Real Coffee with Scott Adams - August 13, 2026


The Scott Adams School - 08⧸13⧸26 AFFIRMATIONS W⧸ SCOTT & The Home Team


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 9 minutes

Words per minute

164.18

Word count

11,455

Sentence count

411


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 46 locals. I will love to see it. My faves. You guys are the fam. We'll wait for YouTube to kick
00:00:09.080 in. Good morning, everyone. Oh, Nikki. Hey girl. Magi. Owen is, um, see how short I look? And I'm
00:00:19.920 like, oh, and you're too in the camera. And that's why I look like I'm five foot one and I'm actually
00:00:26.260 like five, six or seven. So I feel very short right now. Oh, Donde Esta Marcella. She's coming.
00:00:34.780 She's coming. Did you know I spoke Spanish? Wasn't it beautiful? So good morning, you guys.
00:00:41.760 It's August 13th, 2026. I'm looking at your, um, let's see. Oh, it needs those ice gloves.
00:00:52.240 Well, thank you, SJV. That's so sweet of you.
00:00:56.200 I want those ice gloves. Give me those ice gloves.
00:01:00.500 Good morning, EJ. Okay, guys, so it looks like YouTube's kicked in. Good morning, YouTube. How
00:01:06.220 are you? I've been reading everybody's comments like I do every day. So yes, no fear. I see
00:01:13.320 everything going on in every chat. It's very interesting. Very different vibes from the
00:01:18.920 different platforms. Yep. Here's our Marcella. Okay. Here we go. Let's, let's do the shuffle.
00:01:31.620 And there she is. Good morning, Marcella.
00:01:39.080 Oh, wait, we had to leave her. Oh, there it kicked in. Okay. Say good morning again. So
00:01:42.880 we make sure we can hear you. Good morning. You guys, I had a, um, you're never going to guess.
00:01:47.300 i don't want to guess it'll be i had a leak just now and i'm like oh my god
00:01:55.020 right before starting um upstairs so i have to i dried it out but i was like oh it's scott
00:02:02.820 well sorry no we're all we're all adjusting my camera's off you had a leak owen was
00:02:11.700 just too big and uh is it monday it's never never a problem but okay um thursday uh where are you
00:02:23.240 going marcella marcella said it's never a problem that it's thursday okay ma'am rain it in this is
00:02:32.580 a very young audience here okay all right guys i think we're ready i think we're ready i still
00:02:39.220 hear owen typing but we got to do the thing i can't take it ready oh i didn't miss it i'm so
00:02:44.580 glad i was like green so i thought i missed it i'm like i know we're late we are late we're going to
00:02:49.540 catch up guys i'm sorry we'll make up for all this here we go and all you need to enjoy the best part
00:02:54.300 of the day is well i think you know it's a cup or mugger glass a tanker chalice or stein a canteen
00:02:59.300 jugger flesh a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee and join me now
00:03:06.620 for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine to the end of the day,
00:03:10.480 the thing that makes everything better.
00:03:14.260 It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
00:03:16.340 Go.
00:03:20.440 Oh, that's what I needed.
00:03:22.940 That's what we all needed.
00:03:25.980 Totally, totally, totally.
00:03:28.280 Why did I have to see a picture of AOC already in the chat, Kev?
00:03:32.560 I'm just kidding.
00:03:33.440 oh my gosh aoc she's the front runner right now she is the front runner if we had a uh
00:03:41.080 an election today for the democrats and she is really pulling a hard pivot isn't she
00:03:46.300 she's single right ready to mingle and have babies so or not have babies for a while
00:03:54.620 well she i think she said that she doesn't want to have a baby under a trump administration
00:04:00.840 but maybe i'm like no she did not yeah something like that that's what i heard
00:04:07.680 lord i don't even know what to say about that that's odd so again you guys good morning i'm
00:04:14.880 erica you're at the scott adams school and i'm joined by my favorite hosts in the whole world
00:04:20.420 marcella and owen um just yay just a reminder so if you guys are looking for all the scott adams
00:04:28.440 stuff, all of the amazing YouTube videos and whiteboard lessons he gave to us over the,
00:04:35.860 you know, 10 plus years, everything's on YouTube for you. Um, sometimes what we do is we just
00:04:41.780 scroll, scroll, scroll through his channel. And I just like, let, let the random one stop and I
00:04:49.260 just play it. And it's always, it's always golden. It's always a winner. Um, and if you join our,
00:04:55.040 locals community, which is scottadams.locals.com. There are so many of Scott's posts on there from
00:05:05.520 our man caves to our pre-shows to micro lessons. And just you might be cartooning with him one day
00:05:13.460 and we all would jump on middle of the day. He's drawing Dilbert and we would jump on and he would
00:05:19.160 workshop ideas with us. And I mean, when he thought something was funny, he would just start
00:05:24.400 laughing like he really you know i love that that it didn't matter where the humor was coming from
00:05:29.760 if someone on the chat said something funny he would just cry laughing and it could go on for
00:05:36.320 an hour with us just being silly so you hear a rumbling it might be owen typing um so yeah so
00:05:44.080 it's a good time it's a good time um all right guys so uh welcome and today we have an awesome
00:05:52.320 Scott Adams whiteboard for you. And we were thinking, you know, Joel was talking about
00:05:57.080 how Scott would tell him to do affirmations and like, do they work? Do they not work? And so he
00:06:02.540 started doing them and they work. And so we have Scott's affirmation whiteboard today. And
00:06:09.260 personally, I need them for some personal things I want to work on in my life. And like, you forget
00:06:15.820 that they work, you know, like if you don't get in the practice and the habit of doing them,
00:06:21.020 so we will do that yeah owen does type fast isn't it crazy um sorry about the noise so listen i i
00:06:28.940 promised sandy candy in the chat she found this clip from the eclipse the eclipse clip um so i
00:06:36.140 can only play the beginning with some sound and then i'll turn off the sound but did you guys see
00:06:40.060 this so this is um spanish olympic skateboarder his name is danny leon and he did a skateboard
00:06:51.340 trick to time it just in time with the eclipse and this is the result
00:07:05.260 so now i gotta turn down the music because it's a michael jackson song but
00:07:08.780 that's pretty cool so they got the timing right to be just in the center of the eclipse
00:07:15.260 it's got to be pretty amazing so we didn't see it here um but if anyone saw it i bet it was cool
00:07:23.260 so sandy thanks for sending that to me that was fun um marcella did your friends in iceland get
00:07:29.260 to see the eclipse no it was too i mean they experienced it but it was too cloudy because
00:07:35.500 it was raining and all of that but people she's telling me that a lot of people paid a lot of
00:07:39.740 money to be there uh but the other place would have been spain and she's like they should have
00:07:44.380 gone to spain um but you know i i was more excited when i called her when it was happening she's like
00:07:52.620 oh calm down calm down calm down she tells you don't be so excited marcella i was like it's an
00:08:00.380 an eclipse. It was, um, that Michael Jackson song about like the environment and like if the world
00:08:07.700 blew up and it's a very emotional song actually. Um, but you know, Spotify's watching. So they
00:08:15.860 didn't catch us that time. Oh, you guys, I wanted to play this the other day. I just thought it was
00:08:20.820 interesting. So it it's, um, it's been resolved at this point, but so mom, Donnie mayor of New York,
00:08:28.400 his wife is going to be traveling and apparently she requested the nypd to travel with her as
00:08:36.480 security out of the country and i'm like oh i'm sorry do do you believe in police and protection
00:08:43.440 suddenly like what's happening but i just i just have to laugh at these hypocrites but here's here's
00:08:49.680 a clip about it because we have to mock these people as much as we can on next month and the
00:08:54.880 The mayor now blaming his staff for the mixed messaging.
00:08:58.040 Nate Foy joins us now with the details.
00:09:00.440 Nate, what happened?
00:09:01.540 Hey, Griff.
00:09:02.020 So, yeah, the Big Apple's first lady is headed to the Middle East without a taxpayer-funded police escort.
00:09:07.540 And it comes after sort of a high-profile back and forth between the mayor and the NYPD.
00:09:13.000 A police spokesperson says, quote,
00:09:15.520 The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons not linked to investigative work.
00:09:24.520 Earlier in the week, a source told the New York Post that the First Lady had requested the escort.
00:09:29.780 And a spokesperson for the mayor's office had confirmed that police would, in fact, join her.
00:09:34.780 They even issued this statement, saying the detail would join her on the trip, per the NYPD's strong recommendation.
00:09:42.680 That might be because both countries on her itinerary happen to be on the State Department's do-not-travel list because of security concerns.
00:09:50.860 However, yesterday, after the NYPD denied those plans, Mayor Mamdani blamed the back-and-forth on a miscommunication.
00:10:00.380 There was a miscommunication. She hasn't yet taken this trip, and when she takes this trip, it will be without any NYPD details.
00:10:06.420 So that clarifies that for me.
00:10:08.900 One source familiar with the situation told the New York Post that Mamdani's office reportedly never checked with the commissioner before announcing the security detail on Monday.
00:10:18.760 Syria and Lebanon were given the Level 4 Do Not Travel advisory for a number of reasons,
00:10:23.680 including armed conflict and terrorism with Hezbollah operating in the country
00:10:27.920 and kidnapping concerns as well.
00:10:30.160 We'll send it back to you guys.
00:10:31.440 All right, Nate Foy, thank you very much.
00:10:37.100 You're on mute.
00:10:39.160 Okay.
00:10:40.880 Oh, is that George?
00:10:42.700 Sorry.
00:10:44.100 There's George.
00:10:45.140 Rare, rare sighting of George on the show, you guys.
00:10:48.060 That's George Cat Stanza.
00:10:49.680 He wants to sit on my lap, but I was like, come on.
00:10:53.020 So here's my question.
00:10:54.380 Oh, and this is for you in particular, just to be fun.
00:10:58.540 So his wife, she shows her bare arms.
00:11:03.700 She's doing all the things that are like a big no-no.
00:11:07.180 Do you think when they go home, he beats the crap out of her for dressing like that?
00:11:14.540 No, I don't.
00:11:15.700 i think well i mean i'm not i know you're you know partly just making a joke but i think
00:11:22.000 it's i think there's these different classes within that society like you've got the you
00:11:30.300 know upper crust people in those islamic countries and they have their standards of behavior but then
00:11:37.100 they have this other element of like the rich that just go party around the world and do whatever
00:11:42.080 they want in america and um you know you certainly do see a lot of the hijabs and other stuff here
00:11:49.160 but i think especially for that elite class they seem to just get a pass yeah okay so they can do
00:11:57.380 whatever they want i mean you you see sometimes some people like that in bikinis and other you
00:12:01.460 know and it doesn't seem like anybody ever complains about that in that i mean i don't
00:12:05.560 know maybe i just don't hear because i'm not part of whatever they're saying to each other but um
00:12:09.840 it does seem like you know a lot of the daughters and family and people of these rich elite people
00:12:16.660 in these islamic countries just get to like do whatever they want and those rules don't apply
00:12:22.400 to them maybe if jimmy wyman's here he'll chime in but you know the other thing too when i'm
00:12:27.160 thinking about islam and the rules and whatever and why some people aren't concerned or worried
00:12:32.740 about it and then i'm just like well they can do whatever they want in their cult to
00:12:39.460 like if they have to lie or convince people they're allowed to do whatever they want so
00:12:45.180 maybe that's part of it too like oh well we just do this to make it seem like everything's okay
00:12:49.700 i don't know but marcella i mean i don't think it's it's like um like when you're jewish and
00:12:56.700 you have Orthodox Jews and you have Jews that are more, you know, not as conservative.
00:13:07.200 So Muslims, like, they have the same thing.
00:13:09.880 There's very conservative sinners, very conservative imams, and very conservative, you know, people.
00:13:18.960 the majority of the of the the hijabs and the bias and the other you know whatever you that he
00:13:25.940 caught the whatever it's called um they choose to wear that like these women here choose to wear it
00:13:33.380 but it's about what they believe you know so she doesn't believe in wearing it she doesn't have to
00:13:38.960 wear so oh i don't think so yes i mean this is i know i have most friends that are like very like
00:13:47.960 westernized or whatever yeah and they don't they don't follow like everything just like in you know
00:13:55.120 you have very you know very conservative christian churches where i've gotten in trouble um for
00:14:01.820 saying certain things and then there's ones that like you can do whatever you need to do
00:14:08.820 and just like you have your jewish orthodox women they cannot show their hair so they'll wear
00:14:14.620 away or or they'll wear like some covering so i think it's up to the husbands not to the women
00:14:22.920 personally but people know it's really um it's really up to the woman that's something that i
00:14:29.420 realized even the mothers that raised these men they um they're very into that um i had this idea
00:14:40.320 that like oh you know let me talk to them and i can talk to them out of like wearing this
00:14:46.240 they're like no this is how it's supposed to be you know so it's like i i know that in iran that's
00:14:52.720 different because you know but i'm talking about america in america yeah in america yeah so there
00:14:59.600 is there is you know there's these um there was this case of an egyptian father i think um who
00:15:07.440 killed his little girls or or his teenage girls because they wanted to rebel and he he basically
00:15:17.340 killed them before they went outside and became more you know so it's sad that sometimes that
00:15:25.880 happens but you know like everything ah crazy all right i want to know more about these certain
00:15:32.040 things that you said that got you in trouble i said jesus christ that's what i said because
00:15:40.020 sometimes i like hit myself and i said jesus christ and they're like oh don't don't use uh
00:15:45.780 the lord's name in vain yes i was like oh lord and then you did it again yes oh my god yeah okay so
00:15:55.720 yeah i'm like i can't i can't oh my gosh but you know i was watching this this show about
00:16:04.440 the amish and i kind of want to become amish you guys so do you really yeah what do you like about
00:16:11.580 it what do you like about it i like the community the fact that they're so together and and they're
00:16:17.980 just very peaceful you know but the the whole not having a phone and x or like talking to you guys
00:16:25.080 that just kind of kills it for me but would you wear the bonnet and the dress oh yeah that looks
00:16:31.320 cool looks cool yeah and would you do all the heart all the housework and oh yeah that's what
00:16:38.200 i like about it i like like um i watch there's this amish lady that cooks on instagram yes have
00:16:44.760 you seen her wait is she amish she was amish yeah and she wears that outfit she wears the outfit
00:16:51.000 i'm making the buddha buddha i'm like what are you making they're like butter yeah everyone's
00:16:55.720 saying it churning butter yes she do have phones ej says they have phones but marcella the food
00:17:03.480 doesn't look so hot it's you know maybe it's healthy though it's gonna make me live until 200
00:17:09.960 years oh my gosh all right so tomorrow it's like a good amish man and he can whisk you off to your
00:17:15.960 new community yeah and marcel will be here tomorrow in a bonnet and a little house on the
00:17:21.180 prairie dress and it's going to be amazing so sorry guys you're going to not see her in that
00:17:26.280 but i mean when when you travel to lebanon erica or syria i i want to travel with the nypd as well
00:17:33.900 i mean who doesn't want to travel with them like pd guys okay so did you guys hear caroline levitt
00:17:41.360 is uh stepping down our white house press secretary she i know she was amazing so i saw that this
00:17:49.220 morning yeah yeah so i have a clip but we don't need to play the clip but um so she's stepping
00:17:54.360 down she was what like a year and a half i guess whatever trump's been in for and so she has two
00:18:02.060 little she has a newborn baby and then maybe what like a one-year-old or one and a half year old so
00:18:09.020 that's a lot but i you know she's very thankful for the job and trump says he has like a tremendous
00:18:15.660 you know outsider now that will be like one of his best um consultants like an outside consultant
00:18:22.820 i'm wondering if she's leaving if anything has to do with how he left her on air force one when
00:18:30.540 he escaped in the catering cart oh my gosh you know what i'm saying yeah like she's like uh you
00:18:38.900 you know, I have two little ones. I'm ride or die. I travel with you everywhere. And I was
00:18:44.100 left on that airplane. I'm just wondering, I like to put a little something out there, but
00:18:48.880 yeah, that's a good point. So it's interesting, but you know, she, I don't know who's filling
00:18:56.580 in for her at this point. I kind of liked the idea of all of the administration people when
00:19:02.620 they filled in, I think they should just do that because who better than to hear from than
00:19:07.780 Bessent and Rubio and Vance and, you know, Todd Blanche would be amazing with the press secretary,
00:19:14.320 as a press secretary fill in. Um, so we'll see what they're going to do. I'm not sure.
00:19:18.720 I was thinking Spencer Pratt would be great. He would, he would dominate, but we could also have
00:19:25.560 an AI press secretary, like have a, have an AI answer the questions. Oh, Lemon Minty. You didn't
00:19:34.800 like her, huh? All right. Oh, Stephen Miller would be the bomb. Alex Jones. I mean, Lord,
00:19:41.080 we could have- Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think she did a great job. Like she did the job
00:19:48.180 she was supposed to do, which was stay loyal to President Trump and speak to the press. She was
00:19:53.760 great at it. And good luck. Good luck. All right. So what else do we want to tell you before we get
00:20:01.120 into this whiteboard. The whiteboard's long. We may actually have to get right into it now,
00:20:05.040 you guys. I don't want to miss talking about it on the other end. So let me delete Caroline
00:20:12.140 Levitt by Caroline. And let's just get into it. So you guys, this is a longer one, which I think
00:20:19.080 is going to be amazing. It's about, let's call it about 25 minutes, okay? And it's about affirmation.
00:20:25.320 So wherever you are in your life, whether you're working, not working, whether you think you have
00:20:31.440 your shit together or not, work on this. Okay. So as Scott's talking, think about the things that,
00:20:38.460 you know, you, you want to achieve and do, and let's see if you can work it into here. And if
00:20:43.720 you want to share with us in the chat, like while we're watching or after, you know, if you decided
00:20:49.280 to come up with something for an affirmation and you want to share it, let us know. But for now,
00:20:54.640 we're going to sip our coffee and sit back and watch our beloved Scott Adams. Let's do it.
00:21:02.200 Teach me and teach us to do what you were teaching last night, to transform our lives with those
00:21:09.600 affirmations, about which I'm skeptical, but you're an intelligent guy, so I'm willing to
00:21:15.580 try anything. Well, if you saw my presentation last night, that's all you need to get going.
00:21:22.520 The second part of that is just try it and see what happens.
00:21:26.620 Remember, it doesn't cost you anything.
00:21:28.860 So if you don't try it, you'll never know.
00:21:31.180 If you do try, well, maybe you'll still never know.
00:21:33.780 You'll always think that maybe you got lucky just because you're lucky.
00:21:38.600 But there's not much else to teach.
00:21:42.140 Once you see that this is the technique and there's no real way to do it wrong,
00:21:47.160 I get questions like, should I throw away the paper I wrote them on?
00:21:51.380 or does it matter if I chant them or sing them?
00:21:54.880 None of that matters.
00:21:56.160 It's simply if you can focus on this goal with whatever technique for 15 minutes a day or whatever it takes,
00:22:03.880 that's telling you something.
00:22:05.440 It's telling you something about your commitment to it.
00:22:08.220 It's telling you something about how much you want it.
00:22:11.660 And maybe, maybe setting your filters in your mind or somehow improving your filter on life.
00:22:18.440 We don't know.
00:22:19.540 But that's it.
00:22:20.440 I'd say give it a shot, see what happens.
00:22:28.280 Hey, everybody.
00:22:29.860 Come on in here.
00:22:31.480 Do you want something weird?
00:22:33.880 Do you want to have a really weird 30 or 40 minutes?
00:22:38.240 It came to the right place.
00:22:40.420 You will be tantalized in the brain area.
00:22:45.180 You'll be amused.
00:22:46.820 You might be shocked or amazed.
00:22:48.800 You might think the whole thing is just too weird for you.
00:22:54.140 You never know what's going to happen in the next 30 or 40 minutes.
00:22:58.380 But it's going to be good.
00:23:01.400 Those of you who stay to the end, you may never be the same.
00:23:07.560 For sure you'll be a little older because, you know, 30 or 40 minutes.
00:23:11.720 But maybe even better than that. We'll see.
00:23:14.940 I don't want to overpromise.
00:23:18.280 All right, today I'm going to talk to you about a thing called affirmations.
00:23:24.720 Now, affirmations, I think, mean different things to different people, so I'll give you my explanation.
00:23:31.200 I'm not talking about the affirmations where you look in the mirror and tell yourself that you're a good person
00:23:36.580 and, you know, gosh darn it, people like you.
00:23:40.240 That's the cartoony version.
00:23:42.860 Now, the real version isn't much less cartoony than that, but it's different.
00:23:47.220 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.
00:24:00.080 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.
00:24:17.220 Not every time, obviously. Full disclosure, I've been talking about this topic for decades, and so lots of people have tried it, and they've reported back to me.
00:24:29.500 A number of people say they had great results. Other people said they didn't.
00:24:35.560 I didn't do any kind of a scientific poll, so I can't tell you how often it works or doesn't.
00:24:41.440 I feel like people would more likely tell me if it worked, so I probably have an oversized sense of how often it worked.
00:24:51.020 But I will tell you the story from my personal perspective.
00:24:55.680 Some of you have maybe heard it or read about it.
00:24:58.760 And that will form the basis upon which you can judge my credibility.
00:25:03.740 So I'll tell you how I was introduced to this idea, how I used it, what happened.
00:25:09.360 and then I'll tell you a little bit more about the technique, it just takes about a minute
00:25:13.680 and then we'll talk about what kind of a universe
00:25:18.420 gives you even this conversation
00:25:21.800 so we're going to get weird after we talk about it, okay?
00:25:27.520 So first of all, I wrote about this just for background
00:25:30.440 in three different books, The Dilber of Future in 1997
00:25:34.940 God's Debris in fiction form
00:25:39.020 2001. Came out on 9-11-ish that week.
00:25:44.000 Bad timing for a book. And then more recently
00:25:46.880 Had It Failed Almost Everything and Still Went Big. If you wanted to just get
00:25:51.120 the closest explanation to what I'll be giving you
00:25:55.020 today, it would be in this latter book, Had It Failed.
00:25:59.600 So I was a young man in my 20s and I had a
00:26:03.100 friend who was in Mensa.
00:26:07.480 So MENSA is the high IQ organization.
00:26:11.240 And she was very smart because you have to be in there.
00:26:16.060 And she read a book.
00:26:18.540 I don't remember the title of the book, but she was talking to me on the phone about it one day.
00:26:23.220 And she said it taught something called affirmations.
00:26:26.440 And it was this idea of writing down 15 times a day what you wanted.
00:26:32.340 And she said that she tried it skeptically.
00:26:36.800 and a series of coincidences happened
00:26:39.620 like just bizarre coincidences
00:26:41.460 that caused her to get the thing
00:26:43.720 that she was affirming
00:26:45.040 that she was writing down
00:26:46.340 and I think she tried it a few times
00:26:48.660 and she talked about somebody else's experience
00:26:50.980 and she said
00:26:52.580 why don't you try it
00:26:54.500 now keep in mind
00:26:56.760 I'm highly skeptical
00:26:59.840 maybe you'll think otherwise
00:27:02.640 when we're done
00:27:03.300 but I'm not a believer
00:27:06.400 any kind of supernatural power, luck, magic, horoscopes,
00:27:10.980 pretty much none of it.
00:27:13.840 I'm just completely skeptical.
00:27:17.280 So how did she talk me into trying something
00:27:19.620 that has no scientific basis whatsoever
00:27:22.500 and seems like absolute crap?
00:27:27.160 Well, did I mention she was at Mensa?
00:27:29.400 It turns out that they're very persuasive.
00:27:33.440 So here was her argument.
00:27:36.400 It doesn't cost you anything.
00:27:38.960 And if it works, you'll be able to basically rewrite your reality.
00:27:47.060 And you might even recognize the technique from Steve Jobs.
00:27:51.300 When Steve Jobs was trying to hire, was it Scully?
00:27:57.040 He was trying to hire him to be the president.
00:27:59.760 And he didn't want to go, and Jobs said,
00:28:01.740 do you want to sell, because Scully was a head of Pepsi at the time,
00:28:07.120 he said, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life
00:28:10.580 or change the world?
00:28:12.520 And he basically resigned that moment, I think.
00:28:16.140 Not quite, but.
00:28:17.700 So that's the power of contrast.
00:28:21.300 So she used the power of contrast on me.
00:28:24.660 Doesn't cost anything.
00:28:27.080 Could change the world.
00:28:28.320 I wish it hadn't been so simple
00:28:32.500 and also
00:28:36.500 I was an experimenter, I was a seeker
00:28:39.580 so I would look into almost anything and always will
00:28:44.100 so no matter how weird the claim, I'll look into it a little bit
00:28:48.680 I'll check it out, you know, I'm probably not going to be convinced
00:28:52.340 that your seance is real or that you're bending a spoon
00:28:56.420 with your mind. I probably won't be convinced, but I'll look into it.
00:29:00.840 You know, I've got an inquiring mind.
00:29:04.920 So I thought I'll give it a shot. And she gave me this specific
00:29:08.580 advice. She said, pick something that you know is not going to happen anyway.
00:29:13.180 Because what would be the point, right? You'd get your thing
00:29:16.220 that you had been writing down 15 times a day, and then you'd say to yourself,
00:29:21.180 well, that probably would have happened anyway, you know.
00:29:24.480 So she said, pick something unlikely.
00:29:26.340 So I picked something I thought was pretty unlikely,
00:29:29.760 which was to, I'll keep this rated G in case somebody's watching it later.
00:29:36.300 I wanted to, let's say, date a specific woman that I didn't even know.
00:29:43.520 Somebody who was in the company, it was a big company.
00:29:47.980 I didn't know her, didn't know where she worked, didn't know her name.
00:29:51.440 Just somebody I'd seen in the hallway a few times.
00:29:53.700 and decided, oh my goodness.
00:29:56.800 But I picked her as the object of my affirmation
00:30:00.720 because she was so far out of my league.
00:30:03.760 It just sort of wasn't even close.
00:30:06.800 If I'm being properly modest, it wasn't really close.
00:30:12.680 The two of us should never have gone on a date.
00:30:16.280 But we did.
00:30:17.860 And it was because of a series of coincidences that I won't get into.
00:30:21.860 but they were weird ones
00:30:24.180 weird, weird coincidences
00:30:25.960 that we even met
00:30:27.200 I mean, how do you just meet
00:30:29.180 the one stranger in the whole planet
00:30:31.920 you want to meet
00:30:32.700 and just, I didn't even try, it just happened
00:30:35.400 and then the next thing you know
00:30:37.300 we're in the elevator at the same time
00:30:39.020 and the next thing you know, I got a lunch
00:30:40.660 there she is, next thing I know
00:30:43.000 we're on a date
00:30:44.800 and when it was all done
00:30:47.840 what did I say to myself
00:30:49.160 did I say to myself, those affirmations
00:30:50.980 worked really well. I got something that I knew could have never happened in any other way. Did
00:30:58.400 I say that? No, I didn't. No, I didn't. What I said to myself was, huh, I guess I have more game
00:31:05.820 than I thought. Who knew? I guess I had more buying power than I thought. So, of course,
00:31:14.400 the experiment was a complete failure because the very thing that she told me to do didn't work.
00:31:20.140 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.
00:31:29.660 So I was like, ah, inconclusive experiment.
00:31:35.200 So not long after that, I got in a bet with somebody at work about whether I could retake the GMATs,
00:31:46.540 the test you take to see if you can get into a school to get your MBA.
00:31:51.460 And that I would retake the test because I'd taken them before
00:31:54.800 and I'd not scored very well. I was scored in the 77th percentile
00:31:58.800 I think, which is not good enough to get into a good school.
00:32:02.140 If I recall, I might have been a little hungover when I took the GMATs the first time.
00:32:07.700 That's the story I'm going to go with, so just
00:32:10.420 go with that.
00:32:11.320 and the person I had the bet with
00:32:15.740 had scored I think in the high 80s and was taking
00:32:19.600 one of those review courses to beef up
00:32:22.860 her ability to get an even higher score and so
00:32:26.880 she should have gone from like 88 to something higher but they do
00:32:31.660 tell you that you can't really raise your score that much
00:32:34.040 it's not really IQ but there's not a lot you can do
00:32:38.200 you can study the tests
00:32:39.940 and I was telling her you know those review classes
00:32:42.620 they're not going to help you at all
00:32:43.880 and she said oh yeah they will
00:32:46.120 I said no I don't think you will
00:32:47.720 I think it's a scam
00:32:49.580 she said oh no
00:32:51.200 it's going to make a big difference
00:32:53.380 so I made a bet
00:32:55.000 the dumbest thing I've ever done maybe
00:32:57.640 now I've done a lot of dumb things
00:32:59.240 one of the dumb things I've done
00:33:00.840 I made a bet
00:33:01.500 I said I will take the test at the same time you do
00:33:05.320 because I was thinking about
00:33:07.380 taking it again anyway. And I would score
00:33:11.000 your score, even though I was
00:33:15.580 in the high 70s, you were in the high 80s, and you're taking a special
00:33:19.640 class to get into the 90s, which you would need to get into Berkeley
00:33:23.480 because you wanted to go to Berkeley. And you'd have to get into somewhere
00:33:27.400 in the low to mid 90s to get into Berkeley
00:33:29.880 at the time. So
00:33:33.200 it was the dumbest bet
00:33:36.480 because what were the odds that that would happen
00:33:38.400 so I used my affirmations
00:33:40.160 and because I had taken the test before
00:33:42.020 I knew what the little
00:33:44.100 output looked like
00:33:45.460 the mail that you get
00:33:48.320 that says here's your score
00:33:49.560 and it says in this little box
00:33:50.820 and I decided that I would pick
00:33:53.040 as my target for my affirmations
00:33:55.480 94
00:33:56.220 so in order for this to happen
00:33:58.960 I would somehow
00:34:00.400 without taking any kind of a review course
00:34:02.960 magically go from 77 to 94.
00:34:08.080 Now, I don't know if it's ever been done,
00:34:11.120 but that's a really big ask, right?
00:34:14.180 So I thought that is sufficiently impossible.
00:34:17.560 If that happens, I'm going to say, you know,
00:34:21.440 maybe there is something here.
00:34:23.500 So I visualized the exact mailer,
00:34:27.920 assuming it would be similar to the one before,
00:34:30.320 it turned out it was,
00:34:31.680 And I just imagined seeing a 94 in that percentile thing.
00:34:38.000 But I did take some practice tests just on my own because that was okay.
00:34:42.340 I didn't have a tutor or anything.
00:34:43.940 I was just taking the practice tests.
00:34:46.080 And every time I took a practice test, I scored high 70s percentile just like the first time.
00:34:54.520 and so I'd take another one
00:34:56.600 and about the same
00:34:58.400 and every one
00:35:00.000 right in that zone
00:35:02.300 and I'd take it in the morning
00:35:04.700 I'd take it with coffee
00:35:05.920 I'd take it under every condition
00:35:08.760 you know, a bunch of practice tests
00:35:11.320 and every time
00:35:13.100 it was high 70s
00:35:15.240 so it wasn't looking good for Scott
00:35:17.540 the day comes, I take the test
00:35:20.480 she takes the test
00:35:21.400 time goes by
00:35:23.700 and I go to the mailbox and there's the result.
00:35:28.400 I go back to my little apartment, my moldy little apartment
00:35:31.940 in the hate district of San Francisco, living there
00:35:35.820 by myself. A very sad place. And I opened up
00:35:39.760 the result and I looked for the little box where I knew
00:35:43.820 the percentile would be. And there was a number.
00:35:48.700 It was 94.
00:35:49.580 and I looked at it and I thought
00:35:53.200 I'm obviously looking at the wrong box
00:35:55.900 am I looking at like a code or something
00:35:58.280 is it a code, it actually says 94
00:36:01.820 and I looked at it and I thought
00:36:03.860 it can't actually be 94
00:36:06.700 like not literally 94
00:36:09.700 and I would look at it and I'd say
00:36:11.820 I think it is
00:36:13.720 and for hours, this actually happened
00:36:17.580 for hours, I would look at that
00:36:19.720 piece of paper and I would sit just all alone
00:36:21.640 in my little apartment in San Francisco
00:36:23.780 and I'd set it down next to me
00:36:25.820 and I would lean back and I'd
00:36:27.820 think, I'm not sure
00:36:29.740 that just happened.
00:36:31.740 And I'd have to pick it up and look at it again.
00:36:34.620 And I kept doing that
00:36:35.740 all night. I just kept picking it up and looking at it
00:36:37.720 and saying,
00:36:38.740 what have I
00:36:40.420 done?
00:36:44.480 So, I
00:36:45.660 ended up going to Berkeley and getting my
00:36:47.400 MBA. Almost an accident, really. It was based on a bet. Strangely enough. So it wasn't long after
00:36:56.940 that that I thought, what's the limit to this thing? Like, what else can it do? And is it really
00:37:05.180 doing anything or am I just imagining this? We'll get to that part. So I set myself a goal of getting
00:37:12.380 rich in the stock market. Now, remember, I had no money, so it would be hard to get rich in the
00:37:18.400 stock market. You know, I had maybe $1,000 that I could put into the stock market, and I didn't
00:37:24.160 even have an account. So one day, as I'm doing my affirmations, I wake up. I sat straight up in bed
00:37:31.900 in the middle of the night with this thought in my head to buy stock in Chrysler. Now, Chrysler
00:37:39.400 at the time, I'm not good on my years, but Chrysler at the time was bankrupt. So, you
00:37:47.120 know, they owed the government a bunch of money, and a lot of people were betting they
00:37:52.040 weren't coming back. So their stock was just, you know, right at the edge of oblivion. So
00:37:58.340 out of all the stocks in the world, how many stocks do you think there are? Say 10,000?
00:38:03.180 10,000 stocks maybe
00:38:05.500 I did zero research
00:38:08.740 woke up, sat up and thought
00:38:12.380 buy Chrysler
00:38:13.920 for no reason
00:38:16.940 hadn't read an article about it, nothing
00:38:20.280 and so I tried to open an account with Charles Schwab
00:38:24.000 and my paperwork got lost and it took too long
00:38:26.780 and in the time it took me to try to open up an account
00:38:30.100 using snail mail and stuff getting lost
00:38:33.760 The stock had gone up, I don't know, a bunch, 20%, let's say.
00:38:37.300 I forget the exact number.
00:38:39.200 And so by the time I got my account opened, it had already gone up a lot.
00:38:43.220 And I thought, ah, it was a good idea, but I just missed it.
00:38:48.400 So I didn't buy it because it had already gone up.
00:38:51.800 And then it kept going up.
00:38:54.420 And those of you who are old enough to remember,
00:38:58.120 what was the best stock of that entire year?
00:39:01.700 out of 10,000
00:39:04.200 Chrysler
00:39:05.980 it was like the number one
00:39:08.400 story stock
00:39:09.660 out of 10,000 stocks
00:39:12.260 and I picked it randomly
00:39:14.400 or was it random
00:39:16.280 maybe there was something
00:39:18.200 floating around in my head that just
00:39:19.680 came together
00:39:21.220 I don't know, but I didn't get it
00:39:23.660 I didn't get rich off it, so I thought well I'll try it again
00:39:25.980 so I thought to myself
00:39:28.120 alright, I'm just going to do the same process
00:39:30.200 except now I have my account open.
00:39:33.400 And one day I picked up a newspaper and I flipped through it
00:39:36.820 and there was an article about this software company called Ask, A-S-K.
00:39:41.940 I don't know what happened to them.
00:39:43.540 But at the time, it was sort of a hot new technology looking thing
00:39:47.740 back when, you know, that was new.
00:39:52.080 And, oh, it became AskGUs, maybe, I don't know.
00:39:56.480 and no, it was Ask Computer
00:39:59.340 so it's a different company than Ask Jeeves
00:40:01.420 so it was an
00:40:03.480 Ask Software company
00:40:04.820 I forget the details, but anyway, the point is
00:40:07.060 I didn't know anything about this company
00:40:08.980 and I just thought, I'm going to buy this
00:40:11.400 with no
00:40:13.040 anything, no research
00:40:15.000 I buy this stock
00:40:16.460 it goes up, I don't know, 10%
00:40:19.320 in a week, and I think, I'm a freaking genius
00:40:21.480 look at this, twice in a row
00:40:23.420 I picked a good stock
00:40:24.340 so I sold that stock
00:40:26.320 pocketed it a quick 10%. I think I made, probably I netted
00:40:31.440 $100 in a month, not in a month, in like
00:40:35.060 just a week. And I'm thinking to myself,
00:40:39.380 hey, I think I have something here. I've got a tiger by the tail.
00:40:43.840 I just made $100 without doing
00:40:47.380 anything remotely like work in a week.
00:40:51.740 I mean, hey.
00:40:52.980 the second part of the story is that
00:40:56.940 that stock didn't stop going up when I sold it
00:41:00.260 it went to the moon
00:41:02.360 and it was again one of the storied stocks of the year
00:41:07.720 it wasn't just the stock
00:41:09.560 it was like a story that people would write about
00:41:12.940 what's up with the stock just going to the moon
00:41:15.040 so both times I didn't trust
00:41:18.300 to stick with the thing that
00:41:20.980 I was being guided toward
00:41:23.320 or so it felt
00:41:24.780 or it wasn't an illusion
00:41:26.360 so
00:41:29.200 I thought to myself
00:41:31.600 let me try something else
00:41:33.500 it wasn't long after that
00:41:36.040 that I tried
00:41:36.820 I, Scott Adams, will be
00:41:39.700 a famous cartoonist
00:41:41.480 and that's actually the form of it
00:41:44.220 I'll teach you in a moment
00:41:45.680 and I became a famous
00:41:48.360 cartoonist
00:41:49.080 And then I did, I, Scott Adams, will become a number one New York Times best-selling author.
00:41:57.280 And then I did.
00:41:59.620 And there was also a time that I lost my ability to speak.
00:42:07.040 Most of you know the story.
00:42:08.780 So for about three and a half years, I couldn't speak properly because of a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which was incurable.
00:42:16.860 An incurable problem.
00:42:19.980 But do you hear me?
00:42:22.120 So obviously it wasn't so incurable, was it?
00:42:25.420 Long story short, I searched the world and found a guy who had an experimental, fairly newish surgery and fixed it.
00:42:33.740 But that was the subject of my silent affirmations that I would someday speak perfectly.
00:42:41.580 Now, of course I don't speak perfectly, so affirmations are sort of directional.
00:42:46.120 Let's, let me show you what the process is. Then I'll tell you the fun part is, is there anything to it? Or is it just complete BS? And you can decide.
00:43:03.120 Alright, the how of it is easy. You just write a repeat that thing that you want and use this form.
00:43:10.120 form, I
00:43:12.000 put your name in there, Scott Adams will be a
00:43:14.080 syndicated cartoonist
00:43:15.360 you could say you'd be wealthy, you could
00:43:18.120 say you'll find love, you
00:43:20.080 could say you'll be healthy, you could say
00:43:22.100 you'll move
00:43:24.160 someplace, you'll
00:43:25.380 start a family, whatever it is
00:43:27.480 if you're too specific
00:43:30.220 and you'll recognize
00:43:31.920 this for me talking about systems
00:43:33.780 versus goals
00:43:35.700 you don't want to be too specific
00:43:37.600 because you don't want to say for
00:43:39.920 example, I want that specific promotion. Because what if there's a better one? You know, you might
00:43:48.120 get the thing that you're affirming, but maybe there was something better that popped up in the
00:43:52.500 meantime. So try to keep your affirmations, you know, fairly general. Now, an exception would be
00:43:59.840 there's nothing better than being a syndicated cartoonist if you're a cartoonist. You know,
00:44:07.020 if you're going to be a cartoonist, this would be the best one of the types of cartoonists you
00:44:12.740 could be. So shooting for the top is not so bad because what if I'd gotten close? Well, maybe I
00:44:20.540 still could have made a little money or whatever, but there's nothing better in the world of
00:44:25.260 cartooning than being a syndicated cartoonist. So in that case, I could be kind of specific.
00:44:30.080 If you're trying to win an Oscar or something, yeah, go ahead. I don't think those are terribly
00:44:36.940 important, but if you want to. So people ask me, you know, does it matter where I write it? Can I
00:44:45.000 type it? Can I chant it? Can I sing it? None of that matters. It's only about focusing on the
00:44:51.400 thing that you want and visualizing it. It's also very important to visualize. If you don't visualize
00:44:57.560 it, you're not putting the most active part of your brain into the game. Now, here's the part
00:45:04.160 where you should be saying to yourself
00:45:05.600 why would this work
00:45:08.040 based on your complete
00:45:10.260 lack of science and logic
00:45:12.360 or anything that would connect
00:45:14.180 this to the real world
00:45:15.260 why would chanting or writing something
00:45:18.360 down have any effect
00:45:19.700 on the real world
00:45:21.180 that's the fun part
00:45:22.800 does it
00:45:24.300 here are some ideas
00:45:28.060 and I'll let you decide
00:45:30.280 which one you like the best
00:45:31.520 one of the possibilities is that
00:45:33.840 somehow these affirmations change the basic nature of reality itself. Can we agree it's not
00:45:39.820 that one? Can we just stipulate? We don't have to talk about it too much. Because, you know,
00:45:47.160 I may have a different view of reality than you do. My view is that we don't have access to it.
00:45:52.600 There's got to be some base reality. But we have, we live in our own filters. You know,
00:45:58.180 most of you know that's my view. So I don't see a happening, you know, I don't see reality
00:46:03.320 changing. I see maybe our filter changing. That's the part we can see and deal with.
00:46:08.520 But you probably don't think reality changes because you wrote something down. So I think
00:46:12.720 we'll agree it's not that one, okay? The other one could be selective memory. Maybe it doesn't
00:46:18.820 work at all. What if I'm just good at stuff, which explains why I had some success, and
00:46:25.980 what if I just forgot the ones that didn't work. Now, those of you who read this book know that I
00:46:34.420 have many, many failures. In fact, you know, 10 to 1. 10 to 1 more failures than successes.
00:46:42.480 So how do I explain that I'm acting like this works when 10 to 1 it didn't? That's what you're
00:46:50.980 thinking, right? Well, here's the thing. I didn't use affirmations on almost any of those things.
00:46:58.860 I only used it on the ones that worked. Now, you're going to have to take my word for that,
00:47:07.520 but there's a reason for that, and I'll get to that. So hold on, there's a reason why I only
00:47:13.300 did it on the ones that worked. So another possibility is that when you're doing affirmations
00:47:18.260 is you're tuning your brain.
00:47:20.380 There was a study on luck by this guy, Dr. Weissman,
00:47:24.540 and he wanted to see if people had luck.
00:47:27.200 You know, is luck a real thing?
00:47:29.160 Now, most of you are ahead of me, right?
00:47:31.040 Luck is not a real thing.
00:47:33.140 Everybody's going to have the same luck
00:47:34.520 if you're really controlling the experiment.
00:47:37.320 And indeed, that's what he found.
00:47:38.600 Everybody has exactly the same luck.
00:47:40.280 But he did this experiment that was very revealing.
00:47:44.140 He had people divide themselves into groups
00:47:46.280 groups that considered themselves lucky, and groups that considered themselves not lucky.
00:47:52.120 And he gave them all the same newspaper, and he said, look through the newspaper and count up the number of photographs.
00:47:58.160 Now, the people who considered themselves unlucky counted them up, and on average, they got the right number that was 42.
00:48:06.580 And it took them several minutes to complete the task.
00:48:09.600 the people who considered themselves lucky
00:48:13.380 even though really nobody was any luckier than anybody else
00:48:16.620 but they considered themselves lucky
00:48:18.200 they also got the right number on average, 42 photographs
00:48:22.160 but they were done in seconds
00:48:24.040 whereas the people who thought they were unlucky
00:48:27.300 it took them minutes
00:48:29.040 the difference was that on all the newspapers for both groups
00:48:33.500 and the second page in big writing
00:48:35.980 and said, stop counting the photographs, there are 42.
00:48:41.420 The people who consider themselves unlucky
00:48:44.080 didn't see the time saver
00:48:47.560 because they were looking for photographs. They didn't expect anything
00:48:52.140 to be there except what they were looking for. The people who
00:48:56.180 consider themselves lucky are always looking for luck.
00:49:00.680 So what he found is that if you open your mind
00:49:04.200 to the possibility that you could get lucky,
00:49:07.260 you actually will notice things that will make you appear lucky.
00:49:11.480 And if you ask people about their success stories,
00:49:15.640 drill down a little bit.
00:49:16.800 If you know anybody who got successful in an out-sized way,
00:49:20.660 you're going to find this point where they noticed something
00:49:24.120 or there seemed to be some kind of a luck or coincidence.
00:49:28.120 But if you drill down, maybe they were just tuning themselves to notice it.
00:49:31.840 You know, maybe they just set their filters and it wasn't luck at all.
00:49:39.000 They just set their filters and there it was.
00:49:43.200 Reticular activation is a big word.
00:49:45.460 I saw that in a corporate training program once.
00:49:50.220 And it's just the idea that you're familiar with the fact that if somebody calls your name in a crowded room,
00:49:56.100 you can hear it easily, even if there's a lot of background noise.
00:49:59.620 So if you're in a crowded room, you'll hear,
00:50:01.200 Scott, and you'll be like, what the heck?
00:50:06.140 Why is the one word that I can hear clearly in that mumbling was my own name?
00:50:12.780 And that's because your brain tunes for things that are important to you.
00:50:17.760 So if you use affirmations, you're really tuning into a specific objective.
00:50:22.340 In my case, in cartooning, I noticed something on television one day
00:50:27.400 that led me down a trail to find a cartoonist
00:50:30.380 who gave me the advice that turned me into a cartoonist.
00:50:34.240 So I actually had to notice something
00:50:36.360 that maybe I wouldn't have noticed
00:50:39.020 if I hadn't been doing affirmations at the time.
00:50:42.480 Here's another possibility, and a strong one,
00:50:44.960 that you're not really causing something to happen,
00:50:48.600 but rather you're finding out the hard way
00:50:51.120 what things you're committed to.
00:50:53.640 And you're probably committed to things
00:50:55.520 that on some subconscious level
00:50:57.500 you think you can do.
00:50:59.700 You think you can pull it off.
00:51:01.660 So I think we have this situation
00:51:03.760 this is just a hypothesis
00:51:05.980 that you might have a rational thought
00:51:09.360 about what you can pull off in life
00:51:11.220 and how well you can do
00:51:12.760 but you also have an irrational opinion of yourself
00:51:16.000 and the two of them are just always there.
00:51:18.160 There's your rational one saying
00:51:19.580 I don't know if you can do that.
00:51:21.760 Not everybody gets away with that.
00:51:23.820 That looks pretty hard.
00:51:24.640 but you might also have an irrational part
00:51:27.400 that says, I got this
00:51:29.160 I got this
00:51:30.760 and so the hypothesis is
00:51:32.980 that if you can put in the time
00:51:34.840 to write down that objective
00:51:36.520 you know, I, Scott Adams or
00:51:38.360 fill in your name, we'll do this
00:51:41.080 and you actually could do that
00:51:42.760 15 times a day for, I don't know, a few months
00:51:45.220 that means
00:51:46.900 that there's some part of you
00:51:49.100 probably your subconscious
00:51:51.040 if there is such a thing
00:51:52.320 that thinks you can pull it off
00:51:54.620 because otherwise it's not going to let you do it.
00:51:57.280 Remember I told you that there were all those things I failed at
00:51:59.860 that you would think,
00:52:02.020 oh, why wouldn't you want those to be more successful?
00:52:05.820 I, of course, wanted everything I've been involved with to be successful.
00:52:09.780 But there are some things that I wanted with a burning desire,
00:52:15.860 if you know what I mean.
00:52:17.580 There are some things I just wanted to work,
00:52:20.360 like everybody wants everything to work.
00:52:22.200 and sometimes I would want those things to work a lot
00:52:25.380 but that extra commitment
00:52:27.920 of writing down 15 times a day
00:52:30.600 I've only done that of those things
00:52:33.740 that had the extra meaning to me I guess
00:52:37.300 and those were the things that worked out
00:52:39.780 so it could be that this is a backwards correlation
00:52:43.580 it could be the fact that you're even willing to write it down
00:52:46.500 15 times a day is simply telling you something
00:52:49.480 about yourself and that's good
00:52:51.700 Maybe that's good by itself.
00:52:54.460 And then the more fun possibility is that
00:52:57.340 affirmations is part of the human interface
00:53:01.640 for programming your filters on reality.
00:53:04.560 Now, if you're programming your filters,
00:53:06.700 that doesn't mean you have to program base reality.
00:53:10.800 You're just programming the way you see it.
00:53:13.260 So could it be that the only thing that happened in my stories
00:53:17.060 is that I programmed my filter
00:53:20.900 to believe these things happened to me?
00:53:25.040 Maybe.
00:53:26.020 Or did I program my filter to simply make opportunities
00:53:29.740 more presentable?
00:53:33.300 More, not presentable, but more opportunities present themselves to me.
00:53:37.360 Did I do something somehow with the affirmations?
00:53:39.580 Well, here's the fun part.
00:53:42.400 It's completely unknowable.
00:53:45.020 I don't know.
00:53:46.640 But here's my pitch to you.
00:53:50.900 If you looked at this and you said to yourself, you know, this is probably nothing.
00:53:57.420 Doesn't look like it has any more science than horoscopes, and it doesn't.
00:54:02.260 It has no more science than your horoscope.
00:54:06.300 But yet, there's something compelling about it.
00:54:10.400 And if there were anything to it, you might say to yourself, wow.
00:54:16.340 Because if there's anything to this, it's a big, big deal.
00:54:20.900 and so I would pitch it to you this way
00:54:25.060 doesn't cost you anything to try it
00:54:29.380 and if it works
00:54:32.460 could change the world
00:54:34.400 that's my pitch, it worked on me
00:54:39.140 if it doesn't work on you, well maybe you have more
00:54:42.820 more control than I do or better priorities
00:54:47.260 or something, but that's my pitch
00:54:51.620 I will not tell you that I believe in magic.
00:54:54.040 I don't.
00:54:54.920 I'm not going to tell you it's going to work for you.
00:54:58.000 Clearly there are people it won't work for.
00:55:00.560 But if you're going to play the odds,
00:55:05.220 focusing probably has benefits.
00:55:08.280 If I were to tell you where I would break down
00:55:13.780 what parts of this are probably true
00:55:17.880 versus less likely to be true,
00:55:20.020 I would say, you know, there's no chance it's changing base reality.
00:55:24.560 There might be some selective memory, but I don't think that's the main thing.
00:55:28.900 Definitely the brain tuning is the thing.
00:55:31.980 If I had to bet, that would be the most active part.
00:55:34.780 And I definitely think there's something about finding out what you're willing to work hard for.
00:55:39.760 And the affirmations are like a practice way to find out if you're willing to work hard for it.
00:55:45.100 But I also think there's something to the fact that, in some ways, it's programming your filter on reality, in some productive way.
00:55:56.100 Now, since we don't know what base reality is, we're only dealing with this weird symbolic level where we think we're in the same reality but we're not.
00:56:05.100 We already talked about the fact that everybody's walking around in their own bubble reality.
00:56:09.100 You've got your own religion, you think that the other political party is crazy, they think you're crazy.
00:56:14.100 you're crazy. So we're all in our own little bubbles. Could it be that there's a way to steer
00:56:21.720 your little bubble? Because keep in mind, if we're all in little bubbles, and you can see it for
00:56:26.660 yourself, I mean, people are living full lives within a reality that you don't even recognize.
00:56:33.180 They believe, you know, mystical things according to you. They're wrong about this. They can't tell
00:56:39.580 if they're murdering or what.
00:56:42.920 I don't want to get into any heavy topics.
00:56:46.420 But we're in very different worlds all the time.
00:56:51.200 And once you realize you're in different worlds,
00:56:53.500 then you know that those worlds are at least a little bit subjective.
00:56:57.280 And if you could change just the way you view your world from inside your bubble,
00:57:02.960 you don't even have to get out of the bubble as long as you can redecorate.
00:57:06.980 and that's what affirmations might help you do. I guess you'll find out if you try.
00:57:16.020 Love it. Love it. Love it. So we're all going to redecorate our bubbles. And so many of you
00:57:22.740 put in the chat what your affirmations are. Some of you are working on them and they also will
00:57:28.100 develop over the day. Like if you're thinking about it, things will come into your head and
00:57:33.040 then you can kind of fine tune it so we only have a couple of seconds oh and did you change
00:57:37.340 oh what do you mean are you you look amish what the hell uh i'm so jealous you look nice i know
00:57:48.020 we have 30 seconds okay so owen um why don't you just take us out on the affirmations and then
00:57:54.300 we're gonna end the show all right well i mean i i think it's a very interesting concept i have
00:57:59.440 played with it in the past but really never seriously like i've done it a couple times
00:58:02.880 and honestly i can't even remember what i did or if it worked um but i it's fascinating to me and
00:58:08.560 i do think they're the reticular activation piece is probably a big part of it that it um you know
00:58:16.480 focuses your mind and focuses your actions and i've talked about this in the past with with
00:58:21.280 like the secret the book that talked about affirmations and it you know what i what i
00:58:26.080 hated about it was it kind of presented a little bit like what scott just said which is all you
00:58:31.440 have to do is write it down and sit back and wait for it to happen and so you can just say you know
00:58:36.000 like i'm gonna get a million dollars in the mail and then it's just gonna show up and you don't
00:58:40.800 have to do anything and that to me i i find that hard to believe you know i mean maybe i don't know
00:58:45.840 if we really are in a simulation i suppose anything's possible but if i start from the
00:58:51.040 frame that we are actually in some kind of reality then i tend to think what's happening is that
00:58:58.320 you know you you focus your mind in a way where if you keep writing something down 15 times every
00:59:04.160 day then that's focusing your brain on that frame just like the red car thing you know if you start
00:59:10.080 thinking about red cars you see a bunch of red cars on the road all of a sudden you didn't see
00:59:13.440 them before it's not that there are actually more red cars you just notice them and so you
00:59:17.840 you may notice opportunities. You may notice things that, you know, you didn't notice before
00:59:22.580 and you're like, oh, well, there's a way that I could do that thing that I was trying to do.
00:59:26.780 And so you start taking action on it and you start moving in that direction. And so if you
00:59:32.200 hadn't done the affirmations, you might've just never noticed that thing or never noticed that
00:59:36.760 opportunity or never taken that action. And so my suggestion would be to use that kind of frame
00:59:42.660 in terms of, I'm going to focus on this thing and I'm going to believe that it's going to happen to
00:59:47.280 me and I'm going to believe it's possible and I'm going to believe that it's going to happen.
00:59:51.140 And then, you know, you can, I mean, if you want, you can say, let the universe open it up for you
00:59:55.580 and think about it that way. But don't just sit back and say, no, I'm not going to even lift a
00:59:59.680 finger to do it. Yeah. No, you guys, that's true. So, you know, try it, you guys, even like what
01:00:06.880 Scott said in the beginning, um, try something just really small, you know, like start with a
01:00:13.720 small affirmation. Um, and you know, it's all the cliches, what you think about, you bring about,
01:00:19.260 you know, what you focus on. And by the way, if you're focusing on something and you're thinking
01:00:22.920 about it negatively, you're going to get negative back. So when you are thinking about something,
01:00:28.680 really try, you know, to tell yourself, let me, let me put either a positive spin on it. Let me
01:00:33.340 reframe it, or let me just think about something else altogether, because the affirmation, I guess,
01:00:39.440 is the goal, but don't forget, you still need to put your systems in place to hit the goal.
01:00:43.720 so marcella anything real quick you want to add know that that it's a good system to affirm
01:00:51.400 positive things happening to you i mean even if uh you might not believe in it it still puts a
01:00:57.640 positive spin to you i actually have done it i i studied neville goddard uh living in the end
01:01:05.640 assuming the feeling fulfilled and it's worked for me like i literally have gotten calls out of
01:01:11.400 nowhere like hey we need you now and i'm like whoa i never applied for this they're like we don't
01:01:17.640 care and i'm like oh i literally got in checks in the mail from certain attorneys that i refer
01:01:25.080 things to is like here's 10 000 here's 20 000. i'm like what you know so it's it's actually
01:01:32.040 happened to me but um i may just be lucky so and it doesn't cost you anything to try it like scott
01:01:39.080 said but it might cost you not to try it so but i would i would also just say like after everything
01:01:43.720 i just said about you know do the work you know have it be kind of based in a feasible reality
01:01:50.440 way of it happening a lot of the examples scott gave were these impossible things and he did
01:01:55.640 present several of them where he didn't really do anything to other than the affirmation so give it
01:02:02.040 a try i mean i i don't think i know how this all works um and if you do just say you know i'm gonna
01:02:08.120 going to get a million dollar check in the mail or whatever i i don't know maybe it'll happen i'd
01:02:11.780 love to hear your story if it's after tax you guys like we found uh we found a uncle of yours
01:02:18.920 in italy erica that's sending you a billion dollars i mean it could happen i've seen it
01:02:26.240 that might be too much money for me a billion but yes uh fine we'll share it we'll share it
01:02:31.520 you guys let's all do this we have to run i have to run i have a haircut appointment i get my
01:02:36.160 haircut like twice a year and today's a day. Um, so listen, why don't we all do this? And if you
01:02:41.780 want to be open about it, be open about it. If not, not, but why don't we on today's post on X
01:02:47.160 and let's put one on locals. If you want it, let's all try like a really simple affirmation,
01:02:52.560 meaning I'm going to get a million dollar check in the mail. I mean, it doesn't have to be that
01:02:57.400 exactly, but yes, haircut today. So let's all just do this for 30 days. Okay. You write your
01:03:05.580 affirmation 15 times. Maybe that's like the first thing you do in the morning or you do it when
01:03:10.060 you're sipping coffee with us. Let's all pick an affirmation, write it 15 times. And then in 30
01:03:17.300 days, so exactly one month from now, somebody write this down for me to remind me, please,
01:03:21.480 because I can't write it down right now. We'll revisit it and see how everyone's doing with
01:03:25.760 their affirmation. I'll put mine out there too later today when I get back. So I mean,
01:03:30.640 if you want to try as like a group activity, let's do it. All right, guys, love you guys so
01:03:35.940 much. Owen and Marcella, thank you so much. I loved having that big chunk of Scott today and,
01:03:41.400 um, metal seer. I will miss you also for the next 23 hours. Thank you for missing me every day.
01:03:47.580 Um, as always a, uh, uh, closing, thank you to Scott and Shelly for allowing the Scott Adams
01:03:54.180 school to go on. And thank you to every single one of you that come here every day, the way you
01:03:58.020 show up it means everything to all of us that we all show up here for scott and um let's have a
01:04:05.900 closing sip to our beloved scott i can't do an akira song you guys today but tomorrow we'll make
01:04:10.560 up for it okay all right guys go out there be useful pick an affirmation we're gonna write it
01:04:15.300 every day to scott to scott just reminder seven months today that scott left us so
01:04:22.540 oh it is today yep okay guys get out there and be useful i can someone send me a message about
01:04:29.220 what i want to do to do this later thank you i'm sorry i have to run out the door bye guys
01:04:34.400 love you thank you thank you thank you
01:04:36.440 bye you guys just waiting for you guys to all say goodbye so i have to cut you off
01:04:46.260 love yuns
01:04:52.540 Thank you.