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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-02-12
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you've been promoted promoted you're promoted yay yay well this is very experimental I have no idea how many people are going to show up at such a weird time so it looks like we've got 13 so far um yeah and a fair number of of mainlanders I see some I see some uh you know other hemispheres represented as well but um some of you are true night owls um is my shirt looking funny because it's got to to Checkers is it okay or weird no it looks good it's yeah there's no disco effect or anything going on probably the lights are giving a little bit of a disco effect but that's all right um all right yeah usually there's like it's weird to have it you know be all dark here and try to do some semblance of finding some light because the light in this house as you know is not great so yeah um all right Angela says you're you're good you're you're no crazy effects cool all right all right so as usual we have a few questions that were thrown in ahead of time um for for those of you watching now and then for everybody on the replay um very soon we're gonna be ready to launch like a new q a tool on the website which is kind of a Reddit style um you can you can upvote each other's questions and and kind of crowdsource which questions people want us to answer um so that will be integrated with the Q a form which will make everything much easier rather than me trying to move everything into a Google doc and sort through and try to figure out what's been answered and what hasn't been answered and when did we answer things um and uh so we're going to try to make that more of a crowdsourcing effort um so that should be ready in the next the next week or two so just depends on our web Guru yeah oh yeah oh uh a couple months down the road folks I think in its time for everybody that we know this name is Sam is slow as hell [Laughter] you know they just they they have their own Rhythm yeah right yes well certainly you're Sam he's he's known creature for sure all right well I don't see anything in the Q a yet so uh let me see what I have here so this one was from a couple of weeks ago um and you guys because we are doing this so late you guys are getting Dr Lyle like I like his Peak Performance time so I'm gonna go ahead and ego trap him here so just like strap in for some real quality Doug download because he is like just waking up at 10 o'clock at night I'm I'm ready for bed but Doug's like okay let's back the camera up okay yeah yeah get ready get ready for an adventure all right so my son who has a very open not that kind who who is very open not that conscientious very extroverted somewhat agreeable high neuroticism is head over heels in love with his best friend of six years who lives a thousand miles away they talk online every day for hours he has recently professed his feelings and been shut down before he could explain everything he wanted to say he's in a state of full-blown heartbreak and feeling tormented trying to decide whether to speak to her again professing everything he's been feeling or to try to cut cut the friendship and cut ties completely what are your thoughts foreign this is interesting so uh how old is this young man we don't know we it's this has been his friend his best friend of six years it looks like but she lives a thousand miles away yeah yeah kind of curious that they've talked and talked and talked and talked and and now suddenly he uh he confesses his feelings and she's like well so uh surprisingly a little bit obtuse on her part the um I I would say that uh probably the right move is uh is you you want to do you want to just uh essentially back off some minimal contact indicating that that uh that nothing nothing much more is sort of expected or needed and uh but just to I would probably write a you know something along the lines of a one paragraph uh email or text which would save us and I know that that was a lot to put on you just have my feelings like we're kind of wrong they reached a little point that boiled over and I'm sorry if that you know was it was too much for you to handle and I understand that that you know that you're you were not in the same space and I knew that that had to be you know kind of hard on on you to have me land out on you so why don't we just take a little break for a little while and uh maybe I'll say hello in in a few weeks and hopefully can at least say hi okay and uh just to be just to be friend yeah because we're good because it you know it's I'm first and foremost we're friends okay something of that nature uh basically no demands also recognizing that a a period of complete backing off so we're not chasing uh and we're also uh letting that person really feel the fact that we're not out of control and therefore they don't need to be taking care of us uh so we go ahead and set the boundary and set some space out there for them to relax and feel that that we're not out of control that uh sort of the boundaries gonna be respected and but then it would be civil for them to to a few weeks down the road be willing to have a conversation or some kind of communication so a few weeks down the road what I would do is uh I would then probably send them another little email and this one would say hey hope you're doing well I'm doing a lot better myself you know uh I miss talking to you but uh it might be nice to catch up sometime I don't know if this is too soon for you uh but it'd be nice to at least get a note for me to hear that you're doing fine uh but if you if you'd be up for talking for a short chat it'd be good to see you okay uh but that's but if not I understand no problem so then then we have the situation where she'll probably want to defer it again one round which is fine uh but but we but at least at this point we're not dealing with high emergency emotion so that that's and then we we find out what takes place from that so yeah I uh to my way of thinking uh I don't like the idea of having sort of high drama things left hanging out there with unfinished communication no we can be we can be grown up and civil about it and understand that feelings are hurt uh if we he obviously you know is bearing his soul he's also however he's got some responsibility because he's see in in essence he's sort of ambushed her um and so now what we're going to do is we're going to make it very easy for her to to understand that boundaries are going to be respected and that she doesn't have to manage his sort of you know boiling over emotional process so that's what we do and uh and and call it a day and then we let let events to take care of themselves at that point yeah Jen that'll make reasonable sense yeah that all sounds good I I would I would venture that you know this probably wasn't a huge surprise to her um and and that if she's distancing um you know it's she is feeling a little cornered and a little a little pushed into you know the response that she infers that he is demanding of her and that that's probably very overwhelming to her so I think for his part as much as he can signal that hey you know I'm I'm cool I know that's like like you're saying that that exact script I know that was a lot to put on you and and I don't want that to really ruin things between us but I understand if it's going to take you some time to kind of get back to where we were and you do you and and you know I just really wanted to to be honest with my feelings but I would I would have that awareness that she is likely she's habituated to a a best friendship with somebody who's very far away and that includes a lot of sort of just um built-in distance and a lot of her own um the the way that she manages her time and her energy includes that distance from him just on a normal basis and so now he has not only changed the kind of emotional landscape by making this big confession but he's making a lot of additional demands of time and energy which she hasn't actually been putting into the relationship in in the status quo it's one thing to talk for hours on the phone every day kind of having your own space and your own little emotional bubble and and being um you know being very habituated to that and he's starting to likely encroach on that with his his emotional neediness which as someone who has been kind of on both sides of that equation but but very often on the side that I infer that she's on right now that is very um you know a female can be get really really spooked by that and back way way way off so yeah he he needs to stop um in my estimation kind of stop chasing stop advancing and let her come to to him well good all right all right Pleasant days he's a very young person he's wet that takes me back to some very unpleasant days as a young person yeah these are hard hard lessons to be learned and it sounds like it's an early kind of his you know first serious experience with this and um you know that there's a lot of just general calibration to happen and um that's never easy so yeah my first experience with this the check kept talking to me because she was in love with goldhammer foreign [Music] [Music] I've done that [Laughter] oh my God yeah you want to play hard to get with the actual object of your affection but you know you want to not totally lose sight of them so you set your sights on the poor the poor best friends so yeah that's a that's a strategy that comes wired in the female repertoire I'm sorry sorry you had that experience oh well that's just live such as life we're at work it's a hell of an animal all right I still don't you guys are quiet I see uh is 27 folks here so it's not you know it's smaller than our usual group um but uh you know not not that much smaller so guys feel free to throw things in the Q a if you have live questions now um the Australians are always lamenting the fact that they can't join the live q a and ask oh here's something okay um okay I'm gonna butcher your name but maybe Ricky um yes asks is it possible that some individuals have a high threshold for a steam signaling I made the experience that some agreeable and I highly persons maybe highly agreeable persons are less sensitive to esteem although they are depressed and lacking a scene they seem to dismiss honest praise is this an accurate observation I'm not sure exactly what she's saying Jen but it sounds to me like she's probably she's probably describing very high conscientiousness that's what I'm getting and just sort of like not not believing praise when you receive it and not um not taking a steam signaling at face value because you're so full of self-loathing I think is kind of what what that is getting toward yeah so what that would be is that that's going to be a derivative of extremely high conscientiousness typically uh and enough agreeableness so if you get if you get very high conscientiousness you get high disagreeable most people are fine speaking of our friend Alan but uh but yeah I think what she's looking at is somewhere reasonable in the middle of uh agreeableness and then if you put very high conscientiousness on top of that those people uh if you think about how that would work that high conscientiousness is a essentially uh an overestimation of the worst case scenario and so if if the thing that we're most concerned about is the steam from being accepted in either romantic Partnerships uh or in friendship or trade then you can see that if you're very high conscientious and reasonably agreeable you're going to be worried that your performance is not adequate to continue to be accepted and so in a romantic relationship you're likely to be feeling like you're you're a little bit in trouble with respect to your partner in other words you're you're not quite measuring up and you're anxious about it uh and you're you're Pro your sort of processing and dealing with that uh that's also going to be true in friendships I think it's going to be super true in trade the uh I think trades specifically or people are going to feel like you know I'm I'm living into the acts you know there's going to be a layoff it's like yeah well your your score is you know the 96 percentile for the company and they're only laying off the bottom five percent and it's not going to be you but your your high conscientiousness uh will have you walking around with great deal of anxiety so yeah I think that when you say insensitive esteem cues um not exactly insensitive in other words you're aware that the cues are there but as with anything that would reduce your anxiety uh you are you are not calibrating those signals or the entire situation accurately uh that's what it means to be hyper conscientious is that you are the calibration system is effectively sitting out on and overly conservative part of the bell curve and so yeah it's the those those signals are being discounted um now unlike um sort of cognitive therapy inference would be that this is either irrational and we have to talk back into the internal critic or whatever the heck it is and it would see it as you're either accepting accused or not accepting the cues and I.E sort of percolate this thing down to a binary decision-making process that you're somehow doing I would disagree I I uh I think that's a misunderstanding the nature of the brain's function instead what it is it's essentially a a percentile estimate uh what the brain is doing so the brain is saying um I think that these signals do not indicate that I'm really very safe I feel like I'm not kind of on Shifty ground here I could easily be within the catchment area being fired as a friend or a lover or an employee my performance isn't sufficiently contrasted uh with with other people that are mediocre and um I'm not confident even though you say that I'm really good um I believe that oftentimes people give false praise because I get false phrase and I see false praise being given very often and once in a while in this life we're patting somebody on the back that they're about ready to fire okay so I don't trust anything and uh and the reason why is that we've got a hyperactive um essentially a miscalibrated nervous system that is overestimating the worst case scenario and that's uh and so that's I don't know that's that's how that system rolls it's why there somebody has to have an 840 credit score it might as well be you yeah well it's the the conscientiousness and then and then she's double cornered by that agreeableness so the conscientiousness is overestimating the worst case scenario the agreeableness is systematically undervaluing your worth like that's really what agreeableness is doing is it's it's saying it's like oh yeah I was you know I'm on sale I'm just walking around on sale all the time and so look what a great deal I am oh you don't you don't want to buy here I'll lower my price even more like I'm such a good deal so you're you're really it's very very difficult for you to take that kind of Praise or normal normal esteem signaling as uh as much as somebody in the middle of the bell curve would just because you're filtering that through both directions in these ways that are majorly discounting it um and so that's why this is the this is your two-thirds of the way toward what we call the sucker Triad you're you're ripe for exploitation um and it's it's because you're much more sensitive to negative feedback than you are willing to or able able to take on positive feedback and integrate it properly you're going to spin out on negative feedback and it's going to make you really really want to be the best possible deal that you can be for people even more than humans already are wired in that direction which makes you really susceptible to being taken advantage of oh good this is uh since it's Enrique I know a little something this may be a book that some of you that are oh you got your book pretty fancy okay yeah it's called uh it's effectively the new CBT it's called Uh clinical evolutionary psychology um I just learned about this Jen is known about it I'm now reading it very interesting so the the two major uh the two major uh knowledge areas that have not been integrated in political psychology up to now have been a behavior genetics and evolutionary psychology this is the first time I've ever seen uh an attempted immigration other than uh than ours okay so uh this guy they claimed this is the first you know systematic approach and it's like well that's just what I say on my website of course my website predates predates their publication by five years but we of course have not delineated out uh our the systems that we in fact are using that this is beautiful and I was going to tell you Jen and any other uh clinicians out there that are listening to us and trying to integrate what what it is that we do um what we are writing is um super sophisticated and I believe will be tremendously useful for clinicians and just like late people trying to it's meant for the late intelligently public to basically use it in their own lives however it's as obvious clinical implications for anybody that does counseling or therapy which is the same thing this guy this is a quite an opus and it's a uh and it's actually very conventional looking this is meant to be a textbook this is a this is the first major Salvo that that I've ever seen fired are basically saying cognitive therapy has to change and his name for this is informed cognitive therapy ICT is what he's calling this and I.E you are it's informed specifically by Behavior genetics and evolutionary psychology wow I didn't know this guy existed and so uh I'm it's a it's quite a surprise it's interesting looking at this book by the way it's um it has a very conventional flavor to it it has uh he's marching down through diagnoses he's talking a lot of the ways that we would talk except that um he's missing in my judgment some major pieces to the puzzle that we have worked out actually quite a lot that's really important clinically which is fine this is in no way criticism this was this is a godsend for us uh because essentially if we get attacked for our revolutionary view it's like no no it's not revolutionary here it is right here obviously we have some very revolutionary things to say but this this sort of paves the way for The credibility uh and essentially the scientific underpinnings of what it is that that we're going to be talking about so very cool I'm I'm happy that you uh that you you actually have one of our people squawk about this Jen knew about it and had told me and I hadn't paid any attention so uh thank goodness now this is great Jen this is really it's really cool reading down through this yeah no it's very cool and I haven't had a chance to systematically read through it either it sort of came right before I started packing up my My Life um but uh I yeah it is very very textbook very let's just go through all of these diagnoses and sort of get them mostly right but still missing the broader perspective that um you know it's it's I don't know if you saw this question but Jesse's asking are there books about evolutionary psychology that you would recommend that we we read that tie in especially well to esteem Dynamics if steam Dynamics is so like not um in in this you know the broader uh informed CBT world or the the sort of informed evolutionary psychology world it's really just what we're doing um so all of these little heuristics and all of these little cute names that we have and all of these clinical tricks and hacks that we have those those only exist in this little Universe they're not broadly employed by evolutionary psychology writ large um and certainly not is it informed CBT or is beginning to inform CBT so um that that is all uh yeah as we finish this book um that all of that will be part of no rush yeah but that's the real reason that we've been we've been waiting to publish is we've been waiting for this book and Charles Murray and Robert Plowman to just go lay the intellectual groundwork and make it make it really really really nice for us to just feel just come on out you know with the red carpet laid out for us and um not have to dig that that really that really nasty cold that they've already done or it's like hey look at this intellectual pedigree we're standing on the shoulders of giants here which we are we are and actually it's so it's it's hilarious I can't believe that my personal procrastinating uh into saying you know what uh maybe I need some help and I asked when we're like oh maybe we're gonna take our time and then here are three major Works roll out in exactly you know places where we could used to help in terms of making sure that we're comfortable that we're standing on extremely Solid Ground empirically couldn't have asked for anything better and so EP doesn't need any defending at all but Behavior genetics yeah that that could always use a major defense and then the integration of EP and behavior genetics into essentially cognitive therapy which is the only real sort of rational framework of psychotherapy that there is so when you do that I've always said that kind of what it is that that we do is the the next generation of cognitive therapy and uh cognitive therapy has got just almost shocking and embarrassing level of obtuse and uh you you have to have EP and behavior genetics on top of it to actually have anything that remotely resembles uh a an attempt to explain and understand human nature and the individual as they sit and they're within their particularly their slot in their situation so far in this book I haven't I haven't seen anything uh any concept at all I'm sure it's in here probably in faint terms about framing things as competitive processes so this is all sort of classic uh you know we're gonna go after the behavior genetics issue and talk about individual differences in personality Etc so a la Plumbing uh which is completely fine and we're going to talk about EP and they're the they're a wonderful first place that we'll talk about the mismatch of the modern environment and The evolutionary design I.E if anybody's paid any attention um my my first shot on that was called the pleasure trap published 17 years ago uh what was that is that is that on Kindle so the point is is that yes uh we could see many instances of the mismatch between evolutionary design and the modern world uh so we're going to be looking through this book and looking at where it is that he thinks he's spotted mismatches and how he's going to be trying to help people out with that analysis that's all good we may even see some things that we haven't seen uh I'm pretty sure that that we that we actually have our leverage on the main issues of human life in a way that probably hasn't been captured by this book but you know I I just flipped through it enough to know I'm pretty sure that's right so for some reason uh uh for for whatever reason this is that and I I can see this is a very well classically trained classically educated uh psychologist that has really evolved considerably in his knowledge and understanding but what we what we don't what we don't see and where we are very different is understanding that these are esteem contests this is I mean it's so obvious to me I I can't even understand why why the the entire world of psychology is so lost I'm learning some about that as we look back through the history of psychology this guy's a really great scholar so he goes back and and digs through some psychodynamic thinking and thinking of the early behaviorists and the influence of both those things on 20th century psychology which we talk about in our book uh but even so as we get to cognitive therapy we have these broad abstractions like the person has distorted view of themselves in the world in the future it's like no I don't think so what they have is a lack of competitive Firepower and an understanding of how it is that they're going to compete in status domains that's that's right you know that's just such a orthogonal uh tangent uh that is so different from the way that most clinicians are are trained to think and so uh but nevertheless we will benefit greatly from somebody else's very hard work it just makes our life that much easier it makes me a lot more comfortable because you know what Jen I wasn't going to dig through this you know we're we're we're we're we're going to go to press when we're comfortable when we feel like we said it right and I'm not going to do a lot of checking uh but this is a massive check that's going to save us a great deal of time and make us feel like we've been really comprehensive so all good yeah yeah it is it feels like there is kind of this um Turning Point happening just culturally and intellectually where there is there's a lot of really great work that's being done um just along these lines generally from all kinds of different disciplinary lens lenses um the a couple of intellectual and personal Heroes of mine Brett Weinstein and Heather Hein the professors who were ousted from The Evergreen State College for uh you know not not being blindly um subservient to the equity police it's a whole big story that we can we can talk about if people are interested but some of you may be familiar with it uh they've moved into kind of the independent scholar realm I think they have some sort of affiliation with Princeton right now actually um evolutionary biologists really well trained really interesting folks really really really smart um you know kind of politically uh homeless as I am like former real real hardcore leftists I mean The Evergreen State College being this you know no grades make your own kind of curriculum hang out in the trees in Olympia Washington you know sort of consummate hippie college and now they find themselves kind of disgusted by the rise of of what they and a lot of people are calling wokism and the the direction of identity politics that we've talked about here and elsewhere so those two they're evolutionary biologists but they have you know a lot of psychological mindedness and a lot of curiosity about just human nature in general they have a book coming out in the fall that's I think it's called something like the hunter-gatherer's guide to the 21st century so this is this kind of thing this this sort of you know the idea of the mismatch the idea of the you know Stone Age mind modern modern world um uh seems to be getting getting a little ascendancy now um which is exciting to watch for sure yes yeah Jesse's saying they have the the Dark Horse the dark dark horse podcast which is actually very hard to say it's a great podcast every week um the two of them are out there uh telling all kinds of truths and having really interesting conversations and they're they're just great fun so yeah um cool okay well we have you guys are asking interesting questions we have some more personal questions Joe Joe and Brizzy is asking um he says good day which is which is great which I just butchered I'm so sorry Joe I'm not I'm not Australian I need to be trained what are some of our favorite movies and TV series and what did we like about them wow uh you know it would take a while because in half an hour we'd come up with a whole bunch of them uh but on the spot it's not easy uh one of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day and uh that's a it not only is it it's an unbelievably funny movie uh and Bill Murray's utterly Priceless but it also it has a it has a beautiful deep message and it's really a message of uh that you better make the most of yourself or you're gonna just keep living the same shitty life you're always living you're never going to escape it okay so if you're going to walk your way into a new place of personal satisfaction you're going to have to become you're going to have to become a better version of yourself and so that's a uh that's a it's a beautiful movie and uh it you know I think it's the best thing Bill Murray ever did so the uh interestingly enough there's a back story to that movie which I don't know how important it is but it's curious to me and that is that Harold Ramis and Murray were they were beds you know I think back to Saturday Night Live days and and um obviously both monster talents and they this whole thing was set up uh as far as ramus was concerned just to be a comedy just a just a a one fabulous way of displaying Murray's you know comedic genius after the next that's what he wanted to do and in doing it Murray saw that it was way better than that that he he saw that this was a deeply philosophical and ingenious uh opportunity and they fought like hell about it and unfortunately they never resolved it and it ultimately Murray ultimately got its way in other words he wasn't going to not do it he wasn't going to live with himself and waste that opportunity unfortunately somehow ironically the Egos clashed and they they it's too bad that I'm sorry to hear that that it was a Fallout from that but uh in my personal judgment you know if that was remus's position he was wrong you know that that was a phenomenal opportunity and Murray delivered and that that that's one of my favorite uh movies I've ever seen simple not fancy no special effects this is this is pure psychology uh about about a person discovering that you know earning esteem in the right way from the people that matter and that that's what he discovers and that's what happens so yeah that's one of my favorites yeah yeah that's a great one yeah this is always such a hard question because I have so many favorites that are all over the map genre wise so you kind of have to get into a conversation I have to be reminded of things that I am like oh yeah I did love that for this reason and that you're like right off the bat um it's funny that you that Groundhog Day comes to mind because Jesse brings up Lost in Translation which comes to my mind when I think of like all-time favorites um so Bill Murray's just extraordinary in every way but the the sort of I have a real uh affection for whatever that genre is that sort of microcosmic emotional like um like the this this like very very uh we're going deep inside of this relation you've seen have you seen Lost in Translation oh it's extraordinary so it's like this really intimate study of this relationship between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson you know it's like and it's it's um there's lots going on but it's this it's I love this kind of lens that's just like within a day or two like that just really looks at the microdynamics of their relationship and and also kind of has guiding the whole thing the um sort of awareness of mortality and their age difference and the um all everything that that's bringing up and and um his kind of you know he's this he's this washed up actor doing these alcohol commercials and um it's uh oh my God what about Bob What About Bob is another wonderful Bill Murray movie I mean really he's my father's favorite actor for good reason I mean just an extraordinary guy but but Lost in Translation just that sort of subtlety in the intimacy of the the look into these two humans in this kind of extraordinary but also very mundane moment in time I just I just love everything about that um and and movies that are in that genre um are really really appealing to me for whatever reason there's kind of a voyeurism to them um there doesn't there doesn't necessarily there's no plot you know nothing nothing actually happens really um it's just the kind of the shifting uh sort of emotional landscape of that relationship at that moment in time so yeah I love that I love I also have a soft spot for kind of um Grand romantic tragedies which I know Doug does not like as much as I do um but the The English Patient is like one of my all-time favorites um and uh the book as well uh the unbearable lightness of being you know these kind of like just superlative amazing huge love stories with this like horrible tragic element to them um is very appealing to me for whatever reason that's amazing you know what it's funny you mentioned those because I've heard about heard of them all have heard them you know these are Oscar levels and I've studiously avoided all three of those because I've because of my understanding that there that there are tragic that is I don't like it I don't like tragedy and uh it hurts my soul and so uh that's what but you know it's it's worth watching because now I'm hearing you talk about these that they're deep and fascinating and I need to but it's kind of uh it's not easy to goad me into it yeah yeah I know I live perfectly well without them I mean they're hard to watch Jessie's coming coming uh after me for The English Patient which is uh yeah it's probably I I can I can see Arguments for and against it I actually went for years being very anti- English Patient I was like oh overrated you know sort of lumped it together with like Titanic or whatever like oh yeah Oscar winning overrated big money blah blah blah um and came back to it years later and had a new appreciation for it after after having read the book as well so um but whatever I I I I'm a refund apologist I think is my problem there I remember Elaine on Seinfeld being anti-anglish patient but I don't remember the details but I do remember she was very vociferous about it and everybody's just gonna have to deal with it right maybe he was Rocky okay oh sure it's a great movie and that's a what a study of of conflict and frustration and um and finally being cornered uh with having no choice at all but to do your best okay to just to just basically quit doing a half-assed job and to be terrified by like physical fear and humiliation and having no choice to just take a deep breath and then discover the self-esteem okay and and set the bar at a very very very high but possibly achievable Place I.E I just want to go the distance okay and so just the the metaphors for that for your whole life yeah that that uh hey you know it's process not outcome process not outcome don't leave it on the table make the most to yourself you see that but that's not that's not an inconsistent theme uh with Groundhog Day so you're you see that you know this resonates very big with me because this is all at the core of everything that I think about is self-esteem and and what we what I try to do and you can see in these things that the the pressure that people have one of the uh one of the deep problematic pressures in in life is the expectations from other people either from direct outside or that we absorb and they become part of our internal audience but then give rise to conflicted motivations uh about whether or not it's worth doing our best and then getting shown up for the fact that we we aren't up to what those expectations were uh and it doesn't have to be uniform it doesn't have to be everybody in the world thinks that we're so wonderful all it has to be is one person if there's one person who puts the bar too high and we value their opinion in other words they have enough esteem with us that we would lose some if we didn't live up to their expectations that can be enough to stop us and so uh my you know I'm susceptible to that I notice that's susceptible to in myself very early in my teens I I watched that happen in numerous circumstances um uh I think I've told the story that I identified it uh consciously and deliberately for the first time in a therapy session I was actually with a with a uh with a guy on probation in Dallas about his job and uh where he he said well I wouldn't work for anything less than fifty thousand dollars and I knew that there's no way he could make fifty thousand dollars at that time and I said you know I basically lowered the bar to insult him um but but I uh when I did that I said well but the thing is there's no way you can make that much money nobody around this building makes so much money except for the judges none of us I.E I included myself at that time which was true and I said but but you could probably make you know fifteen dollars an hour fifty dollars is 25 you could probably make 15. and with 15 you could have a decent apartment decent car you'd be in pretty good shape now because prices are down and I was meaning I was actually being bold accurate and mean because I was pissed because I didn't like his arrogance and um he had a he had an arrogant shitty attitude and so I meant to pound bamboo shoots under his fingernails uh deliberately you know he's totally acted straight and unconcerned and I just pounded pounded it right out of nonchalantly the way I sharp angle people and uh and he looked at me and he said do you really think I could make 15 an hour I'll never forget that and I I watched my entire feeling towards him change literally in an instant I was instantly like I'm totally here to help you I sat right there and he plotted how he would go about it how he would go through the process Etc and he left a changed individual okay and that and I sat there in that office and I thought what the hell just happened okay and I I don't know what I came up with right then but I I was working very hard to identify that Dynamic and that later becomes known as the ego trap I did identify it and then it became a systematic process for spotting it in getting people out of it so uh the and Rocky has elements of the ego trap in there okay obviously you're supposed to be hot stuff if you're going to be on a world stage uh you're supposed to be a world-class fighter and you're going to be in front of everybody and you got no choice okay so the uh I remember when he when he comes to Adrian and says you know I can't fight with of this guy and Adrian is the new love of his life says what are we going to do it's like what a teammate like I'm in this with you okay what the hell can we do okay and that's when he comes up with the goal of all I want to do is go the distance nobody else has gone the distance right that's the story and he gives it everything he has and he goes the distance that's the story so that's uh one of my very favorite I haven't seen it in probably 10 15 years it's time great question about it yeah yeah I don't think we've ever been asked that that before any sort of there's there's a couple of other personal questions trickling through here so yeah such a such a such boy movies Doug such boys it's like dude yeah gonna work hard gonna gonna win gonna accomplish things gonna do my best I'm sitting here and like well I really like perfect [Laughter] but I also if I have another favorite genre it's um it's it's like absurdist documentaries and we were just talking recently about operation Odessa which is a quiet gem um that everybody everybody whatever your your predilections and whatever kind of films you tend to enjoy this this transcends them and we won't tell you anything don't hurt in your grave having not seen operation Odessa yeah but don't Google it don't Google it just just find it and watch it and allow yourself to to bask in the glory it's really something yeah it's really really something so yeah yes yes yes Modesto Odessa as in Russia okay but yeah all right yeah yeah all right um so there was a question we skipped over from um Chalan earlier uh asking is there any advice for someone who is just not that conscientious I'm driving myself mad I can't get anything done usually looking for my car keys I took the big five and I'm apparently three percent I don't think you're three percent or you wouldn't have a computer I feel like you wouldn't be here um I find that the big five test systematically under under rate conscientiousness like really consistently um and I'm not quite sure why that that particular measurement error exists but it does so if you're if you're wondering what your big five is and you're concerned that you're not conscientious enough that tells us that you're not three percent conscientious you're you're definitely average to above average most likely but um and maybe slightly lower than average but you're not you're not crazy off the scale um I'm agreeable and open so tricks for being more conscientious well I would say that what we want to do is we want to look at look at um we want to essentially do a taxonomy and where that conscientiousness is causing you problems okay so uh I had one lady who was who couldn't get ready in the morning very quickly uh move across the street from her job that way she went from being way late every day to being a little bit late every day and it actually improved that situation so the um these are the kinds of things this is the the ultimate potted plant move uh was to do that that was a very expensive and deliberate process that was necessary uh and you know it made sense to do that so the notion is what are you know we cannot say oh well here let me get out my watch and hypnotize you and get you to be more conscientious no never gonna happen well I know what we're going to do we're gonna we're gonna talk to Dave Ramsey and somebody else who's really good at organizing and then we're gonna have 17 spreadsheets and we're going to have you all organized in your life for once and then it's going to be a nice beautiful system never going to happen here's what we need to do we need to do a taxonomy you can do it kind of with your own eyeball what is the consistent problem that comes up most often okay that's that's worth understanding if it's your car keys and you absolutely if that's some major problem then you can get a little Gizmo that you can put on your key ring that you can call from your cell phone that will tell you where your car keys are okay so then that problem is solved for you know 38 dollars in an app installed on your phone so this is so we we need to look at specifically what's the biggest problem are you like waiting too long and you know are always not getting your bills paid why because if there's not enough money in the bank okay that's one problem if there's enough money in the bank then right after your paycheck goes in there then so all of your bills should be paid the next day all of them okay when when your paycheck is that when your bank account is the fastest so have all five or six of your recurrent bills paid automatically you don't have to do it that way you're not fiddling around in late and then you see how much money you've got left and oh well now you when they deny your card at Starbucks it's like okay well I guess that's the last Starbucks we're going to have for the month okay so in other words we need to not this is the notion of we are not trying to change your personality and we cannot do so all we can do is we can change a specific narrow highly expensive uh Achilles heel that your particular personality is having trouble with that we can do that's what you can change so get get clear about what specific price your conscientiousness is costing you or your quote conscience just costing you and then triangulate a is sort of a systematic effort to alter that process very effectively that's it that's all you can do okay that's the story that's the generic answer to that question yeah she's she is um saying in the chat that the main problem is around food that she has sorted out financed by using a budgeting app that needs something like that for eating um so like a like a menu or I'm not not sure what she's getting at with that but um but yeah that's why you know what that is everybody that's a pie in the sky so this is a bright conscientious person that is saying I'm struggling with my food well what a shock yeah welcome welcome to planet Earth and the year the Year of our Flying Spaghetti Monster 2021. yeah I would just say a few words about this and I I've said far of our words in this lifetime about this problem than I ever wanted to say that's why it's not going to be a long answer okay you were not expected to solve this problem I do not expect you to solve this problem I don't expect anybody to solve this problem and I'm really quite surprised that anybody ever solves the problem okay you that this is the equivalent of me taking a very big sharp needle and sticking it in your left foot right in the middle of the left foot then I come back the next day and I chase you down and I stick it in your left foot again and then they come and I stick it in your left foot again okay and I and I keep trying to tell you you're supposed to learn to pull your right foot away from me and leave the left foot there okay that's what you're supposed to do and you're like well why is that going to do any good because that's what I'm asking you to do I'm asking you to pull your right foot away from the needle while I stick it in the left foot you say well that doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense for you to eat lower calorie density food when higher color density food is available it makes exactly zero evolutionary sense for you to do that how the hell are you expected to do that answer you got to be pretty strange and pretty motivated in other words pretty damn strange and pretty damn motivated if you put pretty damn strange and pretty damn motivated in the same place and you bang your head against that wall you're only going to get you know that needle in your foot about a thousand or 13 times and then you're gonna start to actually pick up your right foot not easy to do this okay so give yourself a break here and every trick that I've ever talked about in the pleasure dropper elsewhere that's what it takes and it takes you know as Jen would say relapse is part of recovery expect yourself to screw it up you gotta have a start stream you got to have the up the learning curve on a start stream if you're not going to create your own start stream then you're gonna have to buy the food from somebody you're gonna have to have somebody make it for you after that there's one last trick one more you hire somebody very sexually attracted to put you in a chair and feed it to you oh my God yeah doing the download man's playing on the pleasure trap like I've heard it all before and then you just gotta throw in something to just make sure everybody's listening oh my God I'm not sure that's the best strategy for for this particular questionnaire Jesse says never met never mix ducks in food very messy well I wouldn't say never but definitely yeah probably not the best idea if you're trying to uh you know be more conscientious about either as Spud fit Spud fits in the house with Mandy hi bud fit how's it going Welcome to our our late night sort of like crazy Punchy Australian friendly session tonight we're all over the map we love Australia we do we love Australia we really did we really did it we didn't just like it no we loved it it was a year ago this week we were there we I think we we had just gotten there we were in Sydney and and you know I think all the time about how when we left at the end you know end of February we were like oh we'll be back in a couple of months you know like this is our new home away from home we were we were wandering around the harbor being like oh this is this is so much better than hanging out on the mainland we're just gonna be over here all the time but yeah oh geez another freaking 10 male one Jenna just look and roll wow I'm telling you they were all criminals yeah there's a reason they were all banished or banished from England they were the the wives the wives of noblemen were chasing those guys around and they probably had guitars they didn't have guitars back then they had something similar whatever it is that they had it's very good storytelling good good storytelling good yeah you can sing a tune doesn't matter have you have you heard the accent but no we really did love it we're gonna we'll be back as soon as we are able yeah oh yeah we've got a Tasmanian partisan I've I've been to Tasmania which I loved as well it actually reminded me quite a lot of Alaska in a lot of ways so um which of course is where I grew up so there was there was a lot of commonality there um okay we have another just fun crazy question Melissa was asking us um let me try and go scroll back up if we could go back in time knowing what we know now about EP and personality what advice would we give to our younger selves I don't think we've ever been asked that either so in the in the remaining you know seven minutes here I mean that's a huge question well you know that chick that had me in between Alan and her yeah right there yeah right there um let's see biggest thing that would have happened to me is I wouldn't have been married um uh that that was a wonderful friend and remaining say you know a very a very good friend to this day but shouldn't have been shouldn't have been married and I I didn't know enough about uh you know romantic process Etc uh at that time so that that was a that was a very big expensive life-changing mistake uh you know no no tragedy but uh you know your life is its own funny funny Odyssey and you have some things that uh it's not a tragedy in the sense I don't look at any sort of mistakes and um uh adversity that I go through is tragic I I look at them as you know what you want to do is you want to as John Wooden says when you lose don't lose the lesson so you you try to make sure you try to make your self more aware and smarter so you don't make similar types of mistakes in the future sometimes that's difficult to do it's hard to know what the lesson is uh but I I learned you know many things the hard way uh that way early in life I I made a major uh I took on a major real estate project very expensive uh a process that early in life greedy you know they're going to make a killing and uh it didn't kill me but it was it was uh daunting and it cast a shadow and essentially hampered my movements for more than a decade in other words I my life was constrained by my responsibilities uh with respect to this this led to the formulation of a very important lesson uh never make a big decision when a small decision will do I could have made a much smaller decision there and discovered that it wasn't such a great deal wasn't a disaster but it wasn't what I thought it was and so uh my when it comes to investment specifically now we translate that very same concept into if it's such a great big investment then it'll be a really fine little investment okay uh so we have we have known people that literally bet their house uh on on what they thought was a great deal and you know run into some problems with that so it did such a great deal then bet 10 of your house for God's sake don't bet the whole thing so uh never make a big decision when a small decision will do uh getting married uh was a big decision there would there would have been smaller decisions to make that would have been wise so uh these are you know these are some uh these are some basic life lessons that I uh didn't know I also obviously didn't understand Behavior genetics so I had a feel for Behavior genetics but I did not understand the depth of it that I do now and so certainly I have spent time uh with my with my hammer and with my personality hammer and chisel trying to Chisel somebody into something that they weren't uh and try trying to improve people's existences through great efforts on my part and it turned out nope turns out it's uh the same Granite that I started with it's just that there's a bunch of scars in my hand uh from hitting the Chisel so that is uh something uh something that you've learned so yeah these are some some of the lessons that I've learned is that if a relationship is really hard um there's there's a good chance that you're working too hard so it's it's work something that has a lot of Promise it's worth a lot of effort and it's worth some risks but at some point you look at it and you have to understand uh that they are who they are and that's either worth it or it's not all right yeah I think my uh it's it's funny I'm thinking about this and thinking about my fairly extreme degree of openness and how it has led me down many a strange path and you know I've talked about a lot of those um and I've just have had a lot of lifetimes kind of like you know Russian dolled into my my existence um and I don't think I particularly regret any of them so I'm like trying to think like what I would I count anything as a regret and I don't think I do even though some of those choices were very very bad um and you know led me down roads that I I wouldn't necessarily want to do again but there were there were enough adventures and enough um lessons and enough uh connections and just enough learning there was just a lot of learning associated with all of it um but the one regret I do have is that I embraced I I my father was an alcoholic and um I I came of age believing that oh if I ever touch a drink I'm gonna turn into an alcoholic like my dad like that at age 17 18 19 that's what I believed was true about the world and then from about age 20 to 24 I became convinced that that wasn't true so I I sort of got myself immersed in a lot of blank slate thinking I be uh you know read some some studies that were very influential to me in early um my early academic years that the that those uh the idea that there was an alcoholic Gene was or a set of genes was racist that it was very problematic um that really alcoholism was this disease of of disconnection it was a spiritual malady et cetera et cetera Etc and all of that was a source of massive Distortion in my life that actually convinced me that it would be okay to to experiment with drinking um and then of course you know got myself into the genetic trap that my my father and the rest of my family had set up for me so so that was kind of a a strange inversion of having it right you know at a very young age and having the aversion where it was supposed to be and then being convinced by some very bad data and bad information that was very distorting to my cost-benefit analysis that cost me a lot of a lot of opportunities and a lot of relationships and just uh just was a huge mess all around so that would be the only thing that I would really want to go back and and take my little 20 year old self by the hand and explain here's how it really is like don't don't be fooled by this new age gobbledygook like this is this is ridiculous um and that I would couple that with kind of the the um the notion that I had for most of my you know most of my adult life which was that transformation was just around the corner you know some kind of like I could transform into the butterfly that I was supposed to be if I just found the right kind of um way of way of releasing my trauma or way of of thinking about my issues or um sort of some kind of new understanding of who it was that I that I really am would descend on me from the heavens if I just got it right if I just entered the right Keys into the combination code and that was just a really misguided principle that that kept me really confused and kept me away from the heart of where my real happiness is which is the the kind of life that is linked to my actual personality it just took me further and further away from walking that path so that would be a hard thing to convince myself at a young age that that was true because like because the openness is so transformation oriented um and and I wouldn't have necessarily wanted to have traded that kind of certainty that kind of Behavioral genetic certainty at age 20 or 21 for all of the misguided Adventures that I had for the next 15 years so it's a it's a tricky question like how how how I would have wanted to inform my misinformed younger self because in general I wouldn't change that much yeah yeah we've we've both uh neither one of us has paid catastrophic crisis uh we paid some Pro we paid some high prices but they haven't been catastrophic uh or some other people they might be that's why uh that that's why our job is to try to give people very good principles to make decisions uh so that they so they make the best decisions that they can uh because life will throw you enough adversity just in in the terms of just bad luck okay so the uh uh that's plenty so but anyway yeah we've the my the balance of my life and my existence undoubtedly would have been better in other words that the track record the track history in the the average mean level of Happiness across uh these years would have been better had I known some things then that I know now uh which is why my existence now uh is better uh than my assistance was 40 years ago so quite a bit uh I can feel it on a day-to-day basis I know some of the what what those feelings were and I know that they're gone uh so yeah it's bummer there's not enough time left but that's the whole point you know that that's why we don't want to make big mistakes is because you don't get it back you just get what's left yeah all right yeah and pets pets you know don't be afraid of always having pets that's what I would have told my younger self too because they're very enriching yeah um Amy is asking in the in the Q a I just want to clarify for everybody watching she says if I could post this on the website earlier because she missed a big part of the session I would if I could but it is not up to me so so everybody I anticipating a bunch of emails about people who want this posted on the website ASAP because is it a weird time everybody's going to want it posted tomorrow that is not my that's I I have no control over that process I send the file to our web dude and he posts it when he posts it and so it's you know it's Friday night yeah it might not be it might not be until Monday or Tuesday um so that is that is uh not anything that I have any control over alas I apologize for that so I will do my best I'll get him the raw material as soon as I can so so yeah yeah um any anything other any other housekeeping stuff you look like you have something I can say one more we're gonna do one more now oh we can do one more um it's a heck of it see what else we have here go back to the actual q a um well that's a big question yeah big big toenails blue something like that there's a key there's just a clarification about that you said that Dr Campbell got something wrong um perhaps referring to the China Study maybe it was a conclusion people draw from the book so many people refer to so what what were you referring to if you were saying that Campbell was wrong about something yeah here's here's an interesting things I now have this new book in the data in that book is interesting and um where uh Colin has a quite a bit of confidence in rights with confidence about the connection between essentially a vegan diet and cancer now the I can see why he does and that is as you as you look at worldwide studies you see a very strong correlation between low animal protein diets and and low cancer rate and high animal protein diet basically the correlation coefficient between animal protein consumption and cancer is a compelling correlation the this leads uh I I don't know why this does not translate to anything you'll see in the United States so I have a speculation as to why I believe that that's true uh and so this is a useful I think useful for people to know um the the reason if you look at that same correlation coefficient in the United States you will not find it the in other words the correlation uh of what people eat and their incidence of cancer is you know animal protein vis-a-vis different various cancers is a very low correlation coefficient in other words if you happen to be a vegan your cancer risk is very small difference with a conventional either how does this jive with the worldwide evidence the answer is the vegans aren't vegans for 70 years they become vegans when they're 47. okay they become vegans when they're 56. and it's likely that the action that's involved here is very long cumulative impact uh the subtle disruption of animal protein on you know essentially a gene popping fidelity so the uh that's that's why I believe that that's probably true so uh that that's one explanation it's the best explanation that that uh that I have that would fit the data reasonably when you look at other other societies obviously there are differences in protein consumption are lifelong so you're really getting a good look at isolating that variable as best you can now it's not the only variable that's different in those societies but the the data that he's got in this new book is called the future of nutrition it's excellent and uh the data is pretty compelling and I look at it and and when I looked at it and I thought this thing through uh oh so the reason why I think it's a mistake is that if you if you're reading Colin's book uh if you're reading The China Study and you're you're feeling the inference and it's and it's an inference that I would have uh I felt like I was in retrospect I was overstating it in the pleasure drop uh and I believe it gets overstated implicitly by all of the plant-based stocks I.E eat this way and you should be very well protected no you're not I already know you're not so I I can actually look at the existing databases and see that that's not true the reason is you're 54. sorry okay there's all you've already lived 5 8 of your existence and so therefore uh from what you do here on out it may have an enormous impact and will have it on your cardiovascular health but it's it's not going to influence your cancer trajectory hardly at all um so that is that is something that is not clearly identified as a concept uh in anything else that I've read uh I.E the exposure the time exposure over lifespan that's the only thing that I can see that would uh essentially uh basically clear up the paradox so if you feel like wait a second I I've become I've been being a vegan for 10 years and now I just came down with cancer you know Paul and Campbell let me down well you know I think he was misled about thinking that that Allah cardiovascular disease of 10 years ago you had Advanced cardiovascular disease and then you've been a super healthy eating vegan for the last 10 years if we look in your arteries you're going to be super healthy and you're not going to die of heart attack okay so the but the same level of protection uh in reversal is does not it does not appear to be evident with cancer so that's the that's what it is that I want to tell you it's it's your best shot but it it doesn't have the the tremendous effect size of protection uh that it does if we started you know when you were two okay which is what happens everywhere else all right so that's that's the story on that okay good that was the short question yeah smart question that's what we got yeah we have we have some other really good ones but I think they would take us into another half hour or so so um yeah we'll go ahead and and wrap up this uh this late night night owl uh Midnight Special it was fun I didn't feel strong I felt like we're with our with our our small group of beds from Australia yeah oh it's great it's great we really we we really like it's really true we talk about it all the time so we we really we want to go back as soon as it is possible to do so we'll we'll be we'll be the first back over so yeah yeah very very good all right everybody well thank you so much for coming out and um yeah we'll see you next time probably we'll we'll be back at kind of a more U.S Mainland friendly time but we'll we'll try to add in some odd times to to keep you guys Happy this is still a little too early for Europe too so I don't know how to I don't know how we fix that unless we it was like really early in the morning our time but that's never going to work for you so we'll just we'll just keep fishing around and see how we can make it work so all right well we'll see you all next time all right everybody have a good night I hate you too bye
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