The Blindboy Podcast - UFOs, Artificial Intelligence and how to gain Self Acceptance

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Part one. Roasting take about AI and UFOs. Part two. Measured and reasoned mental health chat about developing self-acceptance  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caress the dentist, you hell-bent Evans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. We haven't heard my vape a lot on the podcast recently, I noticed. I'm still vaping, I've just stopped vaping mid-podcast. I think I'll reintroduce the vape slightly, not too much. Because it's a bit... Do you know how it was? I have a new vape

and it's a little bit more electronic. Do you know what I mean? I don't know how pleasant that sound is. So this week's podcast it's not going to be about artificial intelligence. The's not going to be about artificial intelligence the podcast is going to be about

self-compassion and self-acceptance but I've just been reading a lot about artificial intelligence recently and I don't have a fully formed hot take about it but I do have some thoughts that I wanted to share with you this week

around artificial intelligence, the shit I've been thinking about. So the first 40 minutes of this podcast are about artificial intelligence, conspiracy theories, stuff like that. Nothing irresponsible. All quite fun and interesting. So that's the first 40 minutes. And that's the first 40 minutes

and then after the first 40 minutes I speak about mental health self acceptance things like that so if you've no interest in conspiracy theories fast forward 40 minutes so I've been reading feverishly this week

in particular around deep learning and machine learning so sometimes if I'm if I'm bored and I want to excite my brain with some fascinating stuff

one of the things I'll usually look up is there's this organisation called DARPA. It's the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. And it's a US military

like giant fund. It's this agency in the US military. They've been around for about 50 years. And it's basically where the huge budget goes into DARPA to research and generate

new technologies and a ton of shit that we use in our everyday lives was developed by this DARPA crowd the internet for instance the internet was a DARPA project stealth bombers drones

and this is all shit that DARPA would have been working on in the 70s and 80s and as far back as the 60s I think with the internet so basically DARPA is this organisation that receives billions and billions and billions in funding from the US government. And it's kind of, they're always 20 years in the future.

If you want to find out what technology will be like in 20 years, will you kind of get a look at, suppose you get a look at what DARPA is saying that it's making right now, because they have an official website and they're like here are the projects we're working on right now so fuck knows what they're working on in secret and so much of it is in secret

and DARPA as well I think they get to they can work outside of the law which I think is a terrible thing and I'm not necessarily saying DARPA is good we're talking about the US military here so it's it's like an organisation within the US military that

it's there to maintain hegemony to make sure that America remains the world's biggest superpower by being 20 years ahead of technology but it's incredibly fascinating, it's just incredibly world's biggest superpower by being 20 years ahead of technology.

But it's incredibly fascinating. It's just incredibly fascinating, the things that they're doing, because it's not fiction, it's fact. So one thing that DARPA are researching at the moment, just to give you an example of how mad this thing is, they're trying to build homes that can repair themselves and possibly even grow themselves. They're researching building materials that are quite similar to living cells.

So building homes that aren't just buildings now, they're somehow alive. And just like human flesh can repair itself if it's wounded a home that can repair itself if it's wounded because the building materials are kind of alive.

Now I don't believe that they're doing it to build homes I think they just put that in their press release probably what they mean is we want to figure out a way to have a military base that you grow from the ground and that repairs itself. That's probably why DARPA are doing it. Because it's US military. But I don't know how they're going to do that.

It sounds absolutely mad. A fucking home that grows itself and repairs itself like cells, like living cells. I don't know how they're going to do it. But they're doing it huge amount of money has been given for them to grow houses and I just find that fucking fascinating, I find it fascinating

because it's not science fiction it's a thing that's fucking happening another thing they're doing is they're researching carbon absorption. So in this world that we face today where there's climate change, they're trying to figure out a way to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it. And that sounds like a nice thing because you're like, wow, big, huge machines.

Like the problem we're having is that we're generating too much carbon and there's a lot of carbon in the atmosphere and this is causing global warming so it's a good thing that there's these machines that can suck it out of the air and reduce the carbon kind of like what a tree can do but stronger but then if you look into who's funding these carbon absorption programs a lot of the money is coming from the fucking petrol industry. So petrol companies, all the big petrol companies are investing in this technology that sucks carbon out of the air. And why are they doing it? Two reasons.

number one it means that the fossil fuel industry can continue because it's like we can still start extracting oil because we have these machines that take the carbon away but also what do you do with this when the carbon is extracted from the atmosphere and it exists as kind of a

half gas half solid where do you put it well the oil companies are saying put it back into where we took the oil from. And you're like, why do you want to do that? So they want to suck the carbon out of the atmosphere, put it back into the hole where the oil came from. And essentially what it does is it creates pressure in the oil well, like popping a pimple, so that the little bit of oil that's left comes up. So I'm not crazy about that. I prefer green solutions rather than just sucking carbon out and continuing fossil fuels. So this isn't science fiction. This is real.

Look up a carbon capture technology, I think it's called. One thing they've developed, which I found quite disturbing in light of the fucking pandemic, is a DARPA project called Insect Allies. And this is a program that DARPA and the US

government, they're making genetically engineered viruses that they then infect insects with and these viruses that the insects are infected with fly onto crops and then these viruses can edit the genes of crops

now they're saying they're doing it for defense they're like what if someone attacked the crops of the United States? With a virus. Then we need to be able to have a virus that can counteract that and edit the genes of those crops in real time. What if someone attacked our wheat? But they're probably just developing a biological weapon so that they can do that to someone else. That they could go to war with China or Russia and then send these fucking insects

into all the food supply and the crops in those countries edit the genes of their crops and cause a giant famine most likely but they're saying it's for defence and part of the reason I find that fascinating

is that I sound mad just even telling you that but you can look it up look up the insect allies program it's real and you've got reputable organizations like the Max Planck Society who are critiquing it going hold up a minute lads

insects injected with genetically modified viruses to edit the genes of crops? You sure about that, eh? So what got me thinking about artificial intelligence is a huge, huge part of DARPA's yearly budget at the moment now has gone into artificial intelligence, into the research and development of artificial intelligence. This appears to be DARPA's main goal. And I'm just going

what the fuck have you got planned? Why? And how? And many types of artificial intelligence that you and I benefit from on a day to day basis again, they were DARPA projects 20 years ago, 30 years ago like Siri if you have an iPhone you have Siri on your iPhone

and Siri is a voice operated person on your phone who's intelligent enough you can ask fairly complicated questions to Siri and Siri will answer them and Siri started off in DARPA as a project called PAL in the early 2000s. And it was intended as a kind of an artificial robot companion for

military commanders to, what they want to do with AI is they don't want computers to be tools anymore. They want a computer to actually be a companion that works alongside a soldier or a commander so Siri was founded that way called PAL you can look it up and then I think in 2008 the company that DARPA had given money to to develop PAL they went private and sold PAL as Siri to Apple and then it ended up in iPhones but how does artificial intelligence get intelligent

artificial intelligence is it's basically a computer that tries to mimic the brain of a human the brain and behaviour. And the way that a human can think. In order to solve problems. That's what AI is.

And DARPA are pumping loads of money into this. But what has me. Raising an eyebrow. And kind of concerned. Is. So a lot of AI. Not all of it. But a lot of AI.

Learns to be like a human by learning from humans through a process known as deep learning. Like I'll give you an example. I spoke about this before, but this is a real world example. Do you know when you sign into a website and the website says, before you move forward, we need to check that you're a human. Are you a human or are you a robot? Now, nowadays, when you get, it's called CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA. That's the software that's used. So if you're trying to use a website and the website is like, hold on a minute, are you a human? And then it says, we're going to show you a lot of pictures. And we want you to click on all the images that contain cars or buses.

So you sit down at your computer and you do a small little test that picks the images that only contain cars and then the captcha says you're a human, grand only a human could have identified those cars come on in and you get on with your day well what you're actually doing there is I think Google are responsible for that but every time we solve a captcha

and correctly identify a car your actions there that little problem that you solved, the data of your behavior is fed into a deep learning network and it's used to train self-driving cars. So that right there is how artificial intelligence deep learns from our behavior. Millions and millions of people every day picking out the cars and buses and pictures. All that data, that behavior is being fed into artificial intelligence that learns it. And this will be turned into cars that can drive themselves, which is a project that Google is doing at the moment. And that doesn't seem that bad. That seems pretty cool.

It's like, okay, grand, self-driving cars. That sounds like a good laugh. I don't think it'd be a good laugh if they were using that data to train drones to kill people. But how do you know they're not? Because when you do a capture, you give your data. and let's just think about the word data data is because that is one of these words that we we don't care about you

tend not to care about the word data but data basically is the recording of your behavior your smartphone, your Fitbit, your smart TV these things all record your behaviour in the case of your phone it records what you say into it what you type into it and where you move around how long you spend on it, what you're looking at your phone records all this it measures and records your behaviour like a science turns this into your data and we tend not to care

because you're just like mostly that's used to advertise to us better like Jesus like over over the pandemic when I couldn't exercise

I put on a little bit of weight and I've got a little bit of weight. And I've got a Fitbit on my fucking wrist. And I also have the Fitbit weighing scales. The Fitbit weighing scales was on special price. So I got it. And it measures my weight and it also measures my BMI. So I'd been using my Fitbit weighing scales I'd put on like a half stone

and then all of a sudden in Instagram Amazon are trying to advertise stretchy pants so my Fitbit had told Amazon that this fella's pants this fella's pants

aren't going to be fitting him very soon if he keeps putting on this weight so let's sell him some stretchy pants. I wasn't looking for stretchy pants. I wasn't even typing in anything about my weight because I'm like, I can't exercise. I can't run because my ankle is sore.

I can't go to the gym. I'm putting on a bit of weight. What of it? But then I'm like, how the fuck did my phone know that it needs to start advertising stretchy pants? My fucking weighing scales ratted me out via my Fitbit, because they're all smart devices. And in that situation, it's like, all right, fair enough, stretchy pants, grand, okay.

They're trying to sell me stretchy pants. But still, they have all this data now about my my body fat levels my heart rate, my height how active I am pretty intimate detailed information about my

health and then ok they're selling it to the stretchy pants company but what if they're selling it to a health insurance company and that affects my health insurance premium because they're selling it to the stretchy pants company, but what if they're selling it to a health insurance company and that affects my health insurance premium? Because they're selling it to third parties and a third party is anyone who can buy it. And that includes military organisations

because military organisations, all they do is they put funding into a private company and then they purchase the data. Same with these listening devices Amazon Echo fucking the Google speaker or whatever the fuck it's called

like these things are really really cheap, like an Amazon Echo device is worth fucking nothing sometimes they give them away for free and you have this thing in your house that you talk to but the reason it costs fuck all

is they don't want your money they want your data they keep track of everything you say to that speaker they keep track of it as data and then sell that to third party organisations like how do you think Siri is able to understand an Irish accent?

I remember when I first got Siri, in order to use Siri, I had to, the only way Siri could listen to me is if I faked an American accent. But now, she completely understands what I'm saying. No hassle. And why is that? Because all of the audio of all of us in Ireland

using Siri or using Alexa, all of our voices are being analysed and deep learnt as data so that the artificial intelligence can better understand the Irish accent. And I'm not saying it's... That doesn't sound too sinister, but it's weird. It's just a bit weird that all this stuff is happening with our data that we don't know about to make machines smarter.

And I don't like that DARPA, the US military, is pumping billions into AI. because I know that if they're if they're developing AI then they're feeding AI our data and they're getting our data via these this third party shit that we think is going to advertisers to sell us stretchy pants

or to recommend a film on Netflix that it thinks we might like and now this is veering into conspiracy right now this bit now is going to veer into conspiracy so you can take this with a pinch of salt this is just me this is veering into conspiracy right now. This bit now is going to veer into conspiracy. So you can take this with a pinch of salt. This is just me.

This is the science fiction writer in me. But one thing I find really fascinating is that what DARPA want to do at the moment with AI is they want AI to have emotions. In order for artificial intelligence to solve problems like a human being humans aren't just complete rational computers we we solve problems using emotions and they're trying to develop ai that can experience emotions like shame and has a sense of accountability and I can't help but detach that from the way the internet has gotten in the past five years the way that people just fight a lot on the internet

on places like Twitter or Facebook or wherever there's a lot more arguing and fighting and divisiveness going on than there was in 2010. It's as simple as that. And we know that there's a reason for this. And again, this isn't conspiracy theory. This is fact. Social media companies have engineered their algorithms to reward what they refer to as high arousal emotions. Things like anger and fear. So social media companies, they've created the environment where people fight and disagree more and more and more. Because this keeps us on there longer and then we give them more data.

And I suppose my conspiracy theory is, is all this to benefit the US military to fucking develop to develop artificial intelligence that can feel shame and accountability and anger are we just these hamsters

where our social media apps are getting us to fight with each other and to divide and to be really stressed out all day so that this data can be fed to this AI machine to learn our emotions. Like it's already definitely doing with the self-driving cars. That can be proven. It's a fact. Self-driving cars are being can be proven. It's a fact. Self-driving cars are being taught by us solving

problems. Us clicking on that fucking picture that has the car or the bus in it. All that data of us arguing every single day. It's not just being sold to advertisers. It's sold to anyone who can purchase it. And when you

bring into the equation all this money for artificial intelligence learning emotions from our data it now creates an economy where it really makes sense to have everybody fighting and everybody disagreeing and everybody falling out and everyone everybody discussing things on social media in a way that has no nuance and is conflict-based. And another thing that fascinates me is are they teaching artificial... What if they want to teach artificial intelligence the emotion of love?

Like if you're in a relationship with another person, your relationship exists as a package of data in 2021. That's a fact. You both have smartphones. You both communicate with each other on the smartphones. If you've moved in with each other, your smartphones are beside each other all the time like this is if you're living with someone if you've got a romantic partner you will start getting advertised things based on what they're searching for because your phones are so close together all the time that this is packaged as one package of data

and amazon is like if your girlfriend or boyfriend is searching for this book or is interested in this topic, then I'm going to put this on your phone as an ad so you get it from as a gift. This happens. So our intimate human relationships are already being packaged as a package of data, of two units of data together, a relationship. data together a relationship if you're both wearing fitbits then it knows when you're riding each other because both your fitbits are close together and your heartbeats are elevated at a certain time at the exact same time unless you want to confuse the corporations and instead of fucking you have a game of furious push-ups in the kitchen together if you have an argument and you do it over text it can tell when you're having an argument and why. And this is a package of data.

This is your phones and your devices reducing your relationship to this package of data that's sold to advertisers. But what if the data of human beings' relationships, how much you have sex, how much you love each other, how much you spend around each other, how much money you spend on each other, all these things of your relationship, what if this is being used to teach AI how to fucking love? And it's completely possible.

So that's my little miniature hot take this week I've just been thinking about that and I do find it fascinating luckily in Europe we have a thing called GDPR which tries to protect, tries to

offer us a certain amount of consent around our data and how much we want to share so if you're worried by that stuff just try and quite a lot of apps now not all of them but quite a lot of reputable apps in accordance with gdpr they make it difficult but you'll often find a setting within the app or within whatever that says, do not share my data. Or things like, I know a lot of people are freaked out by, if you have an Alexa at home and you're talking into Alexa all day asking, what should I watch on Netflix or what temperature is it? You can go into the app and go delete this fucking

do not hang on to my recordings of my voice delete them immediately so if you're it's a lot of work but you can actually limit and protect the amount of data that you share if you don't want to which is we should have consent around our fucking data

lads this is why apps are free the reason apps are free is because they don't need our money they're making that money off our data and again they use this language so that we don't care but next time you hear data just remind yourself your phone is essentially a team of scientists that are measuring everything about your movement and your words and all of this it's measuring everything so that's what your data is it's a detailed scientific report of your behavior that day and you don't have to share that if you don't want to like the word cookies you know when you go to a website and it's like this website uses cookies can we and then your brain goes i love

cookies they're yummy of course you can but cookies are basically something a website uses to track you so that it can get more of your data so if if you use that website today. And it gets. And it puts cookies on your computer. If you go back to the website in six months time. The website is like. Ah they're back. This is the same person with the same data. So that's what a cookie is.

Replace the word cookie with tracking device. And replace the word data. With personal intimate secrets. That I'm entitled to keep to myself thank you very much and just one last thing, one last thing on the DARPA subject because I need to get this out of my system

so another mad thing that's happening at the moment and I commented on this recently is the US government talking about UFOs so this is real this is a thing that's happening it's been happening for the past year

and I think on this week, I think the 25th of June I'm not positive about that date but the Pentagon in the US is due to give a big presentation and admit the existence of UFOs.

This is happening. This isn't conspiracy theory. Look it up. US government, UFOs are unidentified aerial phenomenon, they're calling them now, UAPs. This is a real thing that's happening right now. So the US Navy have basically said over the years

that they have a couple of videos where their pilots or whatever have met aircraft and objects that they don't know what the fuck they are they can't explain why they're flying so fast, they're being chased

by them and the US government is going yeah there's something there and we don't know what the fuck it is. And it's not us. So this is happening right now. This is, you can look it up. And it'll be in the news a lot more next week. So, there's a few possibilities for that. I mentioned a few weeks back,

my personal theory on it is, why are the US government doing that? Why are the US government saying that why are the US government saying there's UFOs and we don't know what they are I think they're scared of the huge amount of people in America now who are

conspiracy theorists and who believe in things like QAnon and the people who tried to storm the capital I think the powers that be in America are really worried about civil unrest. I think the powers that be in America are really worried about civil unrest. So I think by them saying there might be UFOs

is a way for the American government to appear trustworthy to those people. That's the only thing I can think of. It just doesn't make sense. Why are you talking about fucking UFOs? What are you doing? Then there's other possibilities. There

are UFOs but they don't belong to the Americans. They're the Chinese or the Russians and they have some technology that the Yanks don't know about. This incredibly advanced flying technology that defies the laws of physics. That's a possibility. It could be fucking aliens.

It could actually be aliens who are flying around the gaff with advanced technology that's a possibility the videos could be totally fake the US military could have made a bunch of fake videos as propaganda to distract

or to spread disinformation to their own citizens to justify some type of budgetary spending. That's a strong possibility. Now here's another one that I've been thinking about. Now I want you to take this with a gigantic pinch of salt. I'm going to go into full lunatic uncle territory right here. So do not take me seriously with this.

I just have an interesting theory and pretend that we're having a pint, we're in a pub we're having a pint and this is just something I'm saying and I'm not asking you to take it seriously at all and I'd never promote bullshit conspiracy theories as the truth, there's a difference conspiracy

theories are really fucking interesting. They're really entertaining. That's okay. When you start going, this is what's actually happening. Why can't you see the truth, you sheep? That's when it gets dodgy. I'm not doing that.

I'm saying, I have an interesting little theory here that I want to entertain. So DARPA, as I mentioned mentioned that are doing all these crazy projects and they're always 20 years in the future with their technology and we can see that. So what if the videos that the US Navy are releasing of these UFOs, these aircraft that are flying really fast and it doesn't make any sense that nothing can fly like this, it really doesn't make sense

what if this is US technology that was developed by DARPA and this is the US's way of slowly weaning us towards the idea of a very very advanced flying technology that the US government

developed in DARPA and our minds just aren't ready for it now if they released it now. If they released it now, we'd all shit our pants so they'd need to slowly drip feed it to us. And the technology I'm talking about is called anti-gravity technology. Now anyone who knows anything about physics

is immediately rolling their fucking eyes and I understand why you are and I don't even know what I'm talking about because anti-gravity technology is one of these, it's seen as pseudo-scientific. It's like alchemy. Gravity is a fundamental law of reality. So anti-gravity technology is technology that's free of the force of gravity.

So if you've got an airplane that's anti-gravity, there's nothing pulling it down. So it can move at these insanely fast speeds like the blink of an eye the way that these UFOs are moving like if someone's analysing the UFO videos they say the only

way those UFOs can move that fast is if they're using anti-gravity technology and that doesn't exist because it can't exist are you mad? Well here's my crazy uncle hot take that I want you to take with a pinch of salt. There was this physicist right? She was a Chinese-American physicist called Dr. Ning Li and in 1999 she came out with research and she claimed that she developed anti-gravity technology.

And everyone got really interested in it. And then she kind of just disappeared. She didn't die, it's just she came out and said, I've got anti-gravity technology in 1999. And then no one heard from her again, she just disappeared. Maybe a lot of people called her a bullshitter. Like with her pseudoscientific anti-gravity technology theory and she just naturally disappeared

and stopped being a scientist but there's circumstantial evidence that Ning Li instead ended up working for the US military and she didn't disappear she just went to DARPA and worked very very secretly with DARPA on her anti-gravity technology. And maybe that's what the UFOs are.

I'm 99.9% wrong there. Because what that is is an incredibly interesting story. Very interesting story. So don't be believing me or don't be thinking that I'm putting that forward as something plausible I just think it's really interesting and I wanted to say it to you

it's probably bullshit the real answer is probably the most boring one it's often the case and why am I entertaining this stuff this is the allure of conspiracy theories because you look at other stuff then that's real, that happened,

and it's like, fuck, well, that was a conspiracy theory at the time. Like I've mentioned before, I did a podcast on Operation Paperclip. NASA, you know, getting human beings to the moon. How did NASA come about? Americans, the Americans literally took a lot of Nazi rocket scientists the Nazis were building rockets in World War II and instead of these war criminals facing the Nuremberg trial

America like smuggled 100 Nazii scientists into america gave them new names and this became nasa and that's called operation paperclip and that happened if in the 1980s you saw a flying triangle in the air which you called a ufo because it didn't make sense and it didn't look like any plane. If you lived near an Air Force base in America and you saw that in the 80s you'd have called that a UFO. And it wasn't a UFO it was a stealth bomber

which got unveiled in the 1991 Gulf War. It was a triangular black plane that deflected radar. But you'd have thought that was a UFO and it was being secretly developed as this technology that the US just didn't want people knowing about. So those things, it's those things

that then make me go into crazy uncle territory. But I think, like I like that stuff. When I was growing up, conspiracy theories used to be fun. It used to be UFOs and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. That was great crack. And it was sold to us mainly through the X-Files. The X-Files was brilliant, but you knew you were watching fiction. It's like here's a brilliant piece of fiction that's based on conspiracy theories that are out there.

But fundamentally fundamentally this is entertainment and it's safe and it's okay. It's just modern fairy tales and folklore and it can be enjoyed safely and it wasn't harmful but now unfortunately

you know, conspiracy theories now are a real dirty word because they've been you know conspiracy theories now are a real dirty word because they've been a lot of it is really really infiltrated by quite dangerous right-wing ideas and the problem is you start off with your ufos and you go down the rabbit hole and then a week later you're you believe that a one world government is trying to enforce mass immigration

of refugees on countries as a way to replace white people and this is all controlled by Jewish people who are actually shape shifting lizards and that stuff's dangerous that stuff is

causing a lot of harm so that's why i'm so reluctant when i even mention conspiracy that's why i'm so cautious to say to ye when i go into that mad stuff i'm i'm aware i'm aware that i'm i'm having a bit of fun there i'm not entertaining that because i know if I entertain it too much and I lose focus where that can end up I have to use criticality and rationality and I think importantly too

for me to safely enjoy conspiracy theories as a form of entertainment I don't get involved in any of the communities, I'm not in Facebook groups because I often wonder how do I don't get involved in any of the communities. I'm not in Facebook groups. I'm, because I often wonder how do,

how do people, it's happened a lot over the pandemic with just normal people thinking that coronavirus isn't real or thinking that the vaccines are a way to put microchips into us. And I think a tipping point is when you find yourself in an online community where people are agreeing with you and your sense of self-esteem and identity and self-worth

now gets tied in with the social media algorithm and now people are patting you on the back for agreeing with them. And that's how it happens. I think that's how it happens i think that's how it happens it's not necessarily the ideas themselves it's when you mix those ideas with a community of people who are rewarding you for agreeing with them and now you've now it's become a religion if you get me and that space is being. Infiltrated by people who want to promote some. Fucking racist right wing ideas.

It's no longer about like when I was. When I was a fucking kid. Going to the petrol station. And there'd be a conspiracy theory magazine. You'd pick it up and you'd read it. And be a load of fun. And that's it. Or you'd watch the X-Files.

And the mad thing is with these the people who think that vaccines are a way to implant microchips in people they don't need to you're doing it, it's your fucking phone it's out in the open it's your data you're already being tracked, it's your fucking data

the Facebook group that you're in to talk about the microchips and the vaccines. The emotional flurry that you get yourself into in this Facebook group that has it in it all day. That's where you're being tracked.

That's where you're being tracked. And the algorithm is then feeding you more extreme shit. And there's people in there with a vested interest in making you go from Bigfoot to racism. You know, and say that to your uncle who's gone a bit sideways. And I know even that then sounds like conspiracy theory, but

we saw it happen with Cambridge Analytica. You know, we saw this stuff happen. The certain, whether it be groups or fucking state actors or whatever, you know we saw this stuff happen the certain whether it be groups or fucking state actors or whatever there appears to be a vested interest in creating division around anything

creating division around anything sowing distrust in democracy and just dividing people into groups around any subject so that when the time comes these people can be quite easily

manipulated politically. So I didn't want to do this week's podcast on that shit at all. I wanted to do about 10 minutes on AI and then go into my main topic that I want to speak about which is nothing to do with conspiracy theories. I just wanted to speak about self-acceptance

and self-compassion as part of keeping good mental health as always with any mental health to try and keep it about myself and my process. And self-acceptance and self-compassion are things again that I try to keep check on on a daily basis. So I want to speak a little bit about that. So what is self-acceptance? well sometimes

we can be a lot harder on ourselves than we are of other people we can actually be quite forgiving of other people we can be better at allowing other people just be who they are if another person does something,

like put it this way, let's keep it nice and simple. Something simple and embarrassing. If you're, if your buddy, if you're out for coffee with your buddy, and you're sitting down outside, and they head in. To get the pair of coffees.

And it's sunny outside. And there's loads of people sitting down. It's a lovely day. And people are sitting down enjoying their coffees. So your buddy goes in to get your two coffees. He or she comes out. With the coffees. And then they fall over.

And they slam the coffees on the ground. Everyone stares and everyone looks. One person giggles. Someone else over on the left goes, oh my God. And is embarrassed on behalf of the person who's fallen over. And the person, your friend who's fallen over with the coffee. Is fucking mortified. They get to the table.

And they're like I'm after dropping the fucking coffees. And then you say. Look just go back in and they'll give them to you for free. You drop them. And your friend is like. It's not about the fucking coffees. Can we just get the fuck out of here. Because I'm mortified. I'm fucking mortified. I fell over. And everyone was looking. friend is like it's not about the fucking coffees can we just get the fuck out of here because i'm

mortified i'm fucking mortified i fell over and everyone was looking i'm mortified so you say to your friend yeah fuck it it's grand look we'll go somewhere else don't worry about it we'll go somewhere else and your friend is visibly shaken you finally get to the new coffee shop to sit down you decide to go here chill out I'm going to go in and get the coffees now don't worry about it

and you come back out and you can't have a nice coffee with your friend because they're so fucking embarrassed about falling over in the last coffee shop but yet you are able to you're able to go

so what you fell over so what it was actually quite funny why can't we laugh about it so fucking what but your buddy's like no I'm mortified

I'm mortified I'm such a fucking asshole but if you yourself had been the person that spilt the coffee that was in their shoes you'd probably be equally as hard

as you are on yourself you're able to forgive your friend for falling over with the coffees when your friend says I'm a fucking idiot and I look like an idiot

and I humiliated myself and I never come back into that coffee shop again what if someone sees me down the street and remembers me as coffee falling man if your friend said that

you'd very easily be able to say it to them don't be worrying about that that's no no no no I'm sure everybody who was watching appreciates that

you just fell over and if anyone was shocked they might have just been worried for your safety but look people fall over people fall over it's grand

it's absolutely fine but you wouldn't be able to do that for yourself you can do it for your buddy but you can't do it for yourself and they could do it for you but they can't do it for themselves and that's what I mean

self acceptance is to try and develop for yourself the type of rational extension of compassion and understanding and accepting of fallibilities that you have for your body but to be able to do it for yourself

because we're unnecessarily harsh on ourselves so that's what self acceptance is and that's what I want to have a small chat about so first of all when your body falls over in the crowded coffee garden

and drops the coffee what why is that so devastating to your body in that moment why is it devastating and embarrassing to them and not necessarily to you who's watching them and not necessarily to you who's watching well because in that moment their self esteem is highly threatened their sense of self and identity is highly threatened

and they've experienced momentary humiliation in front of loads of people in particular strangers people they don't know and that can be deeply threatening to our sense of self-esteem in society. And that's known as extrinsic worth. Your worth in the eyes of other people reflected back at you.

When your buddy falls over with the coffee, in that moment, the strangers are watching and they've become a spectacle, an object of pity. They fall over, they look up and they see one person. And the look in that person's eyes is, I would hate for that to be me. And that can be crushing. You can feel very weak and undervalued in that specific moment and we've all done it every one of us has done something where you stepped in dog shit or fell over or whatever but we all know that fucking feeling of becoming the center of attention for a tiny amount of time because he did something that's considered

publicly humiliating, farting over farting over fucking getting sick a huge fantasy of mine when I had agoraphobia was the fear of being in a public space and getting sick or doing something mad

and becoming the spectacle of humiliation and attention this kept me not leaving my fucking gaff or doing something mad and becoming the spectacle of humiliation and attention. This was... This kept me not leaving my fucking gaff. The idea of it was so terrifying. But when your buddy does that, falls over with the coffee, they haven't just dropped coffee.

They feel deeply threatened at that moment. Their very identity and self is deeply threatened and it can be traumatic and then why then after they've fallen and they do that little walk of shame back to the table and they want to

leave the area why then 10 minutes, 20 minutes later when you're trying to enjoy your new coffee in the new place why are they saying such things to you which seem ridiculous why are they saying to themselves I'm a fucking idiot

what if everyone only remembers me as the person who spilled their coffee, I feel humiliated I'm a fucking arsehole why are they going there because their self esteesteem has been threatened. And when your self-esteem, your sense of self is under threat, this releases all those fucking hormones in our body. All the stress hormones, the cortisol, the anxiety hormones. So now

our brains are no longer thinking rationally and flexibly. Our self-esteem is under threat. So we have to think from a fear-based, threat-based perspective. And then we're unnecessarily hard on ourselves. You're not feeling that because when your buddy fell over with the coffee, you're able to literally see it for what it is. An unfortunate fucking accident, which anyone can do,

but your self-esteem is not threatened. Unless you're fucking 14. If you're in that unfortunate stage of when you're 14 and you don't have a sense of self, so even your buddy falling over can be a threat to your self esteem as well because you get humiliation by association

because you don't have your shit together as a fully formed person then you can experience second hand cringe but when you're a fucking adult you don't experience it your self esteem is not under threat. Theirs is.

But the fact that your self-esteem and identity hasn't been put under threat by them falling over with coffee also means that you haven't received the emotional hijacking that they have.

When they're when your body's anxiety hormones are high. And now they're not thinking rationally. Because they're filtering everything through a threat based lens. They're receiving what's called an emotional hijack. But you haven't gotten that. Because your self esteem isn't threatened. So you're able to actually look at the situation.

With compassion. Forgiveness and rationality. You're able to go. Yeah you fell over. But fuck it you could have broken your wrist. You know that's the important thing to look at there. Isn't it good that all you got was a pair of fucking wet pants. With a brown stain on them.

And you didn't break your wrist. And you're able to have empathy to go everyone else in the cafe yeah they were a little bit shocked but ultimately people

felt a little bit bad for you and then were moved on with their day and said I could have done that that's just a human thing to do that's not shameful at all. You're able to have that level of compassion because your self-esteem wasn't threatened. So how do we move to a place where when we do something, where our self-esteem is threatened,

that we don't need to have the emotional hijack where we're unnecessarily harsh on ourselves. And it doesn't have to be faring over with coffee. It can be one of the many things that we kill ourselves over every single day, that we judge ourselves over. kill ourselves over every single day that we judge ourselves over before I get into that before I get into some techniques we're going to have an ocarina pause

a late ocarina pause an ocarina pause at 50 minutes into the podcast because I didn't think I was going to go on a big long rant about fucking data and conspiracy theories but you know

here we are this is the beauty of a podcast if that was if I was Ryan Tuberty I'd have lost my job in RTE and people would think I was having

some type of breakdown but no it's a podcast it's fine I can just go on I can just go on and we can we can have a 50 minute ocarina pause

sure if Ryan Tuberty took out a fucking ocarina in the middle of the late late he'd get fired for that as well that's the beauty of the podcast space isn't it so anyway

here's the ocarina pause which is me playing a Spanish clay whistle while you receive an advert that's I don't know what the advert's gonna be

because it's tailored to your unique algorithm StarTown. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. 666. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie

of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Quite a UFO-themed Ocarina Pause this week, actually. That almost sounded like a... I just stuck with this week actually that almost sounded like a

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do things like that alright dog bless so self is our self-acceptance and self-compassion why these things are important and why these are things that i have to work on actively with myself on a daily basis all right this is all daily basis stuff this is part of my mental health regime. This is like exercise for me. It is exercise. It's exercise for my emotions.

That's what it is. But I'm not exercising to try and have big muscles. I'm not exercising to try and have a healthy heart. With this stuff, what I'm working towards is to have a high sense of self esteem for as on a continual basis and when I say high self esteem

what I mean is when I think of myself if I look in the mirror if I'm in bed at night and I think of myself and I'm trying to rate how I'm doing

as a person to me high self esteem doesn't mean that I'm saying to myself you're fucking brilliant high self esteem is going I'm okay I'm basically okay and I'm not rooting my okayness in my achievements

or my appearance or how I see myself performing in relation to other people or my career I'm not basing my okayness in anything I'm doing. It's just fostering an understanding that like, I'm okay. I don't need to be excessively harsh on myself. I'm going to have some behaviors, there'll be some things that I've done that I'm disappointed in myself. Or other things I could have done better. But they're aspects of my behavior and I can change I can change I can work on myself I can take responsibility for those things but I'm still okay I'm grand I'm not looking at anybody else and thinking that they're better than me

and I'm not looking at anybody else and thinking that I'm better than them that's not where I want to be going I'm happy to be alive and any aspects of my behavior that I'm not too keen on I can improve on them and then I can go to sleep and if I'm doing it well, I can wake up the next morning, and that's the first feeling that I have, and that's a lovely feeling, to wake up, and all you're thinking about is the day, I'm not waking up with terror, I'm not waking up with shame, I'm not waking up with disappointment,

I'm not disappointed that I'm awake, it's just about the morning. And. That to me is when I have a high sense of self-esteem. And that fluctuates and changes. I have to work to get to that point. I'm not really there right now. I'm certainly a hell of a lot better than I was about a month ago.

At the height of the pandemic when I couldn't exercise and stuff. I was waking up feeling really bad. Really shitty. My self-esteem was very low. Now it's gotten better. It's definitely gotten better. I'm still waking up with a little unexplained shame. Unexplained being a little bit hard on myself but definitely better because I'm

flexible and changing and for me to get to the point where I'm waking up in the morning with high self-esteem, where I'm happy to wake up and now I'm just thinking about my day and what I can do with that day and embracing the fact that the day is in my control to get to that point I need to practice self acceptance now the opposite

of self acceptance is when I'm measuring my worth on external things like I said my achievements my appearance

and how I rate myself against other people whether looking up at them going I'm not as good as them or looking down at them and saying I'm better than them all of that is being harsh on yourself

that's not very accepting of yourself and when you're in that space you tend to label yourself quite a lot like let's take this pandemic for instance before the ocarina pause I spoke about

the hypothetical situation of someone falling over with a cup of coffee and then experiencing embarrassment and shame as a result of it and then this emotionally hijacking the person and then this person self-labelling as I'm a fucking idiot, I'm a fool

well the pandemic is quite similar to falling over with a cup of coffee. In that falling over with a cup of coffee in a restaurant, that's not something that's inside your control. That's an accident. It's an accident that happens. This pandemic is quite similar. It's something that happened that's outside of our control.

But look at all it's taken away. What if you're the type of person who loves to go out at the weekend and you love to dress up and look nice and meet all your friends and you get great meaning from socialising.

You love being with your friends. You love looking nice and then having people looking at you reflecting that back at you because you look nice and you love having crack and meeting people and talking and that's where you get a sense of meaning from and a sense of extrinsic value external value from an. And external value, external value is important. It just, it becomes an issue when it's the only thing you focus on.

But we all need a bit of external value, that's fine. But the pandemic has taken that away now. And you haven't been able to dress up and socialise and meet your friends and make new friends and do all the things that you love that give you meaning. And now that's taken away and your identity is threatened.

And your identity shouldn't be threatened because it's outside of your control. But the things that you enjoy are gone. So now you find yourself saying, I'm a fucking piece of shit. I'm boring. I'm unattractive. I don't matter.

And you're being really really harsh on yourself. Because your identity and self-esteem has been threatened. By something that's outside of your control. And you found a way to internalize. To blame yourself. Because the thing that gives you meaning has been taken away. And then what's going to happen? Your self esteem is going to fucking plummet for me

the pandemic has taken away my career I get a lot of meaning I get extrinsic worth from doing gigs and being busy and working and getting TV jobs. I love doing this stuff.

I really enjoy it. It gave me a lot of meaning. I try really hard not to allow that. These things that are extrinsic to me, these external things, I try not to let them define me as a human being. But of course I love doing fucking gigs. Of course I love

making television. This is my career. Of course I fucking love doing it. But it's gone now because of the pandemic. But I found myself blaming myself for this. My self-esteem was threatened

because I'm not doing gigs. I'm not getting TV work. Even though the rational explanation is that there's a fucking pandemic. The work doesn't exist. I blamed myself. And I started saying to myself, you're useless. You're not working hard enough. Your career is over. You're spent. you're a has-been and my self-esteem plummeted because my identity was threatened and the stress of my identity being threatened did not allow the rational part of my brain to step in and have some self-acceptance and self-compassion and the unfortunate thing about a cycle like that is it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, one of the reasons that high self-esteem is important to me,

if I'm in a state of high self-esteem, which means that I view myself as being okay, I'm okay and anything that's imperfect is an aspect of my behaviour and I can change but ultimately I feel okay when I'm in that space my world reflects that back at me I'll take risks I won't take risks when my self-esteem is threatened because there's too much at stake but if my self-esteem isn't threatened I'll take fucking risks in work that I'm doing, I'll have fun, I'll be more creative, I'll work harder because working doesn't carry with it the threat of my identity being hurt, I'll be nicer with people when I speak to them and be far more authentic, I won't be trying to impress anyone if I do meet anybody, like a sign for me of when my self esteem is bad if I meet another person

and my interaction with them is trying to impress them or win their approval in a simple interaction because I've walked into the situation feeling like a piece of shit and assuming that they know I'm a piece of shit so I have to prove to them that I'm not a piece of shit but when my self esteem is high

I'm not even thinking that I'm thinking about how can I make my time with this other person nice for them by just being sound because I'm okay I'm not being nice to a person just to get their approval and then when you behave like that

you end up lowering your self esteem farther being nice to a person just to get their approval. And then when you behave like that, you end up lowering your self-esteem farther because you placed yourself underneath another person in an interaction instead of being equal with them. So where does self-acceptance come into this to get to a place of high self-esteem, to truly feeling that you're okay? For me, it's about acknowledging and saying to myself I am insecure all right saying to myself I'm insecure if losing work over the pandemic

leads to me having low self-esteem then I have to accept that I'm not at my core I don't fundamentally believe in myself I don't fundamentally think that I have worth at my very core and sometimes I need to be seen to be successful I have a need for people to see that I'm doing gigs or I'm doing well in my work in order for me to have a bit of worth and I know that that's not healthy

but it's a part of who I am I'm insecure there's I have a desire to be liked by other people and for other people to approve of me that's a desire that I have and to be honest that's a failing that is a failing that's a fallibility because it causes me a lot of a lot of hassle and when I do that when when I say to myself I am insecure I want other people to approve of me I like it when people approve of me and think that I'm successful and it hurts me when I think people disapprove of me or think I'm unsuccessful and when I say that to myself when I truly embrace that part of myself that's scary see I don't want to admit that to myself I don't want to say that because see that's a failing I'd like to think that I'm above that I work towards being being above that but I wouldn't need to work towards being above it if it wasn't a failing for me but genuinely sitting with the fact that I'm insecure

in myself is a hell of a lot better than pretending I'm not and then blaming myself for a lack of work because of a fucking pandemic and then labeling myself a failure you're not working hard enough you're not good enough that's the harmful shit but actually sitting with it and going no I'm fucking insecure and that's's okay. That's okay. Now my self-esteem doesn't feel threatened anymore. Because I'm sitting with the thing I was trying to avoid. Similarly. Your buddy who fell over with the cup of coffee.

They might find that. At their core. They feel like a foolish person. At their very core, they feel like a silly, incapable, foolish person. And they go through a lot of effort in their life to try and hide this from other people. And when they do something like fall over publicly. With a cup of coffee. And people laugh. And people point. This exposes that part of themselves.

That feels like. An incapable foolish person. And that's why it hurts so bad. That's why they can't stop thinking about that. For fucking ages. Because someone else might fall over with the cup of coffee and be grand but your buddy at their

core they feel like a really silly foolish person who should be laughed at who should be humiliated because that's how they feel about themselves and if they sit with that if they truly sit with that

hurtful part that you don't want to admit about yourself your personal failing and go this is part of who I am ultimately I just have this desire to be seen as a cold collected in control individual

but deep down inside deep deep down inside I feel like a real silly foolish person who's worthy of ridicule and that could be rooted in some shit from fucking childhood

maybe that person's dad was a prick do you know what I mean but we all have these deep deep insecurities things that we don't like thinking about. And sitting with them,

really sitting with them and saying them to yourself and accepting them, accepting them. Like what if it's an aspect of your physical appearance? What if you really don't like your nose? Or you don't like your ears? Or what if you think you're too your nose or you don't like your ears or what if you think you're too short or you're too tall and

a huge part of your life is about avoiding people either noticing these things or people saying it to you or even thinking about it yourself accepting the parts of you that you fucking can't change if you feel that you're too tall or you're too short you can't change it so you can either pretend that it's not the fucking issue and continually

self-flagellate about it and look at other people that are the height that you'd like to be or look at people who have the facial features that you'd like to have you can do that and feel miserable and try and change yourself

and evaluate yourself against other people or you can simply sit down and say this part I fucking don't like this part of myself this physical part of myself if I'm being really honest I don't like this part of myself and I'd love to change it

but I fucking can't I can't and I must accept it because this has nothing to do with my worth as a human being this has nothing to do with how lovable I am or how much love I can give another person and my value it has fucking nothing to do with it and that's a tough one that's really fucking tough accepting these things about ourselves

these deep insecurities that's really tough but when you work towards that acceptance moving to that place of acceptance it stops giving that thing power when it comes to threatening your self esteem and identity when those things are threatened and and when you truly accept that the thing you're afraid of inside yourself

then you can move to the place of high self-esteem and the place of high self-esteem is i'm okay i'm actually fucking grand oh i'm too short i'm too tall these are aspects of my appearance these are external things yeah fuck it I'd like him to be different doesn't affect my value as a human being I deserve to be loved I can love other people and if me saying that to you if if you feel like you're lying to yourself because that's the thing with these deep insecurities. You can feel like you're lying to yourself. If this issue with your appearance. Or this issue with how you would like to be seen. If me even saying to you.

You have to accept that. If you still can't move past that. Think of someone else. Think of your buddy who hates their fucking ears or hates the shape of their fucking nose

and imagine them telling you how much sadness and misery and self-flagellation is in their life because of their nose

and this is your best friend. Like seriously, do you ever even think about their fucking nose? Does the shape of their nose, or the shape of their ears, or the thing that they are deeply insecure about themselves, does that in any way affect how much you love your friend? It doesn't friend it doesn't it doesn't but to them it's the biggest thing in the whole fucking world

but the fact that you can extend that compassion for your friend to not give a roaring fuck about whatever it is that they themselves deeply dislike about themselves if you can extend that to them then there's your evidence that these

things are just manufactured you are able to see your friends intrinsic worth and their value and you love them because of who they are you're able to see the entirety of their of them as a human being and you don't give a fuck about their feet or hair or legs or whatever the fuck they don't like about themselves so that's what self-acceptance is to truly deeply accept the thing about you that makes you insecure and that that threatens your sense of self-esteem and identity when it's challenged or threatened when you can accept that thing as ultimately ever present and outside of your control then you disempower it and for me

yeah I have to accept that at my core I don't think I'm ever going to feel good enough I'm never going to be fully fully secure and good enough there's always going to be that part of me that needs to

overachieve and to be doing something that's worthy of praise we'll say that's a facet of my fucking of my personality and sometimes it works for me because it that's also what motivates me to reach for goals that are really high up and try to achieve them and I can I can work on it but if I accept it if I truly fucking accept it I can I can get to the

point where it doesn't have power over me at all and then I can have my high self-esteem and I've been there I've been there loads it's just the pandemic that threw me that threw me off because the pandemic was really fucking stressful really stressful and the other thing as well with self-acceptance it doesn't mean giving up what if you're struggling with the addiction you're struggling with addiction or you're struggling with behaviors I won't say compulsive but patterns of behavior that you that you experience shame over like what if you're a bit of a cunt like seriously

what if you're a bit of a cunt what if you find yourself in situations where you kind of bully your friend a bit you know what if you say you say things to people

that you love that are fucking nasty and then afterwards you feel shame over it you're getting on grand with your buddy and then you get a snaky dig in you say something fucking mean

to hurt their feelings you don't really know why you did it it's a bit of a pattern and you experience shame over it but it's a repeating thing and you're not sure why that is and you're not going to apologize for it because the thought of apologizing to your friend and admitting it is terrifying because in order to apologize it would mean getting very close to whatever vulnerability is inside you

that has you pushing people away and I'm talking about a bully there I'm talking about someone who's bullying and not all people who are bullies are clinical heartless psychopaths incapable of empathy that's a tiny proportion of the population so there's quite a lot of people who bully other people

or say mean things to other people and it's not nice but it's rooted in a vulnerable pain in that person and these people deserve the capacity and space to self accept and change

because they have intrinsic worth and no aspect of the behaviour defines their worth as a human being even though they're being a prick to their friend what if you're when you do anything nice with your partner,

and things are going well, you start to fight, don't know why you do it, but it's a pattern, things are going great, and you decide, I'm going to start a fight right now, and then you have a fight,

and you make up afterwards, and you fucking hate yourself for it, and you lie awake in bed, feeling like shit, because you're going, why the fuck did I start start that why did i bring that up why why the fuck did i do that why do i keep doing it what if you love your partner but every time you get drunk you cheat on him and then you feel shame over it what if you love your best friend you've great crack with him but you're a bit jealous of him you're a bit jealous of your best friend. You've great crack with him. But you're a bit jealous of him. You're a bit jealous of your best friend. Their appearance.

What they have. Whatever. And then you say sneaky shit. You say mean things to him. Or you gossip about him. And then you feel like shit over it. And. These things now that I'm describing.

These are aspects of behaviour. And this is the fallibility of being human. And I don't have time to go into why we do these things. Because you might be thinking, why would you continually behave like a prick? You can stop that. Some people, it's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. It can depend upon the relationships that they had with their parents when they were kids, what they saw growing up, what they learned from their parents.

Maybe you grew up with parents who had a dysfunctional relationship and this is the only fucking frame of reference you have for intimacy. Like I did podcasts a while back on a thing called transaction analysis and life scripts. How we can learn as kids ways of behaving that we continue to do in cycles

even though these things bring us harm and hurt other people. This is a facet of being human. That's a part of being human and through through therapy through psychotherapy when you bring that shit to your psychotherapist and you say to your psychotherapist i went out for fucking i went out for dinner with my girlfriend last night we were having a great time and then i i did it i started a fight again i did it again i started a fight for no reason things were going fucking brilliantly. I started a fight again. I did it again. I started a fight for no reason. Things

were going fucking brilliantly and I started a fight and we drove home really quietly. I did it again. I keep doing it and it's fucking up my relationship. What if you're that person? That's the shit that you'd take to a therapist and a therapist would talk through it

and then you speak about your childhood and you speak about your parents relationship and all this stuff but this is part of being human this is the fallibility of being a human being these are the failures that are in the tapestry of

being a human and a therapist would most likely move you towards a place where you're trying to get to the part of yourself that's motivating that negative behavior but also accepting that behavior doesn't mean not changing it but it means accepting it accepting I have dysfunctional ways of behaving that hurt me and hurt the people that I love and only through acceptance and acknowledging this behavior in yourself only through accepting it can you move towards a pace of accepting responsibility for it, taking accountability for it

I mentioned earlier like if you have a thing where you're just fucking nasty to your friend and the concept and idea of apologising to him terrifies the fuck out of you when you accept that behaviour to yourself

and go this is a thing i do and i don't like it when you move to that place of genuine acceptance then the concept of bringing it to your friend and saying i do this all the time and i'm fucking really sorry only acceptance gets you to that place where you feel safe enough to say it but if you deny it and just keep self-flagellating and repeating the pattern there's no acceptance and accountability and you can say to yourself I need to still have a sense of self-worth and realize that these are aspects of my behavior and they don't define my worth as a human being and I'm a continually changing human being who can accept these things about myself but as part of accepting them I can

also take responsibility and accountability and work towards change and that's way healthier than being mean to the people around you or self-sabotaging things for yourself and then continuing in a cycle of shame like what if the dysfunction is turned inward what if um and this is a common one every time you're given an opportunity you fuck it up for yourself someone gives you you apply for a job that you want and then you go to the job and you're kinda rude you're kinda rude and you don't know why

or you didn't dress appropriately for the fucking interview or you didn't show up and you can't understand why because it's like I wanted to do this fucking job the fuck am I doing and you find yourself that you're actually self-sabotaging yourself and you think that it's a cycle

that you can never get out of and then you flagellate over it and you call yourself a shitty person and useless that cycle of labelling yourself and being hard on yourself over aspects of your behaviour that are failings and that are ugly and that cause you pain and pain to other people. That's part of the tapestry of being a human being.

That's part of being a fallible human being. So accepting these things is the first step to actually taking ownership of them and changing them. But if you're just beating yourself up over it, it just continues the cycle, there's no acceptance it's all part of a pattern do the shitty thing and then

beat yourself up over it in private and then repeat the pattern of shitty thing we're all born into this fucking world as naked helpless babies the exact same as each other. Do you know what I mean? And we're going to pick up failings and hurt and insecurity and all of this along the way. And life is a consistent and continual process of fucking change.

and change and acceptance is the first step of changing the behaviours that aren't working for you or the people around you so that was nearly 90 minutes now

on account of that conspiracy theory rant at the start I could have spoken a lot more about this issue I will at some point I definitely will because there's a lot

to be done around around acceptance I'll be back next week I don't know what I'll be back about I definitely will. Because there's a lot to be done around. Around acceptance. I'll be back next week. I don't know what I'll be back about. I haven't done a 90 minute podcast in a while now. Alright rubber dog. What am I going to do?

I'm going to be back in the fucking gym. I'm going to the gym five times a week. I'm fucking adoring every second of it. It's amazing. It's doing everything that every second of it. It's amazing. It's doing everything that I knew it would. Wonderful brain chemicals. Lovely energy. Fantastic stuff.

Fantastic stuff. I'm truly on the make. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game

and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. All right, dog bless. Thank you. Thank you.