https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nkoXslz\_pI

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 if you can expose someone to a stimuli
and get a consistent outcome a lot of marketers and sales people like to
talk about the internal thoughts that someone's had like first they need
awareness and then they need blah blah and then so they're basically
just make up they reverse engineer fictitious steps of someone's mental
thought process when they have no evidence to support what someone's
thinking at all and so i don't find it useful because it's not useful
like what are the things that are useful these are the things that are
observable that we can drive action towards that that we create an
outcome and then we have a feedback loop and so if we have those things
then we can move the variables and get closer to where we're trying to
go and the feelings although i recognize that they exist they're not
helpful in trying to edit what our activities are i would say there are
days that i feel like less energized or things like that for sure not
about like the big picture of like i don't believe that this cause is
not worthy but i do think a lot of people have that too where they're
like what i'm doing is meaningless right and then i get into i think
everything's

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 meaningless and then we can just create
whatever meaning you know we choose to because if we don't believe in a
capital m meaning which a lot of people disagree with that's fine but if
you don't believe in a capital end meaning i think that's very freeing
because then you can create little meaning for whatever you want and so
if you believe you can then choose to architect your own life in
whatever ways that you deem meaningful and make the activities you do
aligned with that meaning the difference between capital m meaning and
little meaning and this is kind of like the basis of nihilism which
people have like a very negative viewpoint around which i'm not entirely
sure about why but like capitalism meaning means that like this is the
meaning of life period like for everyone this is the meaning of life
whereas if we say that there is no single agreed upon meaning of life
and then people say well then that is your big meaning of life and i'm
like yes you're right i believe that there is no meaning that is the
thing that i that i believe and they're like well then that is the
capital then sure that's my capital meaning is that there is no meaning
what's the implication of that it means now that we have meaning making
machines in our brain and so we get to create and destroy meaning as we
see fit and so if

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 we choose an activity and we deem that
goal meaningful because we think it's more interesting or it energizes
us then we can ascribe meaning to that and do more of it and what's nice
about not having capital m meaning is that that can shift right that
might be good for a season and then it can shift i will say that the
downside of not having capital meaning which i consider to be religion
off the shelf is that it's more difficult because you have no one who's
saying here's the big box of rules you can read it and then that way you
don't have to make the decisions about it but i think it's more
difficult but ultimately more rewarding if you have reasoning behind why
you believe what you believe because then you have to independently come
up with your own conclusions about those things it also makes it
malleable so that if you get new data or new evidence then you can
change your mind which a lot of people again have difficulty with but
like if you change the information then it would make sense that if it
materially changes the outcome that you the way that you believe about
something should change and i think a lot of people identify with their
beliefs as a part of themselves rather than as what i prefer to call
them which is assumptions because they work the same

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 way what's the difference in belief and
assumption not a lot right the only difference is just what we call the
word and so assumptions are based on things that we've observed and then
we assume something as a result and so i would say that beliefs are just
assumptions and but when you call them that they become less tied to
your identity if you have an assumption you don't say you challenged my
assumption it's like well hey challenge my assumption oh that's great i
i was assuming this it must be this and then they become much more
flexible and then we don't tie our egos into them and i think ultimately
it serves more people better in the long run i feel passionately about
my viewpoint of the world mostly because i struggled and i was in so
much pain for such a long period of time i'm only sharing this despite
the fact that i get attacked for sharing this because there are people
who this does resonate with but when there is no required meaning then a
lot of language changes which is should must need have to like all of
these things no longer exist because there is no capital m meaning so i
don't should have to must need to anything and so a lot of the
expectations that we bury ourselves into

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 that weigh us down are just implied
shoulds have to's musts and so if all of those disappeared then in a lot
of ways it's very liberating and so for me in business it allows me to
take actions even though i know that i shouldn't or must not or other
people would judge me for not doing it the way that they thought i
should do it because there are no rules which is why that was the
preference to the book it's like there are no rules we can live our life
whatever way we want to live it and that's okay i read a youtube comment
the other day it's like hey you know you talk a lot about being sad and
like how have you been able to x y and z and i don't identify with being
a sad person i think i i have been sad in the past but i also don't
think that there's a problem with being sad and so i think that there's
just so much power in acceptance it's like so many people make
themselves miserable because they think that they shouldn't be who they
are and they shouldn't feel how they feel and so much of the medication
that gets prescribed right now is because someone's like oh i'm anxious
and why do we feel like someone shouldn't be anxious they are human why
do we feel

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 like we shouldn't feel sad we are human
why do we feel like we shouldn't feel frustrated or angry we are human
and so i think it's one of the most like interesting things or phenomena
where if you have a line which is the normal human existence and you
have points above the line and points below the line you have the median
right or the the middle point and people want to not feel the things
below the line and then we ascribe or label the things below the line as
bad and things above the line is good when all of it is and so i think
that if we just accept that and accept ourselves and accept the feelings
that we experience as things that we experience like rain and weather
and sunshine it's not like rain is bad not like sunshine's good it just
is not like happiness is good or happiness is bad or sadness is bad or
sadness is good we just label it that way and i think the labels create
more suffering than anything that we ever actually experience so when
you're sad do you try to not be sad no i actually don't think about it
much i think a lot of people spend a lot of time and effort trying to
figure out how they feel because they want to then judge or label
themselves as i'm doing well or not well like a lot

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 of effort goes into showing like how do
i feel about this i mean my follow-up question be like why do you care
why does it matter and that's why when you asked way long ago about like
how much do you think feelings matter i don't think they matter at all
like what would the case for feelings mattering be then why do you
believe they exist it's a good question and it gets really interesting
because it's like how i experience a feeling that i label in my head is
sadness is it the same way you experience the thing that you like it's
like seeing green and i see green and you see green what if all of our
greens are different right i mean it's it gets very interesting like
that but i think that i experienced something and if we were to just
measure it based on like brain activity and like heart rate i would say
that i become aroused in the literal sense uh from experiencing what i
would deem as emotions and so if we were to describe it or define the
term in that way i think i experience emotions and so i mean i'm fairly
confident i experience emotions if we were to try and measure it that
way then that's how i would say yes i do experience them but the
question is just like how important are they and then it would be like
for what if it's for accomplishment not very important for fitness not
very important you know if

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 if we're saying how important is
emotion for love which is another emotion right it becomes like
amorphous trying to go to amorphous but then you say okay well for
defining love by what i'm willing to endure to continue to keep
something then how important is it well it depends on how much i've
conditioned myself to accept this thing so like if i want to stay
married it's probably far more effective to condition someone to stay
married because that is the external consequence of a good marriage as
you stay together right i'm just saying like we're just purely measuring
from out from external circumstances and so i think trying to measure
and define things is what i actually geek out on and i really enjoy i
think most people get bored of tears when i talk about this stuff so i
don't talk about it much but that's the stuff that like um when when we
keep peeling back layers of like why do you think you're able to get out
of you know a difficult place in your life or why do you think you're
able to go through these things a lot of it is because i believe that i
will redefine terms and so we'll have some instance or something that i
should do and i will redefine it

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 or i'll say i i don't should i can just
accept it and that's why the biggest refrain that i have in my head for
like my own mental illness is just like and that's okay period like i
don't wanna go to that thing that's okay
