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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-05-06
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hello here we are yay we are on how's it going all good good arms off and all that cool oh you wet it's a great background yeah you know it's just it's a Maui kind of day yeah yeah it's very it's very cold and rainy here right now so no no paddle boarding for me today so I'm paddle boarding in my mind all right well do we have any anything to discuss before we jump into it I can think of all right let me make sure I got everything up here Warren says hi hello Warren okay all right well let's see uh we had uh questions new questions kind of voted up to the top of the queue so we can start there while people kind of catch up so the first one let me just I've got too many windows open as usual um the title is codependent no more sucker Triad success strategy so she's saying um she's heard us talk about the sucker Triad and how we can change it but um change it but and also I think she means and change it and set ourselves up for success I would love to hear more on this subject the sucker Triad she says is strong in this one so how to how to beat the sucker Triad is basically what she's asking I think most important thing to beat the second Triad is to uh recognize when you're definitely in in a relationship with a disagreeable person that's exploiting you and get the hell out which is going to happen constantly if you've got the second Triad like that's that's the normal State of Affairs for a secretary of person is that you're being exploited by a Boss by your relationship by your friends yeah so that means that you the key is to get out because the the devil you know is probably going to be worse than the next person that you uh bump into and then have some relationship with because you get a little older and wiser by the time you've been burned 13 times okay right so the uh the sucker Triad uh uh I mean the limitations of your ability to alter any personality trajectory the limitation is is uh experience in other words you you discover in life that your instincts keep leading you wrong okay right thinks about uh the second Triad is particularly let's let's dissect the the process that's taking place there for just a minute because it's useful for you to understand the process the um people are designed by nature to experience frustration uh in different ways uh frustration meaning the discrepancies that what happens emotionally in the discrepancy between what they think that they ought to be having and what they're getting so that creates the frustration so for some people it creates a determination to work harder to try to achieve it other people they want to complain okay other people are are just uh you know are bitter suicidal homicidal whatever in other words they are uh there's all different kinds of reactions depending upon the situation the personality but what you're looking at is frustration now one of the common uh results of a discrepancy between where we are where we want to be is depression uh depression and anxiety or two of those things but particularly depression depression is a feeling of resignation uh and also remember we're not depressed when we don't reach a goal but we don't think we can get like I never wanted to be Steffi Graf and and win the women's tennis you know Wimbledon it never occurred to me okay the uh so we don't care about goals that we don't think that we could achieve or would want to achieve we care about goals that we think we should be able to achieve and have tried to achieve and didn't okay that's what gets you depressed and so uh in that depression you will express it uh you also might Express frustration you might have anger because you feel like it's not fair one way or the other you go through a process of expressing uh the emotional concomitance of the frustration and as a result uh somebody else picks it up so uh when you are down and out and miserable and weeping in the corner there's no there's no accident that you're weeping in the corner and that people can hear your sobs because this is the way that uh Humanity in a in a group group action and the development of the moral sentiments cause some people to have a resonant feeling to that and like oh that's terrible okay oh what can I do to help you and what it does is it activates a goal structure in another individual whose goal is to help you okay now the uh so what they need what they want to do then is they want to close the distance between where they are and where they think they could go and that what that means is what can they do to help you to get you better off so now that becomes their goal okay and they spend their time and energy in that goal where you can see where this is the problem okay this is a beautiful Swiss watch just so long as it works fine uh if you've got a 14 year old kid he's struggling in school and he's upset about his pimples on his nose then you're his mom and you're going to want to try to help him close the distance between where he is and where he feels like he ought to be which is to not have pimples on his nose and not be struggling in school and so that's what you do and your empathy mechanisms cause you to want to invest time and energy in supporting him but what if it's a disagreeable shitheaded box Okay who wants to be you know regional vice president and by God he needs to have his numbers for your group above the other people's group so that he can look good and the only way to do that that he can see is that everybody under him has to work harder okay so he's a tyrant and it turns out that you're agreeable so what means is is of course you're a normal person everybody in the unit is picking up on this you can't miss it his frustration his anger his intermittent depression his anxiety every he's signaling like crazy that he needs help he needs help he needs help he needs help okay and he may even threaten people that don't help him there was his anger is coming out as threats but by God if you don't there's going to be consequences so it's hell to work under this God but you are highly agreeable so it activates the goal mechanism how can I make it happier what can I do if I work really hard then then he'll be happier and then then you will have earned his esteem Etc this is a prescription for wasting a life that's why we call the sucker Triad uh if you have you know if you've got conscientiousness and you've got agreeableness and you've got some intelligence you're in trouble because people are going to mine those characteristics uh unconsciously in other words they're whenever they've got a little goal frustration they're going to Signal it and it's going to be like you know it's their dog [ __ ] is attracting you the fly okay and so once you you're not going to know this because you're going to be falling for this from the time you're 40 years old with your little friend who who lost her Pokemon card or whatever the hell it is but what's going to happen eventually when you're 38 you're going to start figuring out that wait a minute you know this marriage was lousy wait a minute those last four relationships were lousy wed and then it how come I'm working so much harder than everybody at work I can't seem to stop myself and there's a badge of honor associated with it there's a sense of moral rightness there's a sense that you are earning tremendous credits um and in the Stone Age you would have been earning some these days in a big market economy this is all transient so you're not getting any credits at all so this is absolute sucker all the way down so your first thing to know is if you just have can't stop yourself yes you can stop yourself by realizing wait a minute this is drug addiction that you are you are running into people who are expert signalers at the fact that they need and deserve help that they're not getting and you are a sucker you are not well designed to run into such people so you need to extricate yourself from those relationships and you need to move you know out of Toledo and move to Kansas City get out okay so I have somebody that's trying to get out a sucker Triad person that's in a in a marriage right now and needs to be out and the only way to get out is to sequester themselves in their parents house and hand the cell phone to their parents so that they can't talk to their soon-to-be ex because if they do they'll be drawn in like a moth of light okay so we barricade ourselves from these social interactions from these individuals which means we quit the jobs and we go on a long vacation somewhere away from a relationship and we do not talk it through with the disagreeable person because they will close you every time like a slick car salesman okay so one of the best uh little pieces of advice that I got out of how I found freedom and entry world was that when Harry Brown describes how he left a relationship and how you are to do it he says you don't have do you tell those people you don't have all the answers right now you just leave you don't explain you don't work it out you don't come to agreements you just leave okay just let them have to face the fact that you're no longer in their influential domain and that they cannot get a hold of you and they cannot talk to you and your job is to go cold turkey don't let them talk to you okay that's the idea and by God they'll they'll just let them bang their head against the wall trust me they'll be exploiting someone else in no time okay so that's the that's the long you know detailed concept here is that you you are you are mining credits in heaven and you are being sold Fool's Gold okay and the way out is to recognize clearly you know when this is happening there's no satisfying this individual the the debt that you owe them is infinite okay so the solution is to get the hell out of that relationship and better luck next time baby try you know do a better job picking the next person that's how we do it all right yeah yeah I mean as as somebody with the S emblazoned on my forehead I I I had to learn the hard way that it's and I think it a lot of this you know implicit in what you're talking about um but the people I think there's the the soccer Triad can be driven primarily from the agreeableness or primarily from the conscientiousness I think it's sort of whichever you have more of you're sort of two separate suckers like versions of suckers there's the there's the conscientious like super conscientious High conscientious nutcase sucker even if they're quite agreeable their their largest motivation is this place will fail without me this relation like I've I've invested so much like all those conscientious kind of things where the agreeable driven suckers more like I don't want to be disliked I don't want to get in trouble like I don't I don't want people to be mad at me and and so it's better for me to get sold the bill of goods from the used car salesman boss who's talking me into staying late for another weekend when I can't get to my kids baseball game and I I don't I came in here saying I was are going to do it but I really don't want him to be mad at me so I'm going to go ahead and do it not because oh well he really needs me to work on this project so I'm going to stay on the project it's slight there's slight distinct flavors of of the sucker and most suckers have both to some degree but it kind of helps to know which one you lean more towards to kind of help negotiate this I'm more of an agreeable sucker than a conscientious sucker so I like once I recognize that my my suckerness is driven by that oh I'm so afraid they're going to be mad at me I'm going to have people in the village who don't like me um that that helps uh you create slightly different strategies in escaping these situations than the conscientious version so fabulous Jen School School of Hard Knocks yeah yeah so but it and for either I think the key too is recognizing that this is not about you the sucker just thinks it's about you and if you do the right thing then everything is going to be everything's going to be better the business is going to run better that your the relationship is going to be better everything's going to work um and it's really it's it's this requires both acknowledging and accepting your personality and its immutability as well as the disagreeable who's taking advantage of you and and that they can temporarily sell you on anything they they are acting in their own self-interest and they are trying to manipulate your behavior to get what they want um and so that is magic beans to the agreeable conscientious personality that looks like oh I just did the thing that got me the feedback that I was looking for and now I feel better about that feedback I feel more secure in my place in the village and it's just part of the repertoire of this disagreeable person who is playing every card they have to try to manipulate the situation so so yeah there's there's and there's all this shame and ghosting there's no shame and ghosting that's that's the agreeable strategy that's that's particularly if you were an agreeably driven sucker um that is really what you have to do in a lot of situations because if you don't hand the phone to your parents if you're living in their basement and you don't just kind of close it off and say hey I'll you know I'm not going to deal with this directly I'm not going to venture into direct confrontation there's big stigma against that and and most um people in positions of psychotherapy are going to tell you you're you're avoiding the hard work and you're not drawing the right boundaries and that that's the wrong thing to do but it that may be the only way that you get free of this dynamic because it's just not inherent to your nervous system to be able to negotiate that confrontation in your own best interest if you can't do that then don't do it figure out another way to achieve your best interest and so um my favorite example is the client that I had who who was trying to also escape a really exploitative uh relationship and and I had her arranged for her her uh office to transfer her to another another location for a while so it's not my fault that I have to I have to move I I got I you know I wish I could stay but I can't um and so I'm going very far away and then gradually you've got the distance and oh it looks like my my you know contract's been extended and maybe I'm not coming back and this just isn't working anymore so it gives her the space to allow herself to step out of this really emotionally abusive situation she was in so yeah yeah if you uh a good template to have in your head is that there's effect there's effectively for General strategies uh there there would probably be tiny little perturbations but there's basically four strategies to get other people to do something uh the first strategy is anger so you're effectively threatening them with consequences so this is what you know pretty much all international relations are all international relations are threatening the other party that if they don't do this then we're going to do that there's going to be costs and that's just that throughout the Animal Kingdom so this is uh these are our deep instincts in humanity that if I'm not getting what I want the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to signal to you that I'm going to post costs on you if you don't do it it's reasonable we're influencing the other person's cost benefit analysis the um the other the the next thing that we're going to do is tears so by crying and whining and being pathetic what we're doing is we are attempting to activate altruistic parental instincts on the other side of the equation okay so very uh so suddenly if I mean there is nothing probably as as uh bizarre as watching a man start to cry because he's uh he's defeated and he you know he he doesn't know what he's going to do it's like oh you know women that have been in that situation are like okay I'm now renegotiating or changing or ending this relationship and you know we may have had you know angry disputes about conflicts of interest go back and forth and now we're seeing tears and now that that that's a very deep dirty car to play on another individual because basically you're saying I'm a child I'm pathetic and I can't survive without you being nice to me and taking care of me okay it's what it is and so um yeah I can't I can't recall I think I could recall a few times in my life in male group situations where some some male has done something like that rare like maybe two three times in my lifetime and when she can hang out with men under 40. they cry all the time yeah that's a with me that instantly uh produces an out-group response like okay you get you just go off to the side because you know we'll get you through this mess whatever it is that you are permanently out of the group because you're useless okay if you use that strategy and now the uh that uh the the Wint out strategy now the men that are in you know even uh aggressive in the ass man in romantic relationships you'll watch uh to watch children you watch women everybody will flood back and forth between these two strategies so they don't know what they're doing they're running purely on Instinct so they'll be angry they'll see if that works if that doesn't work they'll flip the tears if that doesn't work they'll flip back to anger if that doesn't work they'll put back to tears in other words this is what they're doing it's your your nervous system is like a jukebox they are aware that you are susceptible to these sorts of uh influential Communications to alter your CV so they're going to keep hitting them from different angles but it's useful for you to know that's all you're looking at okay now there's two other main classes of manipulative strategy one of them is honest cost benefit analysis alteration it's like so you know when I want Jen to do something on the computer that I can't do I'm like hey uh you do this I'll do that or whatever in other words we recognize that that you're you're not above the just irritation signaling strategy which is like I'm gonna drive up the cost of dealing with me on this problem so high that I'm counting on your conscientiousness to step in and save the day that that's your Baseline strategy that's fair that is true actually I I didn't recognize that the um but the point is is that get out of the way let me do it yeah there you go get yourself some credits for rescuing me uh the uh because I'm being treated unfairly by the gods of Technology that's right it's it's yes it's so unfair yeah so uh so anyway the point is is that the honest cost benefit alteration let go if you don't if you won't buy it for 15 how about 10 okay that's what that is now there's another strategy which is deceptive alteration of the cost benefit analysis so in other words if I can't sell it to you at the price that I want to sell to you and I can't cry to get you to do it and I can't threaten you into doing it then I'll tell you that it's a that I'll give you the deal that I think that you'll take and then I'll reneg on it later that's so so deception winds up being a major option in human interaction and it's a it's a massive uh feature in human nature so uh it so anyway that these are the things that are involved so when you're on the other side of a relationship that you can sniff is exploitative and you can tell because you're not happy about being in it and you're avoiding it and it's it's the cause of a lot of emotional um uh you know poor investment in outcomes so then we want to get out of it and so we get out of it any way we can and we recognize along the way that we're going to be getting these kinds of uh pitches thrown at us it's basically they're like a major league pitcher and there's four pitches they can throw anger they can throw tears they can throw honest renegotiation or they can throw deceptive uh renegotiation those are the four things they're throwing and the truth is if we've already pitched them on an honest renegotiation and they've balked at it and felt like it's unfair then we know when they come back with whatever they're coming back with or lying okay we know that they're actually going to deceive us so the truth of the matter is is if they're too difficult to deal with and we can't get on this renegotiation that the thing to do is get the hell out the uh my it's kind of weird to be sitting three quarters the way through my life not knowing now what I know and and understanding that what a waste of time uh to be in relationships that are in any way lousy and exploitative it's uh sometimes you're not sure you have to let them prove themselves out but that's basically what's happening is you're just Gathering evidence on on what the ultimate CV is and when it's lousy for goodness sakes don't don't throw a bunch of time behind it you know I've thrown years behind mediocre relationships I mean I never get that time back as is it a crisis in a disaster no okay it's not a crisis a disaster it just means that my life you know my total life experience is less than it would have been and I'm more determined in you know in the next 20 years to make sure that I don't do that and I won't so I'm I'm in I'm in effectively much more disagreeable now about such things than I was even 10 years ago because I recognize these I recognize more clearly these manipulative strategies I recognize my own innate desire to mine credits from other people's distress which is one of the reasons I'm a clinical psychologist kind of thing that I thought that I could do well and it's true that I can but it's also true that that personality characteristic uh leads me open to being exploited by pathetic behavior on the other side not anger anybody gets angry with me they're they're done instantly uh so that that won't fly with me but what will fly with me is pathetic you're not a female females are more beholden to anger because they're more physical risk rights yeah that's right yeah so that's that's how that works so this is uh your job in life is to defend yourself against exploitation yeah Harry Brown has a a phrase where you just uh you can tell what an impact this book had on me because I haven't read it in 40 years and yet oh wow it's been that long yeah and I can still quote or summarize very carefully many of the phrases which shows you what a beautifully integrated argument it is because it's essentially integrated around principles of freedom and non-exploitation and so the uh he says you know uh what a waste of time wearing yourself out trying to collect you know essentially feedback from other people it's like wow there it is why wear yourself out trying to collect what it is that you're due is from other people just go find someone with whom when you trade it's enough and they're happy to trade with you on the on the basis that seems very beneficial for you that's how to do it and uh and and underneath that is a deep recognition that people are highly individual and that their personalities are consistent because if you can get a Trader that feels like a really good trade and it continues to feel like a really good trade then it's likely to continue to feel like a really good trade when you have a Trader that feels like a pain in the ass and it's difficult and it's then you your you wind up giving a bunch and then you're getting bent out of shape because you're not getting that much back big light should go on this is a bad trade and it's always going to be a bad trip so get the hell out that's that's the that's the summation of this talk get the hell out yeah and we've talked about this fairly recently but I know we have new people coming in all the time so just to reiterate too that the the sort of Sucker Triad people need to be particularly sensitive to the the Lost leader dimension of any new exchange whether it's a new job or a new relationship or a new friendship that you've got the the disagreeable person on the other end relative to you they may not be you know super disagreeable but they if they are more disagreeable than you are and therefore likely to take advantage of your sucker Triad Miss you're not going to see it right away because they if somebody's trying to hire you they're selling you on what a great place it is and you're you're there gonna be their little star employee who gets to do whatever you want to do and it's all it's all going to be just you know cupcakes and roses for you um and and so you're gonna make a sort of false inference about the the trade that you're getting into in this relationship because they are they're the used car salesmen they're they're in used car salesman mode like oh no that that knocking noise that the engine makes that's that's it's supposed to do that it's nothing to worry about so you've got yeah so you've got to stay you've gotta you've gotta like as especially an agreeably uh tilted sucker Triad person you've got to build a little escape hatch into that whole Arrangement so you've got to be you've got to be okay with yourself for whatever set of reasons of giving this sort of a three-month trial and and you know negotiating that as part of the hiring paperwork that that you know if this is not looking like a good not looking like it looks today in three months and I'm starting to see a lot of signs of chiseling and disagreeableness from this boss um I think this is most common in work relationships but it's you know it's every type of relationship is susceptible to this then then give yourself that awareness and and the built-in out if you can because that's just gonna make it easier so you know probationary period the disagreeable boss probably been really happy about that like you know not having to give you benefits especially earlier can can kind of just wait for you to get the full sense of the job so because they are going to oversell they're going to oversell their agreeableness they're going to oversell um how how much freedom and autonomy you're going to have yeah this is just tracking by the way the connivingness of males and casualmetic strategy yeah very similar yes and it's exactly the same thing so it's uh it's just uh confusing and and deceiving about the actual cost benefit um in order to lure you into a potentially costly relationship for you standard standard and and quite frankly the more uh the more agreeable the male the less likely it is that they're going to try to do that not that they wouldn't because it's partially instinctual uh significantly instinctual that that uh the more disagreeable the mail the more the more as far as they're concerned it's totally fair and they can they can not be past conscious manipulation where they already know you don't qualify okay and so that's uh that that and they can absolutely be in used car salesman mood mode behind that so uh once again the notion is uh Escape hatches Trying to minimize your investment up front Etc 10K dates just had somebody that was six weeks in and and just starting to get wobbly in the knees and about to get you know knocked over and and just held out actually called me and there was a weekend coming up and I said okay one more weekend okay one more weekend we would we withhold well that was the weekend all hell broke was and it wasn't because of withholding bunch of [ __ ] came to life it was really bad okay and there's there's a reason why they're uh the individual but now had had breaks on this thing is because there was just some some things that weren't quite lining up and then once we analyzed it in retrospect there was actually quite a few things that weren't lining up but there was an agreeable person sort of giving rope making excuses and I and uh it was interesting because it was week five I got the call and I said never make a big decision when a small decision will do what what's the rush if this is such a great idea it'll be a great idea three weeks from now let's just pull these jets for one more weekend that she was feeling the cognitive dissonance about you know not sure where things were and what this was all about one more weekend I won't tell you any details because it's obviously all private but one more weekend it all went to Major [ __ ] the guys totally disqualified okay but it took just one little bit more bit of information and then we're out so yeah this is all a big part of life uh the reason why we're taking a lot of time on this is not only listed a question but it's it's one of the great deep mosting questions of life because most of your happiness is dependent upon the quality of your relationships with a few individuals it's really about what are these traits like what do they feel like you know what is the sense of them and the biggest upside in your life is if you're in an exploitative situation to get the hell out of it okay that that is the you know if you're you're in any situation that's mediocre and could be significantly improved get out okay that so that and you know what that that's the biggest fundamental upside that most people have staring them in their face in their lives is the quality of the relationships and whether or not uh those represent anything that's a reasonable trade for them all right all right well one one two we're going at this rate we're doing two questions an hour so all right I like the uh the follow-up here Jessica's asking do other species besides humans use guilt to get what they want well my dogs do I mean Molly does you've met melee seems like she is she seems so yeah I think that there's no doubt that the dog obviously doesn't know what it's doing but it has been selected by Evolution to make to make emotional to make certain spaces yeah yeah Melody if Nellie's a master yes she's she's the queen um and then there was another uh follow-up oh I lost it here um Mary's saying to talk more about renegotiation as that third so so anger tears honest renegotiation deceptive renegotiation she's she's wondering more about good honest renegotiation and what that looks like yeah looks like experiments yeah in other words uh the people let's suppose somebody said to me okay okay uh we're gonna make a deal that if y'all if you will you know do the yard uh every week then I will do your laundry okay and so I for and they say and this is how we're going to set this up now for the next you know 20 years it's like well now wait a minute I'm not so sure it's that hard to do my laundry I think it's pretty damn easy to do my laundry so I I think doing my laundry is a 15-minute job and me doing the yard out there is two hours so I'm not so sure that works for me well you like to do the art yeah I do but still it's feeling like that's unfair so I'm resisting it okay but if you said to me why don't we run an experiment instead uh so that you you know to reduce the complexity of your life I will take care of your laundry you take care of the yard let's see how this goes the next couple of months see if we like that trade okay I'm totally willing to do that so that's why honesty negotiation comes with the notion that we are in fact likely to renegotiate it the the plan here in negotiating a lot of things with people that are report to us is that we're actually trying to play against the house the um between us there is some theoretic theoretical Optimum about how it is that we trade on things so Jen for example has massively more patience and knowledge about technological crap useless shitty completely accepted poorly run software that these Barons try to shove down my throat [Laughter] if I ever meet one of these guys in a dark alley you know I'm not very tough but they got something coming to him I'll pick up a shovel okay it is is that there would be very useful trades like uh maybe Jen uh needs a phone call to to to ditch about South something was financially unfair fine I'm pretty good at that okay so uh yeah and so as a result there is there's there's an Optimum trade relationship between us over about a bunch of iterative processes that would go on in life that would actually optimize it so that we could theoretically get to the point where if I got one percent better off she would get one percent worse off Okay so we've effectively got to the point where you can't improve it that by the way in in evolutionary theory is known as uh is a a evolutionarily stable strategy whether it's a strategy that cannot be improved so when we begin to renegotiate the only reason we're renegotiating is we're pretty sure we're not at an ESS we have not hit an optimal strategy so we think that if I give you this and you give me that that we're going to improve okay but we don't know for sure and we want to test it so the the the the honest renegotiation uh between people has to do with the fact that it we we're running experiments attempting to try to improve this the trade relation and uh and very often you can and so that's uh you might not uh but it's worth a try but you you will not be willing to make some of these uh experiments if you feel like you're going to get locked in so that important component of renegotiation is the notion that we are running trials yeah and and I would say limited by the personalities involved so the follow-up question kind of gets out though she's saying can a sucker try out female crystal clear in this way with a high disagreeable male no I don't think so like not successfully not not without I I think there are a lot of situations under which just know because her her sucker triadness is just too easily manipulated if it's a completely unfair equilibrium and he is going if the if if it's skewed in just such a way that he's not negotiating in good faith and she's a pushover it's it's screwed it's just not gonna happen so the only thing to do there is to introduce some kind of mediator to introduce a third party to to kind of try to keep him negotiating in good faith so he's not completely incentivized to manipulate and take advantage of your Good Will in the negotiation um so that's going to be a constraint on any of these Dynamics like if you're like whoever's on the agreeable side if you you're not so agreeable that you're not going to ask for what you're you know you're not going to take way less than what you're actually trying to negotiate for and that the disagreeable member of the negotiation is not going to push for way more than they're being asked to give so there's there's a lot of fragility there yep yeah brother and Cheryl yeah yeah I was thinking about them yeah Larry will always out negotiate Cheryl sure yeah yeah they're a long time actually quite happily married couple but but when there's conflict uh Cheryl is going to get defeated in that negotiation yeah and uh that's just how it is yeah and then she boils over in frustration four quarts four to six months later and this crisis as the as the exploited party finally finds themselves at their end of the Rope because they've been out negotiated it's like well what did you think you were getting producer and used car salesman [Laughter] yes yeah yeah yeah the this is this is the plight of the the sort of you know the flip side of the sucker Triad it makes you a very attractive trading partner like lots of people are going to want to hire you and be your friend and date you because you are you have these really desirable personality characteristics so there's a there's a you know Silver Lining to this thing but it exposes you to this particular type of vulnerability um and so it's just about learning what that looks like and and recognizing it early and often in your relationships and adjusting accordingly as you can so I want to say something else in in my quite considerable experience in human life um and that is that one of the most amazing things to observe is very agreeable Pleasant people that that literally by the dice of fate they either wound up with a disagreeable exploitative person at which point they don't get out because it's they're at equilibrium of 80 20 and 2080 and they just wind up getting chiseled and and put it putting up with this and just you know on on bowing to it for the rest of their life or once in a while they meet someone completely reasonable okay and you'll you'll find a highly agreeable person with a moderately Ripple person and they have this fabulous relationship with basically almost no complex and it's like you know the conflicts that I then see are between them and some third party that's exploiting somebody uh in the relationship it's like okay now now we uh we as a team have to play against the uh the outside party if it's a problem the Mother-in-law the boss the church Deacon whatever it is okay but the couple themselves are walking hand in hand down the beach sunset without any conflicts between them I have seen that and I've recognized that that when that's happening and then I see the other where I see the effectively highly agreeable people are like carbon atoms they hook up with anything okay and so it's like by chance you get hooked up with you know a a disagreeable and it's like only hooks up with an agreeable at least long term what's that who only hooks up with agreeables in a sustainable survey so disagreeable occasionally we'll hook up with other disagreeables but it's it it explodes in fiery shrapnel pretty quickly right exactly so yeah I thought very often about really sweet people who are who are with disagreeable people and I I hear the tortured so you know story of the last 25 years and it's like oh my god do you realize how close you were to actually having had a completely different life experience the uh you know this is your personality isn't changeable but your life experience can be dramatically different uh depending upon these uh essentially his social apology and uh and so you know there are a very agreeable Pleasant responsible people that have lived pretty rugged emotional lives as a result of the chance factors that got them together were the disagreeable pain in the ass and such is life like I have one right in my eyesight right now and it's a it's a young man he's uh he's he's in it with the with the shrew and he's not gonna get out it's long long story this is not a client uh and so it was a client believe me I would be plotting every strategy to to assist him but in this case it's kind of like too bad it's like oh man I I'm I'm watching 50 years being decided right in front of my own eyes and it's like what are you gonna do the uh and oh well that means that that life experience instead of being a seven or eight uh you know IE 70th 80th percentile life experience that that it should be um instead it's going to be a 35th percentile lifestyle experience so what's going to go that's how that one's gonna go down almost certainly ah all right we'll see you in on who this is later Jack I'm I'm running through the options and like I'm ruling them out on various Dimensions very close to home yeah okay so maybe I'm right about my first hypothesis interesting interesting all right well we'll we'll discuss in a breakout session all right um so this this is a completely different question but I think a pretty quick one um so uh organization is saying the name of recommended book slash books to help in getting away from Twitter social media I feel more and more that I'm wasting my life and have no reason to be on there so yeah I mean I have a few of these on my website under the resources tab um but the the main one that comes to mind is Jaren Lanier's um I think it's 12 reasons it might be 10 reasons to quit your social media accounts right now um that's that's the the Magnum that's that's the Opus that's the that's the real gonna tell you the whole story of what's going on and really Empower you to do it um particularly the the most evil ones uh if you haven't seen the documentary the social dilemma you can start there too that that'll rile you up and put the fear of God in your you to get you started um the the center for Humane technology that has a website has a lot of Publications out they um that's run by Tristan Harris who's sort of the force behind that documentary that's a really good resource too so there are lots of others but that if you start with those then that will kind of open up that whole world to you but um yeah there there are many reasons both for your own reclaiming your time and energy from The Addictive process of these things um and also uh stepping out of being part of this machine that is undermining Democratic norms and you know destroying civilization so on on both of those on both of those Dimensions it's a really good idea to limit your use of social media particularly certain types of social media um the Lanier's book was the main reason I left Google so um I still have YouTube I still use Google for certain things I still have Google Calendar because it's the only thing that talks to my my scheduling system but in general I've completely stepped away from using Google both as a browser and for its various Suite of services because it's just so destructive in these ways so um it's it's worth it to me to pay 10 or 15 month bucks a month for for super secure private email that is not being mined for data about me and what to more effectively sell me so so yep lots of lots of options I don't know if Doug has anything else to add to that well now you're going to teach me about that uh the thing is is that I understand I have very little of this in my existence uh my my attitude towards these things would be if it's if it's a necessary integral part of your business life that's one thing um but that's a different motivation and a different different reason but if you're getting caught up in a swirl of pseudo-esteem processes uh you are absolutely wasting your life the uh and and the solutions shut it all off and just walk away the uh and get you get get back in touch with you know uh a more concrete reasonable reality go out and freaking you know pick the aphids off the roses and then smell the roses you know do do something productive rather than worrying about what other people think or trying to get them to think the way you think that's a that's a big waste of time you know at the end of this life you want to look back you know when you're 80 years old and you're going to look back through 40 now and like I spent 40 years staring at a screen paying attention to what other people are thinking doing and worrying about that and worrying about what they think of me all these people that I'm never going to need never going to see never going to have any trade processes worth what a total waste of time it's one thing if you're on a dating app and you're trying to you know find romance that's right no problem if you're trying to buy a grand piano fine but there's all kinds of uses for the internet but pseudo-esteem processes are a black hole of life okay so that is a uh as as Jen has pointed out and become increasingly concerned about uh that that they're essentially what they're going through is a similar process uh to what the food industry went through in the last hundred years food industry got absolutely ingenious uh at figuring out your neurochemistry all the way down to how to package things where to put it on the Shelf how to advertise it and then obviously the biochemistry of how to make food so enticing that you're going to do things so they're going to undermine your health and your happiness that that that's the pleasure track that so they it took a hundred years of experimentation you know we only had chocolate chip cookies starting like 1900 or something so pretty much everything that you see today that you take for granted as just food was invented and perfected in the last hundred years so then we have the pleasure trap that basically nobody will get out of and it's like wow it's pretty expensive I mean is it catastrophic well it depends you know it depends on what your life looks like if you're 52 and you're wheezing going up some stairs and you're 100 pounds overweight and you have no you know you're lonely and you have no chance for any romantic process and haven't had for the last 30 years then yeah it's been pretty damn catastrophic so the pleasure that's that's counting out alcohol cigarettes and all every other addictive process that goes on so the the physical manifestation of the pleasure trap has been pretty damn uh expensive for Humanity the at the same time and once again it has with it this extraordinary promise I.E people are being fed finally for the first time they could process foods and keep it in warehouses and it's fresh enough and it doesn't kill people to put BHA and BHT in there and preserve it it's like wow things have changed in a lot of ways for the better but when boy what a devil edged sword and mostly ultimately in so many ways for the worse the same thing is now happening with essentially Information Technology it's not the newspaper like literally 15 years ago one of the pleasures of my life was to wake up in the morning go outside pick up the Sacramento Bee in the morning sunshine and sit down and open that thing up and read the sports page and look at a few other things I really enjoyed that process that was that was a very reasonable organic process that was taking place now I can't even imagine there's no doing that there is no Sacramento view I don't even think they print it uh they might but I don't I've never I can't I've never seen a uh a newsstand anymore they're gone like a a PayPal okay so what is it now staring at screens watch out because that's Interactive okay when I pick up the Sacramento Bee it's not interactive they're not mining my personality and then selling me my own biases and then you know causing me Monster Nation and upset no it's not it's very much a different process but this is the you know this now creates a firestorm of an addictive informational uh process that's similar to the food process they are perfecting it by the hour and getting better and better at figuring out how to suck down the time of your life just as they got you to uh they've figured out how to get you to suck down their food same thing so uh anyway beware the right move is to is to shut it down yeah yeah we talked about this too um uh last week on hot blocks when I talked about the digital minimalism book and um sort of the the one of the one of the things that has helped me is to think about the you know the your nervous system is always going to come back with oh I can't I need Twitter because that's how I stay current with what's happening and and of course this is this huge evolutionary trap where we we have this we want to be fresh on the news we want to know if the barbarians are coming so we can organize everybody and get out of town um and so we feel at this disadvantage if we're not on the absolute Cutting Edge of what's going on I mean I was raised by journalists who you know it's a scoop Factor um so there's huge status with it but there's also this this tremendous need to to just you feel like you're you don't want to be left out you don't want to be left behind um and so digital minimalism helped me sort of think about that a little more honestly and strategically so what kind of information am I actually getting from scrolling Twitter mindlessly that I couldn't get from half an hour designated looking at certain online magazines that I trust that curate this information so the same things that everybody's posting every day are the links from these things like what if I just went and looked at those things you know first first order instead of taking that extra step to see what people are saying about it because that's really what becomes addictive is like oh I can't decide what I think about this until I know what my sort of my group of influencers think like what does Jeffrey Miller think about that article in the Atlantic like until I know that and this isn't a conscious process but I've watched this happen with myself um I watched it happen when I turned off I have a I have a extension on my browser that like automatically turns off comments anywhere that comments exist so that when I first installed that extension and I went on YouTube I caught myself before even watching a video on YouTube I was looking at the comments because I was looking for like what do people say about it like to sort of prime me before I even watch the content to decide what I thought about it and it was is incredible to watch that happen in myself and I only noticed it because I took away the stimulus I took away the comments and that's all social media is is it's it's uh it's consolidating this group think around you know certain certain ways of interpreting the world and okay I'm gonna I'm gonna position myself on what team I'm on because the cool kids are saying this and and I'm gonna not take it totally as gospel I'm gonna put my own little spin on it and it's just this really toxic process so um so digital minimalism was the way to for me to think okay I can I can use much less time and a much more effective way um he's actually building this argument on things that Thoreau was writing about with his personal economy when he was writing Walden um and so the the idea that I'm somehow networking or that I'm getting information like can't I do those things much more efficiently and in a much more pleasant manner in much less time that leaves me time to go pick aphids off of rose bushes gently to relocate them on so grass blades of grass and to get you know like this week I was sort of attacked by a harbor seal while paddle boarding these life should be made of so um not not scrolling Twitter Twitter's a nightmare particular nightmare yeah shut up it's that is what the extension is called I highly recommend it oh and the browser people are talking about browsers um the the most privacy minded one that I know of is DuckDuckGo um that one is you know explicitly not tracking your movements across across browsers I'm not sure about the other ones um and how privacy minded they are there are even more privacy minded ones there are all kinds of extensions ad blockers that you can use it will break a lot of websites if you do this to if you have like I do sort of privacy minded browsers I use Brave which is this you know built to be very privacy oriented um and it just automatically breaks a lot of websites that are tracking you so that's eye-opening too um but yeah there's lots to say on this I can send people other resources yeah all right one more one more uh yeah Diana had this question I prefer to this is again totally departing from our from our usual programming I prefer to date more than one man at a time until I know that I really want to give the relationship a try but sometimes a man wants me to only date him even though we've only met once or twice what do you think and how do I handle this thanks it's trying to lock you down because he's overrewarded very simple yeah so yeah you're uh anybody who's sort of dating more than one percent at a time and would have people that they would be considering and that it's that easy for them to have multiple considerations it's probably a pretty attractive person and so it's not surprising that the guy on the other side is is wanting this you know suddenly he finds himself playing uh as far as he can tell he's playing parabon strategy all the way so right so he wants you to uh to get exclusive immediately and by God he's willing to uh you know come right up front with it like a real honest you know no game plan that's what that sounds like so uh yeah uh my my I you know my attitude is is uh well this all gets gets filtered through her personality but uh but but the notion is um is sort of thing we'll just we're just getting to know each other we'll just you know let's just see how it goes and uh I wouldn't give anybody any reassurance you can just deal with the anxiety yeah one or two dates is really unreasonable especially if he's being pushy about it you know like it's if he raises the issue in a in a sort of reasonable non-confrontational way then you just reasonably respond back and say well I'm not quite ready to commit to that like let's give it a let's give it a month or so and revisit this topic you know just totally push it out into the future if he's being pushy and shitty about it that disqualifies him in itself like that that raises red flags for me that he's hiding something that he's actually much more costly than you know he's got you know I don't know some some who knows what kind of skeletons in the closet and he is eager he is he is over rewarded for reasons that are not immediately clear right it's very very concerning so um that's not always going to be the case but I think if it's if it's not the case he's he's not going to be really pushy and manipulative about it if if he is that's gonna that's enough for me to just back up on that on the merits of that alone because you you that is contrary to everything that you want to be investigating at that stage of the relationship he wants to get close you don't want to get near him yeah yeah but it is it's it's it's it's flagging yeah there's there's something that he wants to the a level of commitment uh in place before you discover the real cost of the relationship so I've been in that situation and to you know go back to the the sucker Triad conversation I mean that's a particular trap that the suckers Among Us have to look out for so they're gonna feel like oh well he really wants to be be exclusive and I don't want to disappoint him and I wouldn't want him to be mad and you know I think he's pretty cool and so it's very hard to stay in a position of power in that kind of situation yeah never make a big decision when a small decision will do yeah if it's such a great idea it'll be a great idea a month from now okay yeah that's that's always my favorite I tell clients that line all the time or six months from now or or anything else like there's yeah get get that feeling of urgency that if you've got a feeling of urgency about any decision it's it's there's gonna there's more likely to be a mistake going on yes um and so the the longer you can reasonably wait whether it's I have this feeling of urgency that I need to order some nachos right now if you're dealing with the pleasure trap like right now or if I don't do it now I'm gonna miss the opportunity forever or I need to have a drink right now or I need to smoke a cigarette right now like this is this is sort of the circuitry going on that's trying to um get you to do something that is actually probably not in your long-term best interests and and contrary to goals that you've set for yourself so I think anything that you feel really kind of jagged about just wait wait a day for me sleep on send it's wet Revenge Revenge yeah well that's why we came up with sleep on send like don't push send on that email like sleep on it if it's a good idea today it'll be a good idea tomorrow the the jab will hit just as hard amazing how humbling and weird this is because when I've you know I've had times when uh there's people that have people close to me and I really wanted to get it back yeah I wanted I wanted there to be some pretty severe prices and and I'm determined in the moment that this is kind of how it's going to go down but three months from now it's it's five percent the meditation is five percent and so it's super useful to know that that um that that's how you're built you're built with a tremendous sense of urgency and as Jen is saying if there's if there's a bunch of dissonance and a sense of urgency that's a real good time to slow it down that's in fact the best decision okay there are times you know when the Mongol horde is coming and you have to jump one way off over the fence or not we just keep picking on those Mongols we're going to get canceled for our mongolphobia oh is this uh derivative by gingiscon combat or whatever right the uh but yeah these uh but yeah there are times when life will push you into a corner and you have to make a big decision based on on what is clearly um a disturbingly deficient information to be clear about what you're doing but usually it doesn't usually there is some price to be paid from slowing the process down in this case we might slightly upset some guy who is would be a really good guy oh if he's so overwarded he's so excited he's so happy and he's Mr Right you think he's leaving because we cool his Jets a little bit right any chance no no not a chance let me tell you how I would read that I would read that as wow there's no serious flies on you or you wouldn't be so confident that that you could afford to pass me for a little while and you're not convinced enough of my strengths because so many of my strengths are hidden and so as a result uh all I really need is more time to sell you on my strengths as opposed to foreclosing you your opportunities right now so that when you find out about my weakness is later you're already locked in with some oxytocin right totally totally upside down situation Mr Wright is in no rush he might fumble that kind of uh might come out of his mouth but believe me you can defend yourself against that and he will he will sit tight and and do it right I think every every time I've been in that situation where it was like really pushy um and it just immediately I'm like hey like you don't even know me dude like why you want an exclusive relationship after date number two like you don't you don't know me um and not that that can't be I mean you can certainly meet you know somebody where there's this great Dynamic and and both parties are totally on board that's a separate kind of thing but the situation where you feel a little hesitant but he's being really he's like no no no no no you're this is this is it every single time that has happened to me with my hesitancy it has been a short road to him getting real shitty and real nasty and threatening and you know death threats and I mean I had I had one guy go from zero to sixty from you know I want to commit I I you're the love of my life let's get let's get married at the courthouse today just sending me messages on the dating app like I hope you die I hope you get AIDS I hope your whole family gets like like this is how quickly they can turn you know and so that has happened to me a number of times and the correlation is just very strong where if you're getting shitty you're getting if you're getting pushy in a certain way it's it's going to turn into shitty abusive toxic nastiness real quick so so don't feel bad about getting out of there oh yeah yep all good yep yeah Warren I know that was that was and and of course I report this was okay Cupid probably you know I don't know 10 15 years ago and they did nothing about it you know reporting that comment like I did I don't think I even got I got like the little Auto acknowledgment that was it so it's dangerous out there yeah yep yep toxic masculinity what are you gonna do [Music] Henry or or or the poop behind you who's behind you ah it's a good day to look out the window all right we'll have a good one we'll see you next time great to see you all right you too have a good one everybody see you all soon
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