The Game with Alex Hormozi - Labeling, Suffering, and the Human Condition | Ep 393

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

Our minds make meaning, we determine what's meaningful or not. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) talks about the importance of labeling and persuading using the mind and why it's the most powerful aspect of our minds, and how this can affect our personal lives and our business.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:29) - Why labeling is one of the strongest power of the mind(5:03) - The problem with labeling and connecting experiences to bad things(7:05) - Teach yourself to listen for language patterns(9:31) - Change your expectations on what being a human means(12:45) - We must agree on the terms first(14:20) - Suffering and bad times are actually good for youFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

People ascribe positive and negatives to things without understanding what the deep ramifications of those things are. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. I want to talk to you about how to eliminate problems in your life without taking any action. And as crazy as that may sound, I think that what I will share with you may. sound even crazy. If you don't know who I am, my name's Alex Mosey, on Acquisition.com, it's a portfolio of companies that's over $100 million a year. So yesterday I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine, and we have different beliefs around the topic of

problems, especially when it comes to the human condition. And I went on somewhat of a rant about this topic, and I figured I would encapsulate it here for you guys. And so the problem that this individual was talking about was a lot of stuff that has to do with mental illness and mental health. And I think that this is a an interesting topic because the entire industry didn't even exist until a few hundred years ago, and humans have existed for a long period of time. And one of the more interesting things about the mental, quote, illness category is the importance of labeling. And if you followed me for any period of time, you'll know that labeling to me is one of the strongest powers that

exists in the mind. And I'll give you a reason why. Our minds, are meaning-making machines. And so what that means is, we determine what is meaningful and what is not. And then we ascribe labels to them in terms of positive and negative because that is how we survive. Now, that being said,

our brains are meant to keep us alive, not meant to help us thrive, right? To use a rhyming word for you. Now, that being said, with this whole concept around labeling, it's something that I'm probably most passionate about, like the concept of labeling as a whole. it's unbelievably powerful when it comes to persuading people to do things.

It's unbelievably powerful when it comes to changing people's worldviews and their perspectives on life. And I will share a few of those examples with you. So I'll give you a quick persuasion example for how powerful this is. If I wanted to persuade someone to do something, then what I would do is I would create a positive label that I would associate them with. So I would say, you are probably a loving and caring man for, you know, you want to provide support for your family. Is that true? they're like, yes. And I'm like, yeah, you definitely seem like one of those types of people. And since you are one of those types of people, I think that you should invest in this program

that we have because that would be in alignment with this ideal that we just labeled the person with, right? And so what happens is it creates cognitive dissonance because for the person, in order for them to stay in accordance with the label that they would like to have, they then feel obligated to then act in accordance with that label that we just prescribed. Now, that's a very simplistic example. You can weave that into narratives and sales scripts so that people become psychologically labeled and then want to act in accordance with that label because they see it as positive, right? The thing is that it can also work in reverse in terms of how you can harm someone.

And the reason that this is so viscerally upsetting to me is that I have had members of my family extended and whatnot who have, I would say, debilitated themselves in large part because of what they believe to be mental illness. And I disagree. Now, many people will get triggered. this and so I will say my big disclaimer which is this is not financial advice this is not grammatical advice this is not spiritual advice this is not even advice this is a guy making YouTube video about stuff that pisses me off and hopefully some of the things that serve me well now let's talk about the labels that are negative one of the things one of the most pernicious acts that exists negative bad stuff is when we take the human experience that has

ups and downs that has extremes that exist on continuums and we label one side of the continuum is bad and the other side of the continuum is good. For example, happy, sad, energized, or weak, tired, right? We have equal opposites. Now, you know, relaxed, stressed, right? There's lots of examples of these. The reason that this is so dangerous when we give a positive or negative label is that people think that they have a problem when they are not feeling happy or energized. We're relaxed or clear-minded versus foggy you. You don't what I mean? Whatever.

And the thing is, is, in order for there to be light, there must be darkness. Think about that for a second. In order for there to be good, there must also be bad. If you want to admit the existence of one, there must also be the existence of the other. Right. Awesome. Now, the problem, this is why we have to be careful with labels, the problem. the problem that most people suffer from is that they label normal variations in the human condition

with negative experiences. And so they see themselves as tired and say this is bad, whereas it's really just part of the human condition. They see themselves as sad rather than happy and see that as bad, right? And so what happens is you start to upgrade a finite emotional condition into a longstanding emotional disturbance because you think it's a problem. And the thing is, it's very easy to sell people on why these things are problems. Big pharma is the king of this. Are you feeling tired, stressed? Are you hungry? Are you horny? Well, you are suffering from being a human being. It's being human. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're new to the podcast, I have a book on Amazon It's called $100 million offers at over 8,000 five-star reviews.

It has almost a perfect score. You can get it for 99 cents on Kindle. The reason I bring it up is that I put over 1,000 hours into writing that book. And it's my biggest gift to our community. So it's my very shameless way of trying to get you to like me more. And ultimately make more dollars to that later on in your business career. I can potentially partner with you. So that's my give.

Go check it out, Amazon, and back to the show. And so I think a lot of this, and the reason that it wraps into the original part of the prompt of this video, is that if we want to be enduring entrepreneurs, we want to be people who have resilience, we want to people who have mental fortitude, we must be careful about the things that we label. And there's also the good bad label, which is the simplest label that a lot of people ascribe to conditions that are ephemeral, right? They're brief, right? And then they change. But there's also the shoulds have, must, need to, et cetera, that we say in our lives that we have to do these things. We must do these things. And if we do not, or else, we put out a threat towards the universe.

If I don't get my coffee, I must get my coffee. I need to have coffee before I start my day. What happens is that we create these implied threats to ourselves in the universe. If we don't, then what? Right? And so I see this, and this is probably the number one thing that people, when I'm having conversations with them, it's teaching yourself to listen for these links, patterns because they are indications of, in my opinion, broken thought patterns. People ascribe positive and negatives to things without understanding what the deep ramifications of those things are. And so, if you are unhappy, awesome. You're human. This is the human existence. If you are tired, awesome. It will create more contrast for when you are awake.

If you are stressed, amazing. It will give you contrast for when you are relaxed. If we constantly want to eliminate one side of the continuum, what often happens is that we get neither side and we become numb to the continuum as a whole. And so we end up missing out on some of the human experience. And that's okay if that's what you want to do, but the reason I'm making this video is that a lot of people think they have problems

that are not actually problems at all. They're just part of being human. And I think the biggest problem that most people have is that they define being human as the problem, which inherently is why they suffer so much. And I'll say something else that was pissing this person off yesterday that I will reinforce with you, which is suffering is optional. And an easy story to reinforce this point or extreme example. If this is if you read a Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning, and it's a very visceral description, if you haven't read it, of Auschwitz and the prison camps during World War II. He basically posits in the book, and this is a one-line summary that's doing a massive injustice to the book,

that between circumstance and response is choice. And that is the power that all of us have, even when he was stripped of everything that he possibly could have. He still had choice. And so in that gap is where I believe we find the human experience. experience. We find how we define how we choose to live. And it drives me up a wall because I feel like a lot of people suffer because they feel like the way that they're living is somehow wrong or bad or non-optimal, or they need to take a pill or an injection to solve being human. And I think if we can simply change our expectations about what being human really means, and I say this passionately because I very much

suffered from this for a very long period of time. I was obsessed. with being happy. And in being obsessed with being happy, anytime I was not happy, I saw it as bad, rather than a part of being human. And I drove myself nuts. And I think I made myself more unhappy. Now, I say this now, not as though the being more unhappy is bad or good, but I think that most people want to decrease their emotional disturbances that they experience. Right. And so I think a key to not suffering is a understanding that the human experience has peaks and troughs and it is normal and it is okay and as a side note one of the strongest mental health things that i did for myself i'll share with you things that work for me is that i created a mental refrain it's just a simple thing that i can say to

myself in my mind over and over and over again is that when i'm experiencing a negative quotes here negative um part of the human experience i'll say and that's okay that's all Be like, I'm really annoyed right now. I'll be like, and that's okay. Rather than then casting judgment on the emotion. Because a lot of times you don't have control over your emotions, but you do have control over the judgment with which you apply to the emotion that you experience and the response that you have as a result.

And so I think this is where power is formed as humans. Is that some people, two people, are exposed to the same stimulus, right? Same circumstances and one person perseveres and the other person does not. And a lot of it is because of the choices that we make between circumstance and response. And that's kind of back to Victor Frankel's thing. And I'll wrap off this final little thing here, this rant, with a quote from, I think it was, I think it's Socrates. He said, wisdom begins with a definition of terms. And so most arguments or disagreements can be resolved if both people come to an agreement on terms.

it's because we say things like happy, we say things like healthy, we say things like wealthy, we say things like success, right? And we haven't defined the terms yet. And then two people will have different definitions of what those terms mean, or more likely, non-existent definitions, because they've never even thought about it, right? Some amorphous word that they throw out to bucket some general ideas and disagree. But they have very different definitions of those things. And the way that you define the outcomes that you want to experience will help you achieve them if that is what you so desire. And I think that there's a tremendous amount of wisdom in that concept because, you know, in Socrates's quote, because like, for example, when we sold our three of the companies that

we sold last year, right, Jim Walsh, Prestige Labs and Allen, we sold those to different buyers. And what was interesting to me was when I read through the contracts, the first half of like 50 plus page contracts were just defining the terms. And I thought that was just so interesting that in order to come to an agreement, we must first agree on terms, right? What is the scope or territory of a non-compete? And then there would be a paragraph. And then that word non-compete would be put somewhere else. And the actual agreements themselves, oftentimes, are very simplistic. It's like party A, as defined by, you know, Appendix 1, agrees to sell, right? Sell being defined in appendix to, to party B, right, as defined by said assets, said assets defined it, you know what I mean?

And so what happens is when you become clear about the words you say, you can communicate and think more clearly. And a lot of times I think that this resolves a lot of the emotional disturbances that we experience as humans because we've realized that they were never problems to begin with, only that we define them that way. And therein lied the problem of how we experienced them. And so this is something I'm very, very passionate about. Hopefully the topic was not as amorphous as hopefully it sounded to you. But people suffer because they choose to define their experience as suffering. And I think that many of us can experience fewer emotional disturbances or not upgrade them to longstanding emotional disturbances by simply saying, A, I'm experiencing this emotion which will pass, comma, and it's okay.

and B, subset, this is part of being human. And then what happens is we could start redefining what the human experience should be. And if we say, for example, that experiencing the full spectrum of the human experience is a life well lived and we desire to have a life well lived, then we are doing a good thing when we suffer, when we are sad, when we are stressed. because we were living our life to both extremes at different times in different seasons to the fullest degree so that we can look back on our lives and say, I was a human being. I lived this life. And anyways, these are things that keep me up when I think about what it means to be human.

And I think Buddha had a really interesting concept around this, which is, you know, he talks about the middle path in life, which is, by the way, a lot of people don't know this, but, you know, Buddha was a principal. beforehand. So he had all the riches, he had all the comforts, right? And then he went to extreme poverty on the other side of the spectrum. And he was like the middle path, right? So it's understanding both sides of the human experience and not saying either one is good or bad, but they just are. And then I think when we do that, we remove the judgment of self, which is where a lot of the suffering occurs rather than simply being present for the experience and enjoying it for what it is, which is just being human. And we don't fall prey to the narrative of the big pharma's that say that being human is wrong, being human is bad, experiencing emotions is not normal.

It's the most normal thing. It's the most normal thing for people to be unhappy sometimes. It's the most normal thing for people to be tired sometimes. It's normal to be hungry. It's normal to be horny. It is part of being human. And we create so much suffering for ourselves by saying that there is a problem with simply existing during a period of time on a continuum. And then that problem that we label then becomes longstanding rather than something that passes with time. So lots of love, everyone. Mozy Nation, appreciate you. If you knew the channel, welcome. Lots of love. Either way, I have nothing to sell you. Keep being awesome. Bye.