The Consumer Default

Society is architecturally designed to make consumption effortless and creation friction-heavy. Scrolling is a reflex; building requires a decision. The first act of a creator mindset is choosing to interrupt that default.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:17

Number 7 for the expectations elevation.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

We are back. There it is. Peace.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

How are we doing? We come from the past.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

To bring you a message from the future?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Sure. Sure. It's Eric.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

It's Keith.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

And if you're listening to this, I am currently in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

He wishes. We are here in Leonardo, New Jersey. But this is Above Expectations Podcast, so you know we come with the fire anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Um first off, as per usual, start with our gratitude for the week.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Alright. Uh my gratitude is support and family, right? Uh oftentimes we do not know how to disclose how we want to be supported. And what I've learned how to do is to make sure that I know how to communicate my needs. And it's made my relationship so much better because people don't gotta be confused about what I want or what I'm expecting or my standards. So I appreciate uh my family for giving me the ear.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, you you s being in spending a lot of time here and seeing like your family come and help out, and it's very like moving. And it's it's very cool, and it you know, I can tell it took a lot of work to get to that point, you know, and it's just that's the way it should be. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Like, um what about your gratitude?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

My gratitude is to be open-minded that I am open-minded in new experiences. Um I've been trying new things and opening myself up to new things that have been uncomfortable at first.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Exposure therapy.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

And it's been um i it's cool. It's cool, and it's cool that I can walk around without judgment um for those things. Like if I find it strange or like who am I to call somebody's passion strange, you know what I mean? Um anyway, today's episode is called Being a Consumer versus a Creator. Gonna be talking heavy about social media today, huh?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Social media, society as a whole, even as our tight-knit units. Like, are we getting together to build things or we typically consuming and destroying things?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

We live in America, baby.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yeah, you guys know. In fact, get out there and buy something right now so you can prove that you're an American.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Consume, consume, consume.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

All right. Uh the first part we talk about is like the consumer default. It's just basic in our program that materialism goes part with America. I've left the country, my family's from Jamaica, and I've left the country a a good amount of times, and you can tell when a place is Americanized. That's an actual verb because of the clothing and because of the advertising. Eric, how have you seen the difference when you travel like abroad or as you travel the country, do you see a difference with the consumer mindset?

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Oh, everywhere. It's like almost um it's almost like like built to order. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? I guess you would say, yeah. Um because they know everywhere's different, so they kind of latch on to those differences. I mean, they they got it down to a science.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

It definitely is a science, right? It it's so natural for us to even have a phone in our pocket just so we can consume something. Because most of us aren't creating on our phones, we're usually going to look at someone else bringing something to our attention, right? The advertising used to be something that we didn't carry around. We had to drive around and you'd see it on a sign somewhere. Now advertising comes 100 miles per hour to us at our phone, and that's why scrolling feels like a reflex.

unknown 5:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

I'm surprised billboards are still a thing.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

What, right? Who's paying for this? Right, right. Like, who needs a fucking billboard anymore?

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Right. I definitely get that, right? And to start flipping that on its mind, we gotta be a creator, we have to start putting our phones down and go for social media breaks, right? Because it'll give your mind a some of course you're gonna be bored in the first place. Like it's it's it's not gonna you're not gonna jump to being a creative, but it'll you start to be able to sit in the silence and things will start coming to you and you'll be like, oh yeah, I should probably write that thing down when I get a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Something Keith tells me every week. Write it down, write it down.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

What was the last what was the last good idea you wrote down? Um I'm on his heels, don't worry, ladies and gentlemen. I'm on his heels. Make sure you guys write down it, if you guys had an idea right now, pause this and go write it down. Don't let it just disappear into nothing because then you'll never act upon it.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Oh, it was something I said, but I forget what it was. Oh, the mattress. Okay, the best support that you'll get in your life, the best support that you'll ever have in your life is your mattress.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Ding. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

That was an Eric Francelo original.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, you guys quote that. Alright. And why I stress uh creativity so much is it is tied intuitively to our mental health, right? If you can make creation part of your everyday life, I promise you, the feeling of overwhelmed would slowly start to disintegrate. Right? We started this podcast project, we just talked about it in January, and I can feel how my urge to want to have further discussions about things started to lessen, right? And that's part of the key, right? We want to take some of this stuff off of our mental plate. What have you felt is the difference since you started doing a podcast?

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Definitely I my I get more ideas throughout my throughout the week. I'm like, oh, that's uh I'll come up with like either a topic or something, you know, that we something that we can bring to the table, you know, whether it be new equipment or um, you know, the the whiteboard or just like just ideas I get through the week so I can bring them to you on Saturday and be like, yo, or you vice versa.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Um by the way, don't wait till Saturday. Share with me ideas all the time. I always want to talk about new ideas.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Right. You're you're you're absolutely right. But Keith is on me, man. He he is my number one fan in a way, you know, because he he helps everyone needs someone to basically bully them to unlock their fullest potential.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Yeah, I'm the I'm the playground bully, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

In the best way, best way possible.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

And I wonder if that came from me being bullied when we went to school. I was like, I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna create a different version of bullying.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Dude, you weren't bullied, you were tortured. Yeah, that was just fucking straight up torture. Like if that were to happen now, they'd have outcries about it. It would it'd be all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

But don't don't get it confused. I appreciate all of my experiences because it made me this version of myself, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be anyone else, right? And and and back to creation, right? If you guys are feeling anxious or depression, if you just start using your mind to create anything, agency will start to come, right? Where you can operate, where you get the feeling of that you can operate yourself, right? Because oftentimes we uh outsource our uh our confirmation, the internal confirmation, our identity to someone else external than us, and you can bring it back to you as soon as you start turning your thoughts and processing it into tactile and tangible things. You got this.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

That's like when I fiddle around with my guitar or something like that, and I I before I learned how to record a podcast, I learned how to hardwire my guitar into my ant or into my computer. And like immediately when I have an idea, I go and record it, just because I don't want to lose it.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Like a melody?

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Because you're the melody with yeah, and eventually, like I'm gonna hopefully use that, you know, or or somebody will. Hopefully, somebody does, you know, even if it's not me. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. Which brings us to the borrowed happiness, the dopamine issue. Um in my experience, and I think this happened a lot, was during the lockdowns, the COVID lockdowns, we were so we were getting paid to scroll. Um and of course, if you were trying to figure out what was going on in the world or where your next check was coming from, or you know, just like a bunch of stuff, I feel like social media companies took advantage of that. And that's when it really started to explode. Like this world. That's when they knew they had everyone at the palm of their hands.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

It's almost like it was planned.

unknown 10:46

Shh sh.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, because attention, of course, is gonna be the number one asset if people can't do anything. All right, so it w it was timely, I'll say. Timely, yeah, yeah. So we don't know too many conspiracy theories or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Um that being said, you're you're borrowing tomorrow's happiness. Yeah. And and eventually you gotta pay the piper. Yeah. Uh, it took in my experience, it took I'm still bouncing back from that shit. I I mean, I I truly am. I'm still and and a little ninety-five percent of the people that I talk to that like I bring this up to, and I'm like, you know, when people are like, hey, how are you doing, or how have you been? And I'm honest and I tell them, and I'm like, yeah, you know, I I was fucked up from that pandemic. Like, thank God you said something because I haven't felt right, you know, since since that happened. Um, but that net's neither here nor there. It it locked everyone down, everyone was glued to their phones, everybody's scrolling. You know, I had a problem with it now, still. I I can't tell you. It's gotten it significantly better. Uh, I had to buy a product that you is a QR code and you put it as a magnet and you scan the QR code and it breaks your phone.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Very smart. So you have to do it. Yeah, okay. I like that.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

And you time it, it's on a timer. So I I set it for X amount of day or X amount of time, and that's it. And then at night, that's when I can screw around.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

See, like in hindsight, I was it it was a actually a pleasure for me during COVID because I was healing for my second surgery, right? So I didn't I I couldn't even hold my phone up or sit in that posture for a long period of time. I had to do something to be active or I had to move around. It was almost a blessing. Yeah, yeah. Like I was writing my poetry book. I had to do something. So it I I always it when people tell me their experiences, like, man, people can just have a thousand different experiences to the same exact event.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Duality of a man, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

And we I I think one thing we need to hone on so you guys can really let it click. When you consume a lot, when you're watching a lot of TV, eating a lot of food, um and and not producing anything, you just don't feel good, right? I I haven't really met that person that feels like they're happy after doing that kind of activity, right? And that's because the dopamine isn't earned, right? You're getting it, but it's not earned for your your your biology. When you start creating things, that's where the difference comes into play. You know, like you step back and you get to see something you create, it gives you a fulfillment like no other. And as an artist, I I I really advocate for people to get out there and make anything. I don't care if it's a garden, I don't care if it's a paper airplane. Just just make some, let it fly.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

And so many people are so quick to say I'm not creative or I'm not a creator, I'm just not that a creative person. But if you cooked a meal today or you plan on cooking a meal tonight, you created something.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yes, you did.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

If you had a project for work and it was due on Friday, guess what? You created something. If you there's just so many outlets to create. If you brought somebody a smile today, you did it. You created a smile, you created some and you possibly, you know, saved that man's life. Who knows?

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, yeah. And I think it just shows how much we lowball our skills.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Yeah, yeah. It's it's just like human nature to it like default the default setting I noticed a lot is just make things no big deal. It's like, oh yeah, so what? Yeah, you know, I was supposed to do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Right. Kindness is just what we do. But yet so many of us bump into people that smooth just aren't kind. So if you're kind, you chose that today. Be proud of that, right? We can't think our way into being a creator. That's an action. Right? So take action and then you immediately just now you're a new person, you have a whole new identity. Right? And uh like Eric was saying, making someone to smile, making someone smile feels like a small act to you, but if you save somebody's life and they and you got to actually learn what happened, the the uh evidence of your action, I think it would put some more weight on it. So pretend in your mind, like I made someone smile today, I saved their life.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

I'm gonna let Keith take this one.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Right. My one of my favorite philosophies is conscious consumption, right? Because we're not saying that consuming things, eating food, not saying that that's bad, that's the enemy. What we're saying is when we do it without thinking. When I I've often asked people what do you eat for breakfast, and they'd be like, I don't even remember. I'm like, it's the same day, bro. Right? We gotta wake up when we're putting things inside of our body, when we're putting things inside of our ears, when we're putting when we're looking at things, because that's how they got us. That's how they got a whole generation of young men looking at porn, and then they go back outside and see women with regular bodies, and like, go, that's not good enough. That and that's why dating is so bad right now. I hear from the young kids outside, dating is terrible now. That's why food is so bad. People have eaten all this processed food, and then when I asked them, did you eat a piece of fruit? That's not sweet enough. How is watermelon not sweet enough? That's why I said, like, have you ate a mango before? I don't what water just isn't quenching enough. Can you add some red dye 40, please, to really make my taste buds absorb the water? Right? So with today, when you guys are moving through your day, before you eat anything, before you turn the music on, ask yourself, is this for my benefit or is this just for my desire?

SPEAKER_03 16:57

Love that. And now what's happening is we're losing as a society, we're losing that ability of creation because everyone's consuming. The majority is consuming, right? You look at uh figures, uh artists and political figures and cultural figures from the past and how what impact they had.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Whereas now not saying that these new like influenc I hate saying the word, the influencers, like I'm not saying they're not gonna leave an impact, but what kind of impact are they gonna leave?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Are they gonna be revolutionary?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Right. And at this point, it's just so it's so easy to do. So it's to the point where it's like, why not, why not try?

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Indeed, right? I I was st uh fumbling an idea around, right? I want to start establishing legacy. I'm already establishing legacy. I don't really care how much money I have, I don't care how much the cars or how big the house is. I want that the metric of my life is gonna be how many people I inspired, right? Because I I grew up reading people like Malcolm X and Fred Hampton, and these boys are dying before 45 years old. Fred Hampton they make it to his 30s, and and those are the kind of people the society wants to shut down because it's a political act to be a creator, right? Because you make a fuss. We make revolutions, we make a stand, right? So if you guys really feel like we're not getting our fair share, like we're they're taking taxes from us and they're not listening to us, what are you gonna do about it? Create something. I'm not saying you gotta burn down the building, but I'm gonna uh but I'm gonna say to at least start making a move towards whatever we could do to solve the problem. Don't just complain, because then you back to being a consumer. I really feel like this is exactly the kind of conversation we need to have. We didn't know what we're gonna do when we first started today's podcast. No, we didn't.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

Wow. You're right. And this is like turning into the best, in my opinion, the best. My this will probably be my favorite one that we've done.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, man, because society's trying to just fear us into shutting up.

unknown 19:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:44

I mean, what am I even talking about? Like, as a musician, right? Fucking 20, even 20 years ago, if you wanted to record a song, exactly, you had to go to a studio, spend a ton of money or a decent amount of money. And that was the only way to create that song. Now to distribute that song, you had to put in the work. You had to, and I I did it. I was in a band in high school or whatever. It was like a kind of a corny like joke band, but we went, we recorded, and we went into Red Bank and just handed out CDs, sold CDs for five dollars. We burned them all ourselves. Now all you have to do is you my recording equipment, my guitar, um, my guitar line cost me $11.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

That's simple.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

And on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Um turn your phone, put it, put your face on it, and press play, and people can listen to you from halfway across the globe. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

And just even putting this out is the the hardest part, is this.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah, because people are afraid to be seen. They don't want to be judged uh and then rejected for whatever they mistake or they're not good at it. But nobody cares about your mistakes. Like, I've put out content where I look back at it and I was like, oh man, I made a mistake there. And the same yet, people be like, man, I really needed this today.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

And you're gonna find one fan, one person's going to love it. Yeah, at least.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Yeah. So I I really like the what is required of us is to push our fears aside for a moment and to allow for exposure to reveal a version of ourselves that's been hiding. Right? Because you can make a major impact as long as you have visibility.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

And here's the kicker, right? When it comes to consuming um Like fitness content, right? We I am the number one offender of this in a lot of ways. Is I can consume it, I can watch it, but I have to do it. I actually have to mimic what I'm seeing on the screen. It's like when I buy a self-help book. I have to read the book. Like Amazon doesn't just drop off a solution to me.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Yeah, but I can just absorb it now, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

I can uh or in you know, as a recovering addict, I can't just sniff this and get immediate relief. I actually have to put in the work. I can't take my easier, softer way. I have to do something that's hard.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

Movement is the cre is the the metaphor for being a creator.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

And it's just something that I it's just something I'm probably always gonna be working on, you know, is the action part. But I think a lot of people suffer from that.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Or maybe they don't, maybe I'm just the only fucking bozo, but but I challenge him because I don't think that you're gonna suffer from it, right? Because as we continue to uh upgrade our mentality and upgrade our like upgrade from coping mechanism to actual healing, removing your identity allows for you to start letting go of coping mechanisms. Because you'll need coping mechanisms to make it because of the the narrative you have about yourself. Healing happens when you let go of coping mechanisms, and so that that's why like that's what the movement of revolution is. Right? I'm I'm we're gonna start something new, we're gonna revolve, we're coming back around again to ourselves. And movement, the way one treats their body, their actual physical body, is the one exact mirror on how they're gonna treat you in a relationship. So when you see people that disregard the one body that they have, what makes you think that they're gonna actually treat you at the highest regard? They don't know how to do it to themselves, and that's gonna that's gonna hurt some people. That's that don't feel that good. But that's a challenge for you guys. I'm not saying that you guys are uh under par or you don't have what it takes, I'm saying you do. That's why we have to start moving today. And we we to so as we start moving forward in this conversation, that brings us to the algorithm.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yeah, my I was just I I like I gotta say, I like spaced out a little bit towards the end of that because I was just thinking about like how insane my algorithm is. Like, dude, it it's just the most bizarre shit. Like, it's just mindless, dumb, and and like I typically nowadays it's a little more like quotey, uh inspirational, and stuff like that, but sometimes it's just like just insane stuff.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Like Facebook will put on the algorithm fights inside of 7-Eleven. I was like, what have I been watching that Facebook has offered this to me? This is my suggested reader. I need a map, you know. Yeah, like wait yeah, tell me what left I made to end up where I'm at right now.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

What the hell? And it they do the it's this is a real thing. If you're like a late night scroller, after about like two, three in the morning, like it gets dark. And like three in the morning, what time is this guy up? That's what I'm saying. I am telling you, it's it's a real thing. Like, some of the stuff that they end up doing or showing is completely just bizarre.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, and I I don't want to blame it on the algorithms and say it's their fault. Remember, we take part my fault, yeah. Like we take part in what they're showing us, right? The moment we see uh big old butt on the screen and stop for too long, they're like, we got them, we got them. We we know now, and let's let's not front as guys. I understand how we have like visual attraction, and that's why we have to be super mindful about the stuff that we're consuming on social media because it's so distracting when you open your phone and go to Instagram because you only open it to go search for the specific person, and then your first reel is some photoshopped beautiful fitness influence.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Or now it's AI, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

That's right, cutting a review.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

AI, people are AI. Yeah, we're a bunch of suckers.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Like we it's like when we went to the dentist and they were like, you know what, we're gonna give you a lollipop after your 14 cavities.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

You're right, right, exactly, exactly. Yeah, we're just they're they're just like ah, a new sucker's born every day.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yep. Take them out coming in, and man, I so what we're saying is decide how you're gonna feed your mind, decide what they're allowed to put in front of your face, right? We talked last week about the the case, the giant case that just went through against social media, and that's a great step, but I don't like we said, we don't want to put the blame on them. We now have power to the people, is what we used to say. So let's get the power back by being a creator, and that's the real revolution.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

You know how else you can get the power back? I heard you got an app.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

The live above app, right? Because down here in Consumerville, we don't get to do what we want, we don't get real freedom. So I created an app that's based around community support, uh dynamic movement, and building a stronger internal narrative so you can support others that you see and yourself to not only being a creator but being the best version of yourself. Right? If you guys want to join the app, it's uh liveabove.movement.so. That's l-i-v-abe dot mvt dot so.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Eventually we'll get a link for you somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Hopefully we'll see you there.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

And and it's free.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Indeed, right? It's free to join us. So let's not leave you without dropping a mantra. This week is Eric's. What you got for him?

SPEAKER_02 28:51

My mantra is faith over fear.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Believing in things unseen. Alright. I like that. I'm with that. I'm gonna say that today.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Faith over fear.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Alright, as you already know, we love you. And we're here to support you. We know you can do this.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

You're doing it. We're doing it. We're all doing it.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Ain't we? Alright, peace.