Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Makes Sense Mondays - Don't Believe the Hype - Episode 38

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

The human brain have the adaptive capacity to be programmed over time with consistency and repetition to become tethered to and believe certain things that often have no validity to them. With that acknowledged, lets take a look at the borage of hype thats driving its case for your reality through the news and social media every day. Lets make sense of the omnipresent HYPE.   Welcome to MAKES SENSE MONDAYS with Dr. JC Doornick "Dragon" where we makes sense of the things that make you go Hmmm? Start your week off the right way by reclaiming control of your Great Morning.   LIVE STREAMED on Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube MAKES SENSE PODCAST   SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW & SHARE our new podcast. FOLLOW the NEW Podcast - You will find a "Follow" button top right. This will enable the podcast software to alert you when a new episode launches each https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/makes-sense-with-dr-jc-doornick/id1730954168    OUR SPONSOR: Enjoy the show and consider joining our psychological safe haven and environment where you can begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about   Resources: Digital Minimialism - Cal Newport: https://amzn.to/3zAadh6 Does our Brain Know the difference between something it imagines and whats actually happening? https://neurosciencenews.com/reality-illusion-brain-23075/#:~:text=Summary%3A%20The%20more%20vividly%20we,confusion%20between%20reality%20and%20imagination. Bill Maher Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqoTDM7tio Andersen Cooper Segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAMTQZmvPE Reality Threshold Article: https://www.wired.com/story/is-it-real-or-imagined-heres-how-your-brain-tells-the-difference/#:~:text=A%20study%20she%20led%2C%20recently,the%20brain%20thinks%20it's%20imagined.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hmm. Makes sense. Great morning humans. Great morning world. This is your boy, Dr. J.C. Dornick, aka. The Dragon, coming at you with another episode of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast, and it's called Make Sense Mondays. This is making sense of this concept that is called The Hype and directly how social media and the messages that are being delivered to us with regularity are having a potential impact on the, way that we look at things, which is the fascination of this podcast is this idea is if you change the way

you look at things, the things you look at change. So if you're looking for things in your life to change, you're going to want to learn how to change the way you look at things. Easier said than done. I took a week off because the family moved and we're in our new home. As you can see, I have a new background right now. We're starting to play with potential ideas for that. So always looking for feedback from the live audience. So today is called Don't Believe the Hype. And if any of you grew up, in the 80s that probably makes you think of a song and I'll hit on that. So don't believe the hype. Awaken to this and begin the process of reclaiming control as the dominant force and shock caller of your life. So what I mean by awaken to this, the process that I call the interface

response system and the whole essence of the concept of making sense, it must begin with simply being awakened to something. The decision making process, whether or not you want to embrace it and do the work and all of that stuff, that comes second to knowing about it. We're going to talk a lot about some unconscious stuff that's going on in the human brain. And when I say unconscious, what I mean is there's a lot of things going on that are making you susceptible to the way that you look at things change. So the way that you're currently looking at things is very, very much being sculpted and persuaded by some secretive, unconscious flying under the radar things.

If you can learn how to take that essential first step of the interface response system to understand the way that the brain works and just become aware of some things, therein lies the fighting chance for you to do something about it. Very, very fun. So let's make sense of hype and constant barrage of social media because I'm going to make some radical changes in my life, and I'm going to challenge and encourage you guys to join me. So important for everyone to know my intention and agenda this day,

as usual is to brainwash you. Now, if you've never heard me say that, it's important to know that not in the sense that I want to coerce you into believing something that I believe in. That's not my intention today, but rather guide you to the washing process of some things in your brain

that you believe to be so that might not be so. In fact, strike that. I want to strike that and give you a different interpretation of what I mean by brainwashing. My true intention, so it's evolving, right now on the fly. My true intention is to offer you the brainwashing tools and opportunities to change the way that you look at things. Let's call it the equipment. That's what I'm going to

offer you today and in all of my makes sense Mondays and my podcast. When I refer to the equipment, I'm saying making you aware of certain things, that's going to be your equipment and you get to either use it or not. As always, this is not an opinionated show. The concept of this show is to unveil some certain things and put them in front of you, what you do with them is completely up to you. I like to hold my opinion of what I think about things out. I actually love to look at all things. If you have a different opinion, I would love to know what it is and have a conversation with you. Because one thing I've learned in my almost 53 years as a dragon is that I really don't really, truly know anything. I'm always open. There's some things that I think and there's some things that I've been

prompted to be interested in, but I don't really know anything. Good to see some folks from the Make Sense Academy. Let's begin with that first process of understanding why we struggle. It's important to know that our brains have this adaptive capacity to be programmed over time. And the way that our brains get programmed over time is through consistency and repetition. So think about that. What are the things that you're doing with consistency and repetition? And that helps our brains become tethered to and believe certain things that often have no validity behind them. So this is an important concept as we lead in. Your brains have the ability to become tethered and believe in something that has no backing to it. That's really important because therein lies your ability to say, well, let's look under the hood

and let's look at what I claim to be, to believe in what I put exclamation points behind. I just awoke to the concept that it might not actually be so. It might just be something that I've believed and had with consistency and repetition enough to where I've all of a sudden called it a fact. And if you have the ability to do that, that was probably one of the biggest power moves that I ever made in my life is what I started to evaluate things that I thought were certain to be so. Found out very often that they weren't. We've always been this way. We've always had this ability.

And it's helped us in some cases to believe in things and call them fact even when they are not. And it's helped us survive in the past. However, these days, and this is an awakening right here, here's part of the brainwashing tools that I'm offering you. These days, there's some very powerful, almost godlike people, humans and technologies and with financial backing that are exploiting this human capacity almost as a weakness. So what I mean by that is,

I want you to just become aware in this moment, because this might be why you're struggling. I want you to become aware of this in the moment that this susceptibility that you have and this capacity you have to believe in something and then call it fact. What I'm saying is there's some very powerful people that know that and social media plays into this and this concept of hype plays into this. So just know that there's a good chance. I can't put an exclamation point on it because that would eradicate the concept of this show. This is a very good chance that you're being persuaded to believe things. by some very smart people that are taking advantage of your brain's capacity to do this.

So it's showing up in your life typically. It's showing up as ineffective ways in which you're thinking, feeling, and responding to things. Perhaps that pang of anxiety, and I always get that pang of anxiety. I don't know about you. Perhaps that pang of anxiety or even maybe even feelings of depression. Perhaps they're not really associated so much with you as much as you thought. And perhaps they're not your fault. Perhaps there's an unconscious infiltration of information that's making you feel that way.

And you feeling that way was part of the intention because it gets you to act in a certain way, which possibly feeds into things. Once again, maybe, maybe. So perhaps it's a side effect and a symptom of some strategic what we call brain hacking. So there's a couple words you might want to write down because those are fun to look up, brain hacking. One quick disclaimer for the Make Sense podcast and Make Sense. Mondays. This episode and all episodes in no way, shape, or form comes as a personal opinion or

preference. So I'm picking a topic right now and I'm unveiling things. So very often people would assume that that's what I am thinking. I'm just noticing something and I'm paying it forward. I'm noticing something and paying it forward because what my intention is is I want to help you create a more efficient and effective goal and dream supportive sense making machine and response system. It's the whole concept of the show. When I bring guests in here and I ask them questions and I ask them how their theories and their concepts, I always look to be open and curious and make sense of them. Because if we get to that place where we make sense of things and we're clear on things, even if it's just temporary, we make better choices in life. Remember, we don't control what happens.

We control how we respond to it. The purpose of the Make Sense podcast is to offer people the opportunity to simply look at the things that are going on from multiple particular. perspectives and vantage points. That's a very healthy thing to do. Very challenging if you're tethered to something and you're afraid of losing it, like politics or religion and things like that. But very, very healthy to look at things from different vantage points and gain different perspectives.

Remember, perspectives and vantage points with consistency are what shape what you call your perception. And we're trying to change the way we look at things so that the things that we look at change. Your perception refers to how you look at. things. So what we do when we learn how to do this is we create the space to change the way that we look at things so that the things that we look at can begin to change. So if you're interested in that sort of thing, you're going to want to continue following this podcast and you're going to want to

listen to this episode. Back to that brain hacking concept and how thoughts and feelings could possibly be persuaded and sculpted. Of course they are. So let's look at this concept of belief. I'm very fascinated recently with whether or not belief is a good thing or a bad thing. I put up a post the other day that said belief. And people don't like to talk about this stuff, the belief thing. Because like imagine if your belief system was challenged. That's not a fun thing. When we look at the belief thing, is believing in something a safe haven?

Is it a good thing? Or is it possibly, possibly a prison of sorts? Are you in some sort of a mental prison because of some of your belief systems? Because when you believe in something and it's gone to that stage where it becomes fact, it's very hard to untether from that. I'm just so curious, is it a good thing or a bad thing? And a potential prison for the brain. So the thoughts and feelings of belief can easily become the only facts that your brain needs

to place that exclamation point behind something. But your thoughts and your feelings become the only facts. Forget about science and mathematics and all of that stuff and reality. Your thoughts and feelings, that you believe in, right, to have the ability to become fact. And that's what constructs the lens that you are currently perceiving and interfacing with reality through. And what you call reality is a result of that, how you're perceiving and interfacing, processing, and responding things. That's what you claim to be reality. So if you claim this morning that your reality is that you're having a

rough time, that times are tough, that you're not cut out for success. Or maybe even on the other side, Maybe you believe that you're cut out for success. Maybe you have these grandiose goals and dreams that are outside of the spectrum of who you are. Maybe you need to do a little bit of work to become the right person for the job. Who knows what it is? Just acknowledge that the way that you're perceiving and interfacing and receiving with reality right now has been shaped. I have my lens of how I'm doing that right now. What I try to do and I use this interface response system and it's what we teach in our Make Sense Academy.

If anybody likes this idea, this conversation, and you want to become the dominant force of your life, it's going to require that you learn a system that we teach and we talk about every morning in our Make Sense Academy. And we have everything that anybody would ever need to proceed and succeed in life in this simple community that we have. And we charge 24 bucks a month for everything in there. So if you like that idea, just as always, the open invitation is just write the words, Make Sense, and we'll send you an invitation to that, no matter where you're watching. this or listening to this. What we're talking about is how the belief system occurs. It's very often from the repetition of the things that cause your thoughts and feelings. And once you lock something in

as a belief, long enough, it becomes a fact. How you're looking at the world right now, that's how it's been created. Now, before we get started with the brainwashing, I want to offer you this opportunity to decide right now whether or not you are content. If you're just listening to this as a distraction, I want you to wake up right now. I want to ask you. and actually do this. Decide whether or not right now you're content and satisfied with your current reality. Because sometimes we just get like comfortable. That's the easier way to go through life is just accept things.

Are you satisfied with your current reality? You actually get to choose. You might have needed a little reminder about that right now. The idea that you just keep quiet and that's what we've been doing too long and going with the flow, keep quiet, go with the flow today. You have a choice. This current reality of your physical, your mental, your financial well-being, are they connected with what you can call your best life? And if they're not, continue forward.

If they are, if you right now have the ability to say, I'm fine. I actually have a shirt. I'll send that to you. I'm fine. And that's your current reality, which is totally fine. I've been there many, many times. Go on with your bad self today. You actually control the narrative.

You are the movie projector. This is what I love to say. You're the movie projector and the film reel. and you're in full control of what projects on the movie screen. You are the movie projector and the film reel. And what is projecting on your screen right now? Good, bad, happy, sad, I'm fine, I'm not fine. You are in control of that narrative.

That might be your awakening today. This projector that I'm talking about is what I refer to as the sense-making machine. Your sense-making machine is the same as a movie projector. It's what's making sense. And sense is your movie. If you're happy with that, this podcast episode is going to sound silly to you. But if you're dissatisfied or even open for an upgrade, you're going to love this.

So this is an important concept, this sense-making machine and this idea of you having a choice. It's an important concept because two reasons. So if you're not living your best life, here's a reality check. If you're not living your best life, you can make a decision right now to uncover the secret as to why you're not. That's an opportunity for you. And I think this episode's going to help you. Learn how to reprogram your sense-making machine.

your movie projector and change the way you look at things and watch the things that you look at change. The second part of learning about this is if you are satisfied, here's the value, even if you're satisfied with your life and you're content that you're living your best life right now, I can't imagine that anybody is because there's always room for growth. But if that's where you're at right now, I get it. Like I said, I've been there. I just want you to understand that's not luck. If you actually feel like you're living your best life, that's not luck. You actually control that. You actually control the ability to even say that you're living your best life. It's important to know that. That's not like some sort of lucky gift that was bestowed on you. However,

the following information and body of work may unveil part of the programming in your sense making machine that has been writing this stuff and may very well have written into that the way that you're looking at things right now. Here's what I mean by that. Your sense making machine and your program might have written into the programming that you should consider that, you everything is fine. Think about that for a second. If you're looking at the world right now and you're saying, I'm fine. I think everything is wonderful. And I do that. I have affirmations in the morning and all of that stuff. Sometimes I wonder who told me to say that. I'm just saying it's always valuable to find out what's going on in that sense making machine. So regardless of where things fall for you today,

I grant you permission in case you needed it to open your eyes, take note of the illuminated check engine light that you may have been putting black tape over for some time now and have a looksy under the hood. Consider this maybe even just a systems check or a tune-up, little oil change or something like that. Even when my car's running fine, I still get an oil change. And I'm talking to my old self because the old version of me used to look at something like this and say, I don't need any help. I'm fine. Recently, just so you know about the hype thing, recently I kind of went back to my old school days and for whatever reason. I went to school in the 80s and I used to listen to this band called Public Enemy.

I think I saw something about flavor, Flav the other day. And I started listening to Public Enemy and I remember that one song, Don't Believe the Hype. So what's interesting about that, it is it prompted me. Because I'm always opening curious to not only what I hear, but why I heard it. What is the hype? I started to say, where in my life is hype showing up? And I coupled that with the fact that I just found a delicious book. I'm going to give you a book recommendation right now that we're going to go talk about in the Make Sense Academy. Remember, if you want to actually do some work and not spend a lot of money and get the mentorship and support and guidance in every online course and lesson that I ever teach, as well as my wife and our business partner, Jules,

just write Makes Sense and you can check out risk-free, get your money back if you don't like it, the Make Sense Academy. I found this book called Digital Minimalism. Now, we're minimalist in our family, meaning we've minimized our lives and got rid of all things that don't matter. And that's going to lead into the challenge that I'm going to give you. But the concept of digital minimalization, I think it's a hot topic. I think a lot of people are looking at this idea of getting rid of anything that's no longer in support. But it's very, very hard because you're very addicted to many of these digital components. I mean, I've been fascinated with this.

So this is a must-get book, Digital Minimalism. So we're minimalist, but we're not digital minimalism. but we're now starting to practice. And like I said, I'm going to challenge you guys to join me in your own way. When I was listening to the public enemy and I coupled it with this stuff that I'm learning from digital minimalism, what I did in that moment is I took my phone and I turned it off and I shut my laptop. Ironically, I'm speaking to that laptop right now.

And I just gave myself time to actually think about hype and digital minimalization and how I might be still affected by this. outside in force. So this directed my attention not only to the very definition of dangers of hype, false information, but more specifically the fact that we have evolved into a world that runs on hype. So remember, I'm talking about believing in things and then having that turn into fact. We're being subjected to hype every day. You know, the world doesn't run on Duncan. It runs on hype and false information. And some very, very wealthy and powerful people through the strategic use of technology managed to eradicate our chances of even having the opportunity to make choices

in what matters and what doesn't. One of the things that we teach in our interface response system is to create a sorting filter of sorts where whatever we're interfacing with and perceive, we say, does this matter? Does this not? Is this in support of my goals and dreams or is it not? Is this in my control or not? So that's the sorting filter. So what I'm telling you is some very smart people are using technology, taking advantage of our brain susceptibility to believe in things and get tethered to things in the absence of fact. And throwing that consistent barrage of our consumption, we're starting to believe in things. And what that means is this idea of what it is that truly matters to you, you might have forgotten that. You might have forgotten that.

And you might now be feeling like what matters most to you is what you've been taught matters most. So I just want you to stop there and think about that for a second. Even if you don't think that's the case, it is. It's affecting all of us right now and even more so our children. What we control and what we don't, what matters and what does not very, very much are being controlled by others. And how is that showing up and what you're consuming every day? Remember what you consume with regularity ends up being what you assume with regularity.

So taking advantage is what they're doing. And by the way, this idea. that you think that these are all like people that are trying to advance humanity and things like that, when they're sitting around at the strategic table looking at an increased revenue, what they're talking about is taking advantage of the human brain's vulnerability and neuroplastic nature to form circuits around the things that it's exposed to with high repetition and consistency. You call them habits. Maybe you have some bad habits. How did you create them? With high repetition and consistency. Now that's a good thing to know because if you want to create a

healthy habit. That's how you'd have to do it, but you'd have to fight against the oil tanker that's going this way right now because you've been sleepwalking through life. So this prompting our brain-body connection to be persuaded to think and feel a certain way, followed by it believing that it has consciously come up with these ideas on its own. This is an interesting thing to look at. A lot of the stuff that you're consuming and now assuming in the absence of fact, because of the high repetition and consistency and things like algorithms, figuring out where your interests are or where your interests should be. You know how that works. You're actually, it's almost like AI intelligence in your own brain. You actually can find yourself thinking that you came up with these ideas.

I see this all the time. I speak to humans that say things that logically sound preposterous, but they believe in them wholeheartedly. So I get interested in that. And I say, I wonder how they came to believe in that. If I challenge them and say something like, hey, who told you that? It sounds like you've been persuaded. And I wouldn't do that. But if I did, they would say, I came up with this on my own. This is my own voluntary opinion of things.

But if they really, really, in the quiet time of their life, think about it. It's their mother, their father, their teacher, preacher. And then the S that I teach is society, which includes social media and news and things like that, that's constantly going in and shaping those. circuits in your brain. And then there's the E, the evolution that's been passed on to us. So what I'm saying is, is there's a good chance that anything that you claim to know to be so, somebody else told you that. And I think it's just important to just like acknowledge the possibility of that. So that's right. There's a strong possibility that you're being programmed

by what I consider a silent killer of your goals and your dreams. So if you're stagnant and you're not moving forward and you're stuck and you're frustrated, not moving forward towards your goals and dreams or maybe even have forgotten to dream and just accept now. Very, very important to recognize that there's a strong possibility that you're being programmed to be that way. And I call it a silent killer because silent because you're, for the most part, unaware that it's happening until you listen to the make sense podcast. Killer, due to the fact that it's got you thinking and worrying about things that for the most part don't matter and are out of your control and don't in any way, shape or form, support your goals and dreams, and even worse, in many cases, have the data and

proof in your minds of being real. Like you actually are your own data and proof. Forget about science and mathematics. However, you don't know this because what your mind perceives and believes, we struggle with differentiating that. So let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, a.k.a. The Dragon, the Make Sense Academy is a live interactive community where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion, gather daily in a mastermind setting with both chicken and dragon, where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for

funding the Make Saints podcast. So feel free to reach out to us at www. www.Rise Up With Dragon.com and check out the MakeSaints Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make Sense podcast. Before we unveil this silent killer, let's first unpack a little science of how a certain function of the human brain works, and more specifically why the human brain often can't differentiate between something that it imagines to be happening versus something that's actually happening. Many amazing big thinkers like Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Bruce Lipton, or even Greg Braden,

otherwise known as the Three Amigos, are often heard saying things that refer to the fact that the mind cannot tell the difference between something that it imagines versus something that is actually happening. The truth and validity behind this lies in the human brain's system of processing stimuli and what must actually occur for the brain to take something that it processes and get to a point where it puts an exclamation point after a statement indicating that it is determined something as fact. So this is a really important thing to consider. The human brain has something called a reality threshold. Consider that for a second. A reality threshold. Nadine Dykstra, who led a study published in Nature Communications, states this. The brain

evaluates the images that it's processing against what's called a reality threshold. If the signal that it's processing passes the threshold, what happens is is the brain moves to a place where it thinks that it's real. If it doesn't pass the threshold, the brain then thinks that it's just something that it imagined. So an example that they give in this study is if somebody looks out of a window and sees a unicorn running down the street. Most likely, they're going to say unicorns don't exist. They're reality threshold would stop it and say there's no such thing as unicorns, and then therefore it would say, I think I just imagined it, because we understand that we can imagine things. But if the brain all of a sudden came up with this idea that it actually saw a unicorn and

started to say unicorns do exist, what had happened was, is it passed that reality threshold. So what's interesting is to look at the idea when you're thinking about social media and all of these things that we've been discussing, all that social media would need to do, which is being driven by some very smart and wealthy people, is devise a way to pass the reality threshold. And the way something gets past a reality threshold is one of two ways. One, your current reality threshold system filters things like a bouncer at the door of a nightclub, and it checks IDs and decides. So the first way something can get past it is if it's on the guest list.

If it's something that is in the realm of what your current reality threshold deems to be reality. Now, everybody's got a different system of that right now in your current reality. But there's another way that something can get past a reality threshold is that that reality threshold over time can get sculpted and shaped and adapt and evolve into a reality threshold that can learn how to accept new things, new guests on a list that weren't previously there at the nightclub. How is it shaped? With the repetitive and consistent persuasion of the stimuli.

Back by the social proof that. it's real. Void of the requirement of actual facts. Find just having emotions, feelings, and things like that. So what does that mean? Is if you are subjected to a stimuli long enough and it's backed by social proof, meaning other people believe it to be true, your reality threshold can actually be molded into one that allows it in as an actual fact. So now think about social media. Think about how much time you're spending, consuming social media, TV news, or even the people that you're hanging around with the most, and you can easily see how you could very easily be coerced into thinking something's real. Now, here's an interesting side note about the correlation with all of this stuff

and dopamine. Dopamine is mostly believed as a feel-good chemical that gets stimulated by certain things that make us, in essence, feel good. In fact, if you really do some research on dopamine, is actually a motivating chemical that just like a cigarette, let me say that again, just like a cigarette can take you from not agreeing or not liking something to trying it again and again until it becomes something that you do agree with and do like. I remember wholeheartedly if I'm going to be transparent when I was a kid and I tried my first cigarette. I was in my buddy's backyard and he had this old pack of cigarettes stored under his boat. He said, try this. He was a little bit more advanced than me. The first time I took a puff, it was the most disgusting, awful thing I ever had.

I thought I was going to die. And I said to myself, I will never do that again. But I remember this moment when I started to notice some of my friends in the cool kids, air quotes, smoking. And something in my brain said, maybe I should try it again. And I tried it again, and I tried it again. And I got to a point where my brain started to say, hey, this makes sense. And I found myself a smoker. It didn't last long, but point taken. Bill Maher says this, the tycoons of social media have to stop pretending to be friendly nerd gods trying to build a better world. He's talking about the Zuckerbergs and such. And they need to admit that they're just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children, just like cigarettes. Let's face it, he says. Checking your

likes is the new smoking. And he references an awesome interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that aired on something called brain hacking. So there's that brain hacking again. That uncovers the idea that Silicon Valley, the bigwigs there, is actively working harder and harder every day to ensure that your brain is wired with the addictive hunger to constantly check into social media. Ask yourself how often you find yourself doing that without even knowing. So if you're open and curious to this potential silent killer, all is not loss. Henry Thoreau says this, and I love it. He says the sun still rises.

Regardless of your current reality and what you think about the world and your situation, the sun will still rise. There is work to be done, indeed. But the juice is worth the squeeze, as they say. If you're not ready to let go of that string that you're holding on to desperately, that's holding the kite of your addiction, well, this is where you'd stop listening to this episode because we're about to go into a mode where we're going to talk about a solution-focused approach that requires minimalism, specifically digital minimalism. What's digital minimalism? Choosing a focused

life in a noisy world. Sit with that for a second. We live in a noisy world. Lots of distractions and a lot of things capturing our attention. It's this choice to see. say, how can I live a focused and intentional life in the midst of that madness? One of my favorite songs called The Eye by Brandy Carlisle. She says, you can dance in a hurricane, but only when you're standing in the eye. Digital minimalism is about eradicating non-necessary things and living that focused life. Awesome book that he wrote called Digital Minimalism, and it unveils the reality of what's happening as well as provides a new approach to begin loosening the noose, around your neck to live a more fulfilling life that's focused on present time consciousness.

Newport says that there's four perks to unplugging from social media if you needed a reason to do it. One, he says it will promote more boredom. Now you think, why would I want that? What happens when you become alone with your own thoughts? Think about that. Because you've been programmed and this is a good opportunity for you to see how you have. You begin to think about the world around you and you access more of your conscious mind. That's what happens when you're bored. You think more. There's less distraction and there's more time and space to look at the things from multiple, more time and space to look at things from multiple vantage points. This may also drive you towards higher level of engagement in things like, who knows, exercise, reading, and other potentially productive activities. The phone in

your pocket is not going to allow that. Promote more boredom. The second perk. Lower anxiety. What you consume leverages what you assume. We are unaware of how our moods and emotions are impacted and sculpted by the consistent barrage of social media and its algorithm that is not only entertaining you, but learning more about you and learning how to manipulate your emotions to go up and down and buy into what it wants you to buy into. Leaving you and your say your wants desires and wishes out of the equation, unbeknownst to you. The third perk, privacy. Your content reveals more than you wish to reveal over time. I can promise you that. Most people don't think of this. They think they post something and then it disappears. It never disappears. And it also is training the

artificially intelligent algorithm as well as arming some very intelligent people that are capturing that information on how to approach you with their agenda to sell, etc. So more privacy. And the fourth perk, it'll lower your sense of self-importance. Once again, why would you want to lower your sense of self-importance? Well, we get this dopamine-induced illusory perception that we matter more than we actually do. This feeds into the idea that people surrounding us really care about things like our shortcomings. It's the human psyche being manipulated by things that simply don't matter.

Challenge yourself to step away and don't tell anybody that you're stepping away. See if anybody notices. There is so much value in learning how little you matter in the eyes of others. They may love your content, but the chances are that your lovable content is being unconsciously consumed by them anyway, completely oblivious to what it is that you're doing or your involvement. He challenged us as well on this book to reconnect with your moral values. values today. This is a great power move. Get reacquainted right now with the things that matter most to you.

Your answer to that question, what matters most to you, is going to completely place you in full control of your life. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself whether or not the news and the social media are playing a role in shaping the way that you are perceiving reality? And more importantly, how are they in support of the things that matter most to you? So step one in this exercise, reconnect with your moral values and reacquaint yourself and manifest and state the things that matter most to you and then just work back and say, what is all this shit that I'm doing have to do with anything in that realm? He speaks about supernormal rewards having overtaken our drive for normal stimuli. This is fascinating to observe. Things like high calorie foods and

that social media we're talking about are examples of super normal dopamine stimuli, meaning like high octane cocaine, that have addictive attention. They've driven your addictive attention to them. They're more stimulating than normal stuff. So when people muscle through it and remove themselves from high calorie food, from news, social media, and they do that for a prolonged time, what they find is they find themselves increasingly looking forward to, normal stimuli. Things like going to the gym, socializing verbally with people, and of course, eating healthy. So you have to detach and untether yourself to that supernormal reward system that's giving you these high dopamine hits but have nothing to do with where you're going

and what you desire. So the challenge here is to make a list of the super normal stimuli versus, in contrast, the lower more natural stimuli. Now, Henry Thoreau again was quoted to say this. The cost of a thing is determined by the amount of life to be exchanged for it. So how do you identify what stays and what goes? Look at the super stimuli and the lower stimuli and ask yourself that question. How much of my life am I exchanging for it, meaning how much time am I spending on it and what is it granting me? Set a goal to take speed.

specific technology and optimize its use. One idea would be to just take something like Netflix and only watch it with others, not alone. That would be a way of you taking something that you might like like Netflix and watching movies, but optimizing its use. You could take social media and eradicate mindless scrolling of reels, or you could do it at a certain time. You know, we have our morning structure and we have something called twilight at night where we eradicate certain things. And that helps us optimize the use of them. So you don't have to get rid of things, but you can learn how to optimize them. Intentionality is very satisfying, my friends. It feels good to move forward and towards your goals and your dreams. That's what sits on the other side of you

letting go of some things that you might be addicted to, yet don't matter. So let's talk a little bit about an exercise for you today called a digital detox, or as I like to call a hype detox. What it means is to identify these things that need to be removed and then identify replacements for them. That's an important concept. So I'm going to give you three concepts here. One, solitude deprivation. We don't allow ourselves enough alone time. You see this in yourself and children.

It contributes to the sharp rise in things like anxiety and depression. We're not good at being bored, as I said before, and spending time alone. So what you'd want to do is challenge yourself to take. time walking and simply be with your own thoughts. Allow your mind in that moment to be free from the thoughts of other people, from other people's minds. Even your podcasts and social media and all of that stuff, you're exposing your mind to other people's thoughts and their minds. So solitude deprivation. Two, replace connection with conversation. This is a great one. Connection versus conversation is the difference between real time face to face where you hear a voice versus the connection that you're

getting when you're on social media or even texting. Connection is a low bandwidth communication, he says in his book, versus conversation, which he deems a high bandwidth conversation. Social media, texting, and all of these messenger apps and things like that, those are low bandwidth conversations. That's what he calls just simple connections. Hey, let's connect. Hold. a conversation and see the difference. So one of the things he speaks about, which I've adapted into my detox, is to have office hours where you only have conversations and only take calls. No texts during that time. Three, seek out what he calls high quality leisure activities. Identify hobbies like learning an instrument, writing, or exploring the community with a walk,

or even reading a great book, and put that high quality leisure activity in your schedule on a regular basis. Remember, Hebihan's theory is neurons that fire together, wire together. Just like you've adopted bad habits, this is how you're going to adopt good habits, healthy habits. Another example of a high-quality leisure activity is to seek out activities that require actual structure and activities like hanging out with friends, playing sports or even board games, where you're in a structure where you're hanging out with other people and you're having those conversations, those high-leverage conversations. Here is my hype avoidance list or my digital declutter list. Feel so much better after I practice these things. So one, and this is just my

idea. One, I'm not going to watch Netflix alone anymore. I do that sometimes. Now I'm only going to watch Netflix and movies with my wife and my family. Two, I'm now committed to not scrolling on Instagram or Facebook reels. I'm not going to completely eradicate it because to an extent It's part of my job, not scrolling on Instagram or Facebook Reels before 10 a.m. And after 3 p.m. That's my negotiation. And that's where I sit. Three, I'm going to hold one hour a day of conversation-only office hours. I love this idea for one hour. I can use Zoom or I could use my phone. But I'm going to have conversations. I'm not going to talk to people with words that are not coming out of people's mouths because it can

be easily misconstrued. And then four, some things that I've been doing for a while, but I'm going to continue to do because it's very, very supportive of this idea of a detox. Continue the daily practice of early, what I call hype protective, rising up in the morning. My morning structure and getting up in the morning is very much pertaining to protecting myself from outside forces. I don't scroll, I don't check my email, I don't check messages. I just have my morning structure. Another thing that I'm going to do is practice or continue to practice twilight. One hour before sleep, no social media or news. I'm going to protect that last hour from the hype.

I'm also going to continue every morning reading books. I also like to listen to audiobooks for 30 minutes a day. That's it. And then I'm also going to commit to writing for 30 minutes a day. These are high leverage, intentional activities that are free from digital clutter. And I'm going to continue to exercise five days a week. and I'm going to focus my eating habits on fueling versus mindless eating. So there you have it.

That's my hype avoidance list. And that's what I'm committing to right now. What are you going to commit to? I hope that this episode did you well. Love and appreciate you all. Have an amazing day. This has been a Make Sense Monday's topic, making sense of hype and then potentially negative effects of what's going on with social media and how it's potentially programming

us to perceive and look at the world as a certain. way and have ineffective, unhealthy responses. Love this conversation and I appreciate your time today. Have a great day. See you next time. Makes sense.