https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j536U19iTwk

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 the bigger the monster the greater the
hero the things that we go through work on us more than we work on them
and in this video what i want to break down is the things and how we
call the traumatic events that happen and how we view them can change
how they affect us and how they create us and shape us as people and i
was recently interviewed in a two-hour podcast with graham stefan if you
don't know who i am i'm alex ramosey i own acquisition.com we own a
portfolio company that is about 85 million a year and i have nothing to
sell you all right and so on this podcast probably the most shared and
retweeted and cut section is a section i'm about to show you um it was
where i got into it with one of the other the the interviewee or
interviewer of the podcast uh talking about trauma specifically we get
to some really deep stuff and i think that you get a lot of value from
it if you've never watched any of our videos welcome to mozi nation lots
of love and i'll see you guys in the next couple seconds would you
consider yourself emotional yeah i mean probably i think i have emotions
got it because a lot of the times at least in my experience like and and
what i've seen people that are nihilus it's easy to that's like an easy
out if something bad happens if something good happens

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 it's just like oh yeah that's fine
sweep it under the rug it's not it's not it matters anyways so bad
happens it's not like you actually deal with the process whatever you
know event or action occurred that make you felt that emotion if we
believe that we have to like why should we why should you feel that
emotion like why should we process a traumatic event like what does that
mean well i do believe that there are you know things in your brain
biologically that if they are deprived of something or there's like some
bad traumatic event or something like that will affect your biological
dramatic versus non-traumatic i mean i feel like the definition of the
word trauma would probably but what would be the line between like okay
and like let's let's give an example of something terrible actually not
because it's a podcast and people might hate on crap so let's just say
something bad happens that we describe as bad in this culture in another
culture that might not be bad it's trauma in this culture it's not
trauma in this culture so if the circumstance is the same why was it
traumatic circumstances weren't the same why not because the culture the
facts were the same will we describe the facts as changed which means
that we can choose to cause something trauma but wouldn't isn't it
doesn't it make sense

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 that people would be built up due to a
culture and environment 40 year old guy sleeps with a 15 year old girl
terrible rewind 200 years four-year-old guy sleeps with a 15-year-old
girl 100 normal how is it trauma now and not trauma that and mind you
like this is not my state i'm just i'm you have to pull an extreme
example if we're going to talk about trauma to illustrate the concept so
if it's traumatic in one instance and not traumatic in another then it
means that we can basically change the cultural narrative that we're
ascribing to our context and make it not traumatic that makes sense
which means it didn't matter which means the only thing that matters
that you chose to make it meaningful but let's say like like the the the
passing of a parent or like a 1100 or something like that if we think we
feel like we have a narrative that says if i don't mourn it means i
didn't care about them right that's a statement of belief i could say
that if i don't mourn about them it means i totally cared about them
like why does my morning have any indication of how much i cared they're
non-correlates right but it's just because we have like we have so many
of these belief statements that quote society are things that we inherit
but we just choose to say that this is how life is and so i

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 think it's just like monitoring what
those statements are and so like one of my favorite one of my favorite
sayings probably like if i had one thing on my tombstone it would be it
would be a permutation of a quote by orson scott card which is we
question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe and
those who never think to question that's a good club right yeah so it's
like we like oh of course i'm opening to question my beliefs it's like
what's trauma like when someone's like i was traumatized it's like were
you or do you just choose to label this trauma and then now you \[ \_\_
\] up the rest of your life because you call it trauma when 200 years
ago it was life and a thousand years ago having your parent killed in
front of you was just nature if you want to go biology and so we're just
like we just choose to create meaning around things and so like at the
end of the day like end to end end bottom bottom bottom root yeah all
our brains do is just create and destroy meaning and so we say this is a
threat this is not a threat we make like we need to reinforce this
behavior we don't need to reinforce this favor all through meaning and
so if you can control what you deem meaningful you can massively shift
the odds in your favor because you don't need to ascribe meaning to well
couldn't that be let's say like like 500 years ago you see like a parent
killed in front of you isn't that because all you have in your mind is
like food shelter water sure and now

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 that we have those things taken care of
our minds go to other places sure i just don't think it changes the
actual facts so it's like we have we there's there's stimulus response
right and so like we get to control the response we control the stimulus
was it um it's either seneca or epictetus who's like no one yells at a
rock right so it's like if you are the rock then like just it doesn't
matter right like you just like eventually like people just \[ \_\_ \]
off and just leave you alone and so like and if you if you see stimulus
of life that way in terms of like how you deem things or label things
traumatic or not dramatic or good or bad you know it's the same thing
i'm sure like the hate comments and whatnot is like if you deem the
comments of of the fans as meaningful then you will both care about them
being positive and you will care about them being negative but if
they're not meaningful at all to begin with then like i don't think you
can do either i think you just either have to participate in both sides
or you remove that is also a belief statement right so like maybe you
can so you know interesting thoughts so how did you transition from pro
assume i'm assuming you used to care a little bit more about beliefs and
stuff like that how did you transition from that to

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 now not caring and did you have to
completely change your mindset to where your automatic response to
things was just like what are these chains of emotions and like the
cultural constraints and stuff like that that are making me feel this
way yeah that did you just switch that light switch or do you still on
occasion catch yourself slipping right now i was like i just said that
as a belief right that's what i figured 100 yeah i mean i think you
systematically you hear like that's why the talking is so important like
what words are we using what do those words mean like you say drama like
define that what do you mean by that which is why like when you hear
really good writing that's academic like the first few pages will be
like we're going to talk about this and this is how we define this and
this is how we define this it's like we're putting constraints around
the words that we're using because they mean they equate to thoughts
they're just buckets right that we like say a word like trauma and like
it means something different to all three of us so it's like we have to
agree on the definition before we can talk about it that make sense um
and so no i had um so i i definitely made a conscious effort when i was
like 19 or 20 i became a born-again christian um the dunk the whole
thing was like oh my god life's amazing jesus is great and then i ended
up falling away from that

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 because i was like i don't know if this
is true and then i spent the next five years dedicated to apologetics
which is defense of faith of the christian faith so just learning the
arguments around like why christianity like is true right i ended up not
believing in it and i can give a variety of reasons but i'll give you
the simplest one hopefully i'm not insulting anyone this is just my
belief that i'm sharing which is a lot of one of the biggest one of the
strongest arguments for christianity against other world religions is
that other world religions say like if you go to the good place so if
you do a good job you go to the good place right and fundamentally
that's it's a hard paradigm because it means like at what point are you
51 good versus 49 should have just held one more door open and i would
have gone to the good place forever not even talking about like finite
circumstances and creating infinite outcomes but like whatever and so if
you can draw that line then it makes it it kind of makes it ridiculous
right it like kind of breaks down on the like be a good person system
and so that's all world views with the exception of buddhism and
christianity with christianity they're like you don't have to be good
you just have to have faith if you have faith in jesus then you go to
the good place right and so the the reason that for me

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 fundamentally i didn't believe in that
was because you actually create another false binary which is belief or
not belief when in reality is to what extent you believe it's how hard
you believe and again you create another 50 line which is shy i believe
one percent more and then i would go into the good place forever so
anyways the point is is that i i studied apologetics for a long period
of time and then i was really sad and i was just like \[ \_\_ \] sad i
was like \[ \_\_ \] happiness i was like i'm just going to do stuff that
i think is cool and that was like that was like the first break in the
chain for me um my slogan myself was actually just about happiness and
that was wildly fraying because i stopped judging myself for not being
happy and then i was just like oh i'm like i am unhappy i'm like cool
whatever i just kept going and all of a sudden just like stop mattering
to me like i don't think about it i genuinely i don't think like does
this make me happy does not like i don't think about it you just do what
you want to do in the moment do whatever you're doing and it's not like
it's like all short-term like all pleasure-seeking whatever like i still
have a long-term perspective of like this is what i want to build yeah
like i want to write these books i want to build these courses i want to
do this stuff but it's like those are things that i enjoy so that's what
i that's what i do i love it it's great all right

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 i mean i had questions but now i know
the answers to them just based off here i'm just listening i'd rather
just listen and not say i know it's like i don't want to mess it up but
then i created a belief that now i'm going to mess it up oh god why does
it matter man yeah even matter that i meant to begin with doesn't it and
you can't mess it up and then the comments are going to be great no
they're not putting them in the comments why does that matter i know
it's i mean i know it's crazy stuff but like i think that like if you
want to you can't do what 99 of people are doing if you want to be in
the one percent yeah fundamentally and so like you have to have like
what i would consider like maybe uncomfortable conversations just be
like that's okay like cool like i just i'm gonna do my thing and then
they're like and the thing is a lot of times if you just even just make
your statements of like this is how i believe like people feel like
you're attacking them especially if you articulate it well because
they're like why i don't i'm like cool like i don't get like do whatever
you want like it's all good to me and so which is why i don't talk about
it as much publicly how about this yeah what bothers you there's got to
be something out there that like i also haven't wasted a lot of time
it's the only thing i don't have a lot of this may seem like a silly
question

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 but if you go to a restaurant and you
order something let's say you order a steak and you order it medium well
and it comes back medium rare do you say something not worth his time no
i i don't actually you don't no why would i i don't care but at the same
time i was like well a lot of people would be anxious to say something
and i figured you probably wouldn't care about those emotions right i
wouldn't even have an emotion first i mean that's such a no yeah yeah i
mean maybe like like like we have a big ad campaign that's supposed to
go out and like i get all the creatives today before and it's supposed
to launch would that annoy me i'd be like yes but let's fix it you know
like this is bad we can't run this let's try again you know and in the
end it won't matter because we're all going to die and this money is
going to go back to the game i'll give you this one analogy this might
be a good wrap up so this is like my mental analogy that i make sense to
me which is like if if if life were a game and all of us are given a
token to like enter like a casino because we're in vegas right so we're
all getting you know a token we enter the casino we sit down at the
table to play poker right everybody's playing everybody's got cards and
all you know we're dealt cards everybody's dealt different cards and we
got to play the hand we're done and depending on our level of skill we
amass

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 more and more chips throughout the
game and um at the end of the game the difference between the real world
and the casino in the game of life in the real world you just you go and
you can cash out your chips and you walk out with money and there you go
there's your day but i feel like in the casino of life you get tapped on
the shoulder by the grim reaper he says your time's up and then all your
chips get pushed right back to the middle of the table and then you
leave the casino empty-handed because it was a fake game with fake rules
that didn't matter and so like we accumulate these chips that i'm just
gonna push back in the middle again that other people are gonna play on
and like the reason that that analogy became real for me is like i
bought this piece of land in austin and i was like that's neat and then
i was like how many people have owned this piece of land it's like the
guy you know the guy before me owned it and the guy before him owned it
the guy before him doing it and i was like and they were like this is
mine and they die or they sell it and someone was like this is mine it's
like they're just chips that just get played with and they just get
amassed and then they get redistributed it just doesn't matter like
death taxes everybody 100 so like everyone's like estate planning it's
like dude 500 generations from now a your your offspring are you know
500 to the you know 0.5 or you know one half

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 to the 500th power of like deluded
they're basically just humans at that point so if if your wealth somehow
is a big enough that it can be diluted that that much and lasts that
long the people who own it are just humans so like they're so they're
just as close to me as you are you know it doesn't matter um and then
the alternative is the people that i'm giving this to are just the ones
that i care about are the immediate family but then when people get
resources that they didn't learn how to use or manage then it destroys
them because it's too much potential energy they can't handle it and so
it's like it's really for nothing and so like if you want you can build
something that you think is cool but like at the end of the day like
we're just going to cash the chips in so anyways alex's world views but
it's a great analogy just start to think about this one yeah i don't
have to rewatch this but you know you know what's funny i was actually
thinking i would yeah i remember listening to podcasts this segment i
would actually listen to this yeah money income no earth \[Laughter\]
investing indexes savings accounts what credit cards

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 that's good geez thank you so much
thank you alex for coming on this has been an incredible podcast yeah i
think so i appreciate i appreciate you having me and to the audience
like i know that a lot of the stuff that i say can be uh triggering and
i know that at different points in my life if i had heard someone say
what i'm saying in the position that i am i would be offended um and i
want to make it clear that it's not my intention to do that um at all
it's just me sharing beliefs that as i understand the world and that
there's no way projection on you or how you see the world etc it's just
this is how i see the world and these are beliefs that served me well
that helped me overcome a lot of things that i thought mattered you
thought there we go that was it that should be our intro yeah that could
be our intro on that's a good segment to put right there in the
beginning because it's going to catch people's day where they were like
what what's offensive what am i going to disagree with perfect let's do
that thank you so much thanks for coming on man it was nice meeting you
too thank you good luck on your tinder date thank you thank you should
grow the stash out by that you think so i mean if you want to see that's
why i

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 shaved it last night by the way oh
yeah
