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Episode 262: Kid blames parents for low self esteem, High ambition but low action, Being productive w tasks
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yeah i would say um i would say it's a a you know disturbing and confusing time around the coronavirus uh that that uh it's very difficult to to actually understand where we are with respect to this thing the um so rather than just leave it there i will say also that that certainly this current wave uh that we're experiencing now here in early august looks um you know looks significant but again a significant uh notch down a very significant notch down from where we were in january february so we're not sure all the reasons why uh some people might say vaccines some people might say a lot more hurt immunity some people might say that the variant is the current variant is not as bad as the the previous variant we are actually are not sure could be pieces of all three unfortunately the science wasn't done properly to actually help us determine these types of things because the the major safety trials were stopped after it was convenient enough to to get uh emergency youth authorization so they they refuse to continue the appropriate data collection uh in order for us to actually see what the heck is happening i don't think that that's an accident by the way the um however we will we'll learn as we go and uh we're hopeful we're also extremely i'm extremely pleased by news out of israel uh that it indicates that their next stage of a of a trial for this uh drug that has uh or this actually a drug process uh that they have figured out uh that they are now running in greece is having the very same stellar results that they had uh in in their smaller trial in israel earlier this year so it appears that the uh this brilliant group uh in israel has in fact uh essentially checkmated the coronavirus it looks like that is true it looks like they have a simple easy extremely safe no side effect way to drastically cut down the lethality of this disease so um we will see it's uh it's i'm i'm very extremely pleased with this and they will they will do their stage three and final trial uh late in late this year in israel and they expect to have the results wrapped up by the end of the year so that will be a game changer uh provided it is if it if it turns out to be true and they haven't they haven't published yet they haven't told us what their control conditions have looked like but the treatment conditions uh of the first 90 people in the treatment condition uh 84 of them after five days are in great shape so uh 93 this is completely consistent with what they found in uh january february where they had 29 out of 30 people were in in great condition in five days and then the the last person was fine after about seven or eight days so we're gonna find out what happens to the final six we'll also find out what happens to the placebo controls that they have and we'll take a look at this and we will we will know it will be known in two or three weeks uh we will probably have a press release out of there that will tell us what has taken place if it did it which i think it did because the the the mechanics of what it is that they described make perfect sense i think we've got we've got it by the throat and uh not only not only this problem may be solved also what's extremely exciting for this group is that they believe they that this very same technology may be extremely useful for a lot of devastating autoimmune diseases and it makes sense to me that uh that they may in fact have a tremendous solution so just to just very basically in general the the uh when you have autoimmune processes and you have tremendous inflammation etc we'll go after those with it with steroids we'll go after them with medications that will cause an overall depression of the immune function which is of course extremely problematic this is a way to go to the specific tissues that are being attacked and to do those um you know in great in a graded fashion so that you can they use nanotechnology um to actually deliver uh uh deliver an agent that will um that will essentially just disturb that transmission and stop the the autoimmune response this is fantastic and so the the the amount of medication you're not having to take it systemically in this case they just breathe uh into the lung tissue that's being affected here uh they just breathe the medication just to that tissue so we don't have to go after the whole body the whole immune system we just go after that one little part of it uh with and so this is this is the spectacular results that they're seeing and it has a uh as the as the great doc over there says this is the this is a huge future in medicine so anyway that's that i'm excited about that meanwhile we watch the rest of the fireworks and hope uh that that other general processes are actually uh starting to work their way to the good all right so that's enough update on that go ahead nathan that's exciting dr lyle i know i've i've talked to a couple of patients who are hesitant they want to take the vaccine but they're hesitant because uh because they like i've actually talked to a couple of patients who've been trying to do some fasting because they took the vaccine and they flared up their autoimmune disease they believe yes um for whoever knows what reason whether it was an ingredient in there or the actual vaccine itself who knows but um and then other people who have autoimmune diseases are nervous about taking it for exactly the same reasons so sure it's exciting that there's a different way yes there may be uh i i think i think it's already been solved and i think the evidence is extremely compelling already uh and hopefully hopefully we're not going to see you know this is why these this guy they they were pretty sure they had this thing solved last summer when they went to the animal models but unlike the whole vaccine process this has not been rushed this has been standard extremely methodical science and it looks like they have they will box our fda and our nih into uh into not having anywhere to run with respect to this if it turns out to be as good as it looks so i would expect that there would be tremendous pressure to to have this available in the united states early next year under emergency use authorization the um we'll see i i i will be fascinated to watch this this will be being used if it is as good as it looks it will be being used worldwide uh by early next year and so uh our agencies may may protect the pharmaceutical industry if if they are who who i think everybody is uh they may protect foot drag etc we will find out if that happens um but but it will not happen worldwide there's no possible way that other countries uh will let will let the pharmaceutical industry get in the way of their people being saved so the uh you know so the united states agencies um face the embarrassment uh that they may be willing to tolerate uh of having mexico suddenly uh solving their problem very easily and cheaply uh with the the solution coming from israel uh while the u.s continues to suffer we'll find out and we'll start climbing over the border the other way there you go there you go we'll find out i i i'm hopeful that uh that enough uh that there are that there's enough sense in the on the u.s government and that there's enough political pressure and enough moral pressure that that if this solution is as good as it looks that it will not be stopped so we will we'll be learning an awful lot more about this in in the weeks in the few months to come i'll be i'm looking forward very much to to the placebo control data that will come out should come out in the next two or three weeks uh i believe they've got it solved and so uh the that is a game changer for the the landscape of the entire coronavirus crisis and so that uh we'll we'll be looking forward to how this all plays out um you know it's two two different questions of the world can human beings solve the problem and number two will they use the solution those are two entirely different questions and so to the the fact that the the uh the the solution may have been discovered is of enormous importance the second part of it is uh interesting and important but it is not the same level of question so the most important question is can human beings solve it and it appears that they have so we'll go from here fantastic doctor i will we will be anxiously awaiting more news out of israel there very good all right what else do we have let's get to some questions uh because our genes really haven't changed too much since this last year and the questions uh i know our listeners myself included uh love hearing your logic as you wind out on these answers and so our first question is dear dr lyle and doctor hawk my 33 year old daughter was recently informed by her therapist that self-esteem is created in the first five years of life my daughter feels now that i failed her in this regard as i was her primary caregiver she has had too many relationship with charming g-cheating liars quote like her dad was for me and she also flunked out of university and blames me since i graduated with a master's by the way essentially she feels that her unhappy life is now my fault my kids had a great upbringing in many many ways by their two loving parents we weren't perfect of course and i have some regrets about many things but this assessment i feel is exceedingly myopic and unfair not to mention it's devastating for me why do so many therapists focus so very much on upbringing and early life experiences versus genetics doesn't anyone practice what i would consider holistic psychology that incorporates evolution genetics personality life experiences etc i find it so frustrating that mom is just blamed when the adult child is unhappy with their life and the choices that they adamantly made in their teens yeah um interesting problem so let's sort of break break this down and and i will give you some direction about how it is that i would handle it [Music] first of all we know obviously the daughter is wrong and so is the therapist self-esteem we first of all we have to take a tip from aristotle and say okay we have to define our terms so the way i define self-esteem is uh is going to be slightly different than the way someone else does actually the the general world uses this the concept of self-esteem interchangeably with self-confidence so they they don't they don't understand that there's actually a difference between the concept of self-confidence and self-esteem the self-esteem is a dynamic process by which your internal audience observes your efforts and gives you essentially a moral vote about how how admirable your efforts are okay so self-esteem is really a feeling of your moral rightness and that that's basically what it is and your feelings of moral rightness are highly dynamic they're not fixed in any kind of stone uh neither is your self-confidence fixed in stone so self-confidence is a completely different issue uh it is a different tenor to it which is that it's about your ability to compete in some competitive adaptive social domain whether it's mates friends or trading processes so uh so when the therapist says well your self-esteem is formed in the first five years of life um obviously your self-confidence is um is not formed in the first five years of your life a great deal of what your self-confidence is going to be um in various domains is actually going to be determined by the your standing vis-a-vis your competitors and that standing may be fairly consistent across the lifespan as a result of your genetics so if you're extremely attractive intelligent personable emotionally stable funny etc and uh and you grow growing up in america with plenty of opportunity your self-confidence is gonna be very high um so your uh so your situation there is is is not formed or formed by the first five years of life it was actually a lot of that is dictated at the moment of conception uh by gene variation so the uh however what we're interested in is the the parts of these things that are variable so your self-confidence and your self-esteem have day-to-day month-to-month week-to-week period-to-period variance and that variance is depending upon in the case of your self-esteem what has been the local or recent processes uh with respect to the moral rightness of your behavior did you do a really good job on your diet and exercise in the last week did you do a very good job at your at your work did you stay over a little extra and make sure you got everything done properly if you did then your self-esteem mechanism is going to be smiling if you flaked out and did a lousy job it's going to be frowning and it's going to have one eyebrow up that is a dynamic process it's supposed to be i would have to work that way just evolutionarily speaking it would never fix itself at some point in time and then remain that way that would be absurd that would be like saying well you you are either hot or cold or about right on your fifth birthday if it turns out that you were in los angeles on your fifth birthday and then you moved to alaska you know two months later and then you're you're in the cold it doesn't matter because at your fifth birthday you actually felt fine temperature wise it's of course ridiculous yeah your your sense of your circumstances vis-a-vis the environment cause changes in feelings uh that are inherently dynamic in order to guide your nervous system to optimal behavior the same thing would be true of your quote self-confidence so your self-confidence is going to be think about a young boy who's you know a little a little boxing champion in his uh of his you know he's eight years old and he's he's beat up uh you know the other kids in this town that are eight years old and now they say you know what given the fact that you're you're pretty advanced we're going to put you in with 11 year olds now now he gets in with an 11 year old and now he gets pummeled now what's his confidence like okay so obviously his confidence is dynamic it is also true that your self-esteem is dynamic even those those are different things so um now so obviously the the daughter is wrong the therapist is wrong this is a bunch of naivete a bunch of parroting from very simple you know people that don't know anything that's so fine now our our questioner knows this has been listening to us and so is aware of this and if you want to get it pounded down your throat you read plummen's book blueprint then then then there's no escape now if your daughter has any brains you could handle that book by the way and say actually and what i would say is oh by the way your comments about this and your therapist comments about this are actually incorrect and here is a book that proves the point your therapist is undoubtedly not aware of this and has not been educated in behavior genetics and so uh i actually did a great job as a parent and you know it might be useful for you to get educated in this okay just for your own peace of mind okay now so this is what i would call sharp angle okay so when someone accuses me of something that isn't true i i'll hit him back okay it's like no you're wrong like i have no problem telling people they're wrong the uh and so this person is very nice person or daughter is is essentially um has some neural circuits shaped by your genetic code from somewhere that that are sensitive to sniffing out advantages that come from complaining okay people differ in this this is a there's genetic variation undoubtedly i myself you know have complained now and then about this that or the other and and and that's because as a human you're designed by nature to to essentially call in chips of the insurance pool when it is that you feel like you've been treated unfairly and so uh that's not something that that is very is doesn't have much close kinship in my family tree neither my sister nor either of my parents is a complainer and we're not we don't have a tendency to uh lean on that that circuit uh in order to uh gain advantages in the world that's just not something that we do it's not something that uh uh but but people differ on that there's going to be a bell curve of that it's going to be associated with conscientiousness and it's going to be associated with disagreeability so highly disagreeable low conscientious people are going to whine like crazy and [ __ ] and they're attempting to essentially use their energy in the bitching and complaining in order to try to gain resources it's just a as human beings evolved into insurance schemes known as a tribe or a group they're going to have in there a lot of specialized circuitry that is involved in the adjudication of people making insurance claims and so i i came from a bunch a little localized gene pool of mine basically said be self-responsible don't be making claims um unless you are in deep trouble and it is completely and utterly appropriate and basically everybody in the village would probably agree with you that you've got some corn nuts coming to you okay that's my family tree the uh that's that doesn't make us better people it makes us good people with respect to being coalition members because we're not real needy and we're not drawing on the on the county treasury very often uh but but it also makes us suckers in other words we're much more likely to be net tax producers to some village than we are net tax consumers this girl is a net tax consumer she's someone who is who is very much got her nose to the wind to try to figure out how she can get a bunch of resources by bitching okay is that that's what it is so the um just doesn't it's neither good bad or indifferent it's someone who uh with that personality that's the kind of personality that for me i avoid that like the plague when i hear that kind of entitlement that person is a line goes through their name in terms of any possible location that they would have in my coalition scheme so the um so this daughter if this was my kid uh and i and i heard that out of him my attitude would be hmm you're now outside the guano ring you just don't know it the um in other words don't count on me to be to be giving you any major help now you you get to go fend for yourself the um now so this mother is kind of heartbroken and frustrated in some ways about this and i would just tell you you cannot control the daughter's process this daughter has a big entitlement streak in there been to therapy but listen to the therapist gets the news from the therapist about how we can blame it all on our parents and then she goes home and blames her parents okay so you're not going to be able to control that process that is a that is native to that individual and that that individual finds themselves in a socio-cultural situation where that is being rewarded okay now so we can expect more of it now the the chance that you have for a relationship that has any meaning and any dignity and any value is to confront it okay and this is why i would confront it you know you can use your own words in your own uh your own style obviously and it wouldn't be mine you'd probably be a lot gentler you know friendlier nicer more tentative but if any kid of mine came to me with that the answer would be you're wrong okay that is you're actually mistaken uh you don't understand your therapist is ignorant and i actually did an outstanding job and i provided for you as good of existence as any kid could have reasonably desired uh in terms of that and now if any problems that you're having now are derivative of the problems that you're having now or derivative of your natural genetics now that i have really nothing to do with so here's a book if you want to get educated by robert plummen who is the the godfather of behavioral genetics and he in this book will checkmate all of the nonsense and just strip away all of the delusions that you're operating under and if you uh you know you can read it or not read it and i doesn't really matter to me i hope that you do but one thing that i'll let you know right up is that i did a great job you're mistaken and uh i have no culpability in your problems boom right between the eyes wow okay so that's uh and if it turns out that that kid goes off and squawks to anybody who'll listen about what a terrible mother she has fine whatever okay i.e the boat is leaving the shore i am an extremely valuable coalition member and i know it okay and you can either swim for the boat get educated and and trade straight up with me value for value because you're an adult okay or you won't okay and if you don't if you choose to try to dig resources out of the world through your complaining you go right ahead i don't really care okay the only thing i care about is having relationships that are with people that are willing to trade value for value and so you know i i went through that with um more than one of my i effectively have four adult step children in quotes uh these are very close connections to me it's a family very close to me as a result of a romance from times past and so these these kids i essentially supported them and raised them through their through their high school and early adulthood and um and so they their father was not useful okay and so therefore i i stepped in and became essentially a father to four teenagers for a significant period of time and in three of those cases there was some turbulence okay at some point where there was some essentially whining and frustration with me and my rules etc which incidentally were unbelievably liberal and easy going and massively more than fair no problem they were 90 10 all the way okay but in each case everybody some somewhere along the line they'll you know they pushed the envelope or they had conflicts with me and this is what they got they got no problem you're wrong go go go uh go here's here's a sack full of rubber bands go play with them and enjoy as much as you uh want because i don't really care what you do okay but the doors always open when you when you're reasonable and you know what in every case they came back okay so sometimes the the the uh the odyssey took a little longer sometimes it was a little shorter but after those those kids had to go through periods of time where they found out that i in fact was extremely reasonable and it turns out that their bosses and professors and boyfriends and other things turned out to be a hell of a lot less reasonable than me okay and then they had to go through a little adjustment and then they find out oh that's how the world works this is not unreasonable this is what what young people a lot of times have to go through and so i have fabulous relationships with four out of four the fourth one i never had a problem with that one was inherently more reasonable okay and uh and the other three were not particularly difficult but they just had their difficult moments so i trust that the solution to the problem is education the solution to the problem is accuracy okay the only problems that we can fix in the world people are uh questions of whether or not if we are we suffering because we are inaccurate and in the case of this relationship with this this mom and the child the only thing that we can fix is the child's inaccuracy and so the um if it turns out that we can't fix the inaccuracy for various and sundry reasons the most logical one being that the child is a genetic whiner and the child is going to sniff out that this is the best use of their time and energy is to figure out how to whine and [ __ ] in order to lean on the mother or anybody else in sight who will listen uh that they have been so terribly and poorly mistreated in their upbringing that they deserve a break they deserve time off from their job they deserve a disability check they deserve this they deserve that and god forbid they deserve mob honeying up more time money energy apologies and everything else under the sun okay so the problem is that the daughter is mistaken that there's an error okay and the solution to the problem is to correct the error and so that that's why we have you know and how do we know that it's an error because we know because we've done the research we actually have the evidence and so now we hand them the evidence and we say guess what you're wrong okay uh get educated or get lost more or less because i i don't need it and so suddenly we we essentially give them an opportunity to understand that they that they have to swim for the boat and if they choose to not swim for the boat that's fine okay then you you move on and you earn esteem in the right way from people that matter uh but that that one if that one doesn't swim for the boat at some point we don't have to be nasty about it you know i don't i'm not particularly nasty it sounds nasty but it's not that nasty i don't have to raise my voice and yell and argue with anybody it's just no it's not how it is this is how it is okay and this is uh uh i was doing this before i understood what it was and i called it sharp angle and i didn't even know what i was doing it took you know some serious analysis on the part of jen hawk to try to actually identify what the hell i was doing but i told her when she talked about clinical problems what would you do and i said i would sharp angle and then i would describe this now i understand what it is it's the cancellation of their insurance claim okay it's just me saying no your coverage is denied you do not get to make an insurance claim against me okay boom i take out a big stamp and stamp it no right in front of their face okay and then they can they can do other what they will okay so in order to do that you have to be in a position of power uh psychologically you have to understand that that's why obviously if it's your daughter and you're heavily invested in this you're going to be more gentle than i would be i don't know how gentle i would be with my own son if he came to me with something like that uh probably about like you're hearing in my voice right now be like you know what i don't need you okay you can you need to swim for this boat you are wrong i am a highly valuable member of your coalition and if you are responsible with that value we're going to have a very we can have a very fine productive positive loving relationship if you accuse me of things of which i am not guilty and try to claim things that you do not deserve the answer is no and the coverage is denied okay you have to earn my esteem in the same way that i have already earned yours okay so that that is what is fundamentally going on here and that is a sharp angle is how it is that i would take it the only way we fix a problem that can be fixed is to get educated and so we educate the girl and if she doesn't want to take the education we educate her the fact that educating herself in that way is the only way that she's going to get back in the coalition okay so that's how i would do it fabulous thank you so much all right nathan let's go on to the next all right uh dear doctors i my source of distress is that i have a highly ambitious streak but can't seem to string together any consistent action since i've graduated university and settled into a job in a large firm my worry is that perhaps i'm not very conscientious as i have generally gotten by with straight a's in the uk's equivalent of ap examinations i can honestly say i was probably at most doing most working at an average of 60 to 70 percent diligence to achieve this so perhaps i am high on intelligence my concern is am i doomed to mediocrity virtue of my lack of conscientiousness what use would it be for me to have these feelings of missed opportunity boredom at work and the desire for more if i have a personality that checkmates all my efforts dr dr hock suggested in a previous episode without high conscientiousness it is very unlikely one will be able to create any lasting habits or stick to the fundamentals is there anything i can do because as dr lyle says we can't change our nervous system am i doomed to live a life of what could have been [Laughter] oh my god that is absolutely priceless the um well i can tell you why right off the bat that i that i was never cursed with such a problem and the reason i was never cursed with such a problem is i was desperately trying to qualify for girls that i couldn't qualify for and so as a res which remains true to this day how do you think i wound up with four worthless step children [Laughter] so the point is so the point is is that that being the case i always had pressure to try to make the most of my abilities to try to get every possible advertising angle that would give me every possible advantage in that competitive process so that was just me and that's not just me that's every guy that ever swung a baseball bat uh or every tr ever tried to win a math contest or anything else under the sun okay a huge source of motivation to make the most of yourself is not to make the most of yourself it's to compete in sexual competition now the uh if it turns out that our individual here you know maybe as good enough plenty good enough looks that they have good enough feedback from the world just kind of where it is that they are and they're inherently not that conscientious and therefore not that ambitious then yeah you're doomed to mediocrity the uh relative to what it is that you could have been but that's probably pretty good wherever it is that you're sitting the um uh your uh to understand your behavior and anybody else's behavior you have to understand that that all your brain is is a cost benefit analytic engine so you're just running a cost-benefit analysis on energy expenditures and so if you're finding yourself saying well chase you know what i'm like really smart and therefore i don't really have to work too hard to get plenty above average sort of pay grade processes and so uh i'm just not gonna work that hard the um fair enough there's nothing nothing in the world wrong with it uh you you may never trip over a an avenue of possible action where you calculate that that the effort expended might be really really worth it now the truth is the world is surrounded with opportunities like that there is there is always there there's always differential opportunities coming up um there's always market inefficiencies in mating and trade and friendships so there's always something that would be quote exciting and excitement is the feeling that is uh derived from a good deal i.e it's essentially an energy efficiency computation on gene survival uh you know feedback mechanisms is that chick 10 hotter than than one that i would otherwise feel like i would have a chance with well if she just moved in next to you in chemistry class and sharing you know the locker on the other side you are so excited about going to chemistry and suddenly it's like oh my god you're studying like crazy and because you can't wait for the questions to come up you're two chapters ahead so that you can say answers in class to make you look like a genius [Laughter] why are we putting out that energy because of the cost-benefit analysis okay so essentially this person's talking about that they have a life of no excitement and so you know and and you can see problems with this with sort of maybe you know trust fund babies that that have it all in terms of plenty of brains plenty of social skill plenty of good looks and then pretty soon they're they're snorting cocaine because that that type of thing is super normal stimuli is the kind of thing that gives the the genetically and laid feedback systems a sense of excitement like wow this is a really good deal per unit effort expended we're getting a hell of a lot of dopamine in here for not very much effort and not only that we don't have to go work at the factory to get the money to buy the cocaine we got plenty of it in our account so this is this is where you can get waste stroll behavior so this this questioner you know looks to me like someone who uh has has it good enough in enough areas of life that they actually that they they're not seeing opportunistic differentials between what's readily available to them and what they could get if they swung for the fences and really applied themselves it just doesn't feel like it's worth it and you know what i actually saw kids like that uh going right alongside me in junior high school in high school um i wasn't really close to many people in college but i did see it in junior high in high school and boy that you know i i envied their their sort of relaxed confidence and their sort of good looks and social suave and and general coolness that they but they didn't feel any push to accomplish in the way that a lot of us did and uh that's because they weren't feeling uh any kind of deprivation in that in confidence in these arenas so um you know the the fabulous motivational speaker jim rohn uh summed summed up uh this issue he said you know how goal how big do your goals have to be big enough to turn you on and that was very good intuition on this part and i could break that down mathematically into what it really means an opportunity needs to be assessed at such an excellent multiple of of a rate of you know genetic rate of biological rate of return per unit of effort expended that it it signals the nervous system that that computation has taken place and drives a thing that we call excitement okay so that's how you can tell the difference as to what your nervous system is calculating about you know prom date number one versus prom date number two if prom date number one is a hell of a lot more exciting than prom date number two there's a reason for it okay if i two houses that you're shopping for one of them is just a hell of a lot more exciting than the other one there's reasons for it excitement in your nervous system is is derived from these essentially the adaptive unconscious computing the biological value of an opportunity and this individual may and the excitement is going to come when there's a very significant delta okay so you can think of the tremendous excitement on the defining play of a super bowl and it's like okay the excitement is you can feel the anxiety and the tension that if you win this thing you get to swag into every bar for the rest of your life with a super bowl champion ring on your finger you get to stamp to the world that on that day when we were assessed against the best in the world our genes were judged as the superior genes by an objective analysis okay that is unbelievably valuable to a human and so as a result you can expect that there's going to be great excitement and tension in that moment tremendous drama okay the um and if you lose there's pretty significant devastation as a result of that it's pretty damn depressing to have almost gotten there and then you didn't get there okay so uh this person's uh question is really about gee my life doesn't have much excitement in it interesting and that that is what it is my my life has always been punctuated with excitement there's always been evidence of opportunity and that risks and energy needs to be expended and we've got to take some chances and then we may have great gains and then it turns out that yeah if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out but hey that's what it's that's what the playing field is here for uh is to take advantage of such opportunities the uh but if you're someone who is inherently pretty comfortable and you inherently just don't have that much drive to improve your circumstances and your nervous system doesn't get isn't reactive to modest levels of increase of uh of the the value of a situation then it doesn't okay and so yeah you're you will you've got it in you but you maybe have to be trapped on a desert island with only one way out and then it's gonna be you and uh you and your brains against you know some great challenge and then you're gonna be excited okay so but you may never get there so what can i tell you about that not much okay so you're you could experiment by putting yourself in a situation that's not quite so easy not quite so sure and has a lot greater upside so you know if you've got plenty of brains and you got enough money in the bank or money behind you and everything's cool but you're kind of bored hey join a startup company you know get into get into get yourself into a nice big mess nice big risky mess with a bunch of people who are shooting for the stars and see what happens uh i've known people that have done that and said you know what i would never do it any differently after they've done it it's like why why play carefully in this life when i have the opportunity to play that way okay other people have done a startup once i said god i'll never do that again that's such a bunch of crazy stuff with a bunch of egos and crazy dreams and a big waste of time and all came to nothing and a bunch of vapor stock and yeah it wasn't paid too badly but boy we worked like crazy and it went nowhere i'm not doing that again fine okay all depends upon the individual differences in risk tolerance and what the needs are for that organism as it runs the cb against its life so yeah i would certainly run an experiment on that though i would push yourself out of deeper water see how the see how it feels to have a bigger upside obviously with the lowest downside that you couldn't stand but i would shoot for a bigger upside on in some domain and see what happens the uh incidentally i had someone call me in the last month some very thoughtful concerned individual really trying to figure out their life and it was about a relationship and the relationship on paper was so solid and so good but it was flat as hell okay and so it didn't matter the fact that the person checked a bunch of boxes objectively and was fine the truth is is that the insides of my collar were flat flat flat and we talked about the person's history and whether or not they had ever felt differently and the answer is absolutely they had felt differently they had been in situations that were exhilarating and heartbreaking okay and so understanding that your nervous system is designed by nature to react very very positively when it's when it's inferred delta i.e the difference of the upside is high that means it's in you to feel that had that person told me no i've never felt that it'd be like hmm maybe you're a flatliner like our questioner here might be but in this case the answer was clear that that was not true person had a absolute normal dynamic of feeling and that normal dynamic feeling in the current relationship was saying it's flat it's good it's i.e good in quotes there's nothing wrong with it and my dad used to have a saying yeah there's nothing wrong with it but there's nothing right with it either and that's how you have to look at the concept of boredom lack of excitement lack of desire to to uh essentially make the most of yourself in some domain uh it's it's not because there's anything quote wrong with your situation there's just nothing right with it all right nathan all right we do we have time for one more how do you feel let's do one more okay i'll let's do it and this next question dr lyle is uh actually goes right into this uh question uh this last question as well so dear dr lyle you've spoken on previous episodes regarding running an experiment where you engage in doing an excellent job at work in order to engage your self-esteem mechanism your internal audience and then feel the pride that comes with doing a good job this pride will supposedly allow you to get on a path of self-improvement at work which if done diligently can open up new and more interesting opportunities that can go on to build self-confidence and ultimately interpersonal esteem i could see how this process can be effective on turning off the feelings of frustration and missed opportunities that come with cruising and doing a mediocre job however in a previous episode you also mentioned that boredom is a sign that you are not learning much at work and a signal for you to use your time more productively how then does doing an excellent job and improving your self-esteem signals bear on tasks you find boring i'm asking as a recent graduate who's early in their career i'm in a junior role where most of my ev my day-to-day consists of less interesting and boring support tasks given that i don't have the skills and knowledge yet to engage in more interesting tasks and projects so what advice do you have here can doing a good job in improving your self-esteem signals make these less interesting junior tasks that are the right of passage as a junior employee feel less like drudgery i feel like my problem is i know that better work is earned through acquiring rare and valuable skills in the marketplace however i struggle with consistently applying myself to the boring tasks that are needed to get there yeah it's very similar it's a similar story to the question that we just answered except maybe a little bit different that that this person actually can sniff a greater upside and would want to grow and apply themselves and compete at a higher level but is now sort of stuck in a sort of by the organizational limits of uh of of what they can do they're kind of stuck doing what they're doing for a while whatever it is stamping checks or entering data or whatever it is that they're doing the uh now so i would i would have a number of things to say about that and everybody's circumstances are going to be completely individual and different um yeah there is a [Music] unfortunately what is best for an organization is to a lot of times have people highly skilled at repetitive situations that they're way up the learning curve so the transaction costs of getting something done are very low and they're very predictable so that much better to pay somebody twenty two dollars an hour uh who's very bright and young to do the same thing over and over and over again for three years uh that they that they learned in the first week better to do that than to try to get it done cheaper for you know 15 an hour for people that flake out move on and so we're constantly having to have people climb the learning curves and it's a fiasco so so there's a lot of industries where that that sort of takes place and so people are have a lot more intellectual capability and even curiosity than their job affords them to be able to satisfy now so you know that is part of the rights of passage now i could say i would have a few things to say about that and that is that one of the things that you're battling is you're battling the energy conservation system because probably with extra effort you can push your way into knowledge domains uh in that in that company that that it might even cause a few people to be uncomfortable uh probably not or but it might but you can nose your way into things and ask questions and you know essentially find a way to become more competent um that you also may not that one of the problems is it may not seem all that relevant so you want to aim for things you want to have a vague goal towards which you might be aiming in any career path and so one of the things that you want to be doing is you want to be seeing about all the little nodes of knowledge that you can chisel your way into sometimes by making a little bit of a pesticide asking for additional assignments etc in other words we go looking for the excitement of personal growth okay so that's one thing that can be done the um and you don't have to you don't have to essentially uh you know burn the ships and say that this is my new way of behaving and i'm going to just completely go for broke here but you can get more assertive in a work environment about asking for more responsibility or certainly asking for direction about how to go about learning things or what might be useful to learn and then going to the trouble of doing it um and that is a that's an investment not only in the knowledge itself but also in the reputation uh that if you were to do this over a period of months it gets noticed it it impacts people's thinking about uh you know how useful or competitive you might be in that in that arena etc so that's one thing if you're getting stuck too long and you can see that oh no they don't promote anybody out of this you know data entry stamping role for you know it's like a miracle there's 27 of us and they'll promote two of us you know in the next five years to the next stage then i would be looking to get out go go to something that is far more dynamic one thing that i read not gonna say it made a big impact on me but this this is uh i read an a biography of aristotle onassis and it was called i think an extravagant life and um i was struck by his his boldness and his willingness to change direction uh to go for different opportunities um in other words aristotle onassis was was not going to be denied in other words he was going to push and find a way and so if you are seeking so more excitement and personal growth you can find it it's just a matter of how much energy uh that you are willing to put into it and so the and and maybe it's not worth it because it takes your life out of balance so i i have to tell you there's been times when i've been essentially over qualified for some job and i just cruised for a while but usually when i was cruising for a while i was busy doing something else essentially moonlighting on another project and that's that's what you know i might have been somewhat bored at what it is that i was doing but meanwhile my mind was spinning out to the to the uh to the horizon to the right or the left on something different okay so that's another thing that you can do to if you are if you are struck kind of stuck in a bureaucratic situation and the most rational thing for you to do is just keep your head down and smile and take direction and you know make a few little noises about about uh extra things you could do or what it is that you should be learning in other words you're trying to learn the landscape but it just doesn't feel that worth it to try to to break your neck trying to shine in that situation that there's simply a process by which this goes about and it's not that great then fine then find something outside of that that has some excitement to it that you can invest in and so uh this is where uh this is where reading you know reading can widen your horizons greatly and uh when i look on my bookshelves in my house i can look back fondly at you know 45 years of serious reading the the very first serious book that i ever read that truly opened uh started to open my eyes was called looking out for number one by robert ringer and then from from there i then i found the libertarian philosophers uh iron rand and ultimately harry brown and um and then from there you know ultimately branched out into all kinds of other things when i ran into richard dawkins at age 30 that it's just sort of like looking at a at a tree of of knowledge or a tree of life that you could start to see all the other authors etc so there's never been a time when there hasn't been i haven't been pretty close to an important new book uh that that i read and there expanded my horizons so while you are while you could be rubber stamping your way for a few months or maybe a few years through a hierarchical process there's always something that you can do okay there's always some place where you can find some excitement uh in your own personal development so uh that that's what i would tell you and remember also be be reasonable about the cost-benefit analysis because it could be that the right thing is to leave that hierarchy and take you know find a way out to find something new another another thing that i was willing to do in this life was to do things that were funny-looking in other words i was willing to go and do things in places that seemed odd so i worked for the criminal justice system in dallas uh coming out of uh after i uh left stanford i i did something very different and it the uh that actually came as a result of a tip that my sister gave me uh my sister was an attorney she now retired but she told me early in life she said you know doug almost no attorneys attorneys are always settling cases because they're terrified of going to court and she says nobody wants to go to court and the reason they don't want to go to court is that they haven't had experience litigating and she says that's why one of the most valuable things that you can do if you're an attorney coming out of school is to go to work for the da's office you know somewhere somewhere where you're actually going to handle real cases or the public defenders either way get in front of the judge get in front of juries and get your hands dirty okay so that you actually do this and she says there's nothing like it because once you you do that and you make a bunch of mistakes and you learn and you grow and now if you go into civil litigation later in your career uh where the where the fancy money is you're not nearly as afraid of of going to court because you've been bloodied and dirty and so she told me go get go get yourself bloody i told her you know in my early 30s gee i just feel like i'm not ready for private practice i got a fancy education but i feel like i'm i didn't say it this way but i was wet behind the ears in life and so we had that conversation as a big sister she said go get dirty okay so i did and you know what she was absolutely right that was the that was the best move i ever made uh was to get to get down in the dirt and uh and thereby learn a great deal more about clinical psychology than i ever would have learned in some counseling center at ucla so that's uh that's another thing that i would tell you don't be afraid to do something a little offbeat and different because you never know what that might help you piece together in terms of your development uh over a longer trajectory so that's another yeah don't be bored too long as long as you as long as you can afford to not be bored don't be you
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