Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 886 Scott Adams： Swaddle up to Your Screen. It's Time for Positive Thoughts Before Bed.

00:00:00.000 Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in 0.99

00:00:13.480 it's time for positive thoughts while swaddling in a soft blanket trying to feel good about things

00:00:23.100 i have not watched the tiger king but i'm feeling like i just sort of have to

00:00:28.480 everybody's talking about it maybe i'll have to wade into that um so yesterday i tweeted and i quote

00:00:37.540 it's too quiet today something big is coming now i don't know if this was it but today the

00:00:44.400 president announced that he's moving the military against the drug trade from venezuela this is soon

00:00:54.200 after he said that i think they put a price on madura venezuela and it looks like they're trying

00:01:01.820 pretty hard to get him out of there now this is sort of a twofer because number one it could

00:01:07.700 maybe slow down some drugs and deny some drug money to the madura regime

00:01:14.160 it's very uplifting

00:01:17.580 um because their oil revenues down but the interesting thing is so here's the good news

00:01:24.820 here's the good news uh venezuela and china were kind of big uh trading partners until all the all the

00:01:36.380 stuff went down i guess so to the extent that china could be pushed out of this part of the world

00:01:43.540 by by getting rid of their uh toehold uh in venezuela that could be kind of good in the long run

00:01:52.340 could be kind of good so i've got a feeling something is going to happen militarily that might

00:01:59.960 be bigger than just going moving against the uh the drug trade i've got a feeling that maybe this

00:02:07.500 is all about putting pressure on maduro and getting some military assets a little bit too close if you

00:02:14.480 know what i mean because i think we're negotiating with them it's always easier to negotiate if you

00:02:20.520 have your entire military within shooting distance we're just in the neighborhood it's about the drugs

00:02:26.000 you know you don't have anything to do with the drugs do we're just after the drugs yeah we do have

00:02:31.600 a lot of warships here but it's just about the drugs

00:02:34.380 so it seems that it's now considered a fact you always have to be careful about these things but

00:02:45.900 i think the news on both sides is now correct me if i'm wrong considering it a fact that china lied

00:02:54.440 about their death toll which misled our experts about how severe it was which caused them not to

00:03:03.440 raise the alarm as loudly as they might have if they had accurate information and it looks like

00:03:08.800 that's maybe the explanation for why we got a late start now you can always argue we should have had

00:03:15.180 more ventilators and stuff like that and that's a conversation worth having but now that we know

00:03:21.580 that china absolutely screwed the world on this by lying about how bad it was and they haven't even 1.00

00:03:29.200 stopped the fentanyl trade how long has it been how long ago was it that they promised oh yeah we'll

00:03:35.680 take care of that fentanyl stuff so you know it took me a long time to come around to the the idea that

00:03:43.140 china's government was intentionally doing things to kill americans 1.00

00:03:47.920 but i don't know what they're thinking but the effect of it is a lot of dead americans

00:03:55.120 so i'm pretty sure that at the end of this there's going to be a serious reckoning

00:04:00.920 i think the president's smart and you know downplaying it at the moment because he wants to sell some food

00:04:08.260 sell some foreign products to china so you know president's in a tough place but i think in the

00:04:16.040 long run china's got a lot to answer for now i promise you i would answer some questions and i will

00:04:22.700 david angel asks do you think joe do you think joe biden will get to the finish line

00:04:29.860 in october or november and the answer is um i don't think so but you know you can only put the

00:04:40.260 odds on these things so anybody says yes or no is is just kidding you but if i had to put the odds on

00:04:47.140 it of joe biden actually being a candidate and being the candidate and still being in the race

00:04:53.680 on election day 25 maybe that's a healthy odds maybe 40 i'll give it 40 that he's still in the race

00:05:06.980 for any variety of reasons that could change all right um everything we knew as normal is over well

00:05:15.960 that's not true uh government i don't know about that i think that uh there will be some things that

00:05:25.540 change a lot and other things that improve a lot some things get worse it'll be different but i you

00:05:35.760 know 85 percent of life is going to be exactly the same um rebecca says tell us some more stories

00:05:43.420 stories during our nighttime swaddling story time well i'm glad you asked rebecca because i'm full of

00:05:51.700 stories what kind of stories would you like the funny kind the embarrassing kind all right here's a

00:06:00.160 story um that a friend told me um now this requires you to know what a oh i probably told this i think

00:06:09.720 i've told this before i don't want to give you the same stories so let me let me tell you one of my

00:06:15.760 first jobs i was working on my uncle's farm so my uncle had a dairy farm and it was sort of walking

00:06:22.960 distance if if he didn't mind a long walk and so my my siblings and i would would work there mostly my

00:06:29.880 brother and i and we would do every like bad farm job you could do i mean literally shoveling manure and

00:06:37.140 you know getting the hay out of the fields and piling hay bales and milking cows and cleaning the

00:06:44.180 you know cleaning everything basically so i had all these terrible terrible jobs but one of the jobs

00:06:51.240 was that you had to get the cows that's what we called it it was just called getting the cows

00:06:58.680 and what it meant was that during the day the cows would be left at let out of the barn

00:07:03.340 and there was uh i don't know several hundred acres that my uncle had and it was you know forest and

00:07:10.260 open parts and swamp and stuff it was pretty big and so the 40 or so cows i think probably around 40

00:07:18.580 would go out into the uh into the forest and they would mostly hang around within sight of each other

00:07:25.920 because they're cows cows sort of have a herd instinct so they they tend to be not too far away

00:07:33.800 from each other and so the process of going and getting them and gathering them up and herding

00:07:39.920 them back to the barn and across the street was something that everybody who worked in the farm had to

00:07:45.660 learn it was it would be your turn eventually to to go get the cows now this was easier than you think

00:07:52.680 because there would be a trained cow dog and the dog would actually do all the work so the dog would

00:07:59.880 learn from other dogs that's how you teach a cow dog the way you teach a cow dog how to herd dogs and

00:08:05.800 get them back at night and stuff is you just introduce a puppy you i think some breeds are better than

00:08:12.660 others but you just introduce a puppy to a situation where there's already a trained dog and the older

00:08:19.760 dog just teaches it to herd cows it's kind of an amazing process so anyway we had a trained

00:08:25.160 trained cow dog and it was my turn for 25 cents which was the payment for this task i had to take

00:08:34.180 my trained dog and a stick because you had to hit the cows often to get their attention it's not as bad

00:08:40.320 as it sounds usually the sticks were sort of switches you know little bendy bendy ones and cows

00:08:46.480 are literally made of leather so you you can hit them pretty hard before they'll even look at you

00:08:53.100 like you you can hit a cow like really hard and the cow will just be eating grass it'll be like

00:08:59.360 i i feel like there's a fly on my back or something so so i'd have my little stick and my cow dog and my 25

00:09:08.840 cents and i went out to get the cows and you have to know that it was like before a little bit before

00:09:14.880 uh dark so i go out there and i i'm trying to sort of get around behind the you know the cows and the

00:09:22.800 dog goes the other way and pretty soon i've lost the dog so now not only have i not found the cows

00:09:29.660 you know i haven't gotten any cows back and they seem to be like dispersing like they've lost all of

00:09:35.720 their cow instincts suddenly instead of herding up and just sort of automatically going back to the

00:09:41.500 barn as they've done every day of their life they decided when they saw me to just sort of

00:09:46.680 separate and they just started dissolving into different parts of the the swamp and the forest

00:09:53.460 and so i'm like oh my god yeah i've lost the dog i'm losing all the cows so i'm like going deeper and

00:09:59.560 deeper into the swamp to try to sort of get around them because i think well if i get a few cows moving

00:10:04.960 usually that's how it works you get a few cows moving in the right direction and then the other 0.56

00:10:10.200 cows their herd instinct kicks in they're like cows go in that direction i guess i'm going that way

00:10:16.360 they'll just start going but i couldn't get behind the cows and then it's getting dark and now i'm lost

00:10:22.880 and i don't even know which direction is the cows so now i'm in the middle of the swamp

00:10:27.340 i have no cow dog i've lost all 40 cows and it's dark and i don't know which direction is home

00:10:36.360 this is before cell phones as you can imagine and so i'm like well i guess i'm going to be sleeping

00:10:43.400 in the swamp or i'm dead or something so eventually i hear scott scott and it was my uncle who ran the

00:10:51.500 farm and maybe my brother who was somebody else who was with him and they called out to me and i

00:10:56.820 called back and they they found me with their flashlights and took me back to safety but they're

00:11:02.780 taking me back and i'm feeling really bad because i didn't get any cows and i lost the dog in the

00:11:11.420 forest so i'm like ah i you we can't go back yet i don't know what to do i've lost all the cows and

00:11:20.840 i've even lost the dog too and my uncle said oh no the the dog took the cows back to the barn an hour

00:11:28.760 ago i got completely lost in the swamp and the dog just took care of it so the dog just went and

00:11:39.600 rounded up all the cows took him back to the barn because that's what the dog does that was the dog's

00:11:44.940 job the dog wasn't it wasn't the dog's job to follow me around the dog had a had a job description

00:11:51.580 took care of business true story

00:11:53.980 so uh what here's some more stories oh i got lots of stories you know i do

00:12:07.160 one day my my grandfather who was my uncle's father in that same farm was working in the field

00:12:17.120 and he thought he heard something he turns around this is an upstate new york on a dairy farm he turns

00:12:24.220 around and there's an elephant standing behind him it was like an actual live elephant standing behind

00:12:31.000 him in his own field on the farm now as it turns out that a few a few farms down the road was a

00:12:40.920 a company that would train elephants so they trained elephants for various circuses and their their main

00:12:47.520 elephant had some name i forget some circusy name uh got away it just like went for a stroll

00:12:54.960 so so my my grandfather was just like you know working on the farm and turns around there's an

00:13:03.840 elephant so it wasn't wasn't much of a punchline to that story but uh but you know your standards are

00:13:12.160 low let's let's face it if you're listening to this you have low standards oh shrooms you you so you

00:13:19.360 want to hear my taking mushrooms story i know you do all right so i've told this story before

00:13:24.660 only once have i ever done a hallucinogen and it was mushrooms it was i when i just got out of

00:13:31.360 college and came to san francisco and there was somebody i knew from college i won't give you too

00:13:36.960 many details but she and i um decided to try some mushrooms now normally of course i wouldn't do that

00:13:46.680 because i wouldn't know you know how much do you take and do you go crazy and you know it was dangerous

00:13:51.720 but she had done some from the same bag the day before with some other people so she knew how much

00:13:58.820 to do and she knew that this you know this particular bag was really what it was supposed to be

00:14:04.140 so some of the main questions of risk were answered just because it was a known quantity so she talked

00:14:11.380 me into it and so um and so i gagged a few down and my god they taste terrible i mean they really

00:14:19.340 taste terrible and we decided that we would just take a the streetcar the j church streetcar

00:14:26.080 to the beach and we would just watch the sunset and that was our plan

00:14:31.980 and pretty much my whole life changed that night and the reason that my life changed is it was my first

00:14:41.520 distinct um experience of a different reality that still worked and it's the the fact that it still

00:14:50.360 worked is the part that changes you forever because you would you would see your reality like you'd never

00:14:57.340 seen it before like it was brand new so every part of it from your your hand to the cars to the trees

00:15:03.800 were just brand new like you were visiting another planet and seeing things for the first time

00:15:09.840 but you still knew what they were and how to use them so you could navigate your world just perfectly

00:15:16.480 now you know you wouldn't want to drive a car or something like that but in terms of you're just

00:15:21.460 you know existing and going and having a snack and walking around the block and stuff

00:15:26.720 you could do all that stuff but you were in a completely different world and and what you get from that that

00:15:33.860 you keep forever is the idea that your reality there may be some base objective reality but it's not

00:15:42.160 it's not available to you if there is an objective real base reality the odds that you can perceive it

00:15:52.000 are low because we know that people could have completely different movies in their minds and

00:15:58.060 they all work you can believe that trump is a monster somebody else can believe he's the savior

00:16:03.960 and you can both buy toilet paper on a good day but maybe not lately so um we went to the beach and

00:16:13.140 every time somebody got on the streetcar i remember thinking it was the most entertaining thing i'd ever

00:16:18.160 seen because people's faces are so different you know from from one to the other that everyone was

00:16:23.760 just like a marvel and like i i just couldn't stop looking at them just the way their faces look went to

00:16:31.180 the beach and it may have been the best sunset of all time or it could have been an average sunset and

00:16:41.200 i was really in the mood for it but the the other thing i learned is just how good you can feel

00:16:48.600 because i had never felt that good before or even close the the amount of good you feel

00:16:57.520 um under those conditions is so good it doesn't map to any other experience it's a it's a sort of a

00:17:07.240 multiple of the best thing you've ever felt um but i've had only a passing interest in doing it again

00:17:15.460 because it does feel like the sort of thing that once you've done it you don't need to do it if you

00:17:21.080 know what i mean so what once you've seen behind the door you're behind the curtain let's say you

00:17:27.080 know once once you've looked behind the curtain you don't need to look a second time because you've

00:17:32.180 already seen what's back there and what's back there is that reality is far more subjective

00:17:36.780 than our normal experience would suggest so there's that let's see what other questions you got

00:17:45.460 uh thoughts about what the general said today well he the general was very persuasive if you saw the

00:17:52.520 uh press conference um i thought he was good at being the general you know who knows what's going

00:18:00.580 to happen there it's so early that nobody knows really what's going to happen uh did you ever

00:18:05.720 finish watching a star is born i did not and and for those of you know the the newish version of a

00:18:12.600 star is born with lady gaga and bradley cooper the reason i didn't watch it the rest of it is that the

00:18:19.660 first part of the movie was so perfect i didn't want to ruin it the movie was that good that i couldn't

00:18:26.460 watch the second part because the first part was just too perfect i mean i liked it that much i've

00:18:32.100 never had that experience before where i didn't want to ruin the movie by watching the rest of it

00:18:36.340 because let's face it movies movies do sort of peter out after a while you know they're a little

00:18:41.880 longer than they need to be

00:18:43.600 i wanted you to see this it must be an old comic from oh yeah from way back interesting all right

00:18:53.360 how would you make writing a book into a system it seems very goal oriented well that's a very good

00:19:00.280 question roly-poly and here's your answer if you try to do something as big as write a book

00:19:06.180 take it from someone who has written i don't know 11 books or whatever it is i've lost count

00:19:12.440 every time it seems impossible every time i'm ready to write a book that you know on day one you

00:19:19.400 think how many words on a page how many pages do i have to write how many times am i going to rewrite

00:19:26.720 this how many chapters am i going to throw away completely and just start over and if you if you

00:19:33.580 play with the enormity of it you just can't start it will just stun you into submission but there's this

00:19:40.600 weird thing that happens when you start just working on it in little chunks you know if you can get

00:19:45.440 going that they suddenly start adding up because you know time flies which is bad when you're trying

00:19:54.600 to enjoy yourself but it's good when you're doing something unpleasant like trying to finish writing

00:20:00.560 a book so you can get to the end of that nine months or however long it's going to take you to do it

00:20:05.960 that nine months just sort of always goes fast

00:20:09.420 it's just the way of the world now everything goes fast so what i would say is the main thing is

00:20:16.580 to take the smallest smallest increment and then just do that and for me the smallest increment in

00:20:22.720 the way i always start is i just open a blank page and i start writing titles you know this title this

00:20:29.740 title this title this title you know a bunch of titles that'll delete the ones i don't like you know

00:20:35.100 and then i'll get down to what i'll call a working title and the working title is what i need to make

00:20:41.440 sure that everything i write can be tied back to that in some logical way so that i'm not restraining

00:20:47.620 to make the title make sense but i almost always change the title so it's um i don't know how many

00:20:54.040 times well i don't know if it's always but often i'll have a working title for quite a long time

00:21:00.480 and then i'll change it at some point then my maybe my publisher and editor looked at it and

00:21:06.760 they say let's run this by the salespeople then the salespeople say you know this word would be

00:21:12.720 better than that word so it tends to be an iterative process so start start with the title and then start

00:21:21.080 writing your first sentence and your first sentence should be the sentence you rewrite the most

00:21:27.760 so there'll be lots of sentences in your book that you write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite

00:21:32.740 that's normal but the first sentence if you're doing if you're doing it right will be the one you

00:21:40.200 rewrite the most if you write a good first sentence and you just look at it and that's the one that you

00:21:46.280 you end up with when you're done with the book you probably have a bad book i realize that's harsh

00:21:53.040 but that first sentence has to just do a lot of work because it's the first impression the first

00:22:01.140 sentence tells people how they're going to feel for the rest of the book and you can kind of tell

00:22:06.260 you know if you spend any time writing reading books pick up any book read the first sentence

00:22:12.940 you kind of know how it's going to go don't you i mean it's that important you can be a little sloppy

00:22:20.060 later on when people have a sense of what the book is and they've decided if they liked it but that

00:22:26.180 first sentence you got to rewrite that a lot so roly-poly i would say try for a working title

00:22:33.480 open up a document try writing a few opening sentences and think in terms of rewriting the

00:22:43.160 opening sentence 20 to 50 times and and you might actually have one you like write several chapters

00:22:51.460 and then still go back and change it 12 15 more times that's very typical for me anyway now everybody

00:22:59.040 has a different process so that that has more to do with my specific process now you know i've told

00:23:05.180 you that i studied persuasion for decades as as part of honing my writing talent and that's a perfect

00:23:12.980 example because what a uh a writer would maybe not obsess about as much is that first sentence

00:23:20.940 but i would obsess about it because i know the importance of the first impression it's something

00:23:26.560 you learn with persuasion that you might not learn with writing so much

00:23:30.740 um hypnotize you okay um i'm going to hypnotize you but i'm not going to put you in a trance

00:23:42.120 and it goes like this i know you're wondering if i can but part of the reason that you watch these

00:23:52.000 periscopes is you think that i can do some things that other people can't do and as you're listening

00:24:00.220 to me you're wondering can he actually do that can he put a suggestion in my mind that will actually

00:24:08.820 change my programming and the answer is yes i'm actually trained to do that i've been doing it

00:24:16.620 for decades it's easy and all it really requires is that you be open to it so if i were to suggest

00:24:26.120 something that you didn't want it wouldn't work at all because you wouldn't be open to it and that's

00:24:32.160 the most important requirement but suppose i suggested that you had an unusually good night's

00:24:40.080 sleep tonight how many of you would object to the idea no strings attached to simply having

00:24:49.180 a really good sleep tonight how would you feel if as you're drifting off tonight you remember that i told

00:24:57.420 you that you would and it starts making you even sleepier because you're thinking is it working

00:25:04.880 i can't tell if i'm sleepy because i was sleepy or i'm sleepy because the cartoonist who was also a

00:25:12.580 hypnotist told me that i was and then you're going to be starting to think am i doing this on my own

00:25:19.740 or is it because he suggested it and then you're going to remember my voice exactly the way you hear

00:25:27.560 it right now and you're going to hear my voice and you're going to hear my confidence and you're going

00:25:34.220 to hear me tell you the suggestions when you're open to them always work and you are open to them

00:25:43.240 because you like to have a good night's sleep you always feel better when you do and you associate

00:25:49.780 that good night's sleep now with my voice and the suggestion that you're going to have an amazing

00:25:57.580 amazing night of sleep one of your best and if you don't have the best sleep tonight you might notice

00:26:06.420 that it happens tomorrow could be the night after and you might notice that it's just the average that

00:26:14.700 starts to improve so some of you will start right away with an incredible night's sleep the really

00:26:20.560 refreshing kind with either no dreams that you remember or the good kind and you're going to feel

00:26:27.020 refreshed and relaxed when you wake up and you're going to wake up and you're going to think to

00:26:32.560 yourself man i feel good today better than normal and then you're going to think about the suggestion 0.61

00:26:39.560 that i'm giving you and you're going to say damn it is that why and the more you think about the fact 0.80

00:26:49.040 that i suggested it and the more you realize that it could be a coincidence but you would notice that 0.94

00:26:57.180 you can sleep better in the future is that a coincidence and as you associate your ability

00:27:04.000 to sleep better with your memory of my voice as you hear it right now you'll be able to replay my voice

00:27:11.920 in your mind almost perfectly and in fact if you wanted to feel it right now in a way that you could

00:27:21.360 remember i'm going to count to 20 and when i reach 20 only if you want to those of you who don't want

00:27:32.520 to experience this can just observe but if you wanted to you could close your eyes right now and

00:27:38.140 just listen and you can listen to me count to 20 and you would find that there's something about my

00:27:45.740 voice something about my cadence the way i talk that makes you more relaxed as i count up from one

00:27:54.860 to 20 and as i count you'll find yourself getting deeper and deeper and more relaxed

00:28:03.340 and with each count you'll go deeper but if i were to reverse the count from 20 back toward one

00:28:14.560 temporarily or permanently you would start to feel less sleepy more awake but if i were to reverse it

00:28:24.240 again and count back to 20 it would be much more profound and you would go deeper more quickly

00:28:32.400 and so now you can feel yourself relaxed make sure that your feet are flat in the ground or you're

00:28:38.860 propped up so you can you can support yourself without using any muscles and listen to my voice as you go deeper

00:28:47.980 one going deeper two going deeper three four five going deeper now more relaxed feel your arms

00:29:05.420 heavy heavy your legs heavy all your muscles one at a time as you think about them around your body

00:29:12.620 each of them relaxing think of a muscle and it relaxes think of your neck muscles and they relax seven

00:29:22.300 doesn't matter if i skip a number nine getting deeper ten going deeper and more relaxed listen to my voice

00:29:33.100 and play it back when you want to relax in the future eleven twelve going deeper

00:29:41.980 and now i'm going back the other way you'll be a little bit more awake ten nine eight seven you feel

00:29:51.580 yourself waking up a little bit six

00:29:56.780 and now back

00:29:59.660 oh it feels better to go this way doesn't it seven more relaxed much deeper this time each time you go

00:30:08.140 toward 20 you get deeper than the last time nine going deeper ten eleven going deeper

00:30:16.460 13 13 deeper now twice as deep 15 twice as deep again 16 17 18 now very deep very relaxed feeling very good

00:30:34.380 almost floating 18 18 19

00:30:44.300 20 now completely relaxed and going even further 21 and now very very relaxed

00:30:57.260 22 and you'll be able to count yourself into this relaxed state just by listening to my voice

00:31:10.300 in your head and playing it back and if you want to take yourself out of this state well you could just

00:31:17.580 wake up anytime you wanted feeling refreshed or you could hear me counting you back

00:31:22.460 as i will do now so from your totally relaxed state

00:31:28.140 20 19 18 starting to get a little bit more awake now 16 15 starting to wake up

00:31:36.860 12 9 8 starting to wake up 6 7 it's going to feel great when you when you come out of it 5

00:31:46.700 4 almost completely awake now 3 2 shake your muscles 1 totally awake and feeling better than you thought

00:31:58.460 you could feel surprisingly better in such a short amount of time and now tonight

00:32:06.780 when you go to relax and you close your eyes and all the weight of the day is off of you

00:32:12.620 you you'll hear my voice and you'll count to 20 in my voice and you will drift off to sleep

00:32:22.940 and that is my little gift for you today and i will see you in the morning you know when 10 a.m.

00:32:31.820 eastern 7 a.m. pacific for the simultaneous sip good night

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 02, 2020

Episode 886 Scott Adams： Swaddle up to Your Screen. It's Time for Positive Thoughts Before Bed.

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