Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 971 Scott Adams： A Micro Lesson on Affirmations. Can You Program Your Reality？

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody! Come on in here. Do you want something weird? Do you want to have a really weird 30 or 40 minutes?

00:00:18.920 It came to the right place. You will be tantalized in the brain area. You'll be amused. You might be shocked or amazed.

00:00:29.800 You might think the whole thing is just too weird for you. You never know what's going to happen in the next 30 or 40 minutes.

00:00:39.360 But it's going to be good. Those of you who stay to the end, you may never be the same.

00:00:48.560 For sure you'll be a little older because, you know, 30 or 40 minutes. But maybe even better than that. We'll see.

00:00:55.600 I don't want to over-promise.

00:01:00.300 All right. Today I'm going to talk to you about a thing called affirmations.

00:01:05.760 Now, affirmations, I think, mean different things to different people.

00:01:09.640 So I'll give you my explanation.

00:01:11.540 I'm not talking about the affirmations where you look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're a good person and, you know, gosh darn it, people like you.

00:01:21.260 That's the cartoony version.

00:01:23.860 Now, the real version isn't much less cartoony than that, but it's different.

00:01:28.180 And the real version is that you just write down or repeat in your mind, you could do it out loud, I suppose, 15 times a day, some specific kind of an objective that you have.

00:01:40.840 And the idea is that somehow, and it's the somehow that we'll talk about, that's the fun and weird part, somehow, simply repeating or writing down your objective 15 times a day seems to make it happen.

00:01:58.720 Not every time, obviously.

00:02:01.480 Full disclosure, I've been talking about this topic for decades.

00:02:05.580 And so lots of people have tried it, and they've reported back to me.

00:02:10.520 A number of people say they had great results.

00:02:14.120 Other people said they didn't.

00:02:16.620 I didn't do any kind of a scientific poll, so I can't tell you how often it works or doesn't.

00:02:22.840 I feel like people would more likely tell me if it worked, so I probably have an oversized sense of how often it worked.

00:02:31.420 But I will tell you the story from my personal perspective.

00:02:36.680 Some of you have maybe heard it or read about it.

00:02:39.780 And that will form the basis upon which you can judge my credibility.

00:02:44.760 So I'll tell you how I was introduced to this idea, how I used it, what happened.

00:02:51.100 And then I'll tell you a little bit more about the technique.

00:02:53.720 It just takes about a minute.

00:02:54.660 And then we'll talk about what kind of a universe gives you even this conversation.

00:03:03.640 So we're going to get weird after we talk about it, okay?

00:03:08.440 So first of all, I wrote about this just for background in three different books.

00:03:13.620 The Dilber of Future in 1997.

00:03:15.940 God's Debris in fiction form, 2001, came out on 9-11-ish that week.

00:03:25.000 Bad timing for a book.

00:03:27.060 And then more recently, it had failed almost everything and still went big.

00:03:30.900 If you wanted to just get the closest explanation to what I'll be giving you today,

00:03:36.840 it would be in this latter book, how to fail.

00:03:39.660 So I was a young man in my 20s, and I had a friend who was in Mensa.

00:03:48.360 So Mensa is the high IQ organization.

00:03:52.260 And she was very smart, because you have to be in there.

00:03:57.100 And she read a book.

00:03:59.540 I don't remember the title of the book, but she was talking to me on the phone about it one day.

00:04:04.040 And she said it taught something called affirmations.

00:04:06.920 And it was this idea of writing down 15 times a day what you wanted.

00:04:13.340 And she said that she tried it, you know, skeptically.

00:04:18.180 And a series of coincidences happened, like just bizarre coincidences,

00:04:23.120 that caused her to get the thing that she was affirming, that she was writing down.

00:04:27.840 And I think she tried it a few times, and she talked about somebody else's experience.

00:04:32.580 And she said, you know, why don't you try it?

00:04:35.440 Now, keep in mind, I'm highly skeptical.

00:04:42.020 Maybe you'll think otherwise when we're done.

00:04:45.460 But, you know, I'm not a believer in any kind of supernatural power, luck, magic, horoscopes.

00:04:51.940 You know, pretty much none of it.

00:04:54.840 I'm just completely skeptical.

00:04:57.180 So how did she talk me into trying something that has no scientific basis whatsoever

00:05:03.500 and seems like absolute crap?

00:05:07.840 Well, did I mention she was at Mensa?

00:05:10.540 It turns out that they're very persuasive.

00:05:14.560 So here was her argument.

00:05:17.120 It doesn't cost you anything.

00:05:18.720 And if it works, you'll be able to basically rewrite your reality.

00:05:25.600 And you might even recognize the technique from Steve Jobs.

00:05:32.340 When Steve Jobs was trying to hire, was it Scully?

00:05:38.060 He was trying to hire him to be the president.

00:05:40.760 And he didn't want to go.

00:05:41.980 And Jobs said, do you want to sell?

00:05:44.600 Because Scully was the head of Pepsi at the time.

00:05:47.560 And he said, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or change the world?

00:05:53.500 And he basically resigned that moment, I think.

00:05:57.160 Not quite, but.

00:05:58.700 So that's the power of contrast.

00:06:02.300 So she used the power of contrast on me. 0.98

00:06:05.700 Doesn't cost anything.

00:06:08.080 Could change the world.

00:06:10.600 I wish it hadn't been so simple.

00:06:13.480 And also, I was an experimenter.

00:06:19.780 I was a seeker.

00:06:21.220 So I would look into almost anything.

00:06:24.120 And always will.

00:06:25.640 So no matter how weird the claim,

00:06:28.240 I'll look into it a little bit.

00:06:30.100 I'll check it out.

00:06:31.540 I'm probably not going to be convinced that your seance is real

00:06:35.340 or that you're bending a spoon with your mind.

00:06:38.180 I probably won't be convinced.

00:06:40.040 But I'll look into it.

00:06:41.140 But, you know, I've got an inquiring mind.

00:06:45.960 So I thought, I'll give it a shot.

00:06:48.260 And she gave me this specific advice.

00:06:50.040 She said, pick something that you know is not going to happen anyway.

00:06:54.200 Because what would be the point, right?

00:06:56.080 You'd get your thing that you had been writing down 15 times a day.

00:07:00.480 And then you'd say to yourself,

00:07:02.160 well, that probably would have happened anyway, you know.

00:07:05.340 So she said, pick something unlikely.

00:07:07.000 So I picked something I thought was pretty unlikely,

00:07:10.160 which was to, I'll keep this rated G in case somebody's watching it later.

00:07:15.880 I wanted to, let's say, date a specific woman that I didn't even know. 0.53

00:07:24.540 Somebody who was in the company, it was a big company.

00:07:28.880 I didn't know her, didn't know where she worked, didn't know her name. 0.99

00:07:32.440 Just somebody I'd seen in the hallway a few times and decided, oh my goodness.

00:07:37.080 But I picked her as the object of my affirmation because she was so far out of my league. 0.90

00:07:44.780 It just sort of wasn't even close.

00:07:47.840 You know, if I'm being properly modest, it wasn't really close.

00:07:53.680 You know, the two of us should never have gone on a date.

00:07:57.360 But we did.

00:07:58.800 And it was because of a series of coincidences that I won't get into.

00:08:03.460 But they were weird ones.

00:08:05.720 Weird, weird coincidences that we even met.

00:08:08.920 I mean, how do you just meet the one stranger in the whole planet you want to meet?

00:08:14.240 And just, I didn't even try.

00:08:15.860 It just happened.

00:08:17.220 And then the next thing you know, we're in the elevator at the same time.

00:08:20.100 And the next thing you know, I got a lunch.

00:08:22.360 There she is.

00:08:23.200 Next thing I know, we're on a date.

00:08:25.780 And when it was all done, what did I say to myself?

00:08:30.260 Did I say to myself, those affirmations worked really well?

00:08:34.180 I got something that I knew could have never happened in any other way.

00:08:39.240 Did I say that?

00:08:40.000 No, I didn't.

00:08:41.260 No, I didn't.

00:08:42.680 What I said to myself was, huh, I guess I have more game than I thought.

00:08:48.980 Who knew?

00:08:50.460 I guess I had more buying power than I thought.

00:08:53.960 So, of course, the experiment was a complete failure.

00:08:57.600 Because the very thing that she told me to do didn't work.

00:09:01.600 I didn't pick something that I couldn't later convince myself I'd gotten through my own great, you know, good looks or talent or something else.

00:09:10.720 So I was like, ah, inconclusive experiment.

00:09:13.940 So, not long after that, I got in a bet with somebody at work about whether I could retake the GMATs, the test you take to see if you can get into a school to get your MBA.

00:09:31.520 And that I would retake the test because I'd taken them before and I'd not scored very well.

00:09:37.360 I scored in the 77th percentile, I think, which is not good enough to get into a good school.

00:09:42.480 If I recall, I might have been a little hungover when I took the GMATs the first time.

00:09:48.720 That's the story I'm going to go with.

00:09:50.960 So just go with that.

00:09:54.820 And the person I had the bet with had scored, I think, in the high 80s and was taking one of those review courses to beef up her ability to get an even higher score.

00:10:06.480 And so she should have gone from like 88 to something higher, but they do tell you that you can't really raise your score that much.

00:10:15.280 You know, it's not really IQ, but there's not a lot you can do.

00:10:19.420 You can study the tests.

00:10:21.320 And I was telling her, you know, those review classes, they're not going to help you at all.

00:10:25.560 And she said, oh, yeah, they will.

00:10:27.580 I said, no, I don't think you will.

00:10:29.200 I don't think, I think it's a scam.

00:10:31.120 She said, oh, no, these, it's going to make a big difference.

00:10:34.380 So I made a bet.

00:10:36.800 The dumbest thing I've ever done, maybe.

00:10:38.940 No, I've done a lot of dumb things.

00:10:40.620 One of the dumb things I've done.

00:10:41.920 I made a bet.

00:10:43.520 I said that I will take the test at the same time you do.

00:10:47.260 Because I was thinking about taking it again anyway.

00:10:49.860 And I will score your score.

00:10:55.920 Even though I was in the high 70s, you were in the high 80s.

00:10:58.840 And you're taking a special class to get into the 90s, which you would need to get into Berkeley, because you wanted to go to Berkeley.

00:11:06.440 And, you know, you'd have to get into somewhere in the low to mid 90s to get into Berkeley at the time.

00:11:13.260 So it was the dumbest bet, because what were the odds that that would happen?

00:11:19.740 So I used my affirmations.

00:11:21.420 And because I had taken the test before, I knew what the little output looked like.

00:11:26.660 You know, the mail that you get that says, here's your score, and it says in this little box.

00:11:31.800 And I decided that I would pick, as my target for my affirmations, 94.

00:11:38.260 So in order for this to happen, I would somehow, without taking any kind of a review course, magically go from 77 to 94.

00:11:49.120 Now, I don't know if it's ever been done, but that's a really big ask, right?

00:11:54.920 So I thought, that is sufficiently impossible, that if that happens, I'm going to say, you know, maybe there is something here.

00:12:04.300 So I visualized the exact mailer, assuming it would be similar to the one before, it turned out it was.

00:12:12.600 And I just imagined seeing a 94 in that percentile thing.

00:12:17.380 But I did take some practice tests, just, you know, on my own, because that was okay.

00:12:23.340 I didn't have a tutor or anything, I was just taking the practice tests.

00:12:27.040 And every time I took a practice test, I scored high 70s percentile, just like the first time.

00:12:36.180 So I'd take another one, and about the same, and every one, right in that zone.

00:12:43.280 I'd take it in the morning, I'd take it with coffee, I'd take it under every condition.

00:12:50.420 You know, a bunch of practice tests, and every time, high 70s.

00:12:56.680 So it wasn't looking good for Scott.

00:12:59.840 The day comes, I take the test, she takes the test.

00:13:03.600 Time goes by, and I go to the mailbox, and there's the result.

00:13:08.560 And I go back to my little apartment, my moldy little apartment in the hate district of San Francisco, living there by myself.

00:13:18.220 Very sad place.

00:13:19.880 And I opened up the result, and I looked for the little box where I knew the percentile would be.

00:13:26.740 And there was a number.

00:13:29.520 It was 94.

00:13:30.580 And I looked at it, and I thought, I'm obviously looking at the wrong box.

00:13:37.040 Am I looking at, like, a code or something?

00:13:39.820 Is it a code?

00:13:41.020 No, it actually says 94.

00:13:43.500 And I looked at it, and I thought, it can't actually be 94.

00:13:48.900 Like, not literally 94.

00:13:51.320 And I would look at it, and I'd say, I think it is.

00:13:55.700 And for hours, this actually happened.

00:13:58.960 For hours, I would look at that piece of paper, and I would sit just all alone in my little apartment in San Francisco,

00:14:05.020 and I'd set it down next to me.

00:14:07.600 And I would lean back, and I'd think, I'm not sure that just happened.

00:14:12.760 And I'd have to pick it up and look at it again.

00:14:15.700 And I kept doing that all night.

00:14:17.120 I just kept picking it up and looking at it and saying, what have I done?

00:14:25.360 So, I ended up going to Berkeley and getting my MBA.

00:14:30.080 Almost an accident, really.

00:14:32.200 It was based on a bet.

00:14:34.960 Strangely enough.

00:14:36.580 So, it wasn't long after that that I thought, what's the limit to this thing?

00:14:41.760 Like, what else can it do?

00:14:45.100 And is it really doing anything, or am I just imagining this?

00:14:48.420 We'll get to that part.

00:14:49.340 So, I set myself a goal of getting rich in the stock market.

00:14:55.420 Now, remember, I had no money, so it would be hard to get rich in the stock market.

00:15:00.140 You know, I had maybe $1,000 that I could put into the stock market.

00:15:03.460 And I didn't even have an account.

00:15:07.100 So, one day, as I'm doing my affirmations, I wake up.

00:15:11.300 I sat straight up in bed in the middle of the night with this thought in my head to buy stock in Chrysler.

00:15:18.760 Now, Chrysler at the time, I'm not good on my years, but Chrysler at the time was bankrupt.

00:15:27.480 So, you know, they owed the government a bunch of money, and a lot of people were betting they weren't coming back.

00:15:34.200 So, their stock was just, you know, right at the edge of oblivion.

00:15:38.160 So, out of all the stocks in the world, how many stocks do you think there are?

00:15:43.260 Say, 10,000?

00:15:45.120 10,000 stocks, maybe?

00:15:47.260 I did zero research.

00:15:50.720 Woke up, sat up, and thought, buy Chrysler.

00:15:57.000 For no reason.

00:15:59.240 I hadn't read an article about it, nothing.

00:16:01.920 And so, I tried to open an account with Charles Schwab, and my paperwork got lost, and it took too long.

00:16:08.180 And in the time it took me to try to open up an account using snail mail and stuff getting lost,

00:16:14.720 the stock had gone up, I don't know, a bunch, 20%, let's say.

00:16:18.300 I forget the exact number.

00:16:20.140 And so, by the time I got my account opened, it had already gone up a lot.

00:16:23.960 And I thought, ah, it was a good idea, but I just missed it.

00:16:29.340 So, I didn't buy it, because it had already gone up.

00:16:32.820 And then it kept going up.

00:16:34.300 And those of you who are old enough to remember, what was the best stock of that entire year?

00:16:42.720 And of 10,000, Chrysler.

00:16:47.440 It was like the number one story stock, and of 10,000 stocks, and I picked it randomly.

00:16:56.300 Or was it random?

00:16:57.260 Maybe there was something floating around in my head that just came together.

00:17:02.840 I don't know.

00:17:03.700 But I didn't get it.

00:17:04.760 I didn't get rich off it.

00:17:05.900 So, I thought, well, I'll try it again.

00:17:07.840 So, I thought to myself, all right, I'm just going to do the same process, except now I have my account open.

00:17:14.360 And one day, I picked up a newspaper, and I flipped through it, and there was an article about this software company called Ask, A-S-K.

00:17:22.940 I don't know what happened to them.

00:17:24.540 But at the time, it was sort of a hot, new, technology-looking thing, back when, you know, that was new.

00:17:31.900 And, oh, it became Ask Jeeves, maybe, I don't know.

00:17:38.100 And, no, it was Ask Computer, so it's a different company than Ask Jeeves.

00:17:43.040 So, it was an Ask software company.

00:17:46.020 I forget the details.

00:17:47.220 But anyway, the point is, I didn't know anything about this company, and I just thought, I'm going to buy this.

00:17:53.040 With no anything, no research.

00:17:56.440 I buy this stock, it goes up, I don't know, 10% in a week.

00:18:00.900 And I think, I'm a freaking genius.

00:18:03.080 Look at this.

00:18:03.800 Twice in a row, I picked a good stock.

00:18:05.900 So, I sold that stock, made it, pocketed it a quick 10%.

00:18:10.320 I think I made, probably I netted $100 in a month.

00:18:14.880 Not a month, in like just a week.

00:18:18.640 And I'm thinking to myself, hey, I think I have something here.

00:18:22.680 I've got a tiger by the tail.

00:18:24.280 I just made $100 without doing anything remotely like work in a week.

00:18:32.840 I mean, hey.

00:18:35.180 The second part of the story is that that stock didn't stop going up when I sold it.

00:18:42.340 It went to the moon.

00:18:43.360 And it was, again, one of the storied stocks of the year.

00:18:48.980 It wasn't just a stock.

00:18:50.820 It was like a story that people would write about.

00:18:54.000 What's up with this stock just going to the moon?

00:18:56.760 So, both times, I didn't trust to stick with the thing that I was being guided toward.

00:19:04.820 Or so it felt.

00:19:06.320 Or it wasn't an illusion.

00:19:07.340 So, I thought to myself, let me try something else.

00:19:15.640 And it wasn't long after that that I tried.

00:19:19.180 I, Scott Adams, will be a famous cartoonist.

00:19:23.480 And that's actually the form of it.

00:19:25.580 I'll teach you in a moment.

00:19:28.060 And I became a famous cartoonist.

00:19:30.200 And then I did, I, Scott Adams, will become a number one New York Times bestselling author.

00:19:38.280 And then I did.

00:19:40.580 And there was also a time that I lost my ability to speak.

00:19:48.040 Most of you know the story.

00:19:49.780 So, for about three and a half years, I couldn't speak properly because of a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which was incurable.

00:19:58.160 An incurable problem.

00:20:01.160 But, do you hear me?

00:20:03.180 So, obviously, it wasn't so incurable, was it?

00:20:05.980 So, long story short, I searched the world and found a guy who had an experimental, fairly newish, surgery and fixed it.

00:20:15.060 But that was the subject of my silent affirmations, that I would someday speak perfectly.

00:20:21.720 Now, of course, I don't speak perfectly, so affirmations are sort of directional.

00:20:29.360 Let's, let me show you what the process is.

00:20:34.640 Then I'll tell you the fun part is, is there anything to it?

00:20:38.740 Or is it just complete BS?

00:20:40.280 And you can decide.

00:20:45.120 All right.

00:20:45.460 The how of it is easy.

00:20:46.500 You just write or repeat that thing that you want and use this form.

00:20:52.640 I put your name in there.

00:20:54.180 Scott Adams will be a syndicated cartoonist.

00:20:57.020 You could say you'd be wealthy.

00:20:58.820 You could say you'll find love.

00:21:00.880 You could say you'll be healthy.

00:21:02.400 You could say you'll move someplace.

00:21:06.040 You'll start a family.

00:21:07.960 Whatever it is.

00:21:09.220 If you're too specific, and you'll recognize this for me talking about systems versus goals,

00:21:17.080 you don't want to be too specific because you don't want to say, for example,

00:21:21.820 I want that specific promotion.

00:21:25.320 Because what if there's a better one?

00:21:26.940 You know, you might get the thing that you're affirming, but maybe there was something better

00:21:32.660 that popped up in the meantime.

00:21:34.620 So try to keep your affirmations, you know, fairly general.

00:21:39.480 Now, an exception would be there's nothing better than being a syndicated cartoonist if you're a cartoonist.

00:21:47.500 You know, if you're going to be a cartoonist, this would be the best one, you know, of the types of cartoonists you could be.

00:21:54.160 So shooting for the top is not so bad, because what if I'd gotten close?

00:22:00.780 Well, maybe I still could have made a little money or whatever.

00:22:03.420 But there's nothing better in the world of cartooning than being a syndicated cartoonist.

00:22:08.960 So in that case, I could be kind of specific.

00:22:11.260 If you're trying to win a, you know, win an Oscar or something, yeah, go ahead.

00:22:16.180 You know, I don't think those are terribly important, but if you want to.

00:22:19.840 So people ask me, you know, does it matter where I write it, can I type it, can I chant it, can I sing it?

00:22:28.960 None of that matters.

00:22:30.360 It's only about focusing on the thing that you want and visualizing it.

00:22:34.940 It's also very important to visualize.

00:22:37.620 If you don't visualize it, you're not putting the most active part of your brain into the game.

00:22:42.860 Now, here's the part where you should be saying to yourself, why would this work based on your complete lack of science and logic or anything that would connect this to the real world?

00:22:57.000 You know, why would chanting or writing something down have any effect on the real world?

00:23:02.640 That's the fun part.

00:23:04.440 Does it?

00:23:05.240 Here are some ideas, and I'll let you decide which one you like the best.

00:23:13.160 One of the possibilities is that somehow these affirmations change the basic nature of reality itself.

00:23:19.760 Can we agree it's not that one?

00:23:23.080 Can we just stipulate we don't have to talk about it too much?

00:23:26.860 Because, you know, I may have a different view of reality than you do.

00:23:30.960 My view is that we don't have access to it.

00:23:33.040 There's got to be some base reality.

00:23:36.540 But we live in our own filters.

00:23:39.040 Most of you know that's my view.

00:23:41.220 So I don't see reality changing.

00:23:45.000 I see maybe our filter changing.

00:23:47.440 That's the part we can see and deal with.

00:23:49.640 But you probably don't think reality changes because you wrote something down.

00:23:53.360 So I think we'll agree it's not that one.

00:23:56.280 The other one could be selective memory.

00:23:59.240 Maybe it doesn't work at all.

00:24:00.380 What if I'm just good at stuff, which explains why I had some success?

00:24:06.560 And what if I just forgot the ones that didn't work?

00:24:11.800 Now, those of you who read this book know that I have many, many failures.

00:24:18.640 In fact, you know, 10 to 1.

00:24:20.720 10 to 1 more failures than successes.

00:24:22.760 So how do I explain that I'm acting like this works when 10 to 1 it didn't?

00:24:31.400 That's what you're thinking, right?

00:24:32.960 Well, here's the thing.

00:24:34.540 I didn't use affirmations on almost any of those things.

00:24:39.340 I only used it on the ones that worked.

00:24:46.020 Now, you're going to have to take my word for that.

00:24:48.540 But there's a reason for that, and I'll get to that.

00:24:51.580 So hold on.

00:24:52.400 There's a reason why I only did it on the ones that worked.

00:24:56.800 So another possibility is that when you're doing affirmations is you're tuning your brain.

00:25:00.920 There was a study on luck by this guy, Dr. Weissman, and he wanted to see if people had luck.

00:25:08.220 You know, is luck a real thing?

00:25:10.180 Now, most of you are ahead of me, right?

00:25:12.020 Luck is not a real thing.

00:25:14.160 Everybody's going to have the same luck if you're really controlling the experiment.

00:25:18.400 And indeed, that's what he found.

00:25:19.600 Everybody has exactly the same luck.

00:25:21.620 But he did this experiment that was very revealing.

00:25:25.040 He had people divide themselves into groups that considered themselves lucky

00:25:29.660 and groups that considered themselves not lucky.

00:25:33.140 And he gave them all the same newspaper.

00:25:35.140 And he said, look through the newspaper and count up the number of photographs.

00:25:39.200 Now, the people who considered themselves unlucky counted them up.

00:25:44.260 And on average, they got the right number that was 42.

00:25:47.600 And it took them several minutes to complete the task.

00:25:52.100 The people who considered themselves lucky, even though really nobody was any luckier than anybody else,

00:25:57.620 but they considered themselves lucky, they also got the right number on average, 42 photographs.

00:26:03.620 But they were done in seconds.

00:26:05.680 Whereas the people who thought they were unlucky, it took them minutes.

00:26:10.820 The difference was that on all the newspapers for both groups,

00:26:14.500 and the second page in big writing, it said, stop counting the photographs, there are 42.

00:26:21.320 The people who considered themselves unlucky didn't see the time saver because they were looking for photographs.

00:26:31.660 They didn't expect anything to be there except what they were looking for.

00:26:36.200 The people who considered themselves lucky are always looking for luck.

00:26:40.840 So what he found is that if you open your mind to the possibility that you could get lucky,

00:26:48.180 you actually will notice things that will make you appear lucky.

00:26:52.520 And if you ask people about their success stories, drill down a little bit.

00:26:57.880 If you know anybody who got successful in an out-sized way,

00:27:01.540 you're going to find this point where they noticed something,

00:27:05.540 or there seemed to be some kind of a luck or coincidence.

00:27:08.420 But if you drill down, maybe they were just tuning themselves to notice it.

00:27:13.400 Maybe they just set their filters, and it wasn't luck at all.

00:27:19.980 They just set their filters, and there it was.

00:27:24.220 Reticular activation is a big word.

00:27:26.460 I saw that in a corporate training program once.

00:27:31.220 And it's just the idea that you're familiar with the fact that if somebody calls your name in a crowded room,

00:27:37.020 you can hear it easily, even if there's a lot of background noise.

00:27:40.640 So if you're in a crowded room, you'll hear,

00:27:42.200 Scott, and you'll be like, what the heck?

00:27:47.140 Why is the one word that I can hear clearly in that mumbling was my own name?

00:27:53.780 And that's because your brain tunes for things that are important to you.

00:27:58.760 So if you use affirmations, you're really tuning into a specific objective.

00:28:03.120 In my case, in cartooning, I noticed something on television one day that led me down a trail

00:28:09.840 to find a cartoonist who gave me the advice that turned me into a cartoonist.

00:28:15.240 So I actually had to notice something.

00:28:18.400 Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been doing affirmations at the time.

00:28:21.960 Here's another possibility, and a strong one, that you're not really causing something to happen,

00:28:29.680 but rather you're finding out the hard way what things you're committed to.

00:28:34.640 And you're probably committed to things that on some subconscious level, you think you can do.

00:28:40.700 You think you can pull it off.

00:28:42.240 So I think we have this situation, and this is just a hypothesis,

00:28:47.480 that you might have a rational thought about what you can pull off in life,

00:28:52.700 and how well you can do,

00:28:54.120 but you also have an irrational opinion of yourself,

00:28:57.100 and the two of them are just always there.

00:28:59.160 There's your rational one saying, I don't know if you can do that.

00:29:02.800 Not everybody gets away with that.

00:29:04.640 That looks pretty hard.

00:29:05.620 But you might also have an irrational part that says, I got this.

00:29:10.940 I got this.

00:29:12.360 And so the hypothesis is that if you can put in the time to write down that objective,

00:29:17.900 you know, I, Scott Adams, or Philip, your name, will do this,

00:29:22.200 and you actually could do that 15 times a day for, I don't know, a few months,

00:29:26.800 that means that there's some part of you, probably your subconscious,

00:29:32.040 if there is such a thing, that thinks you can pull it off.

00:29:36.080 Because otherwise, it's not going to let you do it.

00:29:38.280 Remember I told you that there were all those things I failed at,

00:29:41.480 that you would think, oh, why wouldn't you want those to be more successful?

00:29:46.860 I, of course, wanted everything I've been involved with to be successful.

00:29:50.820 But there are some things that I wanted with a burning desire,

00:29:56.880 if you know what I mean.

00:29:58.500 There are some things I just wanted to work, like everybody wants everything to work.

00:30:03.980 And sometimes I would want those things to work a lot.

00:30:07.220 But that extra commitment of writing down 15 times a day,

00:30:12.040 I've only done that of those things that had the extra meaning to me, I guess.

00:30:19.100 And those were the things that worked out.

00:30:21.140 So it could be that this is a backwards correlation.

00:30:24.580 It could be the fact that you're even willing to write it down 15 times a day

00:30:28.500 is simply telling you something about yourself.

00:30:32.080 And that's good.

00:30:33.120 Maybe that's good by itself.

00:30:35.460 And then the more fun possibility is that

00:30:38.380 affirmations is part of the human interface

00:30:42.620 for programming your filters on reality.

00:30:45.560 Now, if you're programming your filters,

00:30:47.680 that doesn't mean you have to program base reality.

00:30:51.700 You're just programming the way you see it.

00:30:53.780 So could it be that the only thing that happened in my stories

00:30:58.060 is that I programmed my filter to believe these things happened to me?

00:31:05.800 Maybe.

00:31:07.000 Or did I program my filter to simply make opportunities

00:31:10.740 more presentable?

00:31:14.300 More, not presentable, but more opportunities present themselves to me.

00:31:18.360 Did I do something somehow with the affirmations?

00:31:20.760 Well, here's the fun part.

00:31:22.740 It's completely unknowable.

00:31:25.780 I don't know.

00:31:27.520 But here's my pitch to you.

00:31:31.780 If you looked at this and you said to yourself,

00:31:33.960 you know, this is probably nothing.

00:31:38.140 It doesn't look like it has any more science than horoscopes.

00:31:42.120 And it doesn't.

00:31:42.860 It has no more science than your horoscope.

00:31:47.240 But yet, there's something compelling about it.

00:31:51.480 And if there were anything to it,

00:31:53.760 you might say to yourself,

00:31:55.240 wow, because if there's anything to this,

00:31:59.400 it's a big, big deal.

00:32:01.780 And so, I would pitch it to you this way.

00:32:07.720 It doesn't cost you anything to try it.

00:32:09.980 And if it works, it could change the world.

00:32:17.500 That's my pitch.

00:32:18.960 It worked on me.

00:32:20.860 If it doesn't work on you,

00:32:22.420 well, maybe you have more control than I do

00:32:27.300 or better priorities or something.

00:32:29.400 But that's my pitch.

00:32:32.640 I will not tell you that I believe in magic.

00:32:35.040 I don't.

00:32:35.940 I'm not going to tell you it's going to work for you.

00:32:39.040 Clearly, there are people it won't work for.

00:32:41.500 But if you're going to play the odds,

00:32:46.220 focusing probably has benefits.

00:32:48.920 If I were to tell you where I would break down

00:32:54.780 what parts of this are probably true

00:32:58.860 versus less likely to be true,

00:33:01.520 I would say there's no chance it's changing base reality.

00:33:05.420 There might be some selective memory,

00:33:07.120 but I don't think that's the main thing.

00:33:09.900 Definitely, the brain tuning is the thing.

00:33:12.980 If I had to bet, that would be the most active part.

00:33:15.800 And I definitely think there's something

00:33:17.520 about finding out what you're willing to work hard for.

00:33:20.860 And the affirmations are like a practice way

00:33:24.000 to find out if you're willing to work hard for it.

00:33:27.260 But I also think there's something to the fact that

00:33:30.020 in some ways, it's programming your filter on reality

00:33:35.320 in some productive way.

00:33:37.680 Now, since we don't know what base reality is,

00:33:40.580 we're only dealing with this weird symbolic level

00:33:43.160 where we think we're in the same reality, but we're not.

00:33:46.380 We already talked about the fact that everybody's walking around

00:33:49.240 in their own bubble reality.

00:33:50.720 You've got your own religion. 0.69

00:33:52.380 You think that the other political party is crazy.

00:33:54.820 They think you're crazy.

00:33:55.900 So we're all in our own little bubbles.

00:34:00.040 Could it be that there's a way to steer your little bubble?

00:34:03.980 Because keep in mind,

00:34:05.420 if we're all in little bubbles,

00:34:06.860 and you can see it for yourself,

00:34:08.640 I mean, people are living full lives

00:34:10.760 within a reality that you don't even recognize.

00:34:14.440 They believe mystical things according to you.

00:34:18.260 They're wrong about this.

00:34:19.960 They can't tell if they're murdering or what.

00:34:23.960 I don't want to get into any heavy topics.

00:34:27.460 But we're in very different worlds all the time.

00:34:32.220 And once you realize you're in different worlds,

00:34:34.380 then you know that those worlds are at least a little bit subjective.

00:34:37.480 And if you could change just the way you view your world

00:34:42.460 from inside of your bubble,

00:34:43.960 you don't even have to get out of the bubble

00:34:45.840 as long as you can redecorate.

00:34:48.780 And that's what affirmations might help you do.

00:34:52.060 I guess you'll find out if you try.

00:34:54.600 That's all for tonight.

00:34:55.740 I'm going to keep it on this one topic.

00:34:57.820 Some of these lessons might not stay on Periscope forever,

00:35:03.480 but they will be on the Locals.com platform forever.

00:35:09.140 And I hope that answers some of your questions.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - May 13, 2020

Episode 971 Scott Adams： A Micro Lesson on Affirmations. Can You Program Your Reality？

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