Say goodbye to not feeling good enough with my Shamelessness course

Every now and then we wake up to an undeniable truth that changes everything we thought we knew! I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced a great number of these epiphanies over the years, and in this podcast episode I share some of the most powerful ones to hit me yet.

Dan’s Top Resources

Books

Dan has 3 bestselling non-fiction books available in both written and audio form:

• The Naked Truth, his latest release, shows you how radical honesty builds self-confidence and relationships
• Nothing to Lose explores how to build confidence from the inside by correcting the programming in your brain
• The Legendary Life is a very practical, action-focused guide on how to plan and execute a life plan that brings you your ideal lifestyle

Online courses

Dan continues to put out high quality online self-paced courses through the Udemy platform

• Nice Guy Recovery: how to transform from a people pleaser into a confident beast.

• Shamelessness: how to relieve yourself of the “not good enough” story
• Powerful Honesty: takes you through step-by-step development of your communication skills to be more charismatic and powerful in your honesty
• The 3X Confidence and Authenticity Masterclass program: use the famous 3X Model to build confidence in all areas of life
• Financial Freedom for Beginners: includes everything from budgeting, to getting a raise, to investing in the stock market, to starting a side-business and more
• Overcoming Your Fear of Rejection… Permanently!: covers the psychology of “rejection” and what actions to take to make yourself immune to the fear of it

Full transcript (unedited)

Welcome back to brojo online. Today I’m going to share a random list an incomplete list of some of the biggest realizations and insights I’ve ever had in my life. You might recognize some of these is coming from philosophers and influences and figures that you’ve heard of. And some of them might be more of a synergy of my own creation of other people’s work. I mean, all of this has got to come from somewhere else, because these are insights or realizations, something provoked me from the outside world to change my view on things. And I honestly I just read this list up and like 10 minutes to bang, bang, bang, bang, after listening to way too much tool. So these things get a little psychedelic. But hopefully, there’s someone here that you haven’t heard of that might help you. Some of these things are cold, hard facts, others are opinion or philosophical perspective. They’re all truth in their own way. And some of them are painful. I think this is one, I really have to give you a heads up warning. There are some of these that hurt my mind. When they first occurred to me, there’s some that took me actually months, perhaps even years to recover from fully. The recovery was always, you know, good, it was worth it to go through their pain. But some of these absolutely devastated me. Because they were true, and made me aware of the lie I had been living. And the lie that I still wanted to cling to the thing I still wanted to believe. So be prepared, if you haven’t heard these before. Or if you’re open to having your world rocked a little bit by something that sounds utterly implausible, but as undeniable, then be prepared, you know, this might hurt. So I’ve just made a list of these like bullet points. And I’m just going to rant on each one for a little bit and move on. And we’ll see what happens. Okay. Number one, let’s start with one that kind of defines all the rest of them. And this one came from watching a TED Talk by a neuroscientist. And I believe the title of their talk is, is reality a hallucination? If you google search that plus TED Talk, you’re bound to find what I’m talking about. I can’t remember the exact dude. Essentially, the premise is this, your brain, if it is, indeed a brain interprets electrical signals, right? So all the senses, you know, the five senses that you talked about in school, and then all the other ones, you know, a sense of where your limbs are all these things that we haven’t talked about. But there’s, there’s all these sensors, and they’re all you know, they’re all scientifically measurable sensors in a sense. And they send electrical signals through your central nervous system back to your brain, kind of like some sort of very advanced complicated Morse code that is then interpreted. So sound waves hit your eardrums the little what are they called Filia or something those little hairs shudder at the sound they’re very sensitive little hairs that are blind by sound waves that creates an electrical signal goes to your brain and your brain turns that into Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and it does that with every human that he is, as far as we know. Now, does everyone hear the same Bohemian Rhapsody we will never know is everybody’s Color Purple the same purple will never notice. unverifiable because will always point okay, yeah, that’s purple. And we won’t know if we’re seeing the same thing. Anyway. That’s how the brain works electrical signal signals are interpreted. And then we witnessed this, we observe it in consciousness, this undefinable space that is everywhere and nowhere. Where, say, if we are watching Queen play live, we see them we hear them, we feel the heat of the crowd. everything all at once as this kind of 3d movie inside our minds. And here’s the thing. The only thing we know for sure is that that is not what’s happening. Something is triggering us to have an experience in our mind. But the fact that it is interpreted that the raw data is turned into this mind movie means that we’re not seeing the raw data we know if nothing else that there is interpretation. Okay, when you receive a written message Now that somebody has decoded from Morse code, you know that that isn’t what was seen it was doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. But that’s not what’s written down what’s written down as, come save me, I’m stuck in the bunker, right? So come save me I’m stuck at the bunker isn’t what was sent, that isn’t the message. That’s the interpretation. You seeing everything everything that’s ever happened to you in your entire life has been an interpretation, we are living inside a room, we’re trapped inside a room that we call our mind that seems to have no walls. Because it goes as far as our perception goes, it goes all the way to the horizon. If we want to see further we can, seems to have no limit. But it is in fact entirely limited. We have no fucking idea. If the event is an object of reality, all we know is if objective reality exists, we cannot experience it. We do not see it as it is. Perhaps it’s just binary code like a computer zeros and ones. Perhaps it’s heat and light, I don’t know, we will never know. As the guy in the TED Talk puts, you know, a snake. It almost certainly an objective reality, something dangerous, almost certainly something harmful. But it’s definitely not a snake. A snake is how we manifested in our mind to make sense of the data. You know, interpretation. The snake, the sheer interpretation that we have of their data gives us a working kind of platform. It’s like well, I’m not gonna go poke that fucking scary looking thing with things. Because my mind goes don’t poke scary things will things right, I’m not going to jump off that cliff because it looks really high. Now there’s no cliff. But there’s certainly something there that will harm you, if you were to somehow engage with it in that way. At least we can assume. So it’s kind of like The Matrix. That’s what I think the movie is trying to represent. When the person’s getting the shit kicked out of them inside the matrix. Their real body is just sitting in a chair like fucking shaking and bleeding, right? They’re not actually being harmed, the mind is just making it happen. So when you realize it’s incredibly lonely realisation, at least it was for me, that is just you in there. Everything in the world, the people in the are just manifestations perceptions. You don’t even know if any of it exists, you could be a brain in a vat. That’s a thought experiment, you can look up on Wikipedia. You know, you’re hooked up to a computer that makes you think you’re alive. But you could just be a brain and they’re being studied by scientists having this entire life experience and not knowing that you don’t really exist in such a way. And in fact, the most bizarre, you know, element of this the most one of the most bizarre practices in human world is neuroscience, where the brain studies itself measures itself and gives feedback on itself. pretty biased, don’t you think? You think of a human brain should be studied by something other than a human brain to get an objective perspective of what’s happening. We know the human brain is capable of dishonesty. Why would it tell us the truth about itself? How do we know that it is? Just because every human brain can come to an agreement on something which actually very rarely happens? We almost always disagree on various things. Who’s to say that the brains aren’t somehow in collusion? tricking us all? Who knows? We’ll never know. But that’s one of the biggest things that ever rocked my world is a wake up call that like the idea that there’s a wall there and a computer here and then I’m sitting in a chair, that’s all bullshit. None of that is happening in an objective way. It’s how my mind makes sense of data. That’s all and I have no idea what their data is. But I know it’s not a chair. It’s not a computer. It’s not a wall. It’s not hot temperature. Those are just sensations. They’re just interpretations of data as mean making sense of something that is real, probably, but I have no idea what it is. That’s realisation number one. If that doesn’t keep you up at night. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Number two, I’m going to stop numbering them because I haven’t numbered them on my list and I’ll lose track to the next one. Everyone’s doing it wrong. When we look back at the past, especially when you go more than a few decades back you under hundreds of years. We can clearly see that everybody was doing it wrong. Right? We look at things like slavery, like I can’t believe you guys had slaves. You know, we look at things like you know, wars and all the stuff that people used to do we look at stupid medical practices before science. We Look at the way organized you know people organized societies before democracy or whatever. And we they look out stupid those people are looking are poorly that system works look out, you know low their life expectancy low their life quality I mean the poorest people alive today live better than the Egyptian pharaohs lived. Right? So the the imprison in rulers 1000s of years ago had worse quality of life than our poorest people today, right? So we can look back in the past and go man, we’re really doing it wrong. And that should click onto something like where the future is past? Right? Should humans somehow survive for a few 100 more years? They’re going to be laughing at us, they’re gonna be rolling their eyes at the way we do things, all of the ways that everyone does everything. Now there are exceptions, aren’t they? You know, they’re we look back, we see Marcus Aurelius or, or some great philosophical figure from back in the day and we get man, those dudes were onto it. Well, there actually wasn’t all that many of them was there. The majority of people weren’t like that. Around the world, from what we can see from documented history, most people were doing it wrong, nearly everyone, there’s just a few bright sparks amongst them going. There’s a better way than this. And those are often the pioneers who came up with things, you know, there’s some stuff that was figured out years, many decades or hundreds of years before it was proven, you know, in science and astronomy and stuff like that, you know, guys who figured out oh, you know, maybe the earth actually goes around the sun, you know, they get locked up and burned as a witch. But then hundreds of years later, it’s like, now they’re Duke was on to it, actually. So, no doubt there are bright minds alive today, that even hundreds of 1000s of years later will still be respected. But they have very few. The majority, the vast, vast majority. They’re doing everything wrong. The way they maintain their relationships in their social life wrong. The way their work and vocation you know, their the way they bring in an income provide for themselves and keep themselves busy wrong. Do I take care of the health wrong is there’s a lot they’re doing wrong. And yet we feel compelled to go with the crowd. And I got this particular insight from Eben Pagan, the marketer ex pickup artist dude. And it was very simple. Listen, he said like, when everybody’s is a business training course I was doing of his says when everybody’s going one way go the other way. And business is counterintuitive that the way that works is the way that very few people are doing. And the way it doesn’t work is that everyone’s doing. So if you see something everyone’s doing, like, I don’t know, Google ads or something like that, that’s almost certainly not the best way. Okay? It’ll be the way that gets laughed at. And he is gonna be laughed at now by the people who are doing it right. You can see this with Uber wealthy, the way they manage their money is significantly different to the way that everybody else manages money and even views money. Right? You can see this with people who are super healthy, the way they eat and look after their bodies is super significantly different to the average person who’s have mediocre health at best, right? So one of the things that you got on stand a few going with a vast majority of you’re doing things the way most people are doing them, the only thing you can really be sure of as you’re doing it wrong. Right. And I gotta call out some hard facts here, doing a nine to five job just for the money. That’s what everybody does. Right? Settling down getting married and having kids just because it’s expected of you. That’s what everyone does. Staying in the same country that you were born in. That’s what everybody does. I could go on and on, you know, watching lots of Netflix, smoking, drinking, drinking alcohol, right? Everybody drinks, right? Well. So if you’re completely lost, as to how you’re supposed to live, you can start you can do a one year experiment, since you’ve just been counterintuitive. Just don’t do anybody else’s doing. I don’t mean anybody in the entire world. It’s not actually impossible to think of something that’s completely unique, probably, but certainly not the crowds don’t look for the outliers. Look for the weirdos who seem to be really enjoying their life doing something really different. They probably are getting mocked. Or they’re, you know, there’s the envied and they get a lot of hate. But if you look closely, and you put away the envy and the jealousy and you go fuck, they’re crushing it. Go what do they do differently to everybody else? How do they live differently? What rules do they break in their minds? That’s a very true one. I’ve got to say From experience everyone who’s living the right way that everybody else lives doing the wrong. Next one, you are capable of so much more than you could possibly comprehend. This is perhaps a cliche, you know that people don’t live up to their potential. There’s an old myth about people only using 10% of their brain or something. That’s bullshit, you use your whole brain, don’t worry about that. But people will look at someone say like Elon Musk was hyper achiever, and think of him as some sort of freak. Or they look at someone who’s done something incredible, like an astronaut who’s gone to the moon, or CEO of a major company, or somebody wins gold at the Olympics. And you just see them as this like separate category of people. You’re looking at it wrong. It’s just another human like you. But they’ve done something that you haven’t in that stave, unleash their potential, they’ve gone all in at what they are built to do. Now, they’ve had a lot of good luck in that. They’ve figured out what they’re built to do. We’re all kind of built to do something incredibly well, if we can find out what that thing is. We’re on the homestretch. But not only have they figured it out, they’ve gone all in on it, they’ve what would look like to another person as they’ve done a lot of risk taking. But when you go all in on what you’re great at, it’s not actually risk taking it’s risk taking not to do that. In a sense, it’s very risky to live a mediocre life when you could have a great one, right? So you have a thing, a thing that you are incredible at a thing that would you know, how it would look is, for example, I can churn through books, right, I read book after book after book, I just sort of scan down the page, and all the words go into my mind, and I like hallucinate. While I look at a page and I just play a movie in my head. I’m not even really reading the words exactly, I’m just kind of scanning in a movie plays in my head. And to me, that’s normal. I’ve been doing that since as long as I can remember, readings always been a huge part of my life, or at least a three, three or four books a week as a kid, you know, it’s pumped through. And I used to have a friend who was dyslexic. And it blew his mind that I could read like that. This guy was struggling to get through a magazine article in a single day. And, to him, it was just incredible that I could just absorb information by looking at words, because he’s dyslexic to him the words like this struggle this chore to work through and do them one by one, and then try and figure out what the whole thing means. On the other hand, he was a mechanic, he just drives a car, he hears a noise and goes, Oh, that’s the blah, blah, blah, I could be a mechanic for 20 years, and I wouldn’t be able to do that I don’t have that part of the brain, like, the handyman side of me is very much like, I can do it. But I have to get the YouTube out, I have to fuck it up three times. And before I get it right the fourth time, and that’s like that every time. And I really easily forget, even though I just did it recently, I forget how to do it again. And suddenly part of the brain just doesn’t exist. It wasn’t trained, it’s not my thing. But when I tapped into my thing, which apparently is coaching, or shows, it’s talking honestly, in a way that helps people practically that’s my thing. I’m not bragging, it’s just my thing, everyone’s got a thing, it’s not a brag to say you’ve got one. But I was somehow unleashed, you know, through various supports and efforts on my own part, I managed to find my thing and go all in on it, it was very hard, because like everybody else I was raised in the system, they’re discouraged that, you know, if you’re raised in the classic schooling system, you’ve been discouraged away from your thing. Sorry, specially if it’s creative, artistic type thing, or if it’s anything that wasn’t taught in high school as one of the compulsory subjects. Basically, if you don’t want to be a university professor, you’re probably discouraged away from your thing in some way of shape or form. But when you look at someone who’s hyper successful, whatever that word means for you, you know, if you’ve got social struggles, then it’s the person who has a huge social network, and everybody thinks they’re amazing. And they got great deep connections, and they find it really easy to click with people or whatever, you know, but money you know, it’s the obvious one of its physical health, you can see out as you look at them as superhuman, they’re not they just found their thing and they went all in on it, and I fucking guarantee you, you could do it too. It just requires an incredible amount of insight and courage. You have to explore yourself. Be honest with yourself about what your thing is, it’s probably something unacceptable and socially, or at least in your social circle, something you’re ashamed of it And quite often you’ll think it’s a weakness. Right. So this is why I think most people overlook it is because their strength is being framed as a weakness. You know, I see this a lot, I’ve got a lot of clients are on the autistic spectrum, in some way, shape or form, not the dysfunctional end of the spectrum, the functional end, but they see it as a weakness, they’re always trying to hide it, fake it, learn how to be more normal, and so on. I’m like, Dude, why the fuck would you not use it? Right? Like, it’s this brilliant thing, like my book editor. My book editor is on the spectrum. And her editing skills are phenomenal because of those traits. Right? She has this ability to pick holes in an argument to make sure everything makes sense and goes in an order that, you know, really sells a point without getting off track, and so on so forth. That a Normie can’t do and can’t see. It’s like a superpower she has. Right, she has figured out how to use it. Next one. Pain is physical. But suffering is nothing more than perception. So pain is the electrical signals going from your body to your brain, when there has been some sort of disruption. You know, blunt force, trauma, cutting, injuries, sickness, someone, there’s physical pain. Now, not only is physical pain actually relatively rare, especially for people living in first world countries. It doesn’t actually guarantee suffering. Anybody who’s done a really satisfying workout knows what I’m talking about, you know, the lactic acid builds up in your muscles. It’s a horrible feeling. If you weren’t at the gym, wanting that feeling, right? I often talk about it with people, like if you had the feeling of that 20 of push up. But it happened to you randomly while you’re walking down the street, you would think you were dying, you’d be really scared and really concerned and suffer a lot with that burning feeling in your chest. But when at the gym, and that feeling I fuck you I’m crushing it, right? It’s totally about perception. Physical pain, like I’ve had plenty of tattoos and you can either enjoy them or wish that they were ending but the pain is the same just depends on the story you attached to her? Do you want this pain or not? But suffering. Suffering is the word I give to the emotional and mental pain that you cause yourself by perceiving something a certain way. We take say, a really extreme case, you’ve got these Shaolin monk type people are trained and discipline their whole life to the point where you can boot them as hard as you want and the testicles and they don’t suffer. Right? They have discipline, their mind is such a way that you cannot upset them in any way. Right? These people exist, there’s documented documentation of these people, you can go look it up yourself. So we know that the human being is capable of them. We also know that the Shaolin monks, you know, anybody can train to be one, you know, the earlier you start, the better. It’s not like some ethnicity or race thing this is anybody can be like this, if they dedicated their life to. So we know a human can be completely a human being can completely detach suffering from pain. What we also know is that there are people out there in great misery, with no scars to show for no wounding, no bleeding, take them to a doctor, the scans come up with zero. They have no physical pain whatsoever. And yet they’re suffering immensely. So we know without a doubt that you can have suffering without pain. And you can have pain without suffering. But while we often tell ourselves as a story that they’re connected, so you get the obvious one where somebody gets some sort of physical pain, you get punched in the face, you get a little bit sick or injured, so on so forth, and then you suffer immensely, because the story about the pain in your head is very unpleasant. I shouldn’t a punch me life is unfair, you know, I can’t get sick. Now I’m going to be late on my assignment. That’s where suffering comes from the story you attach to pain. But I think it’s even even more incredible because like I said, physical pain is actually a relatively rare occurrence for most people save for those with chronic illnesses and injuries. But even then, it becomes a baseline that you find normal. The people who suffer without any pain whatsoever. The people who suffer just by perceiving something in such a way that they find it unpleasant. You think of something neutral, sitting in traffic, that’s actually a neutral event. I mean, if you’re sitting on a couch watching TV, it would feel exactly the same physically, as sending into ethic, but doesn’t feel the same emotionally new. And each time and traffic’s a different experience. Now if this is the same old traffic that you have to go to everyday for work, and even three years, it’s just neutral, suddenly a bopping along to your songs. But if you’re in a hurry, and it’s an unexpected accident, now you suffer, right? It’s still just sitting in a chair, a relatively ergonomic chair, probably. But oh, the heat, the frustration, the agitation in the body, the raging that can lead to a headache, even you can actually create physical pain from suffering. But if you understand that, at any point of your suffering, you made it happen, you created the suffering with a story about what’s happening, then you understand that ultimately, at some level, you’re in control of this, you are completely the God of this universe. And so it’s up to you whether or not happens. Next point, this one’s a real mindfuck. One. You have never had a relationship with an actual other person in your entire life. I’m not just making fun of like chronically single people here. What I mean is going back to the first point of our reality being a hallucination. Well, here’s a kicker, everybody you’ve ever known, is just a profile inside your mind, you create a person inside your mind in response to whatever the real person actually is, assuming they’re even as a real person. I saw this was a wake up I got from Byron, Katie, this is kind of thing that she does a lot. She was talking, she was in front of a room, I think there was like 1000 people there. And making that up, it doesn’t matter. And she said, you know, you think there’s one Byron Katie sitting here, but there’s actually 1000, because each one of you views me differently. So there’s a different Byron, Katie and each one of your minds, and get this is actually 1001? Because I’ve got my own version. And here’s the kicker, all of them are correct. And none of them are correct. There is no, Byron Katie, there are just manifestation copy after copy after copy, all of it slightly skews slightly different. Never the original product, there’s only just copies of copies. So even your image of yourself is something you made up inside your mind, and is unlikely to be fully accurate. Even notice somebody points something out that you do and you didn’t realize you do it. You know, person you have perhaps or physical habit that you have, or you know, something, you know, you repeat yourself. He didn’t remember telling the story the first time they know something about you that you don’t? How much of that information exists? How much do you not know about what you don’t know about yourself, let alone other people. If you can barely know who you were amid and how little you actually know about someone else, even your partner of 40 years, if they can surprise you even a little bit. It shows you don’t really know them. You just know the image you’ve created. You think about somebody disappointing you, how is that possible? If you actually know them? Truthfully, the only way someone can disappoint you is when they’re real person doesn’t match the person in your head. The vision in your head is idealized in some way. They’re better than the real person. That’s the only way you can be disappointed in someone is when you don’t know them well. Right? We blame other people for disappointing, so I can’t believe he’s late. Well, you should because he’s late. Right? You thinking he’s the kind of guy who’s on time. That’s your problem, not hers. You’re wrong about her. But he’s always been on time before you but he’s not this time. So it turns out he can be late occasionally. You didn’t have that on your profile, or otherwise, you’d be like, Oh, he’s like, yeah, it’s expected. If anybody ever does something unexpected, and disappointing to you, you’re wrong about them. In fact, that applies to everything in the whole world. If anything happens that disappoints you. It’s because your expectations are wrong. Reality is never wrong. Right? You know, if a person comes up and punches me in the face, it’s not like hey, that shouldn’t happen. Right now they were destined to punch you in the face they built for it. fact that you didn’t see it coming means that you didn’t know them well enough. You can see it in the opposite when you accurately predict someone down to the penny, right? Like, this is exactly what it’s gonna say if you do that I’ve known in my whole life and if you do that, he’s gonna say this again below and he says it fucking told you. Right? That’s when you’ve actually your profile matches the person. Now you’re still going to be wrong about a lot about that person. You have no idea what they’re thinking 99.9999% of the time, like think about how many thoughts you have. And how many of those you actually share. With people like an iceberg, right, a vast majority of what you experience remains under the surface. And then there’s still the stuff you don’t know about yourself. So one of the upsides to this is grief. We grieve for somebody’s physical body, dissolving coming to an end. Entropy, we call that a death. But if they still exist inside your mind, then your relationships ongoing. That was the only relationship you actually ever had with them. And Byron, Katie pointed this out to me as well, you know, if what’s the difference between your child dying and your child being in another room in the house and you can’t see or hear them? Right, they exist the same in your mind. And that moment, like, right now, it’s just me in this room, I have no idea if anybody I love is still alive. Right. And yet, I’m still in a relationship with all of them right here. I’m still on a relationship with my grandfather, both my grandfather’s both of whom have died. It didn’t end with the body, sure, new experiences won’t be created with them. But you’ve got a lifetime already, you know, you’ve already got so many experiences, you can relive them over and over. And actually, every time you relive them, that kind of updates and changes that a bit. So it’s just you and the profiles in your head. You only ever have a relationship with profiles. The good news is those profiles never have to go away. The bad news is, you’re still going out with all your exes, keeping on the mindfuck train, your particles replaced every seven years. Now, this is an oversimplification. But generally speaking, all the molecules in your body, all the cells in your body, you know, they have a life cycle of their own, and it doesn’t last your entire life. And at the longest, it lasts about seven years from what I understand. So I think the liver or something, there’s some cells that lasts quite a long time. But even they eventually die and they are replaced. I mean, how do you think a person grows from a baby to an adult, something’s got to move, right? Something’s got to add, something’s got to subtract to make that happen. You know, it’s a simple thing of baby teeth falling out, or hair falling out, or skin flaking off you like you think that’s the extent of it. Now, the whole body, everything, including the brain. What this means is, if you go back, say eight years ago, that person down to the molecular level, cell by cell, atom by atom is 100%. Different to you. It’s a completely different person as different as you I am to you. In fact, I might even have a couple of the atoms of the original you. So I might be more, I might have more in common with you physically than your own past self. For why fuck and I don’t know where those atoms go. They don’t go that far do they? bounce to the next, whatever the fuck. Especially if you’re a cannibal. Anyway. So we got this idea that I am me as constant ever since I was born. Rather than saying the truth is, the only reason I believe that is because there’s a kind of supply chain of memory, recall, my memories are handed from past self to present self over and over again. Every time I recall something, I’m actually making a new memory right here. And now. I’m not actually looking at an old fact. Like, it’s like some movie that I pull out of the cupboard, check it on the VCR watch it and put it back on the shelf. No, no, I actually look at their movie and they make a new one and replace the old one. All your memories currently, right now, if you’ve ever recalled them more than once you’ve actually replaced them and updated them. You’ll notice because you get details wrong sometimes. Have you seen that? Sometimes you’ll remember something and you realize it was a dream and it didn’t actually happen in real life. Or you’ll remember a person reach out and then when you see them and like, Oh, they got red here, I thought they’re brown here, you don’t realize that you updated the memory shortly after the event actually occurred and you kept updating it until one day you know, like that thing Chinese whispers every time was updated, a little bit got changed a little bit got lost is you know amalgamation of facts that are some sort of synergy whereas mixed with other memories and simplified or exaggerated or whatever. And by the time you know, 10 years later, you’re looking at, say memory, it might as well be a completely different event you’re so far off. I mean, we can see this in science, the evidence of eyewitness testimony, you know, people can’t even get skin color right? When they’re under duress. So the idea that you are able to recall things with some sort of crystal accuracy is so incorrect is like three people in the world who can actually do that and they’ve made documentaries about them. And even they still only get the gist, you know, arraigned and it was a Tuesday. They can’t do much better than that. The poor under this as you are not you, you’re not the static thing. You know, you’re not obliged or loyal to any past self, that was a different guy. You don’t have to fulfill the contracts that he signed. And that can be a literal interpretation. Let’s say you’re 10 years into a job that you don’t like. Yeah, he might have liked it, that you 10 years ago, but you’re not him. Now. You’re not the one who signed the contract. You’re not the one who made obligations and dug in and settled into this job he did. Now you got to ask yourself, Do I still want this? One of the most empowering things you can do is just to imagine that today’s the first day of your life, you just got dropped into this life. But rather than being born as a baby, you just dropped into an actual life that’s already like up and running. It’s like buying a house or taking over a work project. It’s like it’s already had heaps of shut down to it. You’re not beginning something you’re getting essentially for a lot of you will be like this fucking hospital parcel a, here’s a mediocre life. Good fucking luck. By the way, you’re in heaps of trouble, but you’ll figure it out. Sometimes I felt like that. When I look back, you know, especially when I started to try and be more honest. At the lie world that I created. When I say I that my past selves had created are thanks very much. There’s like 1000 lies, I have to go and fucking disclose. And there’s all this bullshit, I have to unravel Jesus Christ, most of my friendships a horse should I don’t even like my job, I probably shouldn’t be living in this city. Like, what a mess you’ve left me with. But that was the right way to look at the my past self. It landed me in this mess. But he’s a different guy. You know, I actually don’t have a lot in common with him anymore. If I look at the teenage version of myself, I might put me back in high school, I’m not going to behave like that is described, I wouldn’t even be close. Right? It’s barely me. So it’s not really me, Says the guy I used to be whose memories have been handed on to me, right? There’s some sort of body swap thing. Do with that what you will, but they won’t get me up at night. Next one, you never experienced the same thing twice. The brain likes to over simplify likes to make you think that you’re repeating experiences, but you never have even once. Because there’s a single, very simple argument to dismiss any claims that you’ve ever repeated and experience. No matter how scientific, the standards of the experiment, were, no matter how perfectly you replicated the variables is one thing you couldn’t control. The second time you did it, you were older. Time, unchangeable. No matter how many times you think you’ve done something, you know, carrying on from the last little factoid, you’ve always been a different person doing it. So you’ve never done anything twice. I’m not sure what the implications for that will be for you. But if you notice how many times you might say something like I’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work. So no, you didn’t try that before. A different guy did and it wasn’t even it. It, you tried something that looks similar before, but everything’s changed since then. Because very rarely do the all the variables get controlled. You may say, you know, I tried to do this course three years ago, well, actually, the course is different, you’re different, the situation you’re in is different. The world is different. This isn’t even close to a repeat, do the course again. Because you’re not actually doing it again, you’re doing a brand new course as a brand new person and a brand new time. You know, the amount of times that people will put themselves off from trying something because they say that they’ve tried it before and it didn’t work? No, you haven’t actually tried this before. This is new, it’s always new. Now, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t similarities and that we can’t learn from patterns. But patterns and similarities are not exact repeats. And that’s a very important distinction. Especially when you got a sense that it might have been the right thing for you, but maybe you just tried it at the wrong time. Or maybe you did it under the wrong motivation. Or maybe you just weren’t ready yet or whatever. This time could be different. It’s not a repeat, you’re trying something new. And that’s how it must be assessed. Okay, there’s a new thing that I’m trying is it right for me? Not Have I done this before? And how did that go? All right. That was a big one for me. Because it’s taken me like back to things that have failed out in the past. And it’s helped me persevere with difficult things. Because I’ve realized persevering doesn’t mean repeating the same thing over and over. It means You keep trying to achieve a goal, waiting for the circumstances to change in your favor. That’s what persistence really is. So perseverance really is, let’s say, I’ll take some sort of really simple analogy, like, you want to jump over a certain height, every time you do it just the fucking miles off, you’re like a foot shorter, no matter how much you try, you just can’t quite get off the ground high enough. You think, Well, why would I keep doing it, because you know, the last 20 times I’ve jumped the exact same height, and so on and so forth, we don’t realize is it might take 250 goes, right. And each time, you’re actually making a millimeter of progress too small for you to measure, or you’re building up a certain muscle set. Or you need to wait until your body matures in such a way or your mind and limits itself in such a way, but due to some other experiences outside of this activity. You know, it’s like, I used to get really stuck on certain dance moves. And then I’d go and I’d come back to them like three months later and be better at them and could do them flawlessly. And yet, I haven’t even been training them or practicing them at all. And there’s a common myth, like, you know, practice means repeating something. But actually, it doesn’t. Not necessarily. I mean, there’s an element to that. But quite often going away from something that you’ve been banging your head against the wall for a while. And then coming back later, having had other experiences in life, suddenly, you cracked the code, because something in those other experiences changed you in such a way that makes us now available. Now you can do it. Many musicians I’ve spoken to myself included, they’ll find that they take a break from their instrument come back, they play better than they’ve ever played before. It makes no sense because then they have gap, you’ve had no practice. But something’s happening in that gap. Some sort of development is taking place without you even touching a guitar, you know. So if you realize that nothing’s ever repeated, you realize you always start a new, you’ve always got a new shot, fresh slate. It doesn’t have to be like it was last time. And certainly if you really want to do better this time, then you must really accentuate being different in some way. Don’t try the same thing, being the same person. If it’s not working, go change something about yourself and then try it again. Or change something about the situation and then try it again. Or change something about the activity and then try it again. And realize you’re never really trying it again. You’re just constantly trying something new until you find something that works. We’ve got a quite a big list I’ll actually go but fast on the rest of these. Next one, there is no finish line. People get stuck on a finish line. Happy Ending fucking Disney ruined us all. This idea that you go through the trials and tribulations and you achieve the big goal and then nothing basically happily ever after. They never show it on the Disney movies, do they? What happens after Aladdin and whatever his missus name. I think I knew it. Jasmine didn’t know they got a kid who’s gonna let them book so the. So Aladdin and Jasmine. After all the bullshit and the flying carpets and the genie and everybody getting up in the shit. They finally get together and they have their romantic kiss and they float away on the carpet into the sunset or however the fuck their movie ends. And then the credits roll. But then what happens to Aladdin and Jasmine? Anybody who’s gotten married knows that after the wedding day more stuff keeps happening. Yeah. After the happily ever after, then you go back to other problems. Now you got mortgage problems, you got kid problems. Now the marriage isn’t quite working out like it was supposed to, or what the fuck your ex is taking your again? Well, now the good problems again. You know, one of my coaches, I was talking to him about money at some stage and the beliefs around money. And he was basically someone who’s like, he’s basically doing one zero better than me, you know, so whatever I’m making it another zero to it. If I’m making 10 grand, he’s making 100 grand on it and I was just sort of like, well, what’s it like up there? You know, up in the clouds of money. And he just said like these same problems more zeros are really like, it doesn’t feel like I’m as stressed about money as I was one zero ago. And two zeros go. And I was like, oh shit, the problems don’t stop. I have a client. He’s one of those are excellent. Sorry, crypto trader type guy. He once had a dream making 100 grand a year just trading crypto. When I finished wrapped up a coaching with him he was making 100 grand a month. And he still wasn’t satisfied 100 grand a month when his dream was to make 100 a year he’s doing 12 times better that, then he ever dreamed, still not satisfied. There was no finish line, the next set of problems are waiting for you Now there can be better problems to have than the ones you haven’t. You know, in a very superficial way the problems you have when you read your billing and the promises and you have when you’re poor financially speaking, struggling financially, there are a lot of rich, miserable guys, I promise you that I’ve met many of them. You know, you might think, Oh, I once I get really healthy and fit in my health problems over actually maintaining health a bitch. Like getting ABS is hard. Keeping ABS is probably even harder. You know. Same with relationships, you know, I have a lot of my clients in particular struggle to create romantic relationships, and they yearn for it. And like, even a little less brother, because once you get there, it’s not like some party. Right? Once you you’re living with a girl long term committed like that. So its own set of shit that single people don’t have to deal with. Now it might be worth it, it might be problems you’re willing to have because the overall lifestyle is better than the one that you’ve got. But don’t think that there’s a finish line across and the problems go away and the pain goes away and you’ve solved everything that does not exist for anyone anywhere and it never has. And it’s actually the realisation of that that is the finish line. I mean, go like, Oh, it’s always gonna be hard. Okay, well, I guess I’ll just deal with that. Then. The yearning goes away the ambition to constantly want more never be happy with where you are that diminishes Yeah, I’ll just deal with what I got. lucky because I mean, it’d be nice if it gets better, but if it gets better, it’s still gonna have shit to deal with. So I got a question whether I really want it to get better. My most recent coach talking to him about scaling up my business, he’s like, usual, you actually want to ask a question. I just thought it’s supposed to like, always go up, right. And he talked to me about the concept of managing other coaches rather than coaching myself and so on and becoming this really admin heavy job. As a as a they’re worth the extra money. Oh, no, that’s horrible. I made that mistake. In my last work. When I was working in department corrections, I got too many promotions, essentially. And ended up getting away from the work that I love does other stuff sucks. Just sitting in a chair like me answering emails, I fucker, like I dumped a hit too far or something. So be careful before you upgrade, because just because it’s more doesn’t mean it’s better, and you’re not going to arrive somewhere and be done. If you’re dissatisfied. Now, you’re going to be dissatisfied later, you need to figure out why you can’t be satisfied with life. That’s your real problem. No, no extra results are gonna solve that for you. Next one, motivations negative, not positive. People think they’re motivated by inspiration, or admiration, looking up to people. They’re motivated by wanting more pleasure and wanting a better life. If that works, then all those quotes and shit you see on Facebook all day would actually do something to people. They don’t they do they know, goals and dreams and all that stuff. Sounds really good. You know, motivates people. Negativity, guilt, frustration, especially frustration, hate. These are the things you need to tap into anger. If you really want to motivate yourself, you need to get yourself worked up about something. Right? Because motivation is essentially what exists when you’re not afraid. Okay? You’ll notice that it’s something you’re not afraid of, is you always motivated to do like, maybe it’s to have a shower in the morning. You have no fear about having a shower in the morning. And so it always gets done, you know, just hanging out with your family, perhaps and there’s not going to apply to all of you but for those of you who have good relationship you’d like or are nervous about going among you don’t feel that so you just go Yeah, okay. See Mom, no problems, right. So as fear comes up, motivation becomes problem. Well, there’s a counter to fear is a few counters, but the main one being one of the most motivational states to be in is when you go Alright, fuck the shit. I’m sick of it is one of the most motivational states you could ever hope to be in and you don’t get there by trying to be positive and happy. You get there by having a good, hard honest look at what you do not like about yourself and what you do not like about your life with real David Goggins type shit here. Okay. And this isn’t the poor me have a look at your life. So third, I’m such a loser. This isn’t that. It’s like I’m sick of being fat enough. Right? It’s a different approach. It’s an aggressive, assertive approach. It’s an approach was like, I’m not playing the victim. This is all on me. It’s by me it’s for me on getting it done. It’s a responsible mindset, not a victim. One. It’s not about blaming yourself for things going wrong. It’s about going look, I’ve been dropped into this life. I don’t like this part of it. I’ve had enough of it. It’s changing. Right? And believe it or not hating yourself can be a great motivator if you apply it right. I don’t mean that hating yourself as a good state to be in and I don’t mean that you necessarily hate yourself for the right reasons. Maybe you’ve been conditioned to hate yourself from shame and you’re actually just find the way you are. But most of the time, the reason you can’t accept the way you ask because it’s unacceptable. I don’t believe that whole bullshit. I just look in the mirror and just go I’m okay with things the way they’re No, I don’t I don’t fucking agree with that at all. If you’re a fucking mediocre loser, no, I don’t agree with that. I don’t think you’re acceptable. I’m not by my standards, what are your own factors you will not be frustrated with yourself, you will not be mad at yourself, you’ll not be disappointed and feel like you’re missing out. If you live in a way that you accept. Right? If you don’t accept yourself, that’s That’s motivation there. If you look in the mirror, you don’t like what you see, if you look at your social life, you don’t like that experience. If you look at your job, it disappoints you, good. Fucking do something with that get mad, get courageous, get ready to roll the dice, had a great session with a client last week where he wasn’t really motivated to become a great person. He just it was too vague to him. He couldn’t see it coming true. He wasn’t sure that he would actually enjoy it. He didn’t trust himself to make it happen. And a lot of people have this problem and self development is, you know, it’s great goals and dreams about what you want to be but you just don’t trust yourself to make it happen. You’re not sure it’s gonna deliver. We don’t need to do that you can just be anything other than what you are. Might. And I had a wake up call on that session for myself and insight that I’d kind of forgotten about. When I first started working on my nice guy syndrome. The goal was simple. Just don’t be a nice guy. That was that was the criteria in anything. And he did some pretty shady stuff. But the point was just break the patents be anything other than the Sun that you hate being that you’re sick of being that you’re disappointed in yourself or being do anything else. Be honest, be rude, move, travel, dance, anything that isn’t what you’d normally do to please people. And that’s exactly what I did for a couple of years. Essentially. That’s all I thought of is just different. I did the YES MAN thing you know, after reading the book and watching the movie, yes, man. I just said yes to everything for a year because that’s something I wouldn’t usually do. And, you know, I hate confrontations did the old pickup artists thing, even though I didn’t really like manipulating people, I’m like, at least I’m trying something. And it’s not what I usually do. And I was just motivated by single foresight fuck being a nice guy. I’m sick of it. That was my motivation. And I’ve never been more motivated in my life. I did some incredibly courageous stuff during that time in my life. I don’t know if I could ever reach that high again. Like I was brave. I was like heart beating in my throat almost throwing up when I was doing some of the stuff that I did. But it was worth doing because I either this or keep being a nice guy. Fuck that. I’ll do this instead. It gives us all throw up on everybody if I have to. I just don’t want to be that guy anymore. Next big insight. I think you’re born with core values. There’s an opinion more than a fact. But there is some science behind it. If you want to know that sciences go read the philosophical baby by Alison Gopnik, Dr. gopnik and I’ve seen this in my own daughter I’ve seen a lot of kids that you know, around me growing up at the moment. Without any training, prompting, force, children will do things of their own accord and there are patterns. And I’d really do believe I see general and universal core values coming through curiosity for example. Persistence, those are a couple that you see in babies really a lot they will keep trying something until they figure it out. Like I’ve got my daughter this little sort of fake little kitchen thing for kids you know and there’s nice dispenser or it’s little white blocks of wood come out she must have cracked their thing fucking 200 times before she got to work before she got the ice actually dropped down no frustration really no giving up I mean she would walk away and have a break do something else then go back to as many days of attempts but she just kept coming back to it. And she some some points he actually got worse. You know, she started doing it in this way and was never gonna work. You were closer before she’s just calm. We were trying to make this fucking thing work. She knows it works. She’s seen me do it. I thought you know I won’t teach her unless ya so I’m just gonna see to see give her what Bolsena as one of the things I’m makes me love the most really, she’s so persistent, she will keep trying to climb up on the couch until she gets up no matter how many times she falls them, box her head on the floor or whatever, you know, she just non stop and very curious. And also very honest. You know, she points she loves, she talks about what she’s thinking and interested in. You have no doubt what she’s feeling. She’s very playful. She likes to have fun. She has a little a very, you know, basic and pure sense of humor that I think brilliant makes me laugh all the time. I haven’t taught her any of that. Neither is my wife. Right? We might have modeled some stuff of short or short, she’s but this stuff she doesn’t like That’s just her like, it’s not even either of us. It’s just her own thing. So she has made it up. So I’ve got this theory. I’ve had the theory for a long time, we’re actually born with core values. And then we get conditioned and programmed away from where you’re taught rules instead. It all How are we supposed to be by other people’s standards to make them feel better to be more convenient to them, to your parents, to your teachers, to society, to the cops, to your peer circle? was constantly barrage with advice and punishments and conditioning? To fit in to be something that other people prefer? Fuck, that. You got to understand like you, you know, deep down, you know what’s right and wrong by your own standard. Nobody else’s, not even the law. Right? You didn’t choose the laws. I actually condone people breaking the law, if they come to their conclusion by their own core values. In classic one, somebody say, using somewhat devious tax, someone devious tactics to avoid paying as much tax as they are expected to pay. And certain situations uncovered that because like, for example, I’m in the category of the worst, small business owners get the worst tax out of everybody. The poor and the rich, don’t get taxed at small business owners that really get taxed. And it’s so fuckin unfair in terms of like everybody contributing. It’s so overburdened on small business owners, they contribute way more than anybody else does percentage wise. So as a small business owner finds a way to scam his way out of some taxes legally or illegally. I’m just like, just don’t get caught brother do your thing. Right? And people who want to smoke weed, and it’s illegal fuck smoke it. Why? Why is cigarettes and alcohol way more harmful? Why are they legal? That doesn’t make sense, values wise doesn’t make sense in terms of any kind of ethics or principles or morals. It only makes sense politically. Nobody can tell you what’s right and wrong for you. But you can tell you, you actually do know, for some of the information might be very vague and murky, and you’ll feel like now that can’t be it. Because you’ve had so much conditioning broken and got so much shame so much wrongness attached to your authenticity that you just shy away from it, you’ve never practiced it, you’ve never given it a crack. But like the six that we use for brojo, and my own personal ones, I really do think the universal, and there are at least a good starting point, you can play with them and then adjust it. Responsibility, curiosity, courage, honesty, acceptance and respect. I really think that these are universal principles that everybody can benefit from living by now, it doesn’t mean that they’re right for you. But if you’re not sure what you’re there, try some of those. Try being more honest, try being braver, right? Try learning a bit more, whatever. Next one, you’ve never been rejected by another person ever in your entire life. As a combination of two things, one is a rejection. isn’t somebody saying no to you? There’s just somebody Express expressing the preferences. Okay, that somebody’s denying your request, perhaps. But what they’re basically saying is, no, I’d prefer something else. The idea that you’ve been rejected is ridiculous. If I found $10 On the ground, and came out and said, I don’t understand all this. And you said, No, you keep it. Would I feel rejected? Of course not. Right? But How’s it different to saying would you like to go on a date? And they say no. Or can I have that promotion? And they say, No. Or, you know, can I get a discount on this coffee? And they say no, what’s the difference? There was none. They just saying they prefer a different thing to what you’re suggesting. That’s it. The other thing is the sense of rejection, the sense that you’ve been turned down that you’ve been negatively judged in some way lost something So perception. And most importantly, it’s your perception. Once you notice that there’s something that happens, which is it’s a, I find someone attractive when I tell myself, you know, they wouldn’t like me because I’m too short. I just got rejected, but they weren’t involved. What just happened there? Well, I rejected myself. You know, let’s say your thing as you think you’re too short, how many people have actually said to you that you’re too short? Right? And even if they have, how do you know, that’s the real reason. And it’s not just some reason that popped into their mind and their real reason there’s something else that they’re even not even consciously aware of? How do you know what they really wanted? And what they really wanted to say in the moment, you don’t. So you can dismiss anything that anybody else has ever said to you has been accurate, because you don’t know if it was a murder. Somebody might have said it, because they want to hurt your feelings. Somebody might have said it, because it popped in their head, and later on, they regret saying it because they didn’t mean it. You don’t know. Right? Very few people say what they actually mean, people don’t even know what they actually mean. Most of the time, very few people are self aware. But you’ll notice what happens most of the time is somebody else says my preferences, no. And you say it’s because I am this and that and the other. And that’s where the rejection takes place. Your explanation for their preferences. Say the classic idea of rejection, I go up and ask someone out and they say no. And I walk away. And this list plays in my head of all the reasons why that probably happened. Now, they haven’t seen any reason they say no, no good money. But right. Now, guys, probably because I was too needy, and probably because I’m not handsome enough, and blah, blah, blah. And I go through this list, and I’m just suddenly just rejecting myself over and over again. What if she’s a lesbian? And she just didn’t tell me? What does that say about the list? I just went through my head. It’s irrelevant, isn’t it? She’ll say no, to any guy. sources list got to do with anything. You know, when for the promotion, but they say no, it must be because I’m too stupid. Or they said I wasn’t experienced enough. Maybe you remind them of their ex. And they didn’t even think of that. And you had no chance because you’ve got like a traumatic face for them. It’s got nothing to do with the workability whatsoever. Maybe you’re in a company that wants you out, you’re in a bad company, and actually them saying that was the best thing that could possibly happen to you. Because you’ll finally leave and go find something else? How could you call that a rejection. The rejection takes place in here. When you say something bad about yourself. Next one, there is no such thing as doing something by accident. There are no mistakes. There are hidden goals. What I’ve come to realize that if you really want to know what someone believes and what they really want, there’s only one source of evidence, the behavior, right? You must completely ignore what people say they want and watch what they do. And that will tell you what they really want. For example, somebody says, you know, I want to be in a deep committed relationship with you, and they cheat on you. Are they saying is No, I don’t want to be in a deep committed or certainly not committed relationship. Right? If they wanted that there would be no cheating. There’d be no betrayal. It’d be no superficiality. What somebody sees as as irrelevant, because they might even believe what they say. And quite often they will. And you believe what you say, when you say I want this, and I want that. But what does your behavior say? What does their behavior say? Someone says, you know, I want to be rich, and they blow their money on crap. No, you want to be poor? Definitely. You live in the dream in terms of being poor, right? You’re doing exactly what you need to do to be poor. So that must be what you want. So he says, I want to be healthy, and they smoke cigarettes. No, you want to be unhealthy. Clearly, somebody wants to be healthy and smoke cigarettes. So I don’t care. If you think that you want that you clearly don’t want that. Or at least, if nothing else, you don’t want it as much as you want the other thing. You might have some yearning towards health, but not as much as you want unhealthy. Now, as much as you want the feeling of the cigarette going down your throat, you’d prefer that over healthy. And one of the biggest frustrations people have as they’re like, I really want this thing that I’m going hard for it, but it never works out. Well, what if you don’t actually really want it, and it not working out as your goal being achieved. When you see that, for what it is, you’ll realize the level of self sabotage that takes place in your life and the level of deception that takes place from other people. When somebody says, you know, like, Oh, you’re such a good friend, and then they treat you badly. No, you’re not a good friend. You don’t understand it. They don’t. They don’t have a good friendship with you. They might think that they see you as a good friend, but they wouldn’t treat someone like that if they were really saw you as a good friend. So they don’t see you as their right. But more importantly, this is about you. You say like, you know, I want to start my own business, or where’s your business thing? Until you’ve got your own business? No, you don’t want to start your own business, you want to stay at this job. Once you start to admit to yourself, what you really want by looking at your behavior and going, what is my behavior, say that I really want? Then you’ll start to see your hidden goals, your subconscious motivations. And you’ll get to ask yourself, Is that good enough? Am I okay with it? So you never have to ask like, how do I get what I want? What you really have to ask is, I can already see what I want. Am I cool with it? You know, if you think guy really want to be healthy, no, no, drop that drop that dream of being healthy. Look at what you eat, and how much you exercise. And then ask yourself, How badly do I want to be healthy? And be like, well, I binge on alcohol every weekend, I keep skipping my workout. And I keep eating sugar late into the night. So I must want to be really lethargic and overweight and unfit. I clearly want that. So how do I feel about it, and I go with it. I’ll know that I want to be healthy when I see myself eating right, and exercising, and you know, going to bed at a good time. That’s when I’ll know that I want to be healthy. But until I see that, I have to say to myself, I want to be unhealthy. Clearly. Because it’s only when you face the truth about what you want, and you might be able to change it. Until then you’re just fantasizing while you continue shitty behavior. It’s like a screensaver to keep your mind occupied while you actually sabotage yourself. I used to do this with women all the time. So I really want a relationship. Really, look, your behavior. You’ve been brave and honest and deeply connected with women knew quite the opposite. You’re being real needy, you’re actually missing opportunities, you get too drunk all the time. So you can’t act or do anything right. Now, you clearly don’t want to be able to go at all even got erectile dysfunction, that’s all barely you don’t want to be able to go. And I never got to see this until very way too late in life. I was just like, Oh, I’m actually avoiding moment. How do I feel about that? And that changed my approach a lot. I’m gonna stop avoiding them, right. I’m going to make some phone calls. And I talked to some checks, like, I changed my behavior to prove that I really want this thing. Next one. Everybody’s crazy. Yeah, that’s all. You’ll notice that you won’t get upset with someone’s behavior, if it’s justifiably crazy. And certain situations will be different for everybody subjective. But the story often tell us there was a big fallout in my own family, I won’t name names, but kind of two sides of the family like split in half over these two people who are like, bashing heads, right? Because father and daughter were having serious conflict for many, many years. and B were to take sides, and it got really ugly, and anybody caught in the middle got hated by everyone. And it’s very, very stressful and just bizarre as well, like, oh, what’s going on one of these two people hate each other? How do we fix this and nothing worked. And then almost simultaneously, both people were diagnosed with long term dementia. And the dementia was the reason for all of the conflict. The behavior escalation between the two was coming from both of them essentially losing their minds. And when everybody realized that that’s what had been happening all along, conflict gone, family healed. I don’t know if it was that quick. But it was only a few conversations for everybody to get, oh, my god is this works. We’ve been fighting about this and they just sick, they just sick people. That’s all. This isn’t personal. This is real. They just, it’s just two sicknesses bouncing off each other, you know, and it suddenly all made sense because there was other weird behaviors and so on. Well, you’ll notice these things like that, right? Like maybe you forgive a child because they’re mature, you know, saying something mean, or you know, somebody who you think is mentally ill, or intellectually disabled, you might forgive them certain behaviors that you would be very harsh about when somebody you considered sane or, you know, fully functional or intelligent. And yet, there is no such thing as sane, harmful behavior. Anybody does anything harmful is coming from an ill, or dysfunctional or disordered place, especially if what they’re doing is bad for their own life in the long run or short term. So whenever somebody does something that’s harmful to you, even if it looks like cold calculated bullying or It looks like they, you know, they’re having fun at your expense, or it looks like they’ve gone out of their way to make life hard for you or whatever. The first assumption you got to make about them is like, man, they got problems, I think nobody who’s confident and healthy and functioning well would do something like that. And here’s thing you gotta understand, you might get hurt feelings, if you’re overly sensitive to somebody else, they living their life, if you’re judgmental, and, you know, conservatively minded, you might get upset by people just doing what they’re doing living by their values. But a majority of the time, if you feel like someone’s hurt you, maybe they have, maybe they’ve done something objectively harmful towards you. But your suffering comes from thinking that it was somehow sane and intelligent, purposeful, rather than seeing it as the knee jerk reaction of somebody who has at least temporarily lost their mind and might never really had control of it. Like there are a lot of functioning lunatics in the world, many, many millions of them. They’d be just like, some, some of them are watching my How do you get up and function in the adult world without ending up in jail, but they do. And they don’t know how to connect with people properly, they don’t know how to express their needs. You know, maybe they guilt trip all the time. They don’t know how to accommodate the stresses and struggles of the world, like the person who cuts off everyone and traffic all the time, they just can’t like, comprehend that they have to share space with the rest of, you know, the particles and the universe, and so on. Those are all forms of insanity. They’re detachment from reality, people do not accept life that people do not take responsibility for themselves that people can’t find anything better to do. And here’s a key one. Let’s say you’re getting deep into the comment section on social media, and somebody’s really giving you shit, like do what is this dude’s problem? stop and ask yourself, Is this the best he can do with his time? Like, I’m watching someone do the very best they can think of doing with the time right now? What does it tell me about them? And the answer probably is, they’re not doing very well. Because there is nobody who’s confident and healthy and doing well. ranting and raving and online bullying, right? There’s nobody, that you never have those that combination of confidence in online bullying. Never have that ever. A confident person never does anything at all deliberately harmful, or even just inconsiderate to other people. Really, it’s very rare that they wouldn’t if they wouldn’t be for the greater good. It’d be it’d be long term, increased quality of life for everyone involved, essentially. So next time somebody pisses you off, just remember, they’re broken, they’re wounded. They’re all kinds of fucked up. So why do you take it personally? It’s clearly not about you. And why do you get upset with them when actually, they’re suffering more than you just do a couple more, because I’m losing my voice. And my girls will be getting home soon. So I’m gonna skip some of the lesser ones. There are no wrong decisions. Decisions are almost arbitrary. It doesn’t really matter what you choose, people get so fucking stuck in analysis, paralysis over analyzing, like, oh, what’s the right move before they take any action? They’re looking at it wrong. There are no bad decisions. There’s just bad reactions to decisions. Let’s make a decision. Like should I live here or move to the other side of the world, it actually doesn’t matter which one you choose. What matters is what kind of life you make for yourself wherever you live. So if you make it work, then either of those options are good. And if you can’t make it work, then neither of them are good anyway. Right? If you can’t figure out how to make the most out of life and doesn’t matter where you live, okay, and if you can figure out how to make the most out of your life, then doesn’t matter where you live. Okay, now sure, some options will give you different opportunities to others. But if you’re a person who makes the most of all opportunities, then it doesn’t matter which one you choose. You know, should I get married or stay single? Hey, as long as you can enjoy the life doesn’t matter. Try both do knee that doesn’t matter. Right? The decision doesn’t fucking matter when you get all hyped up or should I do this? Or should I do that? Fucking flip a coin. It doesn’t matter what matters is once the decision is made. You go right, let’s make the fucking most out of this situation. Even when it looks like a mistake, you are Jesus way, way worse than I predicted. Learn from it grow from it be anti fragile so that you’re glad that something bad happened to you because it made you so much stronger in the long run. You know what I mean? Look around the situation. You’re right. What can I salvage here? And at least become someone who’s growing their resourcefulness. You know, making mistakes, so to speak is actually one of the best things that can happen to you if you make the most of making the mistake. You don’t get strong from getting things right Get strong from getting things wrong. So I say fucking get impulsive with your decision making, but get much more considerate with post decision behavior. Right? So decision making doesn’t matter, flip the coin, give it five seconds choose anything, but we really put in thought and effort is to what you do with a decision after it’s made. You know, flip a coin Fuck, I gotta quit my job. Okay, here’s my notice, right? Stop and think, what do I really want to do for work? What am I opportunities, let’s not rush this and let’s not panic about money. Let’s fucking, I’m free right now I could do anything, let’s make the most of it. That is really what good decision making is about post decision behavior. Low quick one. Addiction is mostly about accessibility. You know, I used to work with drug addicts a lot. And of course, in my work, I come across all kinds of addictions, porn, Netflix games. Six is all kinds of addictions. One thing I found is the most helpful thing to breaking an addiction is cutting off your access to whatever your particular drug is. It’s not even really about beliefs and trauma and therapy and group support. It’s just about not having it available for enough time that you lose interest in it. Really. Like you take any dedicated, fully nicotine hooked smoker, and you plop them on an island for a year without cigarettes, they will be cured of their addiction. It’s as simple as that, for the most part. Right? Even you noticed this with flights I noticed this with like, when I started flying to American stuff in about 12 or 13 hours and I was a smoker, I could handle the whole flight without smoking. Because I couldn’t smoke. Right. I mean, as soon as I got to the airport, oh my oh God, I hope they got one of those horrible death rooms that I can smoke in. But the flight I was actually relatively calm, very uneducated, I could get through the whole night sleeping without waking up panicking needing a smoke. So addiction was really just about awareness and availability. It’s the same like somebody has a porn addiction, cut off your internet, porn addiction gon rally. And then you need a certain amount of time somebody will say 21 days to break a habit. I don’t know what the exact figure is, it’s as long as it takes for you to go home not really thinking about it anymore. Whenever you get to there, then it worked, I wouldn’t say that you should then get accessibility again, you should just make it always unaccessible you know, you should make it that you can never really access your drug of choice. Without strenuous effort without a lot of chance to stop and think along the way, a lot of chance to reconsider. You know, there’s lots of different ways to do it. Lots of practical ways to do it. But if you want to quit something, just make it really hard to get your hands on on that thing. old classic one there just not enough people seem to have got their heads around permanent happiness, such as life satisfaction happily ever after, is impossible. Impossible. The human brain will not allow it from the basic premise that you cannot have one single emotion constantly, we cannot feel good all the time. Because you will get bored of that feeling it will become normal to you. And then it doesn’t feel good anymore. Plus, even if you could sustain it long enough to get bored from it, you can’t actually the brain doesn’t allow it the brain reacts constantly moving moods shifting, physical physiological systems moving around, you will always have a range of emotions. The idea that you’ll be able to go like okay, I’m happy now lock it in forever, oh, hopeless. It’s not physiologically possible. And even if your definition of happiness is some sort of contentment, satisfactions and ideally you wake up every morning, like I love my life. Not possible. It’s not. It’s not possible, you’re gonna have rough days, you’re gonna have off days, things are gonna go wrong for you. I mean, you think, let’s say you cross the finish line, you’re rich and you got a beautiful wife and you’re really, you know, you look great and everything does rolls out in front of you and you get everything you want, and you’re doing this really meaningful work, and then you get cancer is still gonna love it. Still gonna feel good? Well, you probably kind of get cancer in your life. If something else doesn’t kill you first. Cancer is super common. It’s only a matter of time, right? something’s gonna happen to you. Somebody you love is gonna die. Something’s gonna get stolen from me. Something’s gonna fucking crash and burn. Nobody has ongoing sustained success without any dips or fluctuations in the chart forever. It’s never fucking happened. And even if it could, the human brain for survival reasons, evolutionarily speaking, is one If for dissatisfaction, we get an itch and ambition to seek new and better all the time because that’s what used to keep us alive. You think back when we’re in the middle of the food chain, little hunter gatherer tribes that were at as at risk as any other kind of, like low level predator, if they like, you know what, this berry bush, it’s all good. Let’s just stay here forever. So once the Tigers find out that that’s where you camped you did. You’ll be like, Look, these berries are alright, but I’m pretty sure there’s some bit of berries around there, you know, I’m getting a bit sick of these. And that was actually to keep us on the move. You ask any fucking like combat veteran. When it comes to escaping dangerous situations, they always say don’t stay still keep moving the fuck out of there. It’s a survival strategy. So you’re constantly going to end up dissatisfied. You know, I saw an interview with Dan Bilzerian talking about how he always has a Michelin star food cooked for him. And now he can’t even enjoy normal food. He thinks all tastes like garbage. And he can no longer enjoy his Michelin star food. It’s just normal food for him, there will come a point where no foods good enough for him because he’s peaked. And his dissatisfaction has not stopped. But integrity. That’s a realistic goal, or at least a much more rewarding one. You can’t be happy all the time. But you’ve got a better shot at being more real over time. You got a better shot at impressing yourself with integrity over time, and better shot at discovering and living by your principles even more consistently over time. And that creates a deep inner reward that can’t be called happiness, because you’re gonna have a range of emotions and fluctuating luck throughout this experience. You’ll still have highs and lows, you’ll still have good days and bad days. But you will like being the guy who’s going through that Orgill that’s what integrity is, is when you go like no matter how ship things for me. I don’t want to swap with anyone else. Because I like this guy. I like the way he handles shit. Or like I like what he’s trying to do. Like his motives, or like what he stands for. As my boy, I want to see it through to the end with this guy, no matter how fucking awful it gets. I’m invested on this dude, I’m putting my money on this guy. That’s integrity. And that can be developed. There’s no barriers to that there’s no physiological kind of human traits that will stop that from happening. I mean, it might have some difficulties doing it, especially with the conditioning and programming and trauma, but it’s possible. permanent happiness isn’t. Last one. Remember, as a kid, you’d be watching the news and it’s always about people dying, right? Floods, killed 1000s of people and whatever country that you don’t care about. People with a different city died in a car accident and gangsters in some country you never heard of got shot and so on, right? Just always people. And then depending on your life, some of them were close, like Oh, no granddad’s dead and fuck a friend from school got hit by a car or whatever. But was never you, you’re always dodging those bullets. And the longer we live, the longer we hit survivorship bias. And we start to think like, you know, everyone else dropping my flies when I am fuckin stood out. Right? He start to get an unconscious sense of immortality. It’s kind of like, Yeah, I know death happens to other people. But still here, right? I CAN bus whip past me couldn’t have been an inch from my face just the other day, but didn’t get me still here. And no matter how many funerals we go to how much terrible news we watch about people dying was never click like, there’s nothing special about us. Other than good luck for now that your time is due. And you could be one of those people on the news. You could be the guy that somebody else knows who died. You could be next. One of the key things I keep in mind as much as I possibly can as I could be one of the ones who died prematurely. I’ve had a few things kind of bring it home for me like I’ve got a genetic defect that gives me high cholesterol no matter how healthy I live. I’m taking medication for it, but I’m on that like high risk category for heart attack, which Heart disease is the biggest killer worldwide? I think. So I’m sort of like oh yeah, I’m not like this perfectly healthy dude. Like I’ve got a genetic thing that I can’t do anything about basically, other than sort of try to hold it at the door. But it’s going to take me if nothing else does that it’s going to my dad healthy as fuck running marathons eating salads all the time, so on how to take in his 50s almost took him out. And you know, now he lives like a monk just to fucking stay alive, right? And I was just like, shit, man. Unlike 50, as young let’s not old due to an arrest home quietly slipping away that’s like a dude who just got back from doing a fucking half marathon dropping dead Jesus Christ. So I’ve had a few things and I’ve had a couple of physical near death experiences. I’ve pinned under a boat underwater once in a couple of things. made me realize, oh, yeah, now it could be me. Any moment now, if someone like went past you, and they, you know, I sort of just today, I was going across a pedestrian crossing, and an old Candace went past me didn’t even see that I was on there. I was like, if I’d been two steps ahead, is that it for me? Like, if I did, they’re big, like claps and whack your head on the fucking windscreen? Forever, you know, like, it’s just a it’s just a step away death and not for other people. But for you. You could be next could be tomorrow could be next year, it’s almost certainly going to be sooner than you hope it is. You don’t know. Where you do know as if you stop and ask yourself as if it is tomorrow. What would I regret? Right? As I’m just like clocking out, like imagine you don’t want to sort of slow ways we’ve got a little bit to a realize that you’re definitely dying and then be reflect on your life. What’s that experience going to be like for you? Are you going to enjoy it? You know, I’ve got this kind of hope and a bit of a theory that if you are aware that you’re dying, that you will actually get a sense of peace. Now I’ve had that because of my near death experiences, especially the time I almost drowned. There was a moment where I’m just like, Okay, I guess that’s it. And there was no agitation in that moment. It was almost a relief. It’s not like I wanted to get away from life. It’s just more like a kind of like, my body had some sort of reaction to get me through that last moment. Just go full acceptance, download, you know, just went Okay, that’s it. All right, we’re gonna go kind of thing. And as I was very peaceful and strim, pinned to the bottom of the ocean floor by a buckin. Boat, right? I can’t even move at all. And only lasted a few seconds, but I just got lucky wave that took the boat off me. I’m just lying the under the CVS boat, my fucking ribs creaking. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is it says my ear runs out. That’s it, I guess. It was my turn. It was just this very sort of calm thing. That’s it. Now, if the buyer hadn’t lifted off, I would have had a few more seconds. And I think in those few seconds, I would have gone like, so how did I go? What was my innings like, you know, that I do my best that we’re happy with that run, are happy with the way I’ve left things for the others, the people who loved me and so on. And like because my legacy? You know, Michael, would that? And I’m glad at that time that question and come up, because I wouldn’t have liked the answer. This time, if the question came up. They might be some sort of, I guess, acceptance on the app. And like, ah, there’s so much more I wanted to do. But in terms of what I have done, and who I am now be like, couldn’t have couldn’t have improved on it. That was me at my best for sure. Like, doesn’t mean I did perfectly, but I did as well. It’s only gonna do you know? So there’s a question a coach asked me once, and that’s where I’ll finish with that you can ask yourself as if you got a diagnosis and and, you know, a totally believable, bulletproof diagnosis from a doctor that you are definitely going to die 12 months from today, you know, you’re going to be perfectly fine until that date, and then you’re going to drop out, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What changes? How do you live differently in the next 12 months than you have been living? Now, if there’s no difference at all, then maybe you’re on track. So straightaway, you’re thinking all these things I should say. And there’s people I should go talk to and there’s no I don’t want to do this job anymore. And I’ve got to finally go travel and do that thing I wanted to do. Then you’re off track dude. Right? And memento mori. Always remember death. Remember, you’re gonna die and let that guide you on your decision making. So those are just a few of some of the big ticket realizations I’ve had in my life. Hopefully some of them help you there. Some common ones you’ve probably heard before. I’m not trying to be original here. These are just the ones that actually moved me. I left some of the lists because I’m just getting tired, but they weren’t as good as the other ones anyway, so maybe I’ll make another list later. Thanks for watching, listening, whatever. Get in touch if you want help with this kind of stuff, Dan@brojo.org and I’ll see you next time.