Pensive Paddy

#14 Why Self Help Won’t Change Your Life: Tom Hurlstone

• Episode 14

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Do certain ‘self-help influencers’ ignore the fact that we are human?

Will embracing boredom help you realize what you really want from life?

Meet Tom, a YouTuber in the self-help space who wouldn’t describe himself as a self-help influencer. We discuss how to actually move the needle in your life without falling into the self-help pit of despair.

Tom shares his insights on the importance of making a conscious decision to change your life and explores strategies for overcoming ruts through the power of meditation, journaling, and identity transformation (disclaimer: you won’t find out how to change your identity).

We also explore the challenges of dopamine addiction, the value of habit formation, and how embracing boredom can fuel creativity and help clarify your true purpose. Tom critiques the NoFap movement, suggesting that self-improvement should focus on achieving happiness and life satisfaction holistically.

We finally conclude with the concept of Flâneur, where engaging in activities without a fixed purpose can be a source of joy and personal growth.

If you’re seeking personal growth (without the BS), this video will inspire and guide you on your journey toward self-discovery and lasting transformation.

Toms Socials:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomHurls

My Socials:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pensivepaddy/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@pensivepaddy/featured

first step always is you actually have to make a conscious decision that, do know what, I want to actually change. What would you say to someone who says that they cannot meditate? Experiencing mental health problems taught me really that happiness is definitely something you can achieve. can't stay the same because if you stay the same you're still in the same circumstance, in same environment. For a lot of people they want to become a certain person. They want to have certain value. But the truth is if you're very introspective and you look back over your own life There have been times throughout your life where you've embodied those different characteristics. Yeah, the first one that I've done before, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe yeah, well I've had offers for them before but I saw the other ones that you did and I liked Well, I like the other video. So I thought I'd jump on this one So there you go No worries. you go. Thank you, brother. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So as a super quick, give people context listening. Would you describe yourself as a self-help influencer? I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about this more, but I don't really like the words self-help or influencer, to be honest. kind of like. I just sort of make videos on things that I'm interested in and those happen to be topics on self-help, I guess. So it's kind of a somewhere in between. Yeah. I know what you mean. I feel you with self-help. It's the cringe. Right. Yeah. Well, it makes me cringe. I don't probably shouldn't be cringe, but I get your point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think you've some very tasteful videos, Tom. Yeah. I'm not just saying that. as a kind of blind introduction. I watched a few of your videos and like you put like, they're very like tastefully and artistically done, almost soothing. Right, thank you man. Yeah, so, and yeah, I've run down a few different like self-help rabbit holes over through the years and I think like a lot of different self-help influencers, I know I don't like that term, but a lot of guys who post content on my... personal development and growth. Like I think everyone has their own audience. And I think personally, think some people are some, some YouTubers are influencers like a bit extreme, but I really think your, your content is very balanced and I think the overall message is just living like a balanced, well-lived life. Would you agree? Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think that is generally what I think. What I like to do with my videos is push forward a more kind of realistic approach for people, an approach that says, yeah, like you are going to fuck up a lot and that's okay. Got you and definitely think flopping off the spot can be a good thing. Right, exactly. Yeah, because you have to try things. But yeah, it's definitely not a YouTube channel on how to be a Chad or... And you post a lot about like in-scrolling and like how it's a waste of time and it's like the biggest addiction of our generation. Is it even possible to like... of getting rid of doomscrolling because like I've tried numerous times and I definitely reduced it, but like I think we're too integrated with our thoughts to prevent it fully. mean, even personally, I've probably not gone for more than about a week without scrolling on anything at all, but I do believe that there is, there's definitely a future for it. think you need to in a way reshape your entire life around it. You need to have a whole lifestyle change. where you have enough things to fill the gap with. Cause I find this with a lot of addictions is people who try and stop scrolling, for example, or try and quit porn is another big one. They try and stop and they remove that thing from their life, but then they don't put anything back in its place. And so like a crucial part, I think of beating scrolling is just having like a complete lifestyle change where you reincorporate so many new things into your life to fill that void that doom scrolling is left. Did you go through a period then where you were like super dopamine addicted? I feel like these days it's hard not to do that so I definitely did have periods especially when I was younger maybe 15, 16 where I was yeah constantly scrolling watching YouTube all day I'd come home from school I remember this at like four o'clock and I'd just watch YouTube until 10 so there's definitely been periods of my life where I've been like heavily addicted to dopamine Yeah, me too. And I think YouTube is killer. I tell myself it's not as bad because some of the content is educational. Yeah, I mean, to a point I agree with that though. think like, yeah, I think YouTube is, is, is better in a way than these other platforms. mean, firstly, so I use a couple of, Chrome extensions. One is called unhooked and the other one's called hide YouTube thumbnails. So in that way, I've kind of like made my YouTube page. very intentional. So really I can only ever see videos on there that are from people I've either subscribed to or if I specifically search for them. So in that way I've kind of made a YouTube feed that isn't just pushing content at me. I actually have to go out and seek what I want to watch. And so I think YouTube is better in that regard at least. Did you ever go on social media detox? Yeah. I mean, I mean, I'll be honest, I've got Instagram downloaded now on my phone, but like, there've definitely been times where I stopped using it. But I always found it and it goes back to the being very strict on self-improvement thing. What I found was, is there's not really much point because at the end of the day, Instagram is useful, right? I like talking to my friends on there. I like seeing what they post. I like posting things and I'm not really going to get away from that. So I think what's better to do is to try and manage your use of these things rather than just saying very black and white, right? Instagram is bad. Let's just get rid of it and delete my whole account. I deleted it for a year in university. And yeah, I went kind of through a transitionary phase in university, like parodying a lot. then like going to like house party raves and all that stuff. And then I completely doing a kind of 180 on that. and then during that phase, I like deleted Instagram for a year. Just like for mental health reasons, really. I found it really beneficial at the time because like I really needed it at that stage. Yeah. Then similar to you, I went back to it because people were like, I DM'd you on Instagram. And like, you just miss out, you do miss out on social views and things. Right. I did notice when I went back on it, like it was such a fresh pair of eyes and like I saw people posting and it seemed so alien to me after being off for a while, people captioning their life and kind of being a marketing agency for personal life. Right. Which we all do. No, for sure. mean, like you say, it is true. Like when I went back to Instagram as well, that is a lot of what I saw is kind of like, yeah, people marketing their lives, but in a way I feel like coming back to it and having time away from it sort of gives you the perspective that, that you sort of need to manage that usage. Yeah, I agree. I don't think you can live without it really. And for me, it's just about managing it and then realizing that I will probably get addicted to it in the near future. I'll get mildly addicted to but just be aware of that. I couldn't talk across my mind when I was watching your videos. I was like, how did you get so interested in the field of self-improvement? It's kind of like a, in a way, like there's two aspects to it. So firstly, I mean, when I was quite young, maybe 16, 17, I struggled quite a lot with depression and mental health. And I think weirdly enough for a lot of people actually, having these kinds of issues really kind of opens you up to having a will to be happy. But I think an unfortunate truth is that a lot of people today, They kind of see happiness as unattainable thing maybe or something that can't really be changed. But experiencing mental health, experiencing mental health problems taught me really that happiness is definitely something you can achieve and something that I should work towards. And so I got more deeply into self improvement, into philosophy. Do you think if you like struggle with your mental health or like if you go through a rough patch where you felt like in despair or whatever, do you think that like that kind of teaches you to be on your own? Because at end of the day, you have to like get yourself out of that situation. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that's one of the big things that I actually got from it because when I was going through those problems with my mental health. I didn't really have much of a very in real life support network. Like my parents weren't very supportive of anything or like friends, for example. Maybe that was just me not wanting to speak to them more, but I think for sure it developed a lot of like self reliance in me, which I think is very important for people. Cause another thing, another issue that I see today is a lot of people are very reliant on external things for their happiness, especially other people. think one of the, one of the big maybe addictions even of our generation is like people addicted to other people as their sole source of happiness. But going through something and having that kind of adversity really teaches you in a way to be very self-reliant. And so now I can say that I would be happy even if I was alone in a room somewhere for a long period of time, which is quite a freeing feeling in a way. Yeah, very much so. And people are addicted to other people. I think that's very true. And like, it's almost like a crutch. I remember I had like low self-esteem in school when I was like 17, 18. And then there's definitely periods in university, but it does make you change because you have to change really. You can't stay the same because if you stay the same, you'll still be in the same circumstance, the same environment. So. Right. For sure. Yeah. And I think people do change and Like if you're addicted to someone else, you're projecting like your self image or your values or your work on someone else. And yeah, it's kind of like a fearful way to live. So you talk about ruts on your YouTube channel, like getting into a rut, which I think everyone goes through maybe like that, you know, once or I think I go through like a lot, like once or twice a year, maybe for a few weeks or whatever. For whatever reasons, people slip into these bad habits. like, you know, let's kind of get into like a native mindset, a low, a low volume. How would you recommend for someone to get out of that kind of vibration or? Right. think the first step which is kind of so crucial is actually deciding that you want to because I feel like a lot of people and a lot of the time with these, just by nature because often they're very like dopaminergic, these rots, you spend a lot of time doing all of these things. They're quite hard to kind of break free from that. So the first step always is you actually have to make a conscious decision that, you know what, I want to actually change my life and get myself back on track and then Another thing that I'd say is, so the way that I always start off with getting out of a rut, and I don't know where I found this method or if it's semi-original or what, but it's, I call it like the input-output method. So I'll literally just write down on a piece of paper, input at the top and output, and then basically I'll just go through and write down everything that I'm currently inputting into my life. So whatever it is at the time, social media, pornography, drugs, drinking, smoking, whatever. And I just think just that, just being able to list out all these bad things is, is very powerful in the way that you can actually like come to terms with them. You can target specifically the areas that you need to break free from. And from there, once you can kind of cross off all the things that you know, give you a bad output, I poor mental health, you can structure your life in a way that retains the good inputs. And then you can also ask yourself, okay, what other things make me feel good? I think that's another crucial step. asking what have I done in the past when I felt happy? Meditating, reading, taking cold showers, exercising and adding those back into the input column. And then this goes on to wider habit formation but then essentially you need to start doing all the good inputs and taking out the bad inputs, which sounds obvious and it is obvious but and it is hard as well but that essentially then comes down to in a way being disciplined but also being quite flexible with your approach to like reincorporating these positive habits in your life. And then I guess by nature, if you're inputting good things and you're not inputting bad things, you'll very quickly get out of that state of a rot. Yeah. I really like that. I want to try that next time I get into a rot. Sure. But what do you meditate often? Yeah. So I meditate between one and three times a day, depending on And they'll all be of different lengths. So in the morning I do a 13 minute meditation, one, three, and then in the evenings, if I'm feeling or like before a workout or after a workout, I'll often do like a little five minute meditation before bed. If my mind's racing a lot, I'll do another short five, 10 minute meditation. So I kind of use meditation as, a tool where and when I need it during the day, rather than just a habit that I need to tick off once a day. I say on average now I meditate 20 minutes a day just because I get a lot of benefits from it. But say if someone asked you why do you meditate or should I meditate? What would you say to them? The things that I notice is just a sense of greater calmness and presence. The kind of state that when I go through my day, I'm less impacted by emotions and external events. I'm less drawn to certain things and I can more easily just rationally choose what I want to do during the day. I just think being less reactive. situations. mean, like, it's so unbelievably beneficial. Even in like social encounters, you just have that extra kind of second, just like think of what you would say. What would you say to someone who says that they cannot meditate? Yeah, so I get this. Yeah, no, I get this a lot. It's a lot of the time in my discord, I talk to people on there and they talk to me about how they can't meditate because their mind wanders a lot or it's constantly racing or whenever they sit down, they just always are getting distracted. this is the point of meditation and it's what so many people in a way fail to realize because people think meditation is about being completely focused on your breathing for 15 minutes. But if you were completely focused on your breathing for 15 minutes you'd have almost no benefits from the meditation. All the neuroplasticity that occurs, all of the increased density of your gray matter, all of the benefits that you get from actually meditating happen because you have to repeatedly refocus your brain. So in a way If you're someone who struggles a lot with meditation, if you're someone who sits down and your mind keeps wandering, then you're actually the perfect person to be meditating and you're going to see the most effects from it. Yeah, I always say that like, if you try to sit down for five minutes and you said to yourself, I can't meditate because you're thinking, but if you realize that you're thinking at least once, then that's meditation. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because like a few of my friends are curious and I try to explain it to them that like you're more present and you're more calm and you don't act as much and Then they respond, is it just like an exercise then like tink less? I'm kind of like, it's a bit more than that really. I do an app called like Sam Harris. Right. By a called Sam Harris called Waking Up. And it kind of leads into like Buddhism, like, know, your mind made sense. And what are we for not tinking? You what are we for not identifying the thought? Yeah. But Shravan's very abstract, a of people. Yeah. I mean, you've touched on something there though, as well, which is important, I think. because I think there are definitely two different forms of, or at least motivations around meditation, and I try and do both of them. So there's a kind of health-focused meditation, which is your motivation is very specifically to increase your attention span, to be calmer, to have more presence. But then like you say, there is definitely a form of meditation that is more deeply spiritual, which has all of its own benefits as well, and these may be a benefits that takes you longer to realize, but they're definitely there. And if anything, that spiritual form of meditation is probably, I don't know if I could say help me more, but I can kind of feel the effects of that form of meditation more so than purely meditating with a motivation for improving different health aspects. You said like the spiritual side of meditation. How would you try to describe that? So for me, yeah, right. So the difference I'd say is you're coming at it with some sort of philosophical idea behind it. So for me that was Buddhism, it was specifically Zen Buddhism. And you kind of come at it with this idea that what you're really trying to do through this meditation is actually achieve a set goal within this period of however long you're going to meditate for. And that goal in a way is to remove the barrier that you have between ego and like the universe. So there's this idea in Buddhism called dualism, which is that essentially a lot of people see the world in a very dualistic sense. They have I and them. But what spiritual meditation tries to do, or at least Zen meditation, is to remove that barrier and teach you through experience that you're actually part of the universe, not separate from it. And in many ways that's taught me so much about calmness, about compassion, but also it's given me the outlook on life that... like in a way a lot of things don't really matter that much. I'm just one part of like a cosmic whole and so If something goes wrong, if I've just finished editing a two hour video and I delete the file by mistake, it's not really the end of the world. These things can kind of be overcome. And I think in that way, the more spiritual form of meditations help me better rationalize certain emotions and thoughts. Non-duality is interesting. And again, it's something that I've read a bit about, but I find it hard to describe. So you said it's just oneness with the universe that... Yeah. So there's this... In Zen Buddhism there are these things called cones, it's called K-O-A-N. I mean the most famous one is if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it does it make a sound? But they're kind of these questions that a Buddhist practitioner would ask themselves while they were meditating and there's a book called The Gateless Gate which has I think 47 cones in them and you slowly work your way through each meditation. And each time you have a cone, so the first cone is does a dog have Buddha nature? Which sounds like nothing but You slowly, while you meditate, you come to different answers and it sort of represents a transition through the phases of like dualistic thought. Because at first you think, yeah, sure, the dog has a Buddha nature because that's what I've been taught by Buddhism. And then you move on to ask the question, well, does the dog really even exist? Are you in any way separate from the dog? And coming to that realization that in reality, you and the dog are just the same thing is... is I guess well the idea behind like a non-dualistic approach. you and the dog are the same thing and you and the dog are just forms of consciousness reflecting the universe is that the theory? I mean the Zembertist idea is that it's not even a form of consciousness and I can't remember the exact words behind it it's like awareness not consciousness but it's the idea that I mean if you look at it on a very scientific level you and the dog are made up of exactly the same things you're both made up of the same base blocks and atoms And so what is really the difference except for the fact that you perceive there to be a difference? And yeah, that's basically it. You talk about changing identity. How did meditation help you change your identity? So my view on identity essentially is that like for a lot of people, they want to become a certain person. They want to have certain values. They want to have certain strengths in their life. But the truth is, if you're very introspective and you look back over your own life, there have been times throughout your life where you've embodied those different characteristics. So say you want to be a warm person, a kind person, a happy person. There have been times in your life where you've embodied each one of those things. So changing your identity isn't really about bringing new things into your life, but essentially remembering to do these values that you already have within you. And so meditation is a powerful tool in that because of the presence it gives you, because it actually lets you be rational and in a way remember to do these things. And if you can remember to do them enough, they become part of your like ingrained identity. So you said that it's not about becoming a completely different person. It's just like you want to be more confident. You want to be more outgoing, more disciplined, identifying that you already have those traits and just embodying that more. Everyone was confident at one point. Exactly. So take confidence as an example. A lot of people who believe that they're very shy. will have probably had a time in their life where they interacted with someone and they had, well, a good time doing it. And so it's kind of the idea that, if you've done it once, it is something that you are capable of. It's just not something that you're letting yourself do in a way. And so I think it's important to kind of reshift identity as trying to bring out things from your personality rather than trying to add things into it. Did you feel that you needed to change? Identity. Did you ever go under a big shift in your personality or your views? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm still going through that. This is the other thing with identity is that you can, you can want to change your identity, but you're never going to reach that point. Because, well, for one reason, this is an imaginary thing. The person that you want to be is so imaginary that you're never going to actually attain that level of perfection ever. And so identity shift is a constant process and something that I'm still doing now of kind of like incorporating things that, or bringing out things that are like things that I want to embody, things that I want to do. And slowly, slowly those things become more dominant than the things that you don't value in yourself. And so your identity starts to slowly progress. But the idea that you'll ever change your identity, I don't think is true. It's just, it's an unattainable goal. can say it slowly, slowly, slowly. think that's like very important with self improvement. Just just to realize that it's like super slow. That has led me to like failure, like certain projects or personal goals is that obviously you have to be ambitious, but if you expect too much in the short term and too much change, you can set yourself up to fail. If your morning routine is like half 10 or if you don't have a morning routine, then all of sudden you say like, only have six hours for the next two, months. It's so true. I think it's very important that you give yourself the time to do it. Because like you say, mean, so many people have these ideas with habit formation that they'll go on like a streak. People love the word streak and they'll go on like a 10 day meditation streak. And then on the 11th day, they'll have gone out the night before, got really pissed, woken up hungover and they won't meditate. And so what they do is they say, well, I fucked it. Those 10 days beforehand mean absolutely nothing. And so on day 12, they don't meditate either. But it's just, this is just the constant problem with self-improvement. think is this like this rigidity to it? Because in reality, if you meditate for 10 days and on the 11th day, you don't great. You've meditated for 10 out of the past 11 days. But we see that as a failure now because of, because of self-improvement. As humans, we all have needs. We need to socialize and like, they're going to forget things. Okay, we're not robots. What's your framework for habits? incorporating your habits or how do you manage that? Okay so my framework for habit formation is I will pick six habits that I want to incorporate. Some form of training, so physical exercise, some act of love during your day, so talking to your parents, talking to a stranger on the street, some purposeful action, so working towards a purpose or a goal that you have, learning something through a podcast, through reading, through any of these things, an act of suffering, which often people don't quite understand, can be something as small as taking a cold shower or an ice bath or sleeping on the floor or saying that you're not gonna eat a certain food that you really want. And then finally breathing, which is just meditation. But crucially what you need to do is you take these six habits that you want to incorporate and then you tell yourself that it's okay that I only do four of them each day. And that works because isn't rigid exactly because you don't need to tick off all six because if I had to tick off all six of them and one day I really didn't feel like going to the gym or one day I didn't leave my house and so I couldn't perform an act of love or something then it's very difficult to... you feel bad for not ticking that off and so the next day you're less likely to compete the other five of them so it's very important that you only make yourself do say four out of the six habits that you said about to achieve and then also I think it's important to have habit categories. So instead of necessarily saying, look, I want to meditate for 30 minutes every day and set that as your habit, just having a broader category of like breathe, for example, is the one that I use. But it's the idea that, okay, so maybe that will be a five minute meditation. Maybe that will be going on a walk without headphones. Maybe that will be who knows what else, but some other aspects that that kind of achieves the same goal, but isn't necessarily a specific and rigid habit to do. Do you track, do you track your habits? Because like, I believe that tracking is really important. Like I track my gym work and stuff, it's a fine line between like tracking being very beneficial for progress and also like spending too much time on like tracking it and you know, over planning a week and like taking off your meditation every night. For sure. So I think the gym's different, I track the weights that I lift just because I have to. But in terms of general tracking, so I've actually got it right here, this wasn't planned, but that's the kind of whiteboard that I use and I've basically just listed each day along the top and then the habits that I kind of want to do during that day. And it's not necessarily that I tick them off or that I'm counting to get streaks, but just the act of having a list of the different things that I want to do each day is quite useful. because I can just sit there each morning, look at it and say, okay, today I need to do this, this, this, this, this. And I don't tick them off, but it's just a useful kind of reminder that they're things that I have to do that day. Cool. It's nice to have that visual binder also. Right. That is something, but that's something I also recommend to people is just what probably one of like the top three investments that are made in self-improvement was buying a whiteboard. Like it's so important just having something that you can always see that is big and that you can actually like just interact with. Cause it's different on your phone. Cause you have to tap into an app when you want to check something. And different when you have something that's just ever present sat there in the corner of your room staring at you. Do you journal? Yeah. Yeah. I journal every day. That's the, one of the other things that I'd say are in the kind of top three self-improvement things. So journaling I think is also so important. Just, I mean, so the way that I journal is it's a kind of like stream of consciousness approach. So I'll literally just sit down with a pen with my journal open and just write about anything. about what I'm doing that day, about the fact that I need to go and eat food in 20 minutes, about the fact that I'm meeting someone tomorrow. I'll just write about anything. And it often doesn't matter. It doesn't really mean very much, but I think just being able to write down the thoughts that you have in your head really helps you to rationalize them. So something I say is that it bridges the gap between the subconscious and the conscious, which is this idea that you have a lot of shit going on in the back of your head, but writing it down really lets you visualize and rationalize that approach. And so it's a very powerful tool to journal. that's the I've never done anything like bullet journaling or these kind of very rigid journaling approaches. Yeah, I'm the same. just like every morning I just like without the laptop, I have like an ocean page for it. I just like, literally, these actions, just like garbage comes out of my head. Yeah. I read back on it sometimes. It's actually like so funny. Listen, man. I'm like, is that even me? Yeah. But it is me, but I guess I actually find it funny listening to Just so random. But I do think it is interesting to realise, well, that's what I'm thinking. And other times, sometimes I do journal a lot. When I'm like, I'm ever upset or overwhelmed, like sometimes I journal at night. And it's very beneficial to go back and read how it felt. Sure. Because I knew I going to have that Yeah, awareness, if you get overwhelmed or anxiety, have that small little awareness in the back or anything. It's just another phase that... Like the last time it happened, because you hadn't tried. Yeah, that's so true. Because I mean, like I've got like five years worth of journals and every so often I'll go back and read over them and just like look through them and be like, fucking hell, wow, I was really this caught up about this girl. And then now it seems like, mate, that was ages ago. I've grown so much since then. And that actually gives you a great sense of perspective because now when I sit there and actually do write in my journal. It's like, well, six months from now, I'm going to look back at this page that I've written and it's not really going to matter that much. Yeah. I definitely recommend it to anyone. I read a book called, the artists way by Julia Cameron. You actually, you told me you read that. I Have you read the artists way by Julia Cameron? I have not. That might've been someone else. A different, a different guest. Right. She talks about, just journaling, like jotting down your thoughts in the morning specifically for activity purposes and how just getting the way that I kind of like, that on your head, like that kind of bitchy talk. It's like me just giving out my head, my life, like my circumstances. And just to get that out of your system, she says that opens you up to creativity, which I think it does. Like I think that it helps me also creatively. I've never really like, Maybe wrongly so, but I've never specifically set times to do journaling because I find like for me journaling, I always like it needs to be something that I want to do. I don't think I could force myself to write in a journal, but I think definitely it's so useful just to kind of open your brain in that way. I mean, similar to meditation. think another massive benefit that meditation has is that it really just opens your brain up and lets a lot of spontaneous thoughts come in that wouldn't otherwise be able to. The problem with today's society is that I think we have so much input constantly, so much stimulation. I mean, I just made a video and I said something very similar, but we're constantly stimulated. mean, these days people are like running with music playing, they shower with music playing, they're falling asleep to TV shows, they're watching YouTube when they eat food. We're constantly stimulated. There is almost never a time period in our lives where it's just us. and our brains and we can just sit there and actually think about things. And so it's just crucial. Yeah. And journaling, I'm sure helps a lot with that. Yeah. The first time I think that I went through a long period of like no stimulation was last year when I was backpacking in South America and I went to Guatemala and I just like, whatever reason, kind of found it really easy to be like super productive and I was getting up like six in the morning. Right. Hiking most mornings and I was doing a lot of exercise and I was having a really good time. like a lot of like hiking on my own stuff, like just complete solitude, zero stimulation. And like I intended on doing it more backpack, but I kept like meeting people traveling and then I was teaching English for a while and I kind of like get caught up like just socializing and stuff. Obviously nothing wrong with that, but I knew kind of I wanted that, I period of like complete attachment. And it was the first time in life where I really felt just like grounded, a lot less like anxiety. I actually, well, that's actually not true. Before that, I was teaching English in a small village in Columbia. I was living in like this rural house in a small village with like just three other teachers. And I clearly like cows in a field in Columbia. It was like very remote. And we had such a simple life. We all used to just live together in a house, walk in the school. And then it's like get food in town and just come home in evening at five o'clock. And that would be our life. I was like, we didn't have like mobile activity, like where we were, had to go into town and stuff. And we were all just saying like how like much happier we were and like how easy life was just kind of being the official. Yeah. And then was when I really realized like how stimulated we actually are, like how stressed we are. Is he being busy? Yeah, definitely. mean, I think. It's a problem because it's hard to capture that feeling inside of a life that that that isn't a detached life like you're saying, like traveling. It's hard to capture that inside of the life that you're actually living. I mean some things that I've tried to do... so one idea that I have is like, is making things analog, because a lot of us, like you were saying before, we're journaling actually, is like writing a journal entry for example on your computer is something that could so easily be turned into like an analog system. You could write it down with a pen and paper And if you can slowly make these changes in your life, you can slowly start to kind of replace things that you're using your phone with, with something else. I think you can slowly kind of capture that essence of simplicity that you're describing, which comes so naturally when you're doing something like traveling, but it's so difficult to achieve here. You mentioned the term intermittent portal on the channel. What is intermittent portal? So it goes back to this idea of like constant stimulation. And it's basically the idea that says We need to be bored and boredom is a really important thing in our lives. Boredom is great, like we just said, for creativity, it's great for introspection, but it's also crucial for motivation. If you're kind of never bored, if you're constantly stimulated, there's not much impetus to actually go and do something that's difficult. And so I find that often when I'm very bored and I'm just sort of lying there, I find it really easy just to go and do some work because at that point it seems really interesting. So the idea behind intermittent boredom... is setting aside periods of your day where you say, okay, I'm not going to have any form of input in this time. I'm going to intentionally be bored for a while and just fully feel it and let myself think and let my mind wander and let myself choose what I actually want to do. And so I think it's important to do either maybe in the morning when you wake up from like 6 AM till midday, can set aside a time during there where you just say, okay, I'm not going to use any form of like digital technology. just having those periods where you don't have input is so important. Yeah, but like just constantly stimulated like you're just like you're just so tense. think I can feel my body. And like when I came back from backpacking after teaching in Columbia for a while and then like in Guatemala, I was like doing a lot of hiking and yeah, I was like wasn't on my phone at all and I wasn't drinking. I really like just realized that I want to be creative. I didn't have that realization before traveling. I wasn't very fulfilled with my job and that was kind of the reason why I went backpacking. And I felt a bit like stuck and I just came back with this like kind of realization that I wanted to be creative. That was the drive that I was missing that I wanted to express myself. That all came from Warner. Yeah. Yeah. It was like before that I was very not aligned with like what I really wanted to do and why I felt so like unfulfilled. In a way it goes back to the adversity thing. I think it's important to go through periods of your life where maybe you're not particularly happy so that you can come to realize that you want something different. think Sartre has this idea and he talks about like identity and he says that like people identify a lot with the jobs that they do and they're a waiter, for example. I was a waiter for the past 12 months. And if you try too hard to be a waiter and if you enjoy your job too much in a weird way, you kind of, you lose the possibility to kind of want a different identity. You lose the possibility of wanting something else. so think yeah boredom and to a point even adversity and uncomfortability are great for finding your purpose. Do you think that everyone should pursue finding their purpose? Yeah, I do, but I don't think a purpose needs to be what it's become inside of like the self-improvement sphere, but it does help to know what you want to do. It gives you a lot of direction. And so the sooner you can come to that realization in many ways, the better, even though it goes against the traditional advice of you've got ages, you're still very young. But I think purpose is on the one hand can change. So a purpose that I had... my purpose used to be something very different to what it is now, and once you kind of achieve that layer of purpose you then move on to another one, and so purpose shifts. But also purpose doesn't need to be a very like a tenable thing, and a lot of the time now we have these ideas that a purpose should be something like... a lot of the time business, for some reason nowadays business has become purpose, and people say yeah my purpose is becoming a YouTuber. I think a purpose can be something different. For example, One of my biggest purposes in life is just happiness and it's just achieving happiness. And so for me, a good life and like doing a good thing during my day is just doing things that work towards that purpose, which is happiness, for example. I was always like, so uncertain as to what I want to do. I worked in IT as like a branch manager. I was always like so uncertain about my purpose. I was like, don't know if I'll ever find it. And then I didn't even know what I really wanted, you know, like what I actually want in life, said happiness. think that's something that's kind of important to like think about. But for me, I think it's just peace. Like every day, just be, not all the time, but like just be able to come back to like that feeling of peace, calmness. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think I probably encompass that somewhere in my idea of happiness. think we're probably saying the same thing, but yeah, I think, yeah, happiness, tranquility, they're definitely things that I think should be goals. But I think as well, it's kind of a freeing thing to have a goal like that. Because like, so you talk about doing jobs that you don't enjoy, but like, In a way, these don't really need to be problematic things. Like I said, there's been times in my life where I've worked in bars, worked in restaurants... It's... It's not a bad thing. If you can still achieve things outside of that, you can still follow purposes in other regards. You don't need to necessarily... I don't know, like, dislike the job that you currently do. And I think having a purpose like something like happiness, something that's more ephemeral, lets you come to terms with the fact that, yeah, well... Maybe I'm not going to be working in a job that I absolutely love, but that's okay because I'm still doing a lot of other things that I like. So your goal is happiness. What do you think would bring you happiness? It's hard to say really. mean... There's a loop around. Yeah, it's multiple things. A running loop. Yeah. But I think... So the framework that I had, it's... If you remember back to those six things that I mentioned before, train, love, purpose, learn, suffer and breathe, I think for me, happiness is encapsulated in those six. If you have all of those six things pretty much locked down in your life, for me, is very hard not to be happy. Of course, once your basic needs are met, if you have food, shelter, these things, having those six as the kind of extra step, I think at that point you can live a very happy life. Do ever get imposter syndrome like posting on YouTube? You ever get outside and you put stuff out there? No, not really. Yeah. I don't know. I think to be honest, it's like it's one of those things because it's hard to say because my channel still isn't like particularly big. Like I've never been recognized by anyone on the street or anything. So I don't really feel like an imposter because I don't really think that it's that big yet in a way. Okay, okay. You haven't got there. Maybe when I've got a few more subscribers you can ask me the question again. NoFap is like a big thing that's in like the male self-proven space. So is NoFap like, is that just not masturbating or is that not watching porn? Because I get confused. Everyone's got a different definition of it. I think it's, in a way it's important to set your own goal. I mean for me, when I was really on NoFap... We can talk about no fat more. My view on it is essentially, think it's a bit spurious, but the idea was that I sure have sex, but don't masturbate. Don't watch porn was always the definition that I used. not like definitely not watching porn. think porn is like the worst thing ever. Sure. yeah, like, then regardless of like fapping or like masturbating, I think that like less I masturbate, it's actually like better for my mood. And sometimes it's like ever feel like shit. No I agree. I mean the reason why I say like no fap is bullshit is not because it doesn't work. I feel way better when I don't fap. But the reason why I say it's bullshit is because it's a replacement. Because a lot of people, especially young people, think that their entire lives are ruined because they watch porn and that if they just fix this one thing their life will be fine again. And so they struggle and struggle for years and years. have no fap and a 90 day streak is their purpose in life. And they fail to realize that a, your life sucks because you're living a shit life, not because you watch porn and B you're never going to be able to quit porn anyway, until you start living a good life. So that's basically why I think no fap is bollocks in self-improvement. Like if you do massively at the end of the world, really. Right. That's what I say. always something funny, I think is like. What I like to say to all these kids that come to me, there's a dude out there who has a wank twice a day and makes more money than you, is happier than you and gets more girls than you. So this isn't the problem. Your problem in life is a lot of other things other than the fact that you're watching porn. Yeah, 100%. And I think it's kind of going back to like unrealistic expectations in the self-help industry. think. Right. Yeah, there is a lot of expectations. That's why I kind of like brought up the start. Like there's a few guys who I like watch, like I used to watch a bit like Hamza and there's another guy like Jack Hopkins. And like I don't have anything against them personally. Like I definitely start to listen to like they're a bit like red pillage maybe. But yeah, anyway, I'm not going into that. But I do think that. Sometimes their expectations are on this. Do you know Chris Williamson? He's like a podcaster. I've heard of him. I've probably watched one or two of his videos, but never properly gotten into them. He actually had Hamza on his podcast. That was an interesting conversation. And it was kind of like a to and fro about Hamza and like the content he puts out. like, basically it was kind of saying that like he doesn't abide by a lot of the stuff that's out there. That was kind of general gist, and Chris Williamson was saying that, shouldn't be disgenuous, et cetera, et cetera. And Hanso was saying that if he doesn't say certain things with authority, people will listen to him. And he was kind of explaining why maybe some of his content doesn't align with his own views personally. It was an interesting conversation, but that's kind of where I get the context a bit, that sometimes self-help, YouTube, people can be misled, and that it makes people a bit extreme. That is true, I mean, but I recognise that in myself, because like a lot of the videos that I make, like I'm not... I think they very much so paint the picture of someone who has everything together. But I think in a way that it's not really a bad thing because for a lot of people that watch the channel, and at least the way that I kind of felt it myself when I would watch self-improvement channels, is that it's nice to have someone to look up to, someone to idealise, someone to ask yourself, okay what would they do in this situation? And so not necessarily that I don't do the things that I say in my videos because I do do them, but the kind of... I think I portray quite a perfect image of myself and somewhat consciously because I want to create a role model even though in many ways I probably am not. I would disagree. I think you are a role model and like, think that like you've set up this YouTube page and like your videos are very good and like you obviously they're very well done, noticeably well done. So just give yourself a bit of credit. You talked about Flanur in one of your videos. Maybe I'm mispronouncing that. Right. What is that? So it's, I think in its very literal sense, it's a French concept that means walking without a destination. So it's this idea that you just walk around your city. But I think it speaks to a general mindset that we have these days, which is the idea that everything needs to have a purpose. Everything that we do needs to have some purpose behind it. And that's fueled largely by self-improvement videos. People want to meditate so that they can improve their focus. People want to read so that they can have a better attention span. People want to take cold showers because they want to achieve something from them. But no one anymore does things just for the sake of doing them. And that's essentially what fléonore means. And what I, what I try and say is just do things for the sake of doing them. Read a book because you like the story, play the guitar because you like the music behind it. You don't need to have a purpose behind everything. And often having a purpose behind things restricts you because you don't do certain things because you don't believe they're productive or purposeful. So it's like not finding control too much, you think. Up to a point, but also, mean, it's just like, in a way, like fun, having fun, doing things because you enjoy them is a habit you should be incorporating into yourself improvement. is one of the things you should be ticking off every day. It's just saying today, have I done something that I did just for the sake of doing it? And I mean, that's yeah, just try and do some aspect of Flaunor every day. It's all true. When I did my like in pence, it was like for a month, smoke mode. Where I was like no distractions, no party and just goals. And my one takeaway from that period was that I just need to have fun. I have needs as a person. like if ever now, like if ever this week for example, like I'm meeting up with buddies and maybe it's like 11 o'clock and if the guy's not gone, I'm gonna go like get a beer or like. like, I go to a and get my tea or coffee? I'm like, I should go to Maybe I should go to bed because I've worked the morning and stuff too. But I'm always like to myself, you know what? If you're going to enjoy yourself, just do it. Just do it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that's something I think. I mean, like, I go out with my friends maybe two, three days a week and I do all of these things that aren't necessarily self-improvement, right? We go out drinking, we stay up late. And then you've got some people who will do these things and then in the back of their heads, they'll have Hamza sat there calling them like a soy boy for doing it or a Jeffrey or whatever he says. But it's not, it's just not true. And you need to have these aspects of fun. Cause like I say, sure, I go out drinking two, three times a week, but I still meditate. still make YouTube videos. still study at uni. I'm still doing all this productive stuff. And so going out with my friends doesn't undercut those positive things that I'm doing in my life. Yeah, so true man. And like, it is very true that your hand is like self-loathing in the back of your head. Like, as you said, are like, the little hands are then going go and whistle away. Right, exactly. Yeah, it's just, it's like, it is self-loathing though, isn't it? Like, kind of like hating a bit of yourself. hating a natural part of yourself? Just the urge to socialise and have fun? It's just like, being a person. Right, exactly. I think things are a lot more competitive for us, for our generation. It's like very competitive being a guy now, not like social media. We all compare ourselves and like social media and like there's more opportunities I feel like for jobs but I almost feel that it makes the landscape a lot more competitive than that. Sure. There's a lot of information about like dating now, that like people are like having sex and that social media has kind of screwed the dating market a bit. The reason why I think it's more of a problem now is because nowadays people all compete in the same ballpucks. Back in the day, for example now, everyone, whether you're an ugly guy or the best looking guy in the world, you've got a Tinder account and so you're competing against the best of the best. But if you're just some dude who approaches a girl on the street and tells her she's cute and asks her for her number... then you have the same chance as you did 70 years ago in that same regard. It's just people nowadays are competing. They are competing, but the question really shouldn't be, why is life so hard now? Everything's a competition. It should be, well, why am I competing in the same game as all these people? Why can't I just step back and actually do different things with my life, set a different competition for myself? Tony, in Ireland, when I lived in Ireland, I left back in 2020 and... Yeah, I left in 2020. That was like four years ago. I think like approaching a girl on the street, like just saying, how are you? Whatever. I would never have done that at home. Right. I would have just gone out so cringe. I would have felt like very judged. I think I've lived in the mall now for four years. But again, I do it a bit now. It's a lot more natural to me. like, I don't know, maybe it's an Irish thing or not. Irish people can be kind of reserved maybe. like, you'd be like kind of clenched. It's just like, a being at home thing. feel like whenever you're in a place where you don't know, you have the ability to reinvent yourself. And so you go out and you're more extroverted. Whereas when you're at home, there's always in the back of your head, but what if this person sees me do it? That would be so embarrassing. Which is, guess one thing you need to just generally people need to try and get out of their heads, but it's, think that's the case. Yeah. It's all in your head. That's the funny thing. You ever do believe in like manifestation and like. Sometimes when I journal, I try writing prompts and I write down my goals for the year, my top 10 goals for the year every morning. And I do find it very good. And it's good just like kind of rely on yourself, what you want. then like sometimes you do change as well. Sometimes I realize I don't actually want something, but just writing it down each day, just like I find it beneficial. Do you believe in like manifestation and like, do you think that you can rewire your subconscious mind. Yeah, to an extent. I mean, I don't write my goals down every day, but again, on that same whiteboard, I've got all my goals written on the bottom of it. So I'll have a look over at them. I agree with, I don't agree that manifestation occurs in some spiritual sense, but I do agree that when you set your mind to something, if I have on my whiteboard, for example, that I want to, what's something, I want to get to 70 kilograms of weight, then it's going to be in my head and I'm going to be more likely to do a workout. I'm going to be more likely to eat more food. I'm going to be more likely to have an extra meal that day. And so I'll be more likely to achieve that goal just because it's constantly in the back of my mind. Gotcha. And what do you think about people who have literal manifestations and they say like they have like these mantras that they repeat themselves every day? Do you think that like reinforces your dialogue, your head or? Kind of like, do you mean like affirmations? Well, if you go on YouTube, like you type like affirmations, like people say, I am calm. It's just like sentences you'd say about yourself. I think it's kind of similar to what you saying earlier about having change where you write down what you like about yourself. I suppose it's reinforcing. It's your identity, I suppose. Sure. think, I mean, I'd say two things is number one, I'd be careful because There are certain things that you can tell yourself which aren't beneficial. For example, if you tell yourself you're smart, if you tell yourself you're confident, there's been studies done on children and on development that show that if you tell a child or praise someone, generally speaking, for an aspect of their character, it actually works counter-intuitively and makes them less likely to do that. it's an interesting thing. If you're going to do these kinds of things, I'd say focus on telling yourself. I've worked hard, done F, I put good effort in today. These things, not necessarily parts of your identity, like I am confident, I am smart, I am calm. These can have quite harmful effects. But also it's the question of like, You have to then act on these things because affirmations can be, they can be a safety blanket in a way, because you can have someone that says, I am calm, I am calm. But what would be better is for them to spend 10 minutes meditating. And unless you're doing both of those things, I think often people just do the affirmations and then forget to actually do the work, especially with those very identity focused affirmations. I don't like strong leaves in affirmations but meditation definitely like meditation I've talked about for days but what I like about when I write down like my goals every day, let's say I don't know if you call that an affirmation but how it helps me is that like if I write down like one of them is like I want to be calm and magnetic and like I want to be disciplined. Whatever. I want to be a workforce is what I say. like, obviously periods are lazy, whatever. And I don't mind that. if I have to write it down every day and there's a moment where I should be disciplined and I'm not disciplined, then I just tell myself like, you're such an idiot for like getting up every morning and writing in your notebook. I'm not doing it. And then it kind of like, have this like dialogue. I'm like, yeah, fair enough. It's like another bit of resistance that makes me do the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that's powerful. It's kind of like an accountability thing. Yeah. If you met your 18 year old self, what would you say to them? I don't know, pretty much just like keep doing what you're doing, you're getting there. Like right now you might not like yourself, right now you might feel like you're doing all this shit and not making much progress and you're not seeing results but just keep going, stop stressing the small stuff and believe that this is progress. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the show Tom, I really enjoy talking to you and I learn a lot also so I'm very excited to see how rest of your 20s fare. Right, no worries man, thank you very much for having me, it was good chatting to you. Yeah, pleasure man. Goodbye brother.