SOLVED with Mark Manson - Is Technology Ruining Our Minds? (ft. Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD)

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Do I exist if I’m not on social media? Can I fake it till I make it? What’s the secret to a good life? In this week’s episode, I enlist my old friend and host of the wildly popular The Psychology Podcast, Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD. to dissect our psyche in the social media age. Reflecting on his personal experience and drawing on a wealth of psychological research, Scott asks—and answers—questions that might reveal aspects of yourself you never knew were there, and set you on the path to a better life. We’re going to dive deep and get existential. We’re going to talk neurodiversity, vulnerability, and Batman. What more can you ask for? Exactly. Go get it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose. That is purpose.com. 20 million books sold. Zero f***es given. It's the subtle art of not giving a f*** podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Scott, it's great to have you here.

Mark, it is so good to chat with you again. One of the first guests on the new podcast, the old friend of mine. It's an honor to have you here. You know, I really don't like to make a big deal out of it, but technically my ranking put me at 0.05%. Who's counting? I didn't want to be like douchey about it. Yeah. I just said I did technically make the within the top 2%. Okay. So we'll edit that top 0.5%. 0.05. Oh, okay, 05%. What's interesting about that, though, and you mentioned this on Twitter, you were putting a special education class. That's right. And I've actually never talk to you about this about your childhood and I'm curious to open up with that and talk about it.

Thank you. I mean, it is linked to this ranking thing because it didn't really didn't feel real at all, you know, and it's like I wonder like what point in my life am I going to feel like, you know, I didn't like fake it in some way. We're all wondering that. About me? Way to make me so better about myself. You're like, we've all been worrying that. Yeah. No, that's good. It makes me feel better when I hear that because like, I had friends were like, oh, we believe it. I wish I didn't need to hear that. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, for the first couple years of my life, I had a warning just, I had basically a lot of food in my ears. And it made it very hard for me to hear anything. I was effectively deaf for the first three years of my life. I was screaming, you know, crying a lot, walked from crying. I don't know that it's funny. It's not funny.

I couldn't express what I wanted to express. And that was super frustrating. And teachers thought I was stupid. And also, they said I was immature. They had me repeat third grade and I was bullied a lot and kept in this kind of remedial classroom until ninth grade. And what changed? Well, this teacher who had never seen them before, she was coming for the regular

teacher. It was the start of high school. So by the way, it was like a fresh start. I love fresh starts. Yeah. I love when people like view you and new, you know, fresh eyes. Especially when you're not the cool kid. Yeah.

The fresh start is a godsend. Yeah, that's right. A godsend. That's so true. This special ed teacher took me aside. I was taking this untimed test. They take you out of the regular classroom and they put you in the special room. And I remember how frustrated I was.

And I think I made a starkie comment like I have the rest of my life to finish this on time test. So what's the point? You know, what's the rush? She took me aside after class. Everyone was leaving. And she, she went to talk to you for a second. And she like, she like, kind of tilted her head. And she's like, I think I see you.

And I was like, oh, fuck. What is it? I'll see if my zipper was down. She's like, why are you here? You know, I see her. frustration. And I went in my head and I was like, why am I here? And then I replayed the question in my head and then it really got to like, yeah, why am I here? It's crazy how there are moments in our life where we are just kind of waiting for someone to ask us the right question and it can

just activate everything, you know? And I, this like surge of inspiration, you know, when searched through me and I ran to the pay phone called my mom and I was like, I'm not reporting back to special ed tomorrow. She's screaming, freaking out. She's like, where are they doing to you over there? You know, what happened? But I became the first one in my school's history for the kid himself to break out of special ed. Yeah, I mean, I was the first one for to dawn on me that I can take myself out. I mean, it was nice to be prompted and to be asked, why am I still here? Yeah. But I said to her, you know what? You're right. Like, I want to see what I'm capable of. Wow. And then did you excel in high school after that? I did. I won't say Excel did everything. But

What I did is I really fell in all of the learning. And with just, I almost, it almost became like a challenged, a fun challenge to see, well, what can I handle? Because I went through so many years where I didn't think I could handle anything. I mean, I was in all remedial classes. It was so boring. And so I was so curious, like, what could I handle? So I signed up for like some things I did well, like Labkin Latin scholar. Wow.

Yeah, that was too far than my senior year of high school. Yeah. I signed up for a West Side Story, the musical, and that I did not do so well. I dropped out. I said I can't handle the dancing. It's just I couldn't handle it. The orchestra. So my grandfather, I asked my grandfather if he would teach me how to play cello because he was a cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and he was retired at that time. And he was delighted to teach me how to play. And I learned over a summer how to play, how to play cello well enough to join the orchestra, at least play the downbeat of every measure in the beginning. But I quickly,

the crutches came off quickly and I've realized I had a knack for music. I must have been in the jeans somewhere with my grandfather. And I also joined the choir. Joining the choir was actually a fluke. I was hanging out with my friends in the choir room after class one day, and I was making fun of them. And I was like, you guys sound like this. And the choir teacher heard me. And she said, what do you like to join our choir?

Are you? I think you are really talented. And then I. The rest is history. End up becoming a professional opera singer for a short period. I love you. Wow. Wow, man.

So given your history, what's your take on standardized testing? It's been in the news a lot again lately. It's kind of a controversial topic within educational circles. What's your take? Great question. Standardized testing, like we're talking about academic standardized testing in K through 12, is actually very highly correlated with IQ tests. In a lot of ways, they're really thinly disguised IQ tests.

So if you don't have the kind of mind that ACE's abstract reasoning and working memory, which a lot of people on the neurodivergent spectrum do have trouble with the working memory. That's kind of their defining thing. Is they have trouble with organization, they have trouble keeping lots of things that are mind at once, you know, then you'll have trouble on standardized tests, not deterministically, but there's a probability that you'll have trouble in standardized tests. So I think that we need to, first of all, call spade a spade. In some circles, it's even controversial to say that they're thinly disguised.

You know, the SAT is a thinly disguised IQ test. It is. I have researched it proving. They don't prove anything in fact, but showing that to ensure highly probable. You know, the SAT, the board, they don't want to say that. You know, they want to think that if rich people put in enough money, then, you know, for tutoring, then they can improve their scores. But no, it's a thinly value of IQ test. Which is part of the controversy, right?

because if you do have a very highly intelligent child from a poor socioeconomic background, that test can actually be the thing that kind of pulls them out of that or maybe sorts for that. Excellent point. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that that doing well and standardized tests can actually be a golden ticket for people who are living in poverty and can't demonstrate their intelligence in any other way. By the way, I'm not one of these people who was anti-IQ.

This is how I phrased in the past. I'm not anti-IQ, but I'm anti-comparing everyone. on a single standardized metric. And that's different. Because there are people who are generally a high IQ minds and they are not winning either. And no one's winning in an education system. Intellectually gifted kids from an IQ perspective are not winning. You know, you put them all in one room and say, go be gifted together, you know, buy.

And then the teachers go drink coffee. How's that winning for them either? So does that make sense? There's a certain level of nuance there. I like to bring to the table. Well, you brought up this term of neurodivergence, and you were actually the first person I ever heard this term from. Really?

Like maybe five or six years ago? And I love that it's starting to catch on. And I'm starting to see it in a lot of different places. But talk about what is neurodivergence? How does it differ maybe from other definitions of the previous categories that are common in parts of psychology? And why is it important? Yeah, I was just on a panel in New York on what is neurodiversity.

And I think no one could agree really could agree on a definition. Classic psychology. Yeah, yeah. It's become one of those things where when a term becomes so it's starting to mean anything, it's like a rubber band, it's going to snap and not mean anything. And I fear that's what's starting to happen with neurodiversity. It started off pertaining mostly or really just exclusively to the autistic community. And I'm happy that it expanded to things like dyslexia and other learning disabilities,

ways of learning in a school system. It has expanded even further, and I'm still okay with that to certain forms to mental illness. You know, I think bipolar, you know, it really does give you a different way of experiencing a world that puts you kind of an extreme

modality. But right now where we're at with it is I feel like it's, if it hasn't snapped, it's very, very close to snapping that rubber band because if you go on TikTok, everyone, every kid on there on TikTok

has, is neurodivergent now. The neurodivergent and trauma, you know, the two biggest, they both. And now, you know, you can't even say one without the other, you know, there's like, almost become like a, now it's like super cool. Whereas back in my day, I was bullied every day for it. Right. There's status attached to it.

I wish I grew up in 2003 because I just want to say in my day in the 80s. Yes, that's how old we are in. I wish I could have gone TikTok and get like, and for my peers to be like, oh, that's cool cool. You're neurodiverging, you're weird, you're quirky. You're slow. That's so cool. Be part of our group. But instead, I was, you know, just bullet every day.

Why do you think that status has been associated with things like trauma, neurodivergence, gender identity, things like that? I think that these kids are having an identity crisis. I think that we're living in an age of an identity crisis. And there's just so much unknown, you know, whenever your environments where there's so much insecurity around you, talk about the pandemic, to talk about uncertainty, people tend to cling more to belonging and finding somewhere where they belong. And teenagers throughout the course of human history, it's no big shocker that teenagers are the prime identity crisis age. Yeah. Right. So you just compound that with such great uncertainty and such a craving for belonging into some group.

Personally, I think we need to help children and all of us learn how to belong more to ourselves to our unique selves and lead from that sense of confidence and self-esteem. But I don't think that's what's happening. People are so desperate to seek belonging to a group and they've forgotten to belong to themselves. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams,

or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going. Start your search at ototrater.ca. Canada's car marketplace. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls it scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real.

Sci-fi vision comes up the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Sometimes I feel like teenagers unconsciously, they find the thing that is going to upset the older generations the most. instinctively latch on to that. And if you look back through the generations, you see that happening

repeatedly, you know, like in the 60s, it was free love. And then in our generation, it was sex, drugs, rock and roll. And then, you know, with this generation, it's social media and identifying with all these different ways of life and everything. But it's interesting because it's almost like, now that I am one of the older generations, I think if I saw kids doing what I was doing when I was 16, I'd be like, ah, he's 16, of course he's doing that. He'll be fine, you know. It's like they need to find that new limit to test. Yeah. And it's true. Get everybody, all the old people freaking out. I agree with you that adolescence period is just an extended identity crisis. It's the first time in your life that you are discovering who you're going to be in the world

and who you want to be and who you're going to associate with. I also feel like that, you know, just on a more macro scale, there's kind of this like cohort identity seeking process of like who are we as a generation? I wish the kids didn't feel so much pressure to lock in their identity. Yeah. I wish we had cultures that really valued exploration. You know, think how many years it take for me to feel like I know who I am answer? I still haven't figured out.

Yeah. You never totally know. I'm still like, I mean, I'm much clearer than I was when I was 17, but I'm still, not quite there, you know, because I've like, there's so many sides of me, you know. And what I've learned to embrace is just that fact. There's so many sides of me. Yeah. But I don't feel like we encourage kids to embrace that fact of being human, being a whole

person. Instead, I feel like they put so much pressure on themselves. And I think we put pressure on them too to like figure it out so you can write it and you're a college essay and get into Harvard. Interesting enough, I think we're actually rewarding the kids the most who like are the most fragile. So that's an interesting one, you know. How so?

You get so many points in college essays now for the more vulnerable you are, you know, that you have all these vulnerable identities, you're as fragile as possible, you know, please take pity on me in 500 ways, therefore I shouldn't get in college. Whereas in my day, I feel like we had to write our essays how strong we were. Yeah, yeah. But I think that setting off like a process where we allow kids to show over a longer period of time as they're trying to pursue their self-actualization, you know, being vulnerable is great, being vulnerable is wonderful, but then also what do you do with that vulnerability?

I have a phrase like a coined called confident vulnerability. Yeah. You know, where you can be vulnerable, but you can also have self-belief as you're being vulnerable. And also I'd like to distinguish between lower KSV and upper KSV. So lower KSV is vulnerability just for the sake of vulnerability for getting attention, for getting something else. Capital V vulnerability is like being vulnerable in the service of realizing a future goal you have and dream growth in the service of growth versus in the service of, dare I say, narcissism. Sure, sure.

You know, I think there's a difference between lowercase v and uppercase v. And I think we should reward uppercase v more. I wrote my dating book models 12 years ago, which was about statistical models, right? Yes, those models. Did I read the right book? The right book, yeah. But that book talked a lot about vulnerability, and it was specifically directed at men. And I remember at the time, you know, vulnerability was much, wasn't as common.

It was much more taboo back then, especially among a male audience. And I went through great pains in that book to point out that this is not wallowing on the floor in a fetal position saying, no, poor me, look at all the horrible things that have happened to me. It's actually, it's the opposite. It's being comfortable and sharing and expressing, like not being owned by the pains or struggles that you've gone through. Your book is about confident vulnerability in so many ways.

It really is. Developing a confidence in your vulnerability. Yes. Because, you know, when you, someone, a guy who's shy approaches a woman and is a very vulnerable thing. It's a form of vulnerability. You know, hey, like, I like, you're cute. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then if you're rejected, the question is, what happens? What do you do with that? I have taken actually consent courses. I know it sounds really not courses. I've been part of like there's cuddle parties. Maybe this is too much information. But I've been to these parties where you actually- It is LA, so-

Yeah. They do a whole practice where you approach someone who's like, hey, would you like a hug? And if they say, no, I'm good, then you say, thanks for taking care of yourself. And you always smile and walk away. And you just practice. I don't think young people really practice that, you know, and really being able to still stay confident who you are.

Well, I will say there's definitely much more awareness around it than when we were young. That's true. Actually, that's true. Yeah. I loved your book by the way. I was joking about statistics. I read you. And your book resonated with my soul a lot more than maybe some other how to pick up chicks

much. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's funny when I wrote that, I think Brne Brown had just come out like that year. And it's funny because the whole vulnerability thing, I was not aware of her when I wrote models. And then I became aware of her stuff around the same time that models came out. And I remember at the time I was ironically being very vulnerable, like taking a big chance in my industry by saying like, hey, the path here is not to be more bullheaded and more aggressive and less sensitive.

The past year is to actually be more aware of your emotions and your flaws and your issues and become comfortable with them, develop a confident vulnerability. It's been weird over the last 10 years to see vulnerability to come and kind of dominate the culture in so many ways. I never would have predicted that it would get kind of turned into this toxic status signifier that it has become. I remember in the early days after models came out, guys would email me and they would say, hey man, I tried your whole vulnerability thing.

It didn't work. I like told this chick about this horrible thing that happened when I was a kid and she still didn't hook up with me. I'm like, that's dude, that's not it. Like, you know, there's so much there, right? There's what you were selling is different than what the pickup artists were selling. And I don't even go to a horrible, but there's, well, said, I won't paint all the pickup artists with the same brush, but I'll say some of them really were, their, their pitch was

full proof method to getting laid in five seconds upon meeting and girl. And so they already put in guys head some. some unattainable and also, I would say, psychopathic way of thinking about women in the world and that you should be entitled to anything. So that's, that reeks of entitlement when someone says, hey, man, I was vulnerable and and I didn't get laid. That's like the nice guy syndrome, right? You think, if you're a nice guy, you should be entitled to get lead.

And that's not how it works. I can assure you that's not how it. You're like, I've been trying for 20 years. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of. all this stuff that I see online now feels like a permutation of that. You know, it's like I was so vulnerable about these things that happened to me. Give me attention. Give me likes.

Give me, you know, share my, my Instagram or whatever. The social media question is interesting in general. I'm curious, what is your take on the supposed link between social media and mental health prices? What I've seen on that data from talking to my colleagues about it, social media has had a very significant impact on mental health and especially young girls like 13 year old girls it has really magnified kind of the pressures we already put on young girls right boys aren't winning either there right so there's a lot of anxiety i think that's cool they call it that jonathan's calling it the anxious

generation because there really is a lot of anxiety to keep up with to be as cool to get as many likes as this person. It creates a whole comparison game. Yeah. That is already, you know, since the dawn of human teenagers, um, has caused anxiety, that game of comparison. And it's put it, puts it on steroids. On steroids. Yeah. Yeah. Amplifies it. And I'm 44 and I feel 17 when I'm on Instagram, you know, Instagram. Yeah. I feel 17 all over again. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that Bobby Shmuel will get some. many likes for that post and I think any likes for my post. And I try to curb that.

I mean, I better self-regulation skills than I did my 17 where I am like, ah, don't worry about that, Scott. It's hard. I find myself getting sucked into it sometimes as well. And it's hard in our situation as people with online platforms and online businesses because like, let's say we post something on Instagram and it bombs. It does terribly. And I'll get really annoyed.

And I always justify that annoyance or that being upset about that by like, Well, it's bad for the business. You know, this is, this is reflecting poorly on the brand and it's going to lower conversions and all this stuff. And, you know, and if there's a bunch of bad posts in a row, I'll get mad at my team. And, and, and then sometimes like when I'm sitting alone quiet at night, I'm like, am I really mad about the business or is it just, am I like that 15 year old girl who's like, well, Susie got is getting more likes than me.

Like, what does she have that I don't? There's something really profound there. So I want to double click on that, you know, I feel that as though sometimes like, I I ask the question, do I exist if I have no social media presence? It's the weirdest thing where we come to the point where like the extent to which a person exists is the extent to which they have a big presence. You know, there's this one guy and I'm not going to mention his name. He's like my arch nemesis.

And he has, you know, like he can say the dumbest things. And he'll, and immediately it gets like four million likes with four million comments saying, You're a jeanie pets. He'll say something like, to have confidence, you must be confident. And I'll look through like, hot girl, hot girl, being like, you're amazing, you're amazing, you're amazing. Okay. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous.

I'm not jealous. Are you? But it's a fascinating phenomenon. So I sit back and I'm like, wow, does that motherfucker, does he, can I curse on the, on your old podcast called, go fuck yourself pocket? Yeah, it's the fuck yourself, we'll call the fuck yourself fuck. I just like renamed your podcast to the Go Fuck Yourself podcast. This is the special edition of the Go Fuck Yourself podcast. What's crazy too is that, I mean at this point, at a certain level of social media following,

like half the stuff that's going out isn't even created by the person whose face is on the profile picture. You know, I have a team that like goes through my 300 articles and sources, different quotes and creates lists and, you know, all sorts of stuff. So at that end of the spectrum, it gets weird in that way. And then I guess on the lower end of the spectrum, if you're like a teenager and you're probably living and dying by a dozen likes, right? Like it's you post and your best friend posts something and gets 10 likes and you post it and get four and you're like, oh, he's so much cooler.

The cooler part is there and I also think the existence part. I can't get away from that question I just keep thinking about, yeah. It's the new, if a tree falls on the forest, then nobody hears it. Like, if a social media profile has no followers, does that person exist? It's exactly right. That's exactly. I remember the time when, like, I was in grad school and there was no pressure at all

to signal or showcase anything that I was doing. I was proud of whatever I was doing. Like, during the course of my day, if I read a journal article, and I understood it, I was proud of myself. And I was good. Now there's this just feeling costly like it doesn't matter if it's not for everyone else to see. So, okay, I'm glad you brought that up because doesn't this happen a little bit in academia with how often you get published or what's the score on H index?

H index on Google Scholar. That's what the rating was. That's what this ranking was used. See? You know, maybe you're not crushing it on social, but your H index is fucking through the roof, man. I have a big agent day. I should put that in dating resumes. I don't.

That's why I have a big iPad. Comptain for my low age ands. But seriously. Some of this is like humans will always play status games. You're right. And I think there's this tendency and this happened when I was a kid with different things. Whatever the new technology is, that becomes the organizer of the new status game. And then people blame the technology.

They don't blame fucking humans. being human. My personal opinion is I'm a little bit more skeptical of the social media stuff, but I think if there is anything inherently problematic with social media, it's that it accelerates and amplifies the status game that's already there. It makes it way more legible. It makes it way more widespread, easier to communicate, easier to reference. Like when we were in high school, if you were kind of a dork or if your friend was cooler than you, nobody really noticed except maybe like the 10 kids in closest proximity to you, maybe the 10 kids that knew both of you. I think the problem now is it's if your friends cooler than you, the whole school

knows because the whole school sees, they have more followers. It's so true. You know, so it's like it's almost like ranking people instead of ranking people by grades, it's like social media is like a never ending high school and we're all stuck in it. It's exactly. That needs to be a social clip. Yeah. What you just said.

Okay. Yeah. That's so true. It's so true. It's so true. But you feel cool if you're winning in that world. You're winning that. You're winning in that.

Mark? You're cool. We both are. We tend to justify and sympathize with the status games that we win and we blame the status games we lose. You know, Mark Leary, the social psychologist, has this idea of the sociometer. It suggests that our self-esteem rise or falls to the base to which we're perceiving that we have social value, or he calls it relational value.

But I feel like social media has created a sociometer where our social-esteem is a social-a- our self-esteem rise and falls based on how many likes we get. And I think part of the trickiness there is that there was no legibility for that, right? So you could easily, kind of easily convince yourself that you were much cooler than you are. You could easily convince yourself that people like you more than they actually do. Whereas with social media where everything is being measured and the numbers are public and it's all there completely legible for anybody to see, it becomes much harder to kid yourself.

If you're posting things into the void and nobody's responding, including your own family and friends, it's really hard to convince yourself that you're actually a really interesting person that it's so sad. It's fucking sad. I feel really sad for people who are. But also, you know, I think that even add more complexities of this conversation, there are some people where they have huge audiences, but I don't want that audience. Like I wouldn't feel cool if I had neo-Nazis, you know, like, being like, oh, we like your

stuff, Scott. I think who your audiences matters as well. Yeah. As just the metric, do you have a big audience? 100%. 100%. You took a break from Twitter for about a year. You're giving me way too much credit. Yeah. I mean, two months? Two months? It felt like it's... It felt like an eternity, Scott.

My feed was so empty without you on it. It might have been four months. No, it wasn't a year, but it was less than six months. So we'll say half a year. Half a year, half a year. The break from Twitter, how did that affect you personally? I was more in touch with my body. I noticed that I was more, I felt more, my actions and my everyday life felt more authentic. I felt like I wasn't worried or thinking about, you know, if I do that or that or that,

you know, like, how am I going to be judged? Which is weird because it's not like I broadcast everything I do anyway when I am on Twitter. So it's not like, but for some reason when I'm online, I feel like every single thing I do in my life, like has a different layer of, it's like a black mirror episode that we're living in. I can't really describe it. Is it like the potentiality of sharing something? Yeah.

Everything has the potentiality to get likes. So it's like a dinner conversation, you say something really clever, funny, and you're like, oh, that'd be a killer tweet. I absolutely do do that. You know, I'll be in situations where I will say, oh, that would make a good tweet. hold on like i'll be in a conversation with someone like let me tweak that out yeah there's something extra in life that it brings me that i'm not sure it's a good thing but someday i just want to be like hey everyone i'm taking a break from public life so that that would be the big one you know someday

where i have enough certain number of books i'm like you know i'm good like i'm good for a year or two you know like i want to just say i'm taking a break from public life and see what that's like amazon presents jeff versus taco truck salsa whether it's verde Roja or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon.

It's the Family and Friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th, and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. So in one of your earlier books, you talk about mastery goals versus performance goals. And I think this relates to social media. And by the way, I selfishly really like this concept because it maps really well to one thing I've long talked about in the relationship space,

which is that there's two ways to approach relationships. One is through authenticity and the other one is through performance. And approaching relationships through performance, seeing people as kind of algorithmic, if I say or do this, then they will like me, they will give me the affection I want. When you see it at a transactional way, that's actually what undermines the intimacy and the health of the relationship. And so when I came across the mastery versus performance goals, it struck me how similar, the way you were describing how people's attitudes develop towards their pursuits is very similar

to that. Like when people are too performative, they become overwhelmed with anxiety, they start struggling with self-judgment, they feel lots of shame. And I was like, wow, you can have a toxic relationship with a goal. Yeah. You know, it's such a good point. You know, a lot of people talk about the growth mindset. They're like, they go crazy over growth mindset. Some research shows that more educators have heard of growth mindset and they've heard of the name Freud. Wow. So it's big in education circles. I know it's also kind of concerning that there are teachers out there who have never heard of Freud. Yeah.

That's also a problem. And what I like to say is I'm more into growth and motivation that I am into growth mindset because you can have growth mindset up the kazoo for the things that are wrong for you. Growth mindset towards alcoholism or something. Yeah. Well, you know. I blacked out last night, but I think I can black out better tonight. Yes, yeah.

But yeah, no, exactly. And I think that growth and motivation is the motivation that matters. You know, like, are you going toward goals that, um, are wise goals for you that fit your deepest skill set, uh, interests and will also be likely to improve the world in some way, you know, growth goals are what really matter. So I just, I just think just like this blanket love for growth mindset, you know, as well as as grit, you know, people, they kind of personally likes growth minds. They also like grit, you know.

And, um, and I think, I'm not see a man. No, grit's important, but blind grit, blind growth mindset, you know, are nothing to be celebrated. Zero killers are gritty. Very true. Very true. Some of them. Yeah, some of them. The ones that don't get caught.

Some serial killers are lazy. Let's be honest. That is what I'm saying. I don't mean to shame. I don't mean the shame. Yeah, we don't want to shame serial killers. Here's serial killer out there, Scott's not trying to shame you right now. Oh my God, I'm so ridiculous.

I'm so ridiculous. Sorry to interrupt you. What I was going to say, so I feel like this is a story that plays out in psychology over and over, which is a brilliant researcher finds a concept or some measurable thing. Does a bunch of research around it. a lot of great results. Everybody gets super excited. And then when it comes to the implementation into the real world, it gets watered down. Like, you lose all that context. This is the thing that's that's so frustrating about psychological concepts. Everything's interrelated. Like, everything

matters to everything else. And so as soon as you remove, like, you disembodied that shiny new concept of all the context of like, well, you need to make sure that you are properly motivated and you have good values and you have a strong support network around you and all this stuff and you just kind of put it in a vacuum. You start to see mixed results or unintended second order effects, you know, and I feel like we saw this with self-esteem decades ago and I didn't follow it closely, but it seems like this has happened a little bit with the growth mindset stuff. It's also happened in the trauma world.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. just expanded in the public eye to everything. Like, everything's trauma now. You know, I got an ad on my Instagram the other day that said,

like, do you procrastinate? It's a trauma response. You know, it's like, you know, okay. Okay.

Yeah. Apparently we're all fucking survivors then. Yeah. It's an easy way to blame. Yeah. Anything. And so you don't have to take responsibility for anything. Yeah.

You can say, oh, that was my trauma. Well, this is another interesting tendency that I think happens with these, kind of nebulous concepts, which is, I don't know what the term is, but like the expansion of the definition. Yeah.

I mean, everyone's an oppressor depends what your vantage point is. I mean, that's like a profound truth. Yes. Quite controversial, but your perception matters, you know, and whether or not your perception is from the in-group or it's from the out-group completely matters. It reminds me of the Solgenitinthin quote about the line between good and evil, run through the heart of every man. You know, like, it all is perception.

It's hard to stand back and objectively kind of have the nuance where you say, well, there's not always just one oppressor or, you know, you can have, you're allowed to have more than one victim at a time. Yes. You're allowed. Yeah. And yet no one ever brings up that possibility. It's always like, there's the victim and there's the perpetrator, you know?

but like things often emerge and things often interact and it gets complicated and there's complexities there. You know, humans are messy. The whole idea that we can reduce one person to an angel, another person to the devil is ridiculous. Yeah. It's never worked before. So there's no reason it would start now.

Yeah. Why is self-expression potentially healing or therapeutic? You know, I like to distinguish in my work between healthy authenticity and assholy Authenticity. You know, just saying whatever's on your mind at all times, some people have a concept in their head that's authenticity. But I think healthy authenticity, it involves four components. One is radical self-honesty. You're really honest with yourself about your talents, your skills, you know, your areas of strengths and weaknesses. Radical self-awareness. And not just self-awareness, just awareness, awareness in general of the world. You know,

you know, if you're talking to someone, you're aware of what's actually going on in front of them and in front of you and you're also aware of what's coming up inside you, things like that. I also think that another aspect of his integrity and really staying true of your values, acting in accordance with your values and who you want to be as well, you know. Authenticity is allowed to not always be aligned with who you are. It can also be aligned with who you would prefer to be. there's there there there can be an authenticity to a future or self that you want to become um i think that's important would that be kind of like fake it till you make it or yeah where does that come in

does that come in yeah yeah you know it's the whole idea of faking it is interesting you are doing the action yeah in that moment that is who you are you know if i do something that goes against the grade of my normal patterns that still was a real new action so the idea of faking is is an interesting one to me because, yeah. Actually, so I'd like to dig into this a little bit because this is a topic in the self-help space that makes me squirm a little bit, but you do see it a lot. And some people, you know, classically it was fake it till you make it. I think these days, it's a lot more around kind of doing like hypothetical visualizations

so like asking yourself like, what would this feel like if you were a confident person? or how would you do this presentation if you were a great speaker? And I can see the utility of that. That to me, for some reason, that feels more authentic than fake until you make it. There's also a strand that is kind of into this idea of like an alter ego, like kind of creating like a kind of side personality that you step into, kind of like when Batman puts on his mask and cape. It's not necessarily inauthentic.

It's just a separate identity that you've kind of constructed within yourself to perform in this particular context and then when you're out of that context, you take it off. I'm curious what you think about that. This is a great topic of conversation because I'm a big fan of integration. I'm not a big fan of having multiple personalities. Me too. And there was like, you know, now in this extreme thing that I usually am never at, never am and usually never is in contact with that guy.

Yeah. I really like the idea of an inner harmony where multiple sides or selves are working as a team, right? I don't think that inner peace comes when you feel like you're fighting a civil war within yourself. You know, this side's like, oh, I hate that guy. And that guy's like, oh, but that guy comes out when I have my alter ego, you know, then I'll ignore the rest of myself when that guy is just fuck you all. Yeah. Because this is the fuck you podcast.

Yeah, go fuck yourself, fuck. That guy, the alter ego is basically like go fuck yourself, Scott. That's the podcast alter egos, to go fuck yourself. Yeah. So I see why that advice is effective. Yeah, me too. For people that really need confidence to. And it feels like a short-term tool.

To short-term. Right? Like, so it's, if I'm going to go on a speaking tour and I'm really anxious about it, and it's a month long and I'm going to do like 10 dates, I can see like, okay, for this tour, I'm going to have my little alter ego. I'm going to have my pump up music. I'm going to have my outfit that I put on every day. I get that.

That can help you get to the finish line. Where I started feeling uneasy is I'm like you, that my instinct and based on everything that I know and understand about psychology is like, yeah, you want harmony and integration are good things. Well, I'm a big fan of the behavioral activation approach to change within psychology. Big, big fan. My dear friend Seth Gillian pioneered the field mindful cognitive behavioral therapy, and he has his whole approach, I think it could be, and all three are important. But interesting enough, if he knows act was the first one. Yes. And then think and then be. And I love it because he does make a

point, which is we can overthink things. We can get in her own head too much. And there is a great value in even though we're not waiting till we're ready for it, but to be activate the rest of the system by through actions to move in the direction of where we want to go. So I can say I am a fan of that. Take it to you make it phrasing the alter ego phrasing. You know, that's like I feel like that's like a different thing. You know, you can it you can be to me, you can be aligned and integrated and have the behavioral activation approach. The point there is don't wait until you're ready to act because you'll never act. Yeah, yeah.

That's the, that's the important point there. But still, get in touch with your being, with your aligned. Is this something I really want to become? Is this, you know, is this someone that I really feel aligned with? And if it is, you know, there's a great integration there, you know. And how often, how many young men in the clubs, you know, like, I want to talk to her, but I'm just not, you know, I'm not ready. I'm going to wait and we have two more drinks.

and then I and then do you does that person ever talk to her? No, she's off making out with solid else before you have your second drink. That's a story of, you know, my life. But my younger when I was younger. Yeah, yeah. But I think a lot of people can, a lot of guys can relate to that. But the real key there is the behavioral act of probation rate says don't don't wait to that conditional. Another big, I'll generalize this more to all our listeners, not just men, but I'll be happy.

happy when I dot dot that's a huge that's a huge cognitive distortion this is why I like the mindful CBT approach because that is that falls in the category of a cognitive distortion but being mindful about it that wow mindful that I have that cognitive distortion and I'm going to override that through the behavioral activation approach I'm not going to wait till I do X, Y, and Z to be happy. I'm going to go towards this action right now that I know is going to make me happy. I mean it's so weird like we have a thing right in front of us we can be happy if we want to But our mind has this cognitive distortions like, oh, but I'm not ready for that or I need this, this and this before I'm ready to accept that.

And if someone's giving you love, you know, how many people with low self-esteem are like, oh, I can't accept that love until I've done something for them first or that I've done this, this and this. Yeah. Just accept the law. Just accept it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's why is it so hard to act before thought? Yeah, right. You're right. So hard to flip that around. Flipping the script is is and yet that's what it really calls real transformations in one's life is if you make that flip. We get stuck in our heads. We overthink things because of our cognitive distortions and that can go down the list.

There's like 14 to 20 cognitive distortions that we all would resonate with. You know, like if I was like black, how often do course your idea of black and white thinking? Do you have catastrophizing? You know, do you have already talked about the conditional I'll be happy if thing? Entitlement is a cognitive bias. It's such a distortion, cognitive distortion, to think that you're entitled to everything good in the world. You know, get rid of that, you know? Like, you just go down the list.

And then if you have mindful, if you practice mindful CBT, as I've really been trying to practice mindful CBT. And I love Seth's new book on the topic. You just throughout the course of day, you really are mindful about this cognitive distortion. And you realize, holy shit, I have been walking around with just a nonstop replay of cognitive distortions that are, holding me back for my own well-being and growth, you know? And once you're really mindful of that, you're like, wow, I can really change. Yeah. Yeah. The best way I ever heard it expressed was in the context of meditation.

A good friend of mine who I've known forever is a meditation teacher. And I remember I was talking to him once and I was saying like, no, I, I'm so, I can never stick to a meditation habit because at least one or two days a week, even if it's 10 minutes, It just feels overwhelming. It's like, wow, I don't have 10 minutes. I've got all this shit to do this morning. I didn't sleep well last night. I got to go to do this thing.

I got to do a podcast, you know? Yeah, the irony there is that the second you shift into a mindful state of being, that whole way of thinking disappears immediately. Yeah. The Mormon you act to be, and you spend five minutes in a mindfulness meditation, that all that disappears. But that doesn't matter, Scott, because it's like, I've known that for fucking 20 years. and I still do it.

But I remember I was talking to him once about it and he was like, well, why do you need to do 10 minutes? And I was like, well, I picked 10 because that just seems, and he's like, why not just do one? It's so true. And he said he was like, lower the bar until it gets you to go sit on the pillow. And then once you're on the pillow, be like, I'm going to go do 30 seconds. You can always do 30 seconds.

And then once you've done the 30 seconds, be like, okay, I'm going to do three minutes. So true. And then once you do the three minutes, they'll be like, you know what, I'll stay for 10. I'm getting chills because there's a topic that just gets me emotional. You know, there's, I've been obsessively with the in the, getting in the arena idea. It's a Roosevelt thing, but I'm obsessed with this because. Great quote. It's really kind of changed my life. I start to think every time I want to do something and it feels like such a big, big task, I think to myself, my only goal is to just state my intention that I'm in the arena. Just get in the arena. Even if it

means you just, you're watching everyone else in the arena. You're still in the arena. Yeah. Like to me, that's so important in various areas of your life to just get in there. I've found it with writing. Like, I find that if I'm, if I need to write a script for a video or something and I'm procrastinating it for days, I just forced myself to open up an empty document and like write the title. And then it's, once I've done that, I'm like, well, I'm here. So I might as well. It's so true. Start writing the first. It's so true. That's the hardest part. Yeah. But That's the hardest part is just the phase shift between you don't exist in this person's life and now you just said high.

There's a world of difference between not existing and high. It's like zero to one compared to like one to two. Like it's not even being on Solon's radar. It's infinite. In infinite difference. And we can build this up to any example of anything, you know, just you don't know the ripple effects that can happen. You need to trust in the universe.

You know, that sounds really. Trust the universe. I know that sounds unscientific. Scott Berry Coff from PhD. 05. But it is certain sense, isn't that what you're doing? Technically, even scientifically, that makes sense. You can't control all the factors.

Whatever you want to call it. Trust the universe, reality, the future, just existence. Trust yourself. Let go. Yeah. Because you can't control. And you also, there's also a kind of entitlement there, a big presumption that you know how someone's going to react to you or you know yeah the universe is going to do its thing

we're often surprised so you have to kind of let yourself go to the surprise of life so we've we've spent a lot of this conversation talking about um victimhood culture which you're writing a book about right now i haven't announced that but you know why not what this be the announcement okay okay if you're cool with that we'll leave you then um we talked a lot about social media we've talked a lot about education and the younger generation. I'm curious, since you're very focused on this topic at the moment, this kind of group of topics, what do you think is the most underbroadcast piece of advice or piece of wisdom out there? What's the thing that needs to be said more, but it's not getting said enough? Let's double click on the victim mentality for a second. What is, what I think

I bring to the table about that is that I'm not the guy you'd expect to write about. overcoming a victimhood mentality. What I see in this is that the people that are people of victim mentality, they're always pointing their finger at someone else. You know, like, you know, if you're on the far right, you're like, oh, those liberals with a victimhood mentality, you know. Yeah. Even the liberals saying, oh, look at these publicas are always crying, you know, about their, you know, what I want to bring the table is this notion that all of us, no matter our political party, no matter our background, whether we've gone through trauma, we haven't gone through explicit trauma, we can really make profound transformations to our lives

with a simple mindset shift of I am not a victim of my circumstances. I mean, to really, to get in the arena of I'm not a victim of my circumstances is a true game changer for your whole life. But it's something that has, I want to divorce it from its political connotations. I want to divorce it from because it applies to all of us. Again, I don't care, you know, I mean, I do care if you're in poverty, but I'm saying, regardless of if you're poverty or you're, you know, how many people within the top 1%? How many billionaires have a victim mentality right now, you know? So this is not something only, you know, to assert, you know, everyone's playing this kind of card right now. And, and they're holding themselves back from growth and their own self-actualization. I don't remember if I wrote it in subtle art or everything is fucked, but I made the observation that it's an interesting. period in history and that every person and group seems to feel victimized simultaneously. And it's just such a strange situation, like how that's come to be. When my last book came out, I talked a lot about entitlement and kind of victimhood and

entitlement developing a sense of control over your own life. I think I'm worried that book. Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. I loved it. Yeah. And as a result, at the time, given kind of everything that was happening politically, I got invited to go on the Fox News a bunch of times.

And it was funny because one of the times I was on one of the Fox News shows with one of like the more popular anchors. And the whole time, they're just peppering me with questions about snowflakes and, you know, victim all the people complaining about their lives and how nobody takes responsibility anymore and all this stuff. And I was like, man, it feels kind of shitty. I'm totally getting used for this political narrative right now. Like, I can feel it.

I'm like trying to stay as neutral as possible on the show, but they just keep framing it the way they want to frame it. And it goes to commercial break. And during the commercial break, the anchor leans over the desk. And they go, you know who the biggest snowflakes are? The people who watch this show. I was like, oh, shit. I was like, holy fuck. like moment. Oh my God. It's obvious. But I think I think I think the media on all sides they know.

Not only do they know they use that knowledge to get more. They're taking advantage of them. They take it. They exploit it. Yeah. And, you know, I would say trauma's big business right now. Victimhood culture is big business. Keeping people there as big business, not helping to get people to the place of healing. I mean, that's where my heart is at is that I want to get people to the promised land. I don't keep them stuck. I don't make more money if I keep them stuck in the victim and mentality. This is a criticism I've long written about the self-help industry is that as soon as you feel better, you're no longer a customer. Boom. Yeah. That's exactly what I was saying. Yeah. So it's okay for you not to need me someday. Exactly. That's it. That's what a great coach or teacher

is. Like the whole goal of being a good coach or teacher is to get you to a place where you don't need the coach or teacher anymore. I want you to get to that place. And so if you are following somebody or listening to somebody who is keeping you in the same spot emotionally. We had, remember we did, we had our podcast Improv Jam on my podcast and I said something which you really agreed with. I said the whole self-up industry dynamic are grandiose narcissists who exploit vulnerable narcissists in a codependent relationship with each other. 100%. And they, the advice is basically teaching the vulnerable narcissist how to behave like grandiose narcissists.

Correct. I mean, I think it's pretty good. Yeah. That's it. That's it. That's it. All right. On that note, I want to go to the last segment.

I'm doing this segment with each guest. Are you familiar with the game, fuck, Mary, kill? I'm not familiar with that, no. Okay. So fuck, Mary kill, traditionally the way it works is a popular game among teenagers. So you pick three people, and out of those three people, you have to pick one the fuck, one to marry, and one to kill. I got you got you. You're not going to make it.

me play this game, are you? Yeah. For a million people. Yeah, yeah. We're telling you to play fuck, merry, kill right now. But don't worry. We're not going to do people. I thought you're going to see, don't worry.

We're not actually going to fuck marry or kill them. That's what you're going to say. Okay, so fuck Mary kill. Who are the people here? Oh, not with people, though. No, no, no. So, okay, fuck Mary kill. Meditation.

Therapy. Psychedelics. Oh, my God. Okay. Now, this is forced, forced choice. So I just want to make this clear that I would not have said this just out of the context of. We understand. I mean, we're going to edit to make it sound as horrible as possible. Okay, kill, kill meditation. And I've nuanced there because I prefer mindfulness

every day than meditation. Meditation is different than mindfulness. Okay, well, let's call it mindfulness. Oh, really? Oh, shoot, you're changing the, oh, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Because then I get me out of my, I could. First of all, what's the difference between meditation and mindfulness? Yeah, well, when I think meditation, I think of a specific practice where I sit on a cushion and I close my eyes and I have a certain designated period of time. Whereas mindfulness to me is something that you apply in your everyday life. I'm applying it right now with you in action, you know, not just sitting in a cushion

and closing your eyes and tuning yourself out from the world. Okay, so let's do meditation. Yeah. Okay, good. Okay, yeah, that's too broad. So you'll kill meditation. Why do you kill meditation? Why do you kill meditation?

Well, hold on, hold on. Hold on. If we make, I would marry mindfulness. So can we actually make it, can you actually make, because I would kill therapy. I would kill therapy. Okay. I would marry mindfulness. Okay.

What's the third thing? Psychedel. And so what is, what am I doing to psychedelics then? Fucking them. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. That's perfect.

Perfect. Okay. I feel aligned with all three of those things. Awesome. So explain yourself. I'd explain it to. Yeah. Well, what's the reason?

I definitely would love to marry mindfulness. I would love that to be something that is just incorporated into my moment-to-moment existence, you know, and to make mindful decisions and not be controlled by my naughty subcontents. Ultimately, when therapy is done right, we talked about this, its whole function should be to erase itself. That it should be its function. I mean, being a codependent relationship with your therapist is horrible. Yeah.

You know? So yeah, ultimately, if I was able to kill it, that means I'm in a place where I can really be more mindful of my life and, and maybe even get my therapy through making sweet, sweet love with psychedelics. There's actually a lot of good research, suggesting that psychedelics can be a good, integrative form of therapy with a good guide. Yeah, I believe it. I totally believe it. I understand that what I said doesn't paint therapy in the basalite. Yeah. And that's, you know, funny. for someone who hosts the psychology podcast to say that. So I just do want to clarify that ultimately to kill it, you know, it'll be good.

But I don't want to kill therapy, you know what I mean? Therapy is a funny one. I think it's actually, it's probably good to dig into this a little bit because I have recommended therapy to my audience, my entire career. I still actively recommended. I think it's something everybody should at least try at some point in their life. And it does have pretty incredible benefits for a lot of people in a lot of circumstances. said, it is so, it's so situational. So much of it really seems to depend on the unique relationship

between the patient and therapist. So much of it depends on finding a good therapist. So much of it depends on your attitude going into the therapy and what you're willing to focus on and work on how mindful you're willing to be about what's going on in your life. Therapy has had the best PR. It's like the most widely accepted mainstream form of psychological intervention. And when you actually look at the data on its track record, it's not stellar. There's actually men analysis shows not a very high, yeah, very small effect size. Yeah, it's barely above placebo. Not to say that anything else in psychology has a stellar. It's a stellar track record either. But, you know, it's therapy is, it seems to be very

effective in specific contexts, generally mildly effective across many contexts, and also often not effective at all. Unfortunately. Yeah. And there's so many different orientations. And I think that depending on the orientation, the proved effective, the shown effectiveness differs quite dramatically. And also what complicates that whole situation is that so you can look at these meta-analyses and pull out different factors to see which one's increase effectiveness versus decrease it. Like overall, it's looking bad for therapy. But when you zoom in on certain things, like the presence,

you can actually rate the presence of the therapist and you look at that factor. That's actually a big one. Yeah. The extent to which a client feels, a patient feels seen and heard, I don't like calling them patients. I vaguely recalls, yeah, seeing some data on that and it kind of found, there's almost like kind of therapist, superstar therapist. Yeah, there are super certain.

Who just consistently get great results and then they kind of pull the average up for everybody. They have great presence. I think the act approach has been getting some good effectiveness. Actives acceptance and commitment therapy. Yes, yes. I'm a big fan of as well. Yes, but he makes it very clear that it's not an acronym.

I was on it. He was all my podcast once. What does that stand for? He's like, it does not stand for anything. But actually, yeah. Yeah. No, I love it. Yeah.

I love him. And CBT has a lot of research, but it's not the fit for everyone. See, the fit is what also complicates the situation. From what I've seen CBT is greater for anxiety. Like, it seems to outperform people with anxiety issues and then everything else that's kind of in the measm of. And I think I'm a fan of bringing back depth, depth psychology. You mean in depth psychology, you know, that I've argued that that's really missing. And then humanistic psychology is not as prominent as it once was.

And also I think psycho analysis can be incredibly beneficial. Just, you know, not always, I think that a multi-targeted approach is going to be the best therapist. All right. One more. Yeah. Okay. This is fun.

Fuck, Marykill. Extraversion. Conscientiousness. openness to new experiences. Okay, well, oh, I mean, that's really hard. That's really, really, it's like killing my babies. That one's really hard. I guess, you know, I have to choose, right?

This is like one of those horror movies. This is a forced choice. It's like Saw 6. Yes. No, Scott, you have no choice. Yeah. Openest to experience is my favorite. So I'm going to say love.

marrying openness to experience. I'm marrying because that leaves me two others. I extra version is not my defining uh treats um so I'm gonna kill it. Yeah and uh conscientiousness and that leaves me what I'm doing to consciousness. I'm fucking I'm fucking conscient. Wow that's so interesting. I think about fucking conscient maybe I maybe I should be fucking openness. Oh, maybe I should be fucking openness. Yeah. Yeah. No I okay I'm fucking openness and I'm marrying conscientiousness and I'm killing extraversion that feels more aligned that feels more okay because I don't know what it would mean to fuck conscientiousness you know to have like I feel like that's something you really kind of need in your life but on a regular basis

so explain yourself why are you I'm being ridiculous why are you well this the whole game is fucking ridiculous so explain yourself why are you marrying conscientiousness and by by the way for people listening these are three of the big five personality traits but now I've feel like I'm going back. I'm feeling like I'm going back. Now I feel like I want to marry openness again. This is, this is why I have commitment issued. This, you, you, you have inadvertently, like, triggered all of my issues that I have in my life right now. I just don't know what it would mean to make love to conscientiousness. That I just don't even know. It just means that you would be, you would fuck it very conscientiously. Like, take very,

be very care, a lot of care And wait, but but fucking is not love Wait, so actually fucking is different than marrying Yeah, it's fucking, the point is that you're fucking it Which is like, that's not even love It's kind of like a fling So therefore I am fucking conscientious, yes And I am yes, that makes sense now

That makes sense. Now it all makes sense Because I don't want conscience, I do want to live in an open state of being Yeah All the time and I would and I love it And I marry it. Consciousness comes along every now and then when I have to get something done. Ah, gotcha. And when I have to pound it,

I'll pound it. But I don't want to pound it all the time. Yeah, yeah. No pun it. When I want to crush something. Awesome. Scott, it was a pleasure. So much fun.

I'm fine. Very nice. Thanks, man. This was the subtle art not giving a fuck podcast. Sign up for the newsletter. Your next breakthrough. This is Scott Barry Kaufman. and we will be back next week.

So don't fuck your conscientiousness. Too much.