HealthyGamerGG - Why Your Life Feels Meaningless

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about being a speck of dust in the universe and how to find fulfilment. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, like, how do I find fulfillment? Like, what's the point in anything? Like, why should I do anything? And it's like, you don't even understand what you're looking for. All you're doing is substituting whatever logic or intellect you have for any kind of understanding of experience. And then half the time, when your logical mind is telling you to do things, it's actually hijacked by a subconscious like dopamine addiction. So all it's trying to do is like, eh, there's no point in anything. Guess I'm going to play more games today.

because that's life. I want to live a life that I want to live. But I just don't see the purpose or point to anything. Yeah, I can help others and yeah, it feels good when I do. I can try and maybe I actually help or maybe I don't. Maybe I fail. Maybe I succeed. At the end of the day, what does it all really matter anyway? What does it matter whether I live a happy life or a sad life? What is it matter whether I write an inspirational best-selling book or I just play video games all day. We're all just specks of dust on a rock whirling in space, which is itself a speck of dust in an unfathomably vast and complex universe. We get to live for this brief window of time. What's the point of anything other than just maybe maximizing pleasure and minimizing gain?

Before our time comes and it's over, just like it is for every other mortal creature. from the most revered among us to the lowly cockroach. How do people achieve a feeling that their life matters and feel a sense of fulfillment from what to do? Great question. So oftentimes, we're in a position where we don't really understand, like, what matters, right? We have no experience of it.

So we ask these questions, like, how do I achieve a life that matters? How do I find a sense of fulfillment? But we don't actually know what fulfillment is, right? Because what is this person chasing? And in the absence of actually understanding fulfillment, what happens is their intellect comes up with all these different things, right? They comes up with like, oh, like I'm completely insignificant on a cosmic level, which may be true. And so what does it matter whether I do something or I don't do something? Because in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? Well, that's a very good question. And so this is where I think we have to start by sort of unpacking, like, what does fulfillment even mean? Because what I tend to find in these sorts of situations is that when I don't, you know, existential, let's call it nihilism, when we're faced with existential nihilism, here's kind of how it, how the sequence of things runs, okay? So, we look at the world and we don't see meaning. No meaning, no fulfillment,

right? We're kind of looking around. We're like, I don't see the meaning here. And so then what happens is since it's not like apparent to us, we start to become nihilistic. And then in the absence of meaning, we've got a void that we tend to fill up with pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. So in the absence of like fulfillment, which is that dopaminergic, like we're not really sure. Because when people talk about it, fulfillment, they're not talking about things that are dopaminergic, usually. What they're usually talking about is like something else that we don't really know what it is. And so what we end up doing is like we don't see a clear road to it, intellectually that is. And so what we do see and what we have experienced is like dopaminergic stuff. So that's what we kind of do, right? We kind of fill it up that way. So what's kind of going on? And this sort of results in essentially hedonism, right? And so what this person is kind of saying is like, In my mind, I cannot logically discover fulfillment.

Therefore, I'm going to default to hedonism. Okay? So let's like start by sort of understanding if you want to find fulfillment, how do we go about doing that, like from a critical standpoint, right? So let's start by understanding what is fulfillment. Right? So if you want to find something, like if you want to like do something in life, you have to start by like understanding how to go about.

first of all, what it is. And if you know what it is, then you can start to develop a plan to find it, right? But the first thing to understand what is fulfillment? Like, if I were to ask this person or I would ask you, if you're nihilistic,

and I ask you, what is fulfillment? I think what we're going to get is a shrug of the shoulders. And it's in the absence of understanding what fulfillment is that we do this kind of thing. Okay? So this is essentially, in a weird way,

it's almost like Dunning Kruger. So when we lack understanding, we fill it in with theory, right? So I just want y'all to think about it. And our society is moving in this direction. So our society is like moving towards the direction of like proxies instead of like true understanding. So this is why we use grades instead of knowledge

when desiring like who to hire. out of college, right? It's why we use stock prices instead of fundamentals when evaluating the economy or companies. And there are some people who do evaluate fundamentals, right? So Berkshire Hathaway, for example, Warren Buffett, like evaluate its fundamentals. And that's part of the reason that probably is so successful. I'm not an expert in the stock market or anything. So take that with a grain of salt. But the key thing here is that our mind, when we don't really understand something, we'll just like fill it in with what logically we're able to produce.

So this is kind of like, I remember when I was 13 years old, my friends would talk about what the best, like, position is to have sex in. And it's like a bunch of virgins just like talking about this stuff. And they would like argue with each other. Right? They have no idea. But they don't really stop and think a little bit about like, they don't think about that.

right? It's kind of interesting because it's not like ignorance, the ignorance of something prevents people from having an opinion. In fact, quite the opposite. And this is where Dunning Kruger comes in. So if I'm, I'm playing, you know, Dota with, with like, people who are 8K MMR and 2K MMR, and no one knows their MMR. The 2K player will be flaming the 8K player for not coming to fights that are stupid and irrelevant. Right? So they're like, we're going to, like, we don't recognize when we're ignorant of something. We just fill it in with like our random law. So then the kind of question becomes, okay, what are the tools at our disposal to understanding fulfillment? So if we want to like, if we want to start this, how do we start?

So let's start by understanding that we have two fundamental tools for understanding things. We have experience and we have intellect. Okay. And generally speaking, our society tends to emphasize intellect. It tends to understand, emphasize logic. And there's, it's value to this. There's no question about they're being valued. But when it comes to something like fulfillment, if I were to logically lay out an argument, this is what fulfillment is.

It's not going to catalyze behavior. It's not going to catalyze understanding. So this is the other kind of interesting thing is that logic does not usually create behavioral change. Experience creates behavioral change. And so what I'm hearing from this person is like, you know, if their struggle is why don't I just play video games all day versus try to write. a best-selling novel, that's a behavioral difference. So the real problem with nihilism, in my opinion, is that, like, it doesn't dictate the right kind of behavior, right?

What is the right kind of behavior? We'll get to that in a second. So let's start by understanding, like, what is fulfillment? So, like, let me ask you all a question. What do you think it's like to climb Mount Everest? What do you all think is the experience of climbing Mount, or not the experience? What do you think it's like? Do you think it's fulfilling?

Right? So I want you all to notice this for a second. Oh, no. We got this or no? Oh, there we go. Hopefully it'll populate. So I want you all to kind of notice this that no one is saying, I don't know. Right? Everyone is coming up with answers. It's scary. It's challenging. It's cold. So like notice what your mind does. Even in the absence of any kind of experience, no one's like, I don't know. Everyone's like, it must be this way. It must be this way. So your mind is already, like, people are calling it exhilarating. Like, your mind is already like coming up with answers for things that you have no idea about. Right? It's really fascinating.

So what is fulfillment? So like, let's think a little bit. So if we talk about Everest for a moment, I imagine that climbing Mount Everest is fulfilling. So it's kind of weird. So when I say I imagine that, what I'm going to actually talk about is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, which I have done. So when I climb, and y'all are pretty right. Okay. And so, like, it's all of those things, right?

So it's cold because your intellect is not poor. It's not, it's a good intellect. Y'all are right. It's hard. Some people are saying it's exhilarating. Right? So I would say that climbing Mount Kilimanjaro was absolutely. a fulfilling experience for me.

It gave some sense to meaning of my life. And what I learned from it was kind of bizarre. So I got to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. And like my first thought upon being on top of the world, and the view is amazing because you're 20,000 feet up in the air. And you can see like the African savannah like all around you. And so it's bizarre. It's like it's so weird to be, you know, the view you get from an airplane.

It's like that view, but you can look through. 360. It's not secluded to a window. And so it's amazing because you're 20,000 feet up in the air. And when you see that, my first thought was like, all right, let's go. How quickly can we get down? This is amazing and all, but holy crap, the first thing I want to do is get back down to the ground. And so it was like such a bizarre experience and it sort of helped me understand and appreciate like, yeah, this was really amazing, but I never want to do this again. right? And so it's kind of bizarre, but was that experience fulfilling? I'd say, absolutely. Was it all of these things as well? Absolutely. And this is what I want you all to understand is that the intellect can hypothesize these things. But this is the tricky thing about the intellect is once you hypothesize an answer, the intellect will say you don't need to bother because I have figured out what that experience is going to be like. This is what's so dangerous about the intellect. I don't need to bother. I already know that. And so the tricky thing about the intellect is that the intellect actually can keep your

behaviors the same. So it's going to say things like keep playing video games, right? Like, think about this for a second. What do you think is the result? What is this an argument for? Let's assume for a minute that there's a covert argument in this. And this is the justification that we use for playing video games all day. Right?

So I think that this person is actually asking a really good question. They're curious. They're genuinely wanting to grow. But there's like a subtle sneaky, sneaky, sneaky thing here going on, which is this is basically saying, don't bother doing anything. Let me just get my dopamine or your kit. Okay. So let's try to understand a little bit about what fulfillment truly is. Now we're going to step to science for a second.

Okay. So the first thing you've got to do is figure out what is fulfillment. If you want to understand how to build a fulfilling life, you have to start by figuring out what is fulfillment. So now we're going to talk a little bit about video game addiction and the nature of fulfillment. So the reason that video games are addictive is not because they provide a reward. The reason video games are addictive, this is an oversimplification, but there's good data behind this. It's actually because of the denial of the reward. So this is really, really important, right?

So like everyone's playing Eldon Ring now. I'm still stuck on the first boss, which is alarm. hard. I thought I was get good, but I just haven't been able to get good. Right. So what makes it so fulfilling? Like, how does it feel to beat that boss? I don't know, right? Because I haven't done it yet. So it's the denial of the reward, followed by the reward, that actually creates the sense of fulfillment in a video game. This is really, really important to understand. And this is why games are so friggin addictive. Because they're going to deny you the reward for a time. but you know that eventually you're going to get it.

It's the only place where the denial of reward has the guarantee of the reward after some amount of time. That's why they're so addictive. Because what happens in Wow? When there's like endgame content, like what happens three, six months after the content gets released and all the hardcore raid guilds do it? They nerf the content.

So you've wiped on this boss 15 times, but don't worry, the game devs have your back. You're going to beat that boss eventually. right? Whereas like, Dark Souls doesn't do that. So some people quit because there's no guarantee of the reward in Dark Souls. And so game developers will even use this mechanic. I don't think they really use it nefariously personally. I think they're just like, okay, we'll let the hardcore people do it and we want to have everyone have this experience. I don't think that they're evil or diabolical about it. But there's good data that shows that denial of reward is what makes games addictive. And if we think about adverse experiences or fulfilling experiences, right, we just talked about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Like a huge part of the fulfillment of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro was how hard it is. So this is where adversity into success is a huge component of fulfillment. Right. So we talked a little bit about Russia, like overcoming video game addiction. Like what, like, you know, writing a best-selling novel is not about ego. I mean, if it's about ego, that's totally fine. But generally speaking, I think when you write a really good novel or you create a good piece of work, or like even as a doctor when I see a patient, I do write by that patient, that feels fulfilling. Like, I feel really amazed with myself and I feel really good about myself after I work a call shift that's 30 hours. Because it's hard and I did a good job and I'm proud of what I accomplished. But it's actually like the difficulty that leads to some of the advantage.

So I remember many months ago, I went hiking and I found like a bush of wild berries. And like the berries were not nearly as good as what you get in the supermarket. But damn, were they so, like, satisfying? I enjoyed them so much more than the objectively sweeter and tastier berry that you find from the supermarket. So if we look at sort of the science of fulfillment, what we tend to find is that adversity into success is a huge part of it, right? What are people proud of? They're proud of things that they had to overcome. We see video games take advantage of this.

And this is also where if we look at substance use, we can see an element of this principle here as well. So what makes a substance so satisfying? It's actually the craving. It's the denial of the thing. So when I crave something, right? So I've worked with people who are like addicted to heroin. And the worst their cravings get, like they like want, like,

it becomes so difficult, and then when you finally use, it feels so relieving. And people who use, like, over and over and over again, like, they actually don't enjoy it as much as, like, if they've had cravings, and then they use. So when I talk to people who relapse, what they consistently tell me is it's like the first one or two uses when they relapse that are the best. And after that, they don't even enjoy it after that. It feels awful. It's kind of like playing a video game where, like, Like at the very beginning, a video game is actually really, really fun. And it's when you sort of like get into it over and over and over and over and over again that your dopamine circuitry kind of adapts and then it's no longer fun, right? So this is why, like, I'm just to be clear, I'm not advocating for usage of any of this kind of stuff.

I'm just using it to illustrate this point. That adversity into success, that denial of the reward followed by the reward, can be incredibly satisfying. Now, is that the nature of fulfillment? I'm not sure. Okay. So then the question becomes like, okay, how do I find fulfillment? So this is the question you should ask.

And be careful because you can ask this question intellectually. You can answer it intellectually. You can read 1,000 books about finding fulfillment. And will you have found fulfillment? Absolutely not. Right? Like you can watch as much pornography as you want to, but no amount of watching pornography is ever a substitute for getting late.

And so this is what's happening in the world. As we sort of get, as we move towards higher and higher intellectualization in the absence of experience, we start to form, like, opinions about stuff. And then we think we're right. Then we join echo chambers, right? And then when there are a thousand other people who are saying the same thing that we're saying when none of us have ever left the room, then like we think we're more right, because now we're getting congruence from the world. Because like everyone else believes what I believe. so there's like no point in exploration because it's all been figured out.

The world is nihilistic. There's no point in doing anything. Just embrace hedonism. Disagree completely. If you want to understand how to find fulfillment, you have to first figure out what is the nature of fulfillment. And now we're going to talk a little bit

about sort of the yogic path. Now the yogic path is about awareness. And simply what we want to do is look at ourselves through a series of experiences. Okay? And just see like, okay, what is more fulfilling and what is less fulfilling.

So, for example, like, eat while watching, and eat by yourself, like, without doing any distracting, no technology. Just eat the food. Which one is more fulfilling? Which one is more dopaminergic? Which one do you gravitate towards? Why do you gravitate towards it? In which one does the food taste better?

Right? Oh, no, no, no. So you got, y'all are making a mistake. once again. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Everyone's giving answers. This is intellect. Jumping in with answers. Don't do it. You can't answer this right now. This is the point. Y'all need to understand this very, very carefully. Right? You notice how quickly your mind does this. Like, this is the key thing. Do you all see this? Your mind is like, I already know the answer. So now what you've done is you remove the necessity of actually engaging in the exercise,

because you already have the answer. Oh, I know. Oh, I know. Oh, I know. If you want to understand why you can't find fulfillment, it is these three words. Oh, I know. I already know. No need to explore. I've read about it. I've done it before. Do it with awareness.

Sit down and actually do it. Okay? And here's what we're going to do. So it's all about awareness. So this is what I'd recommend. If you want to understand the nature of fulfillment. So you need to ask yourself, like, do I feel? fulfilled. But we're going to give you a couple of exercises. First, seek new things. Why is this?

This is because you already have answers for the existing stuff that you can do. So you can revisit like eating, but I would seek something new. So I would like if you haven't climbed a mountain before or even, you know, like I would go climb a mountain. Like if you've never been snorkeling before, go snorkel. Okay? Second thing is embrace difficulty. Now this is the opposite of the hedonistic path. Remember, the reason we're doing this is not just to make our life hard. It's try to understand the nature of fulfillment. And so if you do something easy versus hard, ask yourself which one is more fulfilling? Which one is more fulfilling? Going for a walk that is 50 steps or going for a walk that is 5,000 steps. Which one is more fulfilling? Try it. And this is the

key thing. This is why we get stuck. Because when we operate from hedonism, we move away from difficulty. And then when we move away from hardship, we narrow the range of behaviors we can engage in. So up here is hike, cook, camp, games. And down here is YouTube games, Twitch. We narrow the scope of our life. And do we feel full... There's a thousand people, millions of people out there that just do this all day.

Are they fulfilled? Or the people that do this? Are they fulfilled? Once again, you're going to want to answer, right? Which is okay. You have some experience, but just be careful. Do an honest investigation. And so I'm going to leave you all with one last exercise.

So this is do these two things. So just find something new, right? And do it with awareness. This is key. So awareness is more than just like the experience of emotion. So if you go do something, you may be anxious. and therefore you don't enjoy it. We're not talking about enjoyment.

We're talking about fulfillment. Enjoyment and fulfillment are two different things. That's why we have two different words for them. And if you go down the hedonistic, nihilistic route, then you're going to shoot for enjoyment all the time and you'll find an absence of fulfillment. And I've seen this like many, many, many times. The classic story about this situation

is actually the story of Gotham Buddha, who had all of the enjoyments of the world, and he woke up unfulfilled. And I've seen this a lot with people who are, you know, financially well off. And what they find is that, like, their life is not, they have luxury and they have security, which are absolutely important contributors to happiness.

There's been research on this, right? Because it's hard to seek fulfillment when you are worried about putting food on the table and having a roof over your head. So you should absolutely do those things first. Right? We're not saying that those aren't important. But it's just it doesn't stop there. And this is where in the yogic tradition,

There are four major goals of life. Dharma, Arta, karma, and moxha. Duty, wealth, pleasure,

enlightenment. So this is the cool thing. I like this philosophy for this reason. They're not saying don't enjoy things. They're not saying don't get financial security. Right? What they're saying is that you should do your duty first, and then by all means,

get, you should enjoy some amount of wealth, right? So get your financial security. Enjoy what life has to offer. Don't live like an ascetic. If you want to eat a slice of deep dish pizza, like eat a slice of deep dish pizza. And, you know, for people who are curious, this is the Kamsutra. This is even a religious text about like maximizing your pleasure, which is like a part of the path. And then at the end, pursue enlightenment. So like take what life has to offer. Don't deprive. yourself of it, but don't stop here. This is the problem with hedonism, is hedonism is like, just this one.

Then there are the tryhards who are just this one. But the truth is that I, and once again, this is from one particular tradition. You guys don't have to accept this. I personally, I like it. Because it sort of says, like, yeah, you should be spiritual. You should do your duty. You should be a good person.

But like, you should enjoy life too. Like, life is there to be enjoyed. And so if we're talking about finding fulfillment, look for it with awareness. And so I'm going to give you all just one last option to get you started because awareness has to be cultivated. It's not just like experiencing an emotion. It's being fully aware of what you experience. So what I'm going to ask you all to do is go for a jog. Okay, so like health stuff aside. So if you have any contraindications to this medically and things like that, don't do this.

But I'd say go for a jog for 15 minutes. Make sure you hydrate a little bit ahead of time. And then the first thing that you're going to want to do is drink water when you get. back. Right? What I want you to do, grab a glass of water, go sit outside, and wait five to ten minutes, and then see how fulfilling that glass of water is. Wait with it. Just watch yourself. Just watch yourself. Notice what happens. Like you're going to get these biological impulses. You're going to feel thirsty. You want the water. You want the water. You want the water. You want the water. And just, you know, obviously if you're like dehydrated or it's very hot outsider. Don't do anything that's like dangerous, like then drink the water.

But just watch. The other thing that you can do is meditate in a hardcore way. What does this mean? So I'm going to teach you all the first step to hardcore meditation. Okay? So the first step to hardcore meditation is to sit somewhere and not meditate. So find a place to sit that's relatively comfortable. and don't do anything.

Don't engage in, like, thinking. Like, don't, like, start thinking about something. Don't create stories in your head. Don't think about what you're going to be doing later. Don't let yourself do anything. You want to try to meditate, you kind of can. But just sit somewhere for 10 minutes. And watch what happens to you.

Observe all of the impulses that happen. Right? So there's a great exercise, which is watch, stare at a wall. So some people have done this even up to an hour. And it's going to be so incredibly difficult because what's going to happen? What's going to happen is like your dopaminergic brain is going to be like, I need something. I need something. I need something. I need something. Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. G me, give me, bored, yes. Do you know what is the most frightening thing in the world to most people is boredom? What is there to be afraid of in boredom? It's 10 minutes. What are you going to do in that 10 minutes otherwise? Browse Reddit? Look at a meme.

What do you have to lose? And see how quickly your mind rebels. This will teach you awareness. Once you have awareness, engage in activities. And ask yourself, what is the nature of fulfillment? Because how the hell are you going to find full fulfillment? fulfillment if you don't understand what it is in the first place. And this is why everyone's stuck because everyone's like, oh, like, how do I find fulfillment?

Like, what's the point in anything? Like, why should I do anything? And it's like, you don't even understand what you're looking for. All you're doing is substituting whatever logic or intellect you have for any kind of understanding of experience. And then half the time, when your logical mind is telling you to do things, it's actually hijacked by a subconscious like dopamine addiction. So all it's trying to do is like, eh, there's no point in anything.

Guess I'm going to play more games today. Because that's life. I guess I'm going to play games. Right? Now I'm going to do it guilt-free because what's the point? What's the point of anything? Why bother, man? Look.

Look at this. Look at how scientifically valid this is. We're all just specks of dust on a rock whirling in space, which itself is a speck of in an unfathomably vast and complex universe. What does it matter if I start working on my term paper today? In the grand scheme of things, it's all irrelevant. So when it's irrelevant, what do you actually end up doing? Watch something on YouTube for a little bit.

Just today. Because in the complete absence of meaning that your mind creates, your addictions are unrampented. right it protects you no guilt bro forget about the guilt don't beat yourself up for procrastinating it doesn't matter you can keep doing it there's it doesn't matter man a thousand years from now 10,000 years from now what difference does it make whether you start your term paper today or tomorrow how is it going to impact the grand scheme of humanity so be careful about where your thoughts lead you be careful if you find yourself it's a good question to ask like where does fulfillment come from why should

I'd just be hedonistic. And this is where I'd say, like, sure, I could give you all sorts of answers. Like, you don't have such a powerful impact on the world, man. Like, try to be a good human being. Forget about all that. Let's be a little bit yogic about it. Let's follow the path of the yogis. And ask yourself first, what is fulfillment?

Define it. Like, what the hell is it? Then we can figure out how to, like, find it. We have to know what we're looking for first. How do we do that? Be careful about your intellect, which is going to want to get. give you answers as substitutes for taking actions. Very tricky. So seek new experiences. Embrace adversity. So ideal that those experiences are not like super easy. And then do so with

awareness. And if you start doing these things, you will understand the nature of fulfillment. I also had one other exercise, which I'll leave you with, which is to find a moment of pure happiness and understand what are the components that are requisite for pure happiness. And the only way you can do that is to study happiness in all of its different shades. And the answer that I discovered was mind-blowing about the true nature of happiness. But you can't, I could tell it to you, but then you won't explore. Your mind will come up with answers right now. It's saying, oh, it's this, it's this, it's this, it's this.

But remember, this is like, it's like tasting a strawberry. Like you can talk about it. You can learn about neuroscience. You can, you know, watch other people eat it all you want to, but you're never going to taste it yourself until you actually like take a bite of the strawberry. So try to find for yourself, this is hard. Find a moment of pure happiness and understand what are the prerequisites for it. Yeah, you want to know it now, right?

So let's think about this. If you're saying, I want to know it now, what happens? if you learn it now? What does your mind get to avoid if you understand the answer? If I tell you the answer, what do you get to do? Right? You don't have to bother because the thing is it's hard. So the harder it is, the more you want to like, you know, get a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain. Like, you don't need a helicopter ride if you're climbing to the second floor of your house. You need a helicopter ride if you're going to the top of Everest, right? So be careful about what your mind wants. The harder it is, the more your mind is like, I don't want to. Why can't we just play

games? Sit in front of a wall and stare at it. Oh, I don't want to. Just tell me what I'm going to learn anyway so that I can be intellectually satisfied, and I don't have to change anything about my life. If you want life to be good, I don't know how else, what other word to use. Generally speaking, hopefully it'll be easier. It doesn't mean that it's free of pain, Right? Just understand yourself, man, or woman, or anything in between. Just understand yourself and how the hell you work. Just understand that and like life becomes so much more manageable. Not saying that it's all, because remember, like, if fulfillment and enjoyment are two different things,

that means that you can live a fulfilling life that is absent of enjoyment. That's true too. That's what Victor Frankel figured out. it's like, oh, being a Holocaust in a concentration camp sucks. And yet, I can find fulfillment and meaning. So the two are actually somewhat independent, right? When you talk about the science of it, there's more relations there, right? So we know that security and a certain amount of financial stuff.

We know that, for example, commutes over 45 minutes for married couples lead to sharp increases in divorce rates. Right? So they're like all kinds of interesting factors that we know from science, which you should absolutely take advantage of. but don't use logic and intellect as a substitute for experience. And be careful about how your mind tries to like dodge all kinds of stuff that is good for you. Because that's why you're stuck. Right? Because you're like listening to your mind.