00:26:23.000 Yeah. Yeah, you could debunk that. Here's how you would debunk it. No, you didn't. No, you did not

00:26:29.560 build a fusion reactor in your garage. And you're not even a scientist. You don't have to be an expert

00:26:38.880 in the field all the time. Sure, there are plenty of things that you really would need to be an expert

00:26:44.640 to debunk. So in, let's say, a scientific field, if there was a scientific claim that you couldn't

00:26:50.420 tell one way or the other just by observing it, yeah, you'd have to be an expert. You'd have to be

00:26:55.400 a really big expert to debunk that. But you don't need to be an expert to debunk things that are

00:27:01.580 clearly and plainly false. The financial industry is that. The management, leadership, you know,

00:27:09.460 training industry is largely that as well. Those are things where you didn't need any expertise.

00:27:14.380 None at all. You could just look at it and say, uh, I don't feel as if I'd even need to read a book

00:27:22.360 on this one. This one's sort of right out there. You know what I mean? All right, let me give you

00:27:27.960 another example. I've been pestering the psychology industry online. You know, I've been, if you've been

00:27:38.420 watching recently, you know, I've been challenging those who say that narcissism is real. And of

00:27:48.060 course, uh, we're hearing narcissism all over the place and there's this alleged, uh, epidemic of

00:27:53.500 narcissism. And people are thinking it's because, oh, it's because people take too many selfies and

00:27:58.740 social media is turning us into narcissists, et cetera. Um, I'm going to take a different approach on

00:28:05.200 that as I have been on Twitter, too much criticism, et cetera. Here's what I see with no expertise.

00:28:13.220 Are you ready? So how much expertise do I have in the field of psychiatry and psychology? Zero. I mean,

00:28:22.040 I've taken courses. I've, I've read about it all my life. I am a trained hypnotist, which is, you know,

00:28:27.800 maybe a little, little sliver of some of that field. But do I claim any expertise in the field

00:28:34.720 of psychology or psychiatry? No, none. But is that going to stop me from doing what I'm going to do

00:28:44.720 next? Nope. Because sometimes you don't need to be an expert to know that your neighbor who's an

00:28:53.680 idiot did not really make a fusion reactor in his garage. I don't need to have a PhD to do that.

00:29:02.200 Right? That's how obvious some stuff is. And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to break it down to

00:29:07.780 you. This, for some of you, this is going to break your brains. For the rest of you, some of you are

00:29:14.120 going to say, yeah, I knew that. But some of you, your brain is just going to get broken right now.

00:29:19.040 And I apologize in advance for what I'm about to do to you. So I've been, I've been reading up on

00:29:25.920 just the last few days on various symptoms and mental health conditions. Now, as you know,

00:29:32.900 there are lots of mental health conditions that have names. You can say, well, you got this OCD or

00:29:38.420 OCPD. You've got your, you've got your depressions and your bipolars. You got your schizophrenics and

00:29:45.440 your, um, you got your, you're on, you might be on the spectrum, uh, your anxieties, your, you name

00:29:52.760 it. Right? So you've got all these things that have names on them, ADHD, whatever. I'm not sure which

00:29:58.520 we, which of these are actually mental illness versus just a mental situation. Right now, each of these

00:30:05.920 have a whole bunch of, uh, symptoms and they have constellations of symptoms. So most of these things

00:30:15.360 that have a name have, uh, a number of different symptoms. So I wrote on the board some example

00:30:22.300 symptoms. This is by no means complete. This is just, just a little sample and there's nothing special

00:30:28.640 about the symptoms I chose. These are just example symptoms and have lots of symptoms. And here's what

00:30:35.480 I observe with no understanding of psychology or psychiatry, no background whatsoever. I'm just

00:30:42.900 looking at it. Here's what I see. I see the psychologists say, all right, all right, all these

00:30:50.440 different, uh, different, uh, things have a variety of different symptoms, but the ones we see a lot,

00:30:57.260 let's say we're going to pick out these guys, this group here, just these symptoms and maybe some

00:31:05.280 others, right. But I'm going to label this and I'm going to give this little group a name and I'll

00:31:11.940 use just a fake name. I have to get this closer. So I don't rip my microphone out. We'll call this

00:31:17.420 the flurbs.

00:31:23.140 Flurbs, just something I made up. All right. So if you come into my office and you say, I've,

00:31:28.680 I've got some anxiety and depression and fear of fear of losing things, I'm going to say to you,

00:31:34.180 Hmm, looks like you got a bad case of flurb. But then you say to me, but I also have excessive,

00:31:41.480 obsessive thoughts, which wasn't really in my definition. And I say, yeah, you know, comorbidities

00:31:47.500 are very common. It's very common. So we see this a lot. People will have mostly a bad case of flurb,

00:31:54.440 but it's very common that they'll also have a little bit from some of these other places.

00:32:01.060 And then somebody else will come and write a, write a PhD thesis. And they'll say, you know,

00:32:06.540 if you have this group and I'll borrow this one out of the flurb category.

00:32:11.800 And we'll just say that this group is a bad case of, let's say, ploop. You've got a bad case of 1.00

00:32:24.800 ploop, which is just something I made up. And now you come into me in my office and you say,

00:32:31.180 I got my obsessive thoughts. I can't handle some criticism. I feel really depressed about it. And I

00:32:35.860 go, hmm, sounds to me like you've got a bad case of ploop. And then the guy says, ah, but are you

00:32:45.860 sure it's ploop? Because the last guy said, I got a bad case of flurb. Do I have flurb or do I have

00:32:51.080 ploop? Doctor says, ah, I've been at this a long time, Sonny. I'm the expert. And it looks like you

00:32:58.540 got a bad case of ploop. And then I come back and say, you know, I left down a few symptoms. I've also got

00:33:04.840 some anxiety and fear of loss. So now do I have ploop with a few comorbidities or do I have

00:33:13.040 ploop plus flurb? Because I have all of these. Oh, it's worse than that. According to other people,

00:33:22.060 I don't have empathy. Now, if you've watched the news this week, literally this week,

00:33:30.960 the scientific community has said, oops, it turns out this thing where we said that sociopaths

00:33:39.160 don't have empathy. We were wrong. Even sociopaths have empathy. We were just wrong. They choose

00:33:49.540 things that are bad for people anyway, but they have complete empathy. I don't know if it's as

00:33:55.060 complete, but they have empathy. So it turns out that everything we knew about one of the main

00:34:00.380 symptoms of a whole constellation of different mental illnesses probably wasn't ever true.

00:34:08.100 Probably everybody had empathy. I don't know if it was psychopaths, but sociopaths have empathy.

00:34:15.480 So now you throw this one on there. Now I say to my psychologist, do I have ploop or flurb?

00:34:21.180 Because I've got all the symptoms of ploop and flurb, but I've also got this no empathy thing,

00:34:26.300 and that's hanging out there. And my psychologist says, don't worry about it. I know it doesn't seem

00:34:31.120 to fit the exact definitions, but you definitely have ploop. You definitely got a bad case of flurb.

00:34:36.940 And it's not unusual to have some comorbidities that would include maybe one or two other symptoms

00:34:43.380 from some other thing. Very common. Do you see where I'm going with this?

00:34:48.660 The entire field is just complete categorization BS. Now ask yourself, why is it that anybody would

00:35:02.700 need to put a name on any collection of symptoms when that collection is never stable? It's never

00:35:09.440 really only these things. In fact, it's rarely just those things. Most commonly, it's a grab bag of

00:35:18.460 symptoms, and nobody has any idea what to do about it. So the reason that these get names is because

00:35:25.440 people in the business want to collect up something and write a paper on it, and then maybe have a

00:35:33.680 major or a class about it. The categorizations have everything to do with commerce. It has nothing

00:35:40.500 to do with people. You don't have something called ploop or flurb. You don't have a disease because

00:35:49.040 somebody wrote a paper and said, I think if I throw these three in here, I can show some data that says

00:35:55.400 that they often travel together. Yeah, they often travel with other stuff too, but I can make a paper on

00:36:02.320 that. I can publish it. I'll be famous as the one who developed the theory of ploop. I'll be the ploop

00:36:09.720 guy. That's my PhD right there. And I can sell this. And by the way, it gets better. Would you take a pill

00:36:18.360 for a collection of random symptoms? Hey, I made a pill. And it's what's it to treat? Well, we don't have a

00:36:28.680 name for it. But if you take this pill, we think it might handle some of these things. How good is

00:36:36.400 the marketing? Is that a good marketing approach? I've got a pill. It might do something for some of

00:36:43.440 these things. Compare that to this. I've got a pill. It'll take care of your bipolar problem.

00:36:50.380 It's marketing. Half of this, it feels like, is just somebody who wanted to make a name for

00:37:01.120 themselves and have a study. Somebody wanted to make a pill that could treat a specific thing,

00:37:06.800 not some general bunch of symptoms. There's an industry that needed to refer to it. There are

00:37:12.960 scientists who need to be able to describe things. I'm starting to believe that the entire

00:37:19.460 categorization of what names we put on stuff has nothing to do with the patient. It seems to have

00:37:28.620 to do a lot with commerce and how we like to think of things, how we like to package them.

00:37:36.040 And now, if this were useful, then I would have a different opinion. In other words, if you went to

00:37:42.220 the doctors and said, I've got ploop and only ploop, and they gave you the ploop pill, and they wanted to

00:37:49.040 make sure they didn't accidentally give you the one for flurb, well, that would be pretty handy,

00:37:53.460 right? You'd say, I don't want to get the flurb pill when I've got a bad case of ploop. 0.99

00:38:00.400 But what happens in practice? Is there a pill that only handles ploop? Nope. There's a pill that

00:38:08.860 they say, you know, this pill is pretty good for ploop, and we found we have good effects when we've

00:38:14.880 got flurbs, and even when we don't have a name for it, and you've got some three of these, same pill.

00:38:21.800 Same pill. How many of you are having your heads exploding right now?

00:38:30.660 Now, I'm not going to say that the medications don't work. I'm not going to say that psychiatry

00:38:37.160 doesn't work or that psychology doesn't work. I would say there's evidence that at least some part

00:38:43.760 of it works. I don't know what is real and what is not, but I'm not disparaging the entire field of

00:38:51.420 psychology or the entire field of anything. I'm just saying that I don't think you have to be

00:38:58.240 an expert to look at this and say, this doesn't look exactly the way it's being presented to us.

00:39:07.300 All right? So, somebody says, same pill, different dosage. Yeah. How many of you are seeing this and

00:39:16.780 saying to yourself, holy cow, I think he's onto something? And how many of you are saying,

00:39:23.260 I don't think you're onto something? You don't have any experience in this field, and why would

00:39:29.800 you be making fun of it? So, I'll tell you the comments. Some people are saying they're laughing

00:39:35.440 because it's true. Somebody says the side effect from taking the pill for flurb is that you get a

00:39:41.860 bad case of ploop. True. True. I'm not seeing anybody disagree with me. Some of you are actually saying

00:39:49.640 it's old news and saying that it's obvious and it's old news. I don't know how obvious it is. All

00:39:55.640 right. So, look at the comments from the other people, if you were a little bit doubtful. There

00:40:01.040 seems to be a universal agreement that I have described something quite accurate here. Okay?

00:40:13.580 Well, actually, I'm actually kind of blown away about how many people are agreeing with me.

00:40:17.500 So, I didn't think this would go over as well as it did. I'm kind of surprised about that, honestly.

00:40:25.900 So, here's what I would suggest. I feel as though maybe there's a theory of our brains that is

00:40:35.760 missing. And I've had this conversation recently, and I want to see what you think about it.

00:40:41.560 I've heard it said that if you have some of these conditions, whatever name you want to put on it,

00:40:48.760 your brain, you have a certain brain with a certain structure, and therefore the only thing that's going

00:40:54.340 to help is probably a drug, because you've got a physical problem. You don't have a, when you say it's a

00:41:03.120 mental problem, it's easy to imagine it's something about this amorphous, non-physical thing called your

00:41:09.340 mind. But most people who have a little bit of understanding of the world understand that there's

00:41:17.020 a physical problem with the brain, because the physicality of the brain is what causes your

00:41:22.960 thoughts, right? It has to have a certain structure and chemistry to produce a certain set of thoughts.

00:41:28.580 So, if you're thinking to yourself, well, there's nothing I can do behaviorally, there's nothing I can do

00:41:34.520 with my environment or my lifestyle that's going to change it, because how do you change something

00:41:41.440 that's in your brain? And here's the most important thing that I think humanity needs to understand.

00:41:49.740 Your brain is programmable. You can physically change the structure of your brain by the things

00:41:59.520 that you do. Now, you have to know how to program. If you just randomly go through your life, you will

00:42:04.680 randomly program your brain. That's not, maybe that doesn't help you too much. But you can rigorously

00:42:10.500 decide how to program your brain, and when you do, it physically changes. Physically. Everything that you

00:42:18.580 learn becomes a physical change. If you have a trauma, that's a physical change. That's why it's so hard

00:42:25.060 to get rid of PTSD, because it's physically in there. It's not a memory, per se, like a concept.

00:42:31.840 It's a physical change. That's why it's persistent. So, what could you do to physically reprogram your

00:42:39.980 brain? Could you physically retrain your brain to help with some of this mental illness stuff?

00:42:47.760 Certainly not all of it. I mean, there's got to be things that are just beyond our ability to,

00:42:53.180 you know, handle with any specific tool. Maybe you need lots of tools. But let me give you a

00:42:58.720 model here of how to approach this. I wasn't planning on doing this today, but I'm going to

00:43:04.100 change some of your lives just for fun, because the news is boring. So, since the news is boring,

00:43:11.860 I'm going to change some of your lives. This will work, I would guess, something like 10 to 20 percent

00:43:17.300 of you will never be the same after this. That's true. Most of you will just say, oh, this was

00:43:22.440 entertaining or it wasn't. But about 10 to 20 percent of you will never be the same after the

00:43:27.480 next five minutes. Because I've seen this happen, so I'm not really guessing. I know this will be the

00:43:34.560 case. And all I'm going to do is reframe something. I'm going to tell you things you already know are

00:43:40.060 true. I'm just going to organize it differently so that you can see them differently, even though you

00:43:44.880 know all the parts. Okay? That's called reframing. Very powerful if you do it right. It goes like

00:43:51.160 this. This is you. And even though I'm a world-famous cartoonist, sometimes stick figures are the way to

00:44:01.220 go. So that's you. And you want to reprogram this thing into your brain. It's in your head. It's your

00:44:08.180 brain. So there's your brain. And you want to reprogram it because it's not making you happy. It's

00:44:14.900 giving you some problems. How do you do it? Here's how most people do it. I'll try to arrange my

00:44:22.900 thoughts. Not so easy, is it? You can't really just think your way to a different brain. If you

00:44:31.640 could, we'd all be doing it. Now, there are some ways you can actually think your way to a different

00:44:36.760 brain. So in some ways you can. For example, if you forced yourself to focus on something positive or

00:44:44.100 to learn something, those things would be maybe mental processes. Not so much the learning, but the

00:44:50.880 focusing on something would be kind of a mental process. So in some small way, yes, you can reprogram

00:44:56.500 your brain just by thinking. But mostly, you have to do it this way. You've got to do something in

00:45:04.040 the outside world. This is a very bad picture of a globe of the world. Globe of the world. There's

00:45:13.980 South America there. A little bit of Europe. Let's give us a little Hawaii there. So if you want to do

00:45:20.860 something to reprogram your brain, here is the reframing that will change the lives of 10 to 20%

00:45:26.680 of you right now. You have to change something in the world to reprogram that little wet

00:45:34.520 thing inside your skull. That's how it's done. Did that seem like a big deal? For 80 to 90% of you,

00:45:43.400 you just said, 10 to 20% of you just said, what? What? It's the first time you're thinking of it this way.

00:45:54.540 Let me give you an example. You feel bad. Get out of the house, get in your car, go someplace that

00:46:01.320 changes your mood. That is a change in the world that happened outside of you. There was a car,

00:46:08.400 change of scenery, change how you feel. Let's say you go do a thing over and over again.

00:46:15.840 Going and doing a thing is a change in the world. You've got to change the world to change your brain.

00:46:21.580 So you think the way to think of your brain and reprogramming it is that there's an interface

00:46:29.460 for your brain, the actual mound of cells and chemistry in your skull. There is an external

00:46:38.020 interface like a chess board. And if you go to the external interface outside your head and move the

00:46:44.900 chess pieces just right, it reprograms your head permanently. So look for those ways that you can

00:46:53.500 reprogram your external life. For example, let's say you've got a fear of a thing, whatever it is,

00:47:02.580 speaking in public, you have a, you don't like to be touched. You don't like a certain kind of

00:47:10.060 stimulation. Now, in some cases you, you probably can't get past that, but here's what I would at

00:47:16.540 least try. Graduated exposure. Have you ever heard that? There are a number of cases where graduated

00:47:22.320 exposure works. And basically it is, if you've got, there's a thing you can't do, you, you kind of

00:47:28.140 creep up on it by doing it a little bit until you can get used to it. So let's say it's impossible

00:47:33.900 for you to be in a crowded place or let's say a place, a social place. You just don't want to be

00:47:42.640 in a cocktail party. The way to deal with that is to manipulate the external world. So you put yourself

00:47:50.760 in a situation where you can practice small and then pull back as soon as it's uncomfortable. So you do

00:47:57.920 two minutes of talking to three people and then you pull back. And the next time you do five minutes

00:48:04.500 of talking to three people and then you pull back until talking to those three people for five minutes

00:48:10.380 is easy. And then you do it for 10 minutes. So that's graduated exposure. Now, I'm not saying that

00:48:15.900 that works for any one of the symptoms. I'm saying that if it does make sense for you,

00:48:21.460 that's something you can manipulate in the external world. So the big aha for those of you who have any

00:48:29.420 kind of mental problem you're working for is that almost certainly there's a way to at least make it

00:48:35.440 better. I'm not going to say any of this will cure any particular mental problems. That would be way

00:48:39.840 too big a claim. I'm saying that you could probably chip away at a lot of this stuff by manipulating the

00:48:45.520 outside world. Here's the way to think of this. Have you ever had a bad mental problem at the same

00:48:54.160 time you've had good sex? Chances are not so much, right? If you're lucky enough that you've had good

00:49:02.020 sex in your life, you know the experience of feeling great and having no mental problems at that moment,

00:49:09.580 but just at that moment. And so if it's true that what you're doing, having your great sex, changes your

00:49:18.220 chemistry at least temporarily, you already know the experience of using the external world, in this case

00:49:25.100 another human being, to change your mind. So the moment you realize that changing how you feel is always a

00:49:36.180 function of changing something external, you have a way to fix almost everything. Now if you have

00:49:43.540 serious mental problems, you know, they're going to be beyond any kind of lifestyle change. So I don't

00:49:49.020 want to oversell it. I'm just saying that there's a whole constellation of, let's say things that act

00:49:55.280 like they're new problems in 2020. Doesn't seem like everybody's depressed in 2020, right? Have you noticed

00:50:03.780 that basically everybody has anxiety in 2020? Everybody's got a self-esteem problem? You know,

00:50:10.900 the whole list of mental problems, even people who would have called themselves not mentally ill

00:50:17.160 10 years ago are kind of looking at themselves now and saying, I might be a little mentally ill.

00:50:24.140 I got some problems. Every single time, the solution is the same. Never, never will the solution be in your

00:50:33.140 head. The solution is somewhere out there. Gratitude is one of the ways to reprogram your

00:50:40.260 brain. If you're in a negative space, try gratitude. Simply finding a person in the real world, give them

00:50:48.180 a call, send them a text, and say how much you appreciate them. All right, I do this around Christmas

00:50:54.440 pretty much reflexively now, because I like it. I'll just pick somebody at random, not random,

00:51:01.380 somebody I've actually thought a good thought about. Contact them out of the blue and say, you

00:51:06.860 know, all this time I've been very grateful about something you taught me or grateful about the time

00:51:13.640 we spent or something you did for me, just out of the blue. Do you think that that doesn't reprogram

00:51:19.240 your brain? It does. It does it pretty quickly. Gratitude is one of those things that's built into us

00:51:25.580 as some kind of a, I don't know, it's part of our software, I guess. And if you activate it, it has a

00:51:32.480 predictable effect on the nature of your brain. So let it fly. Just let it fly. I saw a tweet by

00:51:42.060 Roly Poly, Twitter user Roly Poly. And I think his exact tweet was that compliments are a way of

00:51:51.560 distributing happiness. I think I got it close, trying to quote it exactly. Compliments are a

00:51:57.720 way of distributing happiness. And that's exactly the way I think of them. But it's two-way. It's a

00:52:04.760 two-way happiness. When you give somebody a compliment they weren't expecting, I'm not talking

00:52:09.500 about, you know, the ones that are sort of expected, you know, your spouse comes out dressed

00:52:16.580 for the evening and, you know, sort of a compliment situation. Oh, you look great. I'm not talking

00:52:21.580 about those. Those are good. You should do those. But I'm talking about the one that just comes out

00:52:25.880 of nowhere. You were not expecting a compliment today and you just got one. Have you ever had

00:52:30.980 that experience? You just, you open your email and there's nothing but a compliment. Somebody actually

00:52:36.060 sent you an email and wasn't asking for anything. It was just a compliment. Has that ever happened

00:52:42.460 to you? If it has, you'll remember it, right? It would feel like it's a small thing, but it almost

00:52:48.740 doesn't matter who sent it or even what they said. If somebody sends you an unsolicited compliment,

00:52:53.980 it'll go through you like lightning as an adult. As a kid, maybe less so because you get compliments

00:53:00.220 as kids. As adults, you can get, it's rare to get a compliment. You know, I get them because I'm in

00:53:06.520 the public, but for most of you, you can go weeks without a freaking compliment. And it's like life,

00:53:12.840 life blood. So my point is, if you want to feel happy for yourself, give somebody else a compliment.

00:53:19.960 If you don't think that works, you'll be surprised. Just keep in mind that whenever you're in that,

00:53:28.020 those few situations that you know you can be happy, you just had great sex, you won the lottery,

00:53:33.900 you're out in nature, you took a great trip. If you could be happy in those situations, it means

00:53:39.500 that the outside world is available to you as an interface to program your brain. That is all I

00:53:48.200 want to tell you. Now, some of you, I've, I do listen to all of your criticisms of my live stream,

00:53:55.120 by the way, and I find them helpful. Here's another, here's another reframing for you. How do you like

00:54:03.060 being criticized? You hate it, don't you? Don't you hate getting criticized? Everybody hates it.

00:54:12.100 It's not something you can enjoy. Here's a reframe for you. Every criticism you receive,

00:54:20.060 just play this, play this sound effect when you get it. You ready? Cha-ching.

00:54:25.200 Yeah. Every time somebody criticizes you, you just made money. Do you know why I say that?

00:54:33.980 Because you just made money. It's true. If somebody criticizes my live stream, and I'll tell you the

00:54:41.980 biggest criticism I'm hearing, it's not the biggest one, but it's the one I hear the most, is that my

00:54:46.360 shelves are boring. Right? How many of you have told me, since I did this, that my shelves are boring?

00:54:54.440 A lot of you. Right? Now, do I feel good that you're telling me that there's something about my

00:55:01.100 thing that I do every day isn't good? No. Nobody likes to be criticized. It's not like you can enjoy it.

00:55:10.320 But how do I receive it? Do I receive it as, oh, I guess I suck? I could. Right? How easily could I

00:55:20.540 receive a criticism like that as, God, I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. Why didn't I see it? Obviously,

00:55:27.480 those shelves need something on them. I'm an idiot. That'd be really easy, wouldn't it? I don't.

00:55:34.560 Here's how I hear it. Cha-ching. That's the sound of a cash register, me making money.

00:55:39.720 Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Because when you criticize me for my background, I know exactly what to change

00:55:46.900 to do a better job. Because you told me. That's like money. If somebody hands you a thing that will

00:55:57.040 definitely make you money, what is your feeling about it? Do you feel, oh, I hate it when people give

00:56:05.680 me a thing that makes me make money? I'll bet most of you think exactly that. You think, I hate

00:56:13.000 a criticism. Not me. Years ago, and this happened about the time I was doing the Dilbert comic, when

00:56:19.880 people would criticize my comic, I would hate it, of course. But then I would say, oh, a lot of people

00:56:26.480 are saying the same thing. So I'll change it. And then I would make that change. And that made me

00:56:32.240 rich. I literally got rich by being criticized and understanding the criticism as cha-ching, 0.79

00:56:43.020 cha-ching. Every time I hear one, I say, wait a minute, you just told me how to get richer. 0.99

00:56:49.160 And the same applies if you're not trying to get rich. I know you're not all ambitious in the same

00:56:55.820 precise way. But suppose you just wanted a better social life. I'll tell you the best advice somebody

00:57:03.420 gave me was the cruelest thing anybody ever said to me. Years ago, I had a female friend many years ago,

00:57:12.300 and we would chat often. And one day, my female friend told me how negative I was.

00:57:19.160 And what a bummer it was to sort of listen to me, because I was sort of complaining about stuff

00:57:25.480 all the time. Now, I was not aware that I was a big complainer. So this is maybe 25 years ago or

00:57:34.240 something. I thought I was not a big complainer. I had no idea. I thought I was a person who talked

00:57:39.900 about my day, and talked about the funny parts of it, and anything that caught my interest became,

00:57:46.080 you know, a story. So in my mind, I had no idea, no idea that I was having an effect on other people

00:57:53.080 with my negativity, because I thought I was just telling about my day. Once I learned that,

00:57:59.580 do you know how powerful that was? I was able, because it was something I could change, I would

00:58:05.260 just become aware of the ratio of negative things I said to positive. And then I borrowed a technique

00:58:12.460 from my tennis player friend, John. John was one of the most, probably had one of the most successful

00:58:19.940 social personalities I've ever seen in my life. And you see people like that, and you say to yourself,

00:58:26.080 why is that person so well liked by basically everybody? And why am I not? And I thought,

00:58:33.180 maybe it's technique. Maybe it's not just that he has, you know, a natural personality that people

00:58:39.320 like, which he did. But he also had technique. And he actually taught me his technique. One day when

00:58:45.780 we were just talking after tennis. And the technique was this, that if he has anything negative that he

00:58:51.460 wants to express, he either changes it into the most positive way he can say it, or he pairs it with

00:58:59.380 a positive thought. So that he never goes out of balance with more negative than positive. No negative

00:59:06.300 thought comes out without being paired. And I thought, well, that's like an easy formula.

00:59:12.040 I can do that. And again, this is a change in the outside world. Because things you say

00:59:17.240 are the outside world, right? It's no longer just in your head, you're affecting other people.

00:59:22.720 And then those other people are affecting you. How do you think John's life was when the way he

00:59:29.080 affected other people is making them feel positive? Right? Don't you think that made his mental health

00:59:35.760 a lot better? Because everywhere he went, he would be influencing people to become positive just by

00:59:42.420 his own positivity. That positivity would come back to him. And he'd think, I love spending time with

00:59:48.200 those people. They were so positive. But they weren't. They were only positive because John made them

00:59:55.260 positive. He paced them. In other words, he paced the wrong word. He basically, his energy led their

01:00:03.820 energy. And they matched his positivity. I watched it happen a million times. Wherever he was, he would

01:00:10.200 turn people into more positive people just by his example. So since it was so easy to copy, literally

01:00:16.680 you just say, oh, I'm saying something negative. So I'll just add a balancer. It's easy to do. And so I

01:00:23.080 started doing that. So the point is, the most brutal criticism I've ever had, like something that

01:00:31.140 really stuck in my head, really stuck in my head, really hurt. I mean, it stung. Cha-ching. It was 0.95

01:00:38.920 probably the most important change I've ever made to my social, let's say social toolbox. I would say

01:00:47.040 that that one change really, really changed my life in terms of whether people want to spend a minute

01:00:55.380 with me in person. And that's the reframe. So the next time you get criticized, whether

01:01:04.040 personally or whether professionally, say to yourself, cha-ching. Just try it. Like actually 1.00

01:01:13.760 say that little sound, cha-ching. Not figuratively. I'm not talking figuratively. I mean actually saying

01:01:23.020 that cha-ching when you hear it. And you'll be amazed. That will just be like a trigger. In 0.97

01:01:29.040 hypnosis, there's a technique called a trigger or a key. You just pair a thought with some kind of

01:01:36.220 stimulus or other word or whatever. You just pair something together and then they become forever

01:01:41.300 paired in your memory. So there you go. I wasn't planning on doing this, but for 10 to 20% of you,

01:01:49.840 you just had it paid forward. So I would say that what my friend John did for me, without even trying,

01:01:59.500 I mean he wasn't trying to fix me. He was just being himself in a way that was actually very effective,

01:02:05.300 the way he was being himself. And I learned from that and I just paid it forward. So 10 to 20% of you,

01:02:12.960 your life's just substantially changed. It really did. Most of you, maybe you learned something and

01:02:20.380 that would be good too. And there might be some of you for whom you know somebody who needs this.

01:02:26.060 And so your benefit is that you fix a spouse by exposing them to it, etc. So you can actually fix

01:02:32.880 your own situation by fixing other people. I'll tell you, I was in a conversation just this week

01:02:39.340 with somebody who told me that someone in their social circle had mentioned their weight.

01:02:47.860 Imagine that. Imagine somebody in your social circle mentioning your weight. Ouch, right? It's pretty bad,

01:02:59.420 especially if you were already worried that you had a few extra pounds. So you already had some

01:03:03.960 self-esteem issues. And then somebody actually says it out loud. Ouch, right? What do you think

01:03:11.940 happened? The person in this story went out, completely changed her diet program, probably 0.74

01:03:20.920 changed her exercise and took it up a little bit. I'm not sure about that. Dropped a bunch of pounds

01:03:26.800 pounds and went from being a little less self-confidence because she frankly did have

01:03:33.740 more pounds than she wanted. I don't think I noticed, but in her own mind, she wasn't where 0.99

01:03:39.780 she wanted to be. I don't think you would have noticed necessarily, but we have higher standards

01:03:44.240 for ourselves. And took her game up a lot, a lot, and probably permanently. So this was somebody who

01:03:55.100 took this just horrible thing and turned it immediately into the most positive thing ever.

01:04:02.220 Because unfortunately, we are a world in which your looks and your health make a lot of difference.

01:04:08.340 You would love it if that were not the case, but it is the case.

01:04:10.920 In the real world, those things matter to how people treat you. So this one person took this

01:04:17.920 criticism that was biting and terrible and probably will be scarred for life because it was pretty bad

01:04:23.340 and turned it into the kind of positive that's just life-changing. I mean, I actually watched somebody

01:04:30.940 turn bad news into good news in a way that was frankly just awe-inspiring. And

01:04:37.600 I felt very glad to know this person and very proud. All right.

01:04:44.960 So that is what I wanted to tell you for today. And maybe tomorrow there'll be a little bit of

01:04:54.260 news that isn't terrible. Somebody says, how can I fix my balding problem? I actually have an answer

01:05:01.100 to that. You know, I know that you're joking. So somebody asked, what can I do about going bald?

01:05:06.040 I literally have an answer for that. And I'll tell you the story. Maybe you've heard it before.

01:05:10.920 So years ago, you can tell that I've follically challenged myself and started losing my hair

01:05:18.140 very young. So it's always been an issue because it happened, you know, especially because it

01:05:23.220 happened earlier than it happens for most people. So I was once getting a suit tailored and I happened

01:05:31.860 to be in the suit buying place. And the gentleman who was helping me, he was doing the measuring and

01:05:38.600 helping me with my suit. And I was trying it on. We were just chatting. And I don't remember why,

01:05:43.500 but I think he said, I look good in the suit or something, you know, as a salesman would.

01:05:48.160 And I said something self-deprecating, joking around. I said something, yeah, but, you know,

01:05:55.340 it's too bad I'm short and bald or something. And he gave me the best life advice I think I've just

01:06:06.000 ever had. And, you know, at the time I was the trained hypnotist and he was the guy working in

01:06:13.420 the suit shop. And he gave me the best hypnosis trick to make my loss of hair not matter that I've

01:06:23.060 ever seen. And it was this. Make sure that you go to the gym, you know, build up your physicality

01:06:30.140 to the point where people don't notice you're bald. Now, what's your first reaction to that?

01:06:36.580 Do you think you could build up your physicality, you know, your muscles and get your body in good

01:06:41.100 shape to the point where people don't notice you're bald? Do you think that's the thing?

01:06:47.000 Well, let me tell you, he gave me that advice. And after he gave me the advice,

01:06:53.040 I had already noticed that he was really strapped himself. He was a really fit guy. And you could

01:07:00.920 tell even he was wearing a suit, but even in his suit, you could tell this guy was ripped.

01:07:07.680 And after he told me this, do you know what I noticed? He's bald. Didn't even notice.

01:07:16.140 I had worked with this guy up close. He was literally measuring my suit. And until he told me he was

01:07:21.940 bald, I didn't even know it. And it wasn't that I, that my brain didn't see it. It's that he had

01:07:29.560 shifted my attention from the top of his head where there wasn't much going on to the rest of his body.

01:07:36.920 And his body was magnificent, if I may say so, of another man. His body was magnificent, even in a

01:07:43.520 suit. He was so well-developed that you could, you know, you could tell his chest and his arms were

01:07:49.000 really well done. And I said to myself, that actually worked. That actually worked.

01:07:57.660 And so it wasn't long after that, that I started, you know, just buzz cutting what I had left and went

01:08:04.560 to the gym. Dan Bongino, thank you very much. Dan Bongino, there's an example. I assume he's,

01:08:12.540 is he losing his hair or does he just cut it short? I don't even know.

01:08:15.360 But you look at Dan Bongino and is the first thing you say to yourself, there's a bald guy?

01:08:22.440 No, no. I don't even know if he's actually losing his hair or he just cuts it short.

01:08:27.060 But either way, you're not going to look at Dan Bongino and say, there's a bald guy.

01:08:32.120 That's the last thing you think. You're going to think, damn, what is he doing with his exorcism?

01:08:37.700 Joe Rogan, another example. Do you look at Joe Rogan and say to yourself, there's a bald guy?

01:08:42.300 Nope. You look at him and say, what the hell is he doing with his fitness? I want to do some of that.

01:08:49.060 Michael Jordan, bald guy? Nope.

01:08:53.620 So, to the answer to your question, yes, you can actually make your baldness go away.

01:09:01.260 Three examples right there. Made their baldness go away.

01:09:04.620 And I think that this technique is one you can generalize to a lot of stuff.

01:09:09.020 You don't need to fix all of your flaws if you can make people look somewhere else.

01:09:14.920 Right? Two ways to fix a flaw.

01:09:17.420 One is to actually fix it, and one is to make people not care.

01:09:21.740 Which is just as good.

01:09:23.000 If nobody cares, you stop being a flaw.

01:09:26.580 So, I don't think you expected me to have an answer for that, but there it is.

01:09:29.700 And that is your live stream for today.

01:09:34.620 And I've got a few more minutes here on Periscope.

01:09:40.420 A little extra.

01:09:43.120 Oh, somebody says it's the best Periscope ever.

01:09:46.440 Well, I don't know about that, but I always try to make them the best ever each time.

01:09:51.900 I actually literally try to do that.

01:09:53.600 Is there a reason you don't drink alcohol?

01:10:01.420 Yeah, alcohol is poison.

01:10:03.000 Now, I say alcohol is poison in an answer to that question because that's a technique.

01:10:08.940 I tell myself alcohol is poison because if you tell yourself it's entertainment, you're going to want some.

01:10:16.200 So, how you label things will, over time, not right away, but over time, when you label things consistently, it will reprogram your brain.

01:10:24.680 It's the same technique I use for not overeating because if you tell yourself that cake and dessert are food, you're going to eat them.

01:10:36.200 Because what do you do with food?

01:10:38.580 You eat it.

01:10:40.040 So, I don't define stuff like sweets and cakes and desserts and stuff and junk food.

01:10:46.340 I don't define that as food.

01:10:48.480 I define that as entertainment that has, unfortunately, a cost.

01:10:54.000 So, when I want to eat, I eat things I call food.

01:10:58.220 You know, your broccolis, your clean proteins, etc.

01:11:01.320 And when I want to entertain myself, I say, well, one way to do it would be to eat this crap.

01:11:08.320 And another way to do it would be to do something that I like just as much that doesn't hurt me.

01:11:12.500 And then it's easy to say, well, if it's just entertainment, I'll do one that doesn't make me fat.

01:11:20.140 So, the label that you consistently put on things will actually program your brain over time.

01:11:26.360 You just have to be consistent about it.

01:11:28.220 So, the reason I say it's poison is that it's lots of fun.

01:11:32.500 I have just as much fun being drunk as other people.

01:11:35.960 But I also have a reaction to alcohol that I don't like.

01:11:39.000 And I don't like how I wake up the next day.

01:11:42.840 I don't like the lasting effect over the weekend.

01:11:46.500 If my alternative is to smoke some weed where I feel great when it happens,

01:11:53.160 and then I wake up in the morning and I'm better rested.

01:11:57.240 If you do weed, you wake up in the morning feeling better than if you had not smoked weed.

01:12:03.680 Like, a lot better.

01:12:05.060 It's not even close.

01:12:05.920 And if you drink alcohol, you have a good hour of fun followed by not so much fun the next day.

01:12:14.880 So, to me, it's not a good cost-to-benefit trade-off.

01:12:18.140 I do expect that someday, between now and the time, the rest of my life, I will drink again.

01:12:24.420 There will be a time when I have a drink for whatever reason.

01:12:27.520 But I like to think of it as poison and not entertainment.

01:12:32.520 All right.

01:12:33.080 That's all for now.

01:12:33.660 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:12:35.920 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:12:36.820 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:12:50.060 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:12:50.140 , Eu.

01:12:50.620 Talk to you tomorrow.

01:12:50.920 See you tomorrow.

01:12:51.640 We turn yourself again.

01:12:52.220 Bye.

01:12:52.280 Bye.

01:12:52.680 Bye.

01:12:53.240 Bye.

01:12:54.160 Bye.

01:12:54.680 Bye.

01:12:54.960 Bye.

01:12:55.180 Bye.

01:12:56.600 Bye.

01:12:56.880 Bye.

01:12:57.920 Bye.

01:12:58.340 Bye.

01:12:58.540 Bye.

01:12:58.780 Bye.

01:12:59.560 Bye.

01:12:59.820 Bye.

01:13:00.180 Bye.

01:13:01.760 Bye.

01:13:02.740 Bye.

01:13:03.880 Bye.

01:13:04.560 Bye.

01:13:04.800 Bye.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - December 27, 2020

Episode 1233 Scott Adams： The News is Boring so I Will Take You to a Higher Level of Awareness Instead

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