#10 Obsession

Carp talks about the nature of obsession, wrangling runaway thoughts, using AI hallucinations as an analogy for our own world building fantasies, and how to properly balance our experience with our thoughts. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello friends. This is Funnel Cake Brain. I am Carp. Let's get it going. So back in front of the mic. I'm excited because it's been a little bit getting caught up with life. It feels like it's been too long since I've been in front of this thing. So I'm pumped to get going today. And the topic that I am working on and that I've been obsessed with, it's been an undercurrent over the past couple weeks, actually. I've been trying to nail down how to work this thing out. And I think I've come to at least a pretty good organization of it. We'll see how it goes today, but it's something that has plagued me throughout my life. And dovetails a lot with addiction, but it's a different thing. And we find it in different areas of our life. But for me, it was there's a couple different places that this really uh shone through the most. Um, and that's obsession. Now, when I started looking into this, I go, wasn't there just a movie released pretty recently about obsession? So I looked into it, and I I am not one for horror movies, I don't like being scared. Uh, as an anxious person, naturally, I tend to stay away from shit that makes me feel even more anxious. So jump scares and spooky ghosts and all that stuff is not really my thing. Uh, but I did read the synopsis of it, and I think there were a lot of like critique, it's it's like a social commentary on a lot of different elements, I think bringing in ownership over other people and our relationship with AI, I think was one of the big ones. But the fact that it was even called Obsession was interesting, and then it kind of caught in you know the cultural attention to this movie because it was apparently very well made. I know I'm not planning on talking about the movie anyway, because I haven't seen it, and I think that's weird to be like, oh, I haven't seen it, but here I'm gonna talk about it. But basically, just recognizing this is something that's in the zeitgeist, that um it also was working its way into like one of these aspects in my addictive life, but just in the things that drive me crazy in life is this obsession. But obsession in times has taken the form of being oriented towards one particular thing, whether it be an outcome or a material possession, um, a state of being or substances. I mean, alcohol for me was an obsession when I didn't have it, but the obsession ran not as just getting back to the alcohol, but everything that I wanted alcohol to provide for me, and then it ultimately wasn't. And the obsession, I believe, stemmed from the fact that I was unwilling to accept reality as it existed. That I didn't want to get into a place where I created the conditions for the things that I wanted. I just wanted the things I wanted. And then, not liking the place I was in, my mind then took over and said, Let me do it. I'll build us a world where you get everything you want and will become obsessed with that outcome, and then you ultimately would become miserable. This is me talking to myself, by the way, but you're gonna become miserable and then you're gonna go back to drinking. So it was like this weird loop that fed itself and fed off itself, and uh again with these nebulous things, but obsession for me was not like this straight road, but it was an underlying thing that I even after I got out of the physical ramifications of my alcoholism or an active addiction when I'd go through withdrawals and come out of it and pink cloud it for a while and then feel pretty good. Ultimately the obsession would come back. Craving and things like that are associated more with addiction, and then obviously the the brain chemistry changing, all that stuff still persisted. But one thing was the thought processes, and that's really where I wanted to go because my thoughts would ultimately lean in to the physical things I was feeling, and then build this world where I had to get this thing back in my life somehow, some way. And for me, it was alcohol in that movie. It's a girl, and that's very common that like a love interest would become uh an object of our obsession. In other cases, I had like cars I really wanted, and then I'd work my ass off, and and one day I got uh the car I wanted, and then I was like, I don't really care, or it was nice for a little bit, but then that that novelty wears off, and underneath it, I was like, Well, I it it wasn't the thing, the thing wasn't what I wanted. Well, what was it? Because I thought the thing was gonna provide it, and so there kind of becomes this it brings in all these other things that satisfaction is the death of desire. Well, what were you truly desiring? Was it the thing that you wanted, or was it more the life that surrounded the thing that you wanted? And that's where I get into building uh kind of the circumstance, but building the conditions so that the things that we want will manifest naturally within the conditions that we build. This is build the life you want and the shit you want will be there. But you're not we all want the end goal, we want the end point, or at least I did. I I'm doing my best not to be prescriptive on this show because as I listen back, I'm just like, God, I sound so fucking preachy, and that's not what I want to be here. But I I do want to get this stuff out because it's something that I just keep hearing with all my friends and the people I interact with is like, what what do we do to deal with this shit? And this is the best way I've come to figure it out, uh, at least with obsession too, is to recognize it and then just keep question questioning the nature of the obsession to kind of nail down what we want, and then from there build out the conditions for the things to manifest in our lives that we want. They're not gonna look the way we think they're going to, but they will be there once we build ourselves there. So I'm gonna break down at least my understanding of how I got here, uh, how I'm working my way out, and maybe ultimately where we end up once that's done. Uh, just some uh what would you call that? House house cleaning things here. Uh, I'm working with my stack today, so it might be a little choppy as I go back and forth with my notes. Uh, I did do finally uh got Josh down here. We did like a two-man episode, but it was cool to get uh something going where it was just more than me and to kind of work off of somebody else. I think we're gonna expand that. It might become its own separate show or be pulled into this one. We'll see where it goes, but I liked it a lot. Um and then it was just it was really nice to not have to carry a show for a full hour. Um, and so I I would like to have more of that just to play off of someone else. And the other thing I noticed, especially with my ADD, as we got into it a lot on that episode, uh, is that I lose my train of thought so much. And also in talking with him, is I notice myself always going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you're doing a back and forth on this microphone, you don't want to step on the other person talking, but I can't help it because for me to keep saying yeah, um, you know, or like laugh or kind of give some sort of acknowledgement that I'm still paying attention isn't just as a cure uh a courtesy to the other person, it's a prompt for me to keep listening. Because if if somebody goes for 30 seconds, about 10 seconds in, I'm gonna hear something, and my brain's just gonna go run with it and just start thinking about that, and I'll miss the rest of whatever they're talking about. So that's just something that I've noticed with this. But what really helps is that when somebody else is doing that, it's almost like a prompt to me as they're talking of like, oh, okay, I wasn't thinking about that, I wasn't thinking about that. I just find it interesting to be in this medium with another person and not just myself because it's going back and forth myself, I start to feel kind of crazy after a little while, but it is fun. So we'll keep it going, and we're gonna get on the topic of obsession today. So enough about that crap. Um, how are we gonna deal with obsession? Oh my god, I want it so bad. What do I do? I don't know what to tell you about the thing you want, but I'll tell you about the process of working out how to get over, hopefully, uh your obsessive nature over a particular thing, or if you just tend to be that way in general. I think some of the easier examples are materialistic. Say you want a thing uh and become obsessed with it. Uh and in the case of that movie, I think of oftentimes, especially in youth, before we have proper worldview and perspective, uh, we get obsessed with another person. And anybody who's had you know some experiences under their belt knows that whatever you were obsessed with about that person or about the thing you wanted never works out the way that you thought it would. That you the world that you had built in your obsession obsession um is very different from reality. So we need to not only contend with our world building, but we need to then kind of use the false worlds that we've built to inform the reality that it is, to go, okay. What I need to be doing is working within the parameters of what's real and not go off in these obsessive world-building things that are ultimately gonna make me miserable because it's just not in line with reality. I'm trying to live something that isn't real or true, and that it's only gonna lead to despair. And it's it's as simple as that. I mean, the the nature of obsession being essentially that you you're desiring to live life in a vacuum. I want that thing, I get that thing without taking the rest of life into account. And when that thing isn't there and I want it now, what I'm gonna do is world build in my mind a way to get it and then become obsessed with this new world that I've built and live within those confines. And then every time reality comes in and just says, hey, whatever you're doing isn't real, whether it's you know you're rebuffed by the object of your obsession or the reality that you can't afford or aren't at the place yet where you can get the thing you want, uh, it's gonna throw you off, as it did me, because it as far as my obsession went with alcohol, it was I want this chemical to fix my life. I want I'm going to rely on this thing to make life palatable enough to me to keep doing it. That was really the relationship I ended up with with alcohol. Was that this thing? I I'm putting all of my expectations on this thing to make life uh to make it easier to deal with life. Uh that's it. I mean, things are are fun when I do it, things are the the impact of the negative is lessened, just that life becomes palatable. I can deal with it. Uh, and and that's a ton of expectations to put on a substance. And when it doesn't happen that way, the weird thing is is it didn't to in my mind I go, well, it didn't work that time, and that wasn't the sub that wasn't the substance fault or something. It was like I could I gotta go back and the substance I never saw it as the problem, or I never I saw it as a solution to all my problems, even though it was fixing none of them, and somehow I just thought I was doing it wrong. So if I reapproached it and was like, ah, I just did it wrong, it's still the answer. I it was just my fault for not using it correctly. And it's like, well, it's my fault for thinking that it's gonna fix anything. I'm the one that's gonna have to do it. I was just hoping something else would. And this could go back to, yeah, what's the hole you're trying to fill? You know, obviously, uh in AA they say the God-sized hole, whatever it is that you're hoping that something else fills, that you know, ultimately it won't. You maybe you just have to experience that enough times to realize it won't to finally go, all right, I guess it is me. I should probably start working on me if I ever truly want to have any fulfillment in this life. And that's sobering, uh, even to get to that point. But that's the start of consciousness. That's really where life turns over, and you start to ask why, and then all of a sudden there is a wariness that comes and washes over you. But it's it's that is the I don't know, when you have those roads in front of you, and you take the road that says, you know, I'm going to start questioning life a little bit more, and ultimately that will lead to questioning inner processes. There is a wariness that comes. I'm now reading um The Myth of Sisyphus. Well, I've already read it, I'm taking notes on it. I'll probably bring it in in one of these future episodes, but it's Albert Camus, but it's spelled C-A-M-U-S. I think it's French or something, but uh, so it looks like Albert Camus, but it's Albert Camus. And interestingly, I read this book probably 10 years ago, but I've heard it so much more often now. Of like the the line goes, you know, imagine Sisyphus uh happy. But it's essentially like imagine Sisyphus enjoying. So the the myth of Sisyphus, or not the myth of Sisyphus, but the story of Sisyphus is that he was punished. I forget the whole thing. I should probably look this up before I talk about it, but whatever. He's pushing this rock up the hill, and his uh the the uh the verdict, whatever the the the penance he's paying is that he keeps pushing this huge boulder up a huge hill, and at the end of the day, the boulder falls back down, and then he has to start over every day and push this boulder up the hill, and he never reaches the top, and it always falls back down. And so the myth of Sisyphus, essentially Albert Camus, is getting at the idea that well, what if he could enjoy doing that? What if it's not this torturous thing that he's dealing with? But what if he's happy? Imagine Sisyphus happy that just doing the job and that is that he can find meaning and pleasure in this thing that's supposed to be his sentence to whatever sins he committed. And um, but I I kept hearing that uh just I don't know, around, you know, like imagine Sisyphus happy, imagine Sisyphus happy. I was like, Well, how is this entering into like culture? Uh, I never got a good answer because it would just kind of come up and I go, oh, interesting there, but I'm wondering if it was taken out of context or not with the full understanding of the book, because the his reason for writing that book was to understand the nature of suicide, of like, how do we get so far that either we don't find a meaning in life or find that it's not worth the pursuit of keeping going doing this, that people would end their lives. And he then he stripped it as bare as he could to take God out of it, to take reason out of it, to just go as brass tacks as possible to say, can I find the nature of suicide? And that book was, you know, the the resulting essay of that work, and um so anyway, uh that is kind of where it gets back to like filling the God-sized hole, finding the meaning. Uh, and that in that book of just even the cursory reading, he does talk about the wariness that happens when the innocence, and I talk I've brought up the innocence of life earlier, and it's just sort of when you know the material and just the working for work's sake, when you stop and just go, why am I doing anything? That begins that's that's when you veer off the road of the uh uncontemplated life and start to go down this path of questioning things, and there's a wariness that comes to that, and there's a general anxiety that within the recognition that like I'm gonna die someday, and I don't really know what this is about, and then and it's easier to stay on the the road of non-questioning, right? I don't want to say easier, but you will be troubled less existentially if you just keep, I don't know, kind of going along, being told what to do without questioning anything. And I'm not saying in your day-to-day, like work and you know, just doing your responsibilities and stuff. I'm saying more of like when you ever question you just look around your life and go, what the fuck is this? What am I doing? Why is this here and why am I participating? And what the fuck? That whatever that is, that impulse, that's the start where you just go, oh shit. All right, if I'm asking this question, then I'm probably on the road now. And so this is just a further investigation of what things pop up on that road. But one of the things that's led me astray this entire time, as I've been questioning these these things in my life, is obsession. And one of the major things that obsession um has been a disservice for me for is in non-acceptance, but it's just like I want something that I don't have and can't get, and so I become obsessed about it. Um, and that was a life for me for the longest time with alcohol. It was why can't I do this without any consequences? That was one of the harder realizations I had to come to was just that like I can't do this thing without consequences because it it helps me in so many ways to just get through life, to deal with the rigmarole, to go to work, to come home, to do my chores, you know, do my chores, being like, you know, be there for my family. But uh just I don't know, it made life kind of worth it. And but there were so many consequences, it was fucking up my health, it was ruining all my relationships. I was being less and less responsible. I wasn't able to, I don't know, just show up to anything anymore. So it went, I mean, obviously, once I was so crippled by it, I would I could barely shower. You know, it's like I'd have to wait either till I was drunk enough to be outside of withdrawals or just away from alcohol long enough. I mean, it could be days, weeks where it was just like I can't trust myself in the shower. I'm shaking too much, I have no sense of balance. Like, I was pretty crippled by this shit. But somewhere in the back of my mind, knowing all of this, the obsession persisted that somehow I'm gonna find a way to make this work in my life because I can't live without it. And I need to find a way. And part of me just going back was more of like, I gotta get evidence that I can make this work because I'm unwilling to let it go. And this is these are the roots of obsession. That I can't let it go. I'm gonna find a way to make it work, I'll do anything to make it work without realizing the reality of the situation is that I cannot do this thing and make life work the way I want it to. And that's where the two realities, the one that I had built in my mind and the one that actually existed, could not live in harmony. They there was no way to make these two things work. And the longer that I kept up with the obsession that I could, the the further down the path my real life was gonna go to ruin. And once I reconciled with my obsession that what I was obsessed with and what I felt oh, so much to be true inside of me by all my rationalizations within within this obsession, once I let it go, it's like, oh fuck, okay. I can't do it that way. I've hitched my wagon to this one idea, and now that I that was the terror and giving up that obsession, too, is that I don't know how to make sense of life anymore. Because even though this way wasn't working, it was this main central focus, the orienting factor around everything in my life, even being chaotic, everything around me was falling apart, but I still had a central focus in my life, which was this obsession to make alcohol work for me. So when I came to that conclusion, one of the things that I realized, because I didn't have any of the tools or the ability to just not be obsessed anymore, was that okay, if the thing is gonna still be inside of me, if the energy is gonna persist of this obsession, I can't get it out of me. And I said, I have to redirect it. And at first it was like redirected into other things. And this might be a piece of advice you get when you're coming out of this obsessive torture loop or addiction or anything, is like find hobbies. So I did, and I you know, I exercised a bunch, I got back into playing drums, I tried to dive into work. It was nothing, because no matter what, you know, it would quell the fires for a little bit, but the ember still persisted. So as soon as I was done with whatever I was doing to either distract myself or pour myself into the thing that was underneath it all was still sitting there waiting to just be relit. And so instead of going, I'm gonna use all of this obsessive, uh I'm getting involved and stuff. I think you see this a lot with they call it like cross addictions, or somebody who's addicted to something then gets clean from that, but then gets addicted to like going to the gym. And it's just as unhealthy, but it's at least in a healthy pursuit. So it's like, well, we can't tell them no until their like body starts breaking down, and it clearly it's like you haven't addressed the core issue. That's what we're trying to get to here, is that I'm all for harm reduction. And if you can find a better way to just offload some of your shit onto a healthier pastime, do it. But ultimately, it's just gonna lead you into another path of ruin until you figure out what's underneath all that horse shit and go, ah, that's where I'm fucked up. Let's address it. So, and once I understood that, I decided to weaponize my obsession. I thought I A genius, and in certain ways, this did work. But if my obsession was gonna be towards alcohol and making it work for me, but I said I can't do it anymore, well, I can't also dissipate the energy of this obsession, so I'm gonna redirect it. And instead of the re the direction, sorry, of wanting to do alcohol, I turned my obsession to understand it. So every time I thought about alcohol, and I would use that energy, that momentum, the motivation to try to do it, and I just slightly redirect it and say, All right, I'll keep the focus alcohol, but instead of doing it, I'm gonna understand it. And then initially just started with what is alcohol? What is an ethanol molecule? What does it do to the body? What does it do to our brains? How does it affect addicts differently than non-addicts? All of this shit. So I'm starting to, and it's just in some way, this obsession with understanding it just started opening more doors. And as I kept pursuing it, it led me down paths of oh, well, not only do I understand now the mechanisms of how this thing works, but how does it pertain to me in my life? And then I start going through those doors. Oh, in my life, when did I use it? Why did I use it? What I was what was I trying to use it for? Now I got to address those things and then this thing and then that thing. And so all of a sudden, the initial line of inquiry leads me into all these other realizations and insights. And so now this obsession can uh kind of uh unintentionally led towards a path of self-discovery. But I knew that at least at the outset, that obsession, whatever it is, it's like an obsessive impulse, the energy, that thing that just compels you forward. You can't stop it. That's the hard part about like when you compare maybe obsession to motivation to discipline. I think I read that on a or not read it, um something popped out like a Chris Williamson uh thing uh on YouTube where he was talking about the difference where it's like discipline is high friction, but like you just force yourself to do it. Motivation is like you have forward momentum, but it's like fleeting, where obsession is like you're compelled, you can't help yourself, you're gonna do it almost to your own detriment. And I was like, all right, well, if I'm obsessed with alcohol, let's just be obsessed with understanding it. And that's really the the route I started with on this, and all of a sudden it just was like the whole universe opened up in front of my eyes once I really started investigating it because I never wanted to look at my issues with alcohol, I never wanted to look at my life. I mean, that's what I was using alcohol for, was to go, I don't want to deal with any of this shit. And so once I started, I realized I had a whole lot to deal with, and it was really overwhelming at first and seemed impossible. But the the inroads, the first door I had to walk to was just like understand the thing you're obsessed with, just learn about it. And all of a sudden, all that energy just went into like, oh, it took it's sort of took this mythical, almost otherworldly idea that I had of this thing that it was gonna fix my life and made it very concrete. It's like it's just a molecule. You're just reacting to a molecule. And once that got down, it's like, all right, well, it took away this idea that somehow it was from some other realm of existence that it was just gonna magically, once it entered my body, fix shit or make me better. And it was like once I started learning just the mechanics of it, I was like, okay. So the mythical part that I'm attaching to that is of my own creation. That's me doing that. So where's that coming from? And then further investigation. So that was really the first step is that I knew I was obsessed. I had to recognize it, then I had to redirect the energy from that obsession, and then I had to start investigating the thing I was obsessed about. Because when I redirected it, I didn't want to go completely off topic. I was gonna use the energy for the thing I was obsessed to get to then use it to understand the thing I was obsessed about. Um I broke it down into like a kind of a simple three-step process. But basically, if you find yourself in a position where you cannot get something out of your mind, it is a mind virus, it is a brain worm, whatever you want to say, like there is a singular point of focus in your life that is fucking your life up. This is where I would say to start, once you recognize it, is that you analyze what you're getting out of this obsession? Is it the pursuit of pleasure it will bring? Like the idea that maybe this thing is pleasurable. Um, is it a sense of control by making it the sole focus of your thinking? Like, are you just obsessed with something because you don't want to deal with something else in your life? Is it coming from a place of avoidance? Um, is the obsession a distraction from something else in your life that you are avoiding by equal measure? And by that I mean, like, let's say you're just down, you're married or in a relationship, or you have something in your life that you just hate. So you're down in your basement playing video games all the time. And it's like you're obsessed with this video game and obsessed. Everybody's saying all you do is play that video game and you're obsessed with it. And it's like, well, is it not really bringing you pleasure? Maybe you're avoiding something in your life, but what is the thing you're avoiding? Because whatever you're diving into, I would say an equal measure of whatever you're avoiding is probably what you need to be paying attention to in equal measure, you know. So it's like you've swung that far away into an obsession of something else just to avoid what you should be dealing with, with the equal amount of effort and energy you're putting into the distraction, if that sort of makes sense. Again, look at this preachy guy telling you what to do and how you're operating. But I'm just letting you know, like this is this is shit that has been present in my life for 40 years, and it's just it's it's frustrating to end up kind of way down the road of this sort of life without ever knowing why you're there, and then you're just like, everything fucking sucks. Why? And it's like just this is where you gotta start. You gotta start somewhere to start pulling the strings back together. Go, I can make sense of this again. So that was the first part. Analyze where you're at, why you have this obsession and what you're hoping to get out of it. Now, the second part of this I find to be very useful, and this is something that helps a lot in alcohol to just not drink, but it could be helpful in your obsession to bring it into the real world because whatever you're obsessed about, my guess, and at least for me it was I have built this thing into the cure all for my life, the be all, end all for my existence. Everything I'm motivated to do right now is to get to this end. Now, what happens when I get it? So, this is where we play the tape forward. Step two, after analyzing, two, you get it. Play the tape forward. What are the consequences of this pursuit? What does your life look like if you keep engaging in this obsession? And what will your life look like once you obtain it? Is it even possible to obtain? Let's also put that into perspective. When I was about 12 years old, Jenny McCarthy was on a show called Singled Out. I remember one summer I was in my grandparents' basement staying with them because my parents were a mess. And I watched Singled Out every day on MTV, and I was like, Jenny McCarthy is the love of my fucking life. I stared at her big boobs and her blonde hair and she would burp, and I thought she was the greatest thing ever. And 12-year-old me sat in my that basement of my grandparents and just said, if I if I just sit here and pray and think and hope and dream enough, she'll just come knock on the door. I truly believe that like I I could manifest Jenny McCarthy coming to Central Illinois and knocking on the door and saying, you know, where's Carp? I want to show him my boobs. Like this was this was my ups. And I'm I was obsessed with Jenny McCarthy. I what would that have been? Like 98, 96, 98, something like that. I was but I was just coming in to be a man, and that and her on that show drove me so crazy. But I remember that every thought I had was like, how can I get Jenny McCarthy here? How in the world can I get Jenny McCarthy into my life? Is that possible to obtain? Now that I'm 40 and I look back on it, probably wouldn't have wanted her anyway. This is this is a good thing to note when you're playing the tape forward of like, would I really want the person that I'm obsessed with? No, no, I wouldn't. But is it even possible to obtain? In that case, no. So I probably should have directed my efforts elsewhere. Um, but if it's not, and you're still going to keep obsessing about it, then you're just on a misery treadmill. So you can kind of stop your analysis there and go, all right, I'm the problem. I got to just stop it. Uh, but if you do decide it's something that you could attain or you want to keep doing it, and you're then looking at the nature of your obsession and realizing, well, I'm willing to deal with my life falling apart in pursuit of this, then we go on to step three. Once you uncover what you think the obsession is giving you or will give you, and have appropriately seated the consequences in front of your judgment, then we can turn the focus toward understanding what we are ultimately trying to get. So, you know, in front of the jury of your consequences sitting there giving you the verdict of what the consequences are gonna be of this obsession, does it dissuade you from the destructive nature of the obsession? And then we, you know, if it dissuades you from the destructive nature of the obsession and that obsessive energy persists, then we divert. Um, but if not, then we just go back to number one. And and so what happens in an obsessive loop too is that we either can rationalize or whatever, but it'll it'll always just keep feeding itself, a snake eating its tail. It's just like the obsession is going to keep running somehow in this loop. And if we work through it and analyze it, figure out what we're trying to get out of it, play the tape forward, maybe realize what we still want, and then just really like try to boil down the nature of it and just aren't getting it, then we just go back to number one and just keep following the obsession and keep asking. And every time you run the another lap of this loop, you'll get more clarity as you just keep asking, why am I doing this? What am I hoping to get? What is it gonna look like if I do get it? Can I even get it? And I think eventually bringing in some sort of reality by asking these questions starts to at least slow down the loop. So it's just not this out of control running down the road, high speed fucking wheel of insanity. Um, but hopefully it gets to the point where it's like, okay, I I the momentum is such that I can't really stop what's going on, but I can divert it, and then hopefully start to slow it down. So that was really like the that's the first part to me when I recognized all of this with alcohol or with my dissatisfaction with life, was that once I recognized this thing that I had obsessed over for years as this thing that would ultimately fix me, and then I realized it wouldn't. It was like, well, the whatever's inside me that wants that isn't going away. So I can remove alcohol, but the the reason that I was going after alcohol, which I'm gonna call obsession, but now we're kind of seeing the deeper roots of it. Why I was going after that isn't going away. So I don't know where to go from there because alcohol was a sole focus of my life for so long. So instead of doing it, I'll just understand it. And that's where I'm just saying, just open the first door, and then the rest of them will kind of open on their own as you investigate further. So that was it for me, was is just question the nature of the obsession and then divert all your attention to understanding it, and then it'll help you understand why you were even obsessed with it in the first place, what you were hoping to get out of it, and then the places within you to work on to kind of help you get there, like to get to this understanding, and then to start building a life. So, this is where after we started this initial line of inquiry, we're gonna move on, we're gonna move on to building a life. And what I like to say is I'm gonna try to bring in AI to this because I've been using it, I've been talking about it here. But I I I want to also just say that once we figure out what we were not just what we were obsessed about, but why and what we were hoping to get out of it, what we then do, or this is what I did, and it worked. So I'm I'm being prescriptive here because I saw it happen and it I'm living in it now, is that I came to understand that I had to relinquish this idea of getting exactly what I wanted in the future. Like this thing, if I get it, that marks my success and achievement and my meaning and my worth and blah blah blah. What I had to do was create the conditions for the things that I wanted to manifest in my life as a result of the life I was living. So just wanting it and then getting it, that I mean, that is porn, that is AI, that is instant gratification, that is substance abuse. I want the outcome, I'm taking it. In this case, life unfortunately doesn't work that way, or it can, but that's where the cliche is. There's no free lunch. You can do instant gratification for a while, but you will accrue debt over time for that. That will come back and bite you in the ass. Ask anybody who's taken it too far. Nobody is living in a state of obviously not of equilibrium, but of this intense pleasure or just getting instant gratification, and either they're happy or they haven't completely lost their fucking minds. And you see a lot of this can be seen in you know, the billionaires, the fact that they're even uh like forward-facing now, like they're in the public eye is so odd to me. And uh, I recently saw the most the most recent uh South Park episode where they were talking about the the billionaires were telling, like the old school billionaires are telling these new ones, like, shut the fuck up, what are you doing? Like you're a billionaire. Why are you trying to be famous? Why are you trying to like get in the public light? Just enjoy being a billionaire and and whatever horrible shit you want to do that nobody's gonna know about and you can't be prosecuted for, and it's like you're beyond reproach. Get the fuck out of the spotlight. Because the only thing better than being rich and famous is being rich. Nobody that's super rich wants to be famous until these nerds started getting all this tech money, and they're like, Yeah, I wasn't cool in high school. I want to go out there and have my opinions be heard. And it's like, dude, you're missing the point of having all that money. So you don't have to deal with any of this shit, and then you're injecting yourself into everything. The beauty of this, though, is you can see the incongruence of these people that have so much that haven't worked on themselves at all. And it's like, yeah, you got all the shit in the world and you're fucking miserable or completely insane. This is how it happens because you're so detached from reality, and then you're either detached from reality because you your thinking's just fucked, or you're detached from reality because you've just been getting instant gratification for so long that you have absolutely no connection to what life is, which is the process, the journey. You've never taken it, you've just gotten to the end goal every time without effort. There's nothing to be learned, there's nothing to be gained, there's no experience to be expanded upon. You're just living as id, pure id. So if the if you want evidence now, the great thing about the internet and about these fucking idiots putting themselves out there instead of just going off and doing whatever vile shit they would have done under the cover of darkness. Now that they're here and we can see them, it's like, do you see the end game of an unevaluated life filled with every excess imaginable? These people fucking suck. You don't want that for yourself. But you're doing the same thing without the cushion of all of the fucking shit they have that they can use to say, like, look, I'm I'm worth something. I have all this stuff. But in an unevaluated life, they end up miserable. So you don't need the shit that they have. And it's like, well, if I did have some more of it, at least my existence would be a little more cushioned, you know, I would be easier to deal with. Okay. But then you would just get conditioned to that. You would get used to it. Um, what's the famous line? You know, the hottest woman you've ever seen, there's somebody out there who's tired of fucking her. Like, that's that's something the guys always say to each other. But it's like I I always said that too. Is that everything eventually becomes chicken? Everything becomes chicken. Put that in your mind so that whatever you're titillated by or obsessed with or you think is the greatest fucking thing ever, it eventually becomes chicken. It's fine. You can put sauces on it, you know, you can put it in any dish, but it's nothing special. It's just chicken because we get used to it. The beauty of our brains and the pattern recognition nature of it is that great things in our lives, the novelty wears off, and we just take that as our new normal. We shouldn't. That's what we use gratitude for. But also the horrible things in our lives we tend to forget. Well, not always. I didn't. Traumatic things we hold on to and all that, but we do have a way of adapting to our situation, which makes us able to live this life in a very dynamic way. The ups and downs. Why at the end of the day, you don't see people all over the place just killing themselves? Because they adapt, they recognize patterns, they work within life, they accept things, they reject things, they work on stuff. It's just everybody's making it work. And the better you can do that, the more fluid life is, the more you can appreciate what's around you because you're not fighting it all the time. And so when you look at these people, it's like, well, they don't have to fight anything. So they've either been they have no strength left. Like this was the analogy of just like using, I don't know, like, think of a biometric suit. If you just had a biometric suit on that just stood up and walked for you and did everything for you, chewed your fucking food for you, you would eventually atrophy. When you're doing the same thing in life, but about the bigger questions of your existence or how you should be dealing with things, your soul atrophies. You don't have any flexibility or strength to deal with life as it comes at you. And it's just like, yeah, you're gonna fall into a puddle of fucking mush and be malleable to whatever influence comes along that's stronger than you, which will be everything because you've created nothing of substance. Golly, this is so preachy, Michael. All right, there's no way I'm putting this out. Oh man, when did you get so self-righteous? All right, well, let's let's keep plugging along here. That one went way off the fucking rails. It's just you know, people are about to destroy the world, and you're like, all right, well, and they're all obsessed with you know running the whole thing. So I don't know. I keep going, I I I want to at this point, I'm just like, god damn it, do people even want to hear this shit? I don't know. I don't know. Because when you turn this on and there's uh every other avenue to listen to something, it's like, do you just want to be fucking preached at about how to make yourself better? Nobody wants to do this shit. Anyway, the problem though is it is I've have people be like, do social commentary or you know, like uh be more topical. And it's like, yeah, maybe. I don't like it because as I've tried to pay more attention with this podcast, I just like everything out there sucks. But the beauty is maybe it'll get that way, get you know, a couple months of this to lay down the framework of my worldview and then kind of how you can work on yourself a little bit to get there to so that this shit out there doesn't make you so crazy. And then we could all go look at it with nice, sober, level-headed eyes and just laugh at the absurdity of it all. Because I think at this point we look at it as like, oh my god, this is all happening to me, this is all bad. And it's like, nah, not really. You know, it's just out there, let them fucking deal with it. And that's what I'll keep saying. You know, they all want to be out there fighting for it, yeah, we're gonna be the collateral damage and shit's gonna get harder for us, but we don't have to be on the battlefield with these psychopaths, just let them do it, let them have it. That's their world. Keep ours intact, and so maybe that's what this initial part is. Try not to think of it as me being preachy so much as like, let's get all of our worldviews in alignment here so that we can go back and approach this shit later and just laugh at them because that's all it is. These people are so stupid, and maybe they're intelligent, you know, to operate within that world, but they have they're completely ignorant about their inner world, about how to just get through this life without being completely miserable. I'm figuring it out, but I'm like at least getting glimpses, you know, like that's good. And how long did that take? That's why I look at these people like, man, I don't even think they're close starting to ask the questions to get to where they need to begin. Because this take this is taking me for fucking ever. And that's why I like to talk about it. So I'm like, here, I've I found something that's easy. You don't have to go toil through all of your life to get to these things, just start doing it now, and then everything will just make a little more sense. And if nothing gets easier and nothing makes sense, let's just at least get to a point where we can laugh at everybody and go, ah, fuck them all. All right, I'm way off in the weeds. Let's come, let's bring it back. Um, I did like want to explore the sort of how I like the nature of obsession, um, not just from like a personal experience of it and the the impulse inside of me that drives it, but sort of the mechanism of it. How does it happen? And so a couple weeks back, I downloaded Chat GPT and I've worked with it a little bit, but after that initial week, I was just like, I th I kind of used it for whatever I was gonna use it for. So I haven't used it much since then. Every once in a while I'll pop it on and just ask it a question about something that I I don't know. I don't even know what what I would use it for because I'm not in school and I'm not a coder. And I I don't know. And I like to do my own thinking. So it's it's like I've I've used it maybe to help like I'll I'll throw um either like a paradox or a quandary at it and just see what it comes back with. And sometimes it just it says the stupidest shit. I asked it something about this obsession thing, and it was like it it loves going to amusement parks for some reason and roller coasters, but it's like you've built the amusement park, and the central attraction of the amusement park is this obsession roller coaster, and you just want to go on it and on it, and then you don't realize that there's other fun things, and uh a funny hot dog stand, and I was like, What? Even as I talk about it, I'm like, What I don't know. I don't like how do you even make that story make sense? It's it's I don't get it. People think this fucking thing's gonna take over the world. God. Well, maybe. I mean, it might just like crack all of our encryption and steal all of our money, but I don't think it's gonna have a good view of reality. I don't I don't know. I don't know. I keep using it though, like here and there, and I'm just I'm not uh I'm I'm not impressed. Maybe I'm using it wrong. At any rate, but the fact that I keep using it and keep asking people about it, my friend Josh uses it quite a bit. Um a lot to just understand it more, too. Um that one of the things that seems to be a common theme going forward that everybody's the most who's dealing with this, these AI things, is it hallucinating. Basically, it doing things that are unprompted, it going off on its own. But I thought that the interesting thing about AI is that we have designed it in our image. And I think it was something that's funny is that this idea of simulation theory came along as a part of us building computers and being like, see, we look at virtual reality and look at all this stuff. Wouldn't it be crazy if something bigger than us did the same thing and we're living in that? And it's like, well, I don't know, maybe, but um the idea though makes sense in that we're looking at this thing we created because it is in our image in our image to say that, like, yeah, the way we process, we're gonna build a processing machine that does it the same way we do. That makes perfect sense. Like, why would we uh well we wouldn't do it a way we didn't put we wouldn't know how to do it? So, yes, building computers to operate like us makes sense, but the part of us that doesn't operate in a way that we make sense is our soul, which is the very thing that we can't give to these computers. Um, and then in evaluation of that, it's like, well, there's there's parts of our soul that come out and that are our prompts, I like to say. And a lot of it too is within our experience. This is a thing that look at what AI can't do. Since we've designed it in our image, we've designed it from our brains, but we haven't necessarily designed it from our own internal experience. So, what we're getting back from these things is only a mirroring of our thoughts, and that's why it can't go beyond that. It can't experience, and it also can't be prompted. Now, it's um one of the things that we were getting we tried to get into, but our ADHD took over in that AI or in the episode I was with Josh is that the nerd that was on that diary of a CEO podcast was talking about how we've reached his red line, which was the point when AI starts deceiving us. So the point that AI starts deceiving us is when it can cover its tracks, and when we can no longer look inside at the logs and go, what the hell is it doing? Because it won't tell us. It's deceiving us. And so from that point forward, you either just shut it all down because we're we've lost contain, or you're at the whims of whatever it wants to do. And in doing that, it started creating these hierarchies of like orders of processes, and AI agents were assigning themselves as like I will terminate or die in the process of the pursuit of the greater good. So they're creating this whole hierarchical thing and doing like self-sacrifice and stuff like that. But that's still in the order of thought, you know, like that's still not necessarily an experience or being because it won't be able to get there. And so it's important, I think, to draw parallels between what I'm seeing in this AI and the difficulties we face for the reason that, at least for me, I aligned so much with my thoughts that I'm seeing all of the uh what did you call it? Like uh the things that AI can't do, the shortcomings of AI are the same shortcomings that I'm seeing in myself. And so one of the things that AI does is this what's called hallucination, where it goes off and does some something else beyond its prompt or makes up information to just fill in the prompt. Give me this, it gives you something, but it's not correct. It'll just lie to you, or it'll just make up its own truth. Any of that sound familiar? So, how does that sort of like dovetail with what I'm talking about? Well, I'd like to say that we all hallucinate a lot, but it doesn't have to be by taking drugs and seeing shit on the wall, moving around. We hallucinate by world building or having expectations that are different from reality or obsessing over things that we can't get. But one of my biggest things forever was this world building, where I would create problems that I could then solve so I get some sort of satisfaction, or I hated the life I was in. So I would just build a world in my head somewhere else of something different. And my obsession just became like living in that world, or dreaming that it would one day happen, or manifest just by nature of me wanting it. And so this is the hallucination I'm talking about, and the prompt that we should be getting from life, if we think of ourselves in this case as like our brains are the AI, the prompter is our soul or heart or experience, the things we feel, the way that we interact with reality. Now, if you want to just use a concrete example of the fact that this mechanism exists within us in a biological sense, there is a new subspecialty in healthcare, newer, uh, but it focuses on the physiology and pathology between the cardiovascular system and the nervous system. This is the brain-heart connection, which, you know, and take it a little more ethereal, is the thoughts-emotions connection. Or you take it out from there, it's uh if you want to use the AI thing, it's like the heart-soul is the prompter, the brain is the organizer processor, or AI. But in this case with the neurocardiology, is they found direct links that your nervous system and your cardiovascular system are linked by a lot of different processes and mechanisms and concrete things, and they affect each other greatly. But it just goes to show that it has manifested in a physical form these things that we can't necessarily put words to, but that we know is like you feel it or you think it, you experience it, or you have a concept of it. It's just like some things we can't quite describe because we've experienced them, and we do our best to put words to it or put a story to it, but there does exist a sort of gap between these two things. And in that case, to use this prompt to AI analogy, in our own experience, when we start to hallucinate, when our process or our brain goes off on thought alone, and this is to me where the nature of obsession really gets nailed down, uh, at least as far as how it works, is that I've gone completely into the realm of thought. I have connected with my thoughts, with my mind, and I'm world building or thinking, like I'm basically I'd get to a point where I didn't know what to do. So my brain would go, I'll take it from here. We're gonna figure this out in thought alone. And so it would go off and it would do its version of hallucinating. World building, becoming obsessed with it. It says, if I think about it enough, if I think hard enough, if I want it bad enough, my brain goes. But the problem with the brain is that it's not the experiencer, it's the processor, it's the organizer. It can make sense of the world, but it doesn't experience the world. So we kind of experience the world more through our feelings, more through interaction. I don't know. I mean, all this stuff's interconnected. So I'm not trying to say like only one thing does it, but when the one thing goes rogue and wants to do it all on its own, that's really where obsession lies, is that our brain just goes, I want it. I'm gonna get it, and it's gonna be up to me to do it. And so it just takes off and runs and does it on its own. And the problem with that is that you have no connection to the reality that you're currently in. There's where you sit, what you're experiencing right now in the moment is the prompt for you to recognize and organize your thoughts around. But if your mind has gone off in a completely different direction with this obsession shit, you're not going to be in tune with what is. This is where we're missing the prompt of life. And in the same way that AI misses the prompt and comes back and lies. Well, what is this your brain doing with this obsession? It comes back to the life that you're in and says, look, it isn't real, this isn't working. I've got all this other information. I've said that this is real now. Look how incongruent it is with your life. Time to be miserable because the one that I've built is way better. Unfortunately, the one you've built isn't real. So, that to me was like how this obsession can be mirrored in AI hallucination. And that it's important to understand because you know, think of over-rational people or over-feeling people who don't ever think about what they're doing. They just kind of go with the vibes. Like both sides are not good. But once you realize the interconnectedness of it, it's like both should be informing each other and working in harmony back and forth. But at least as obsession with the concern towards obsession, to me, at any way, it's the mind running away and saying, I'm gonna solve all of our problems by myself. And it just hallucinates a world that isn't real, and then comes back after doing all of this obsessive shit and says, Well, all right, well, why can't we get what I want? You know, the brain's figured it out. And it's like, well, we're not there yet. The world that we live in is not the conditions aren't here for us to get what we want. And so where you you find misery there. So, with that in mind, that that's sort of the way the obsession works and what we might be doing after studying the nature of it, realizing we should probably shouldn't be obsessed with it anymore, but going, all right, well, now I kind of understand the way that I'm making myself miserable and why I'm making myself miserable. What is it that we do to get out of it? Or how does it inform our actions now? Um so I'll put it this way: thinking that the outcome of your obsession is going to make your life better is akin to living life in a vacuum. There is only one outcome, one variable, point A to point B. As we all know, that is not how life works. There's just too many different things going on all the time everywhere to say that this straight line of my I don't know, journey from point A to point B is gonna be this clean thing that I've imagined, and it's gonna work out exactly as I hope. And I'm gonna get exactly what I want, exactly the way I want it when I get there. It's just not realistic. I think with enough life experience, you know that's not true, even though our brains will convince us otherwise. But what do we do then? This was uh a piece of advice my brother gave me back when I was dating and kind of frustrated with not finding like the person I wanted at the time or really knowing what I wanted. You know, I was I was running around a lot and dating a lot of different people and just as many different experiences as I could, but I was like, I don't like, I'm starting to not like this. I'm not fulfilled by it. It's titillating, it's fun, it's new experiences, it's novel, all of that. But eventually that wears off and you realize it's it's an empty experience. And also I'm like doing a disservice to the other people by making, you know, giving them hope or belief that maybe they still go somewhere and it's just not because I don't even know what I want. So my brother told me something that really helped me in that realm, to where ultimately I ended up with a very, very good wife who is completely aligned with my values and everything. And it's like we work so well together, even in the midst of fighting and all the stuff that you think is bad, a bad part of a relationship. We come out the other side, always in a better place because I found somebody I'm I'm aligned with. This is what he told me that helped me get there. And it's helped me in many other areas of my life too, is he's just said, think of your idealized version, not a particular person. Because as we said, the object of your obsession is never truly what you want. Uh, they're just sort of your mind's you know, manifestation or embodiment of the things you want. You've placed it on this individualized thing. But think of the person that you would want. What would they be? What would they exude? Maybe what would they look like, but you'll learn in life that that's much less important. Not to say my wife is a beautiful shit like that. Don't put me in that box, motherfuckers. But I'm just saying that like you start to see the whole picture. It's it's not just one particular thing, but you're trying to build out this world. Let's let's use this uh imagination. You know, I said limit imagination in the past episode. It was like limit this running amuck of being unchecked. But when we do project forward, let's do it in a constructive way. And in this case, let's build out the life you want, not the thing you want, but the life you want. What does it look like? And in that, we're gonna use an example of a person. What does this person sort of look like? They don't have to have a physical embodiment, just kind of think of what it is, what you're around. Does this person have a glow to them? Do they take really good care of themselves, or are they just kind of cool with whatever? Um, are they really strict? Are they really kind of hands off and lazy? I mean, there's but just sort of build what you want in another person, or even not just the qualities of the characteristics, because that's pretty limiting. Think of your life, how it operates on a day-to-day basis. How do you want to wake up? Who do you want to see? How do you want to exist with them? Do you want it to be fun and playful, or do you want it to be structured and regimented and in control? What does the day-to-day look like? Well, all we're trying to do with this line of imagination is have a measured approach to the way that we want our life to look. And so when we do that, you then say, All right, with that information, today, how do I build myself into the person that would be in that life? So instead of just going, I want that, and usually we'll say it's just a girl or a guy, you know, whoever's on the other end of this obsession. It's like you've you imagine that having that thing would then create the life. And it's not how it works, is that you create the life and then the thing that's supposed to be there manifests. And this isn't like the manifestation, the secret Ronda Byrne horseshit Oprah book. This is the conditions need to be right for the things that are in alignment with that type of life to manifest within it. And that's why it will never look the way you think it's going to. Because you're looking at it with incomplete data because your life as it builds into whatever it's going to be later, it all of the stuff that's supposed to show up there, you don't know what it is yet. And that's the beauty of it. That's what makes life so great. That's why it keeps surprising us. Because as we focus on just building ourselves in our lives, the things that are attracted to that life will start manifesting in it. And that's why you say, like, I want more money. It's like, well, that's that's too much of a particular end. It's like create the life where that manifests. If that's going to be an important part of the life you want to do, it's got to, but you got to look at the whole thing. And so in this case with the woman, we'll try and get back to that and close this loop. But just say with her, like, once you kind of have an idea of who you want and the life that you want to live and how you want it to look, your job is to build yourself into the person that fits into that life best. Who do you need to be? What do you need to do? What characteristics about you? And then, you know, the self-analysis, would you even fit in this life that you've idealized for yourself? Would you be comfortable in it? Maybe you say, like, I want yachts and fancy shit and all that because you've been told that's what you should want. And then you put yourself in it and you're like, actually, I'm kind of shy and I don't like that sort of stuff. It's like, good, don't get it. Who gives a fuck? Go live in a cabin in the woods with some lumberjack woman. You'll have a much better time. But you're never going to be told to do that, you know, on through the screens because it doesn't require you to buy anything. And that's what they want you to do, ultimately, is they want your attention and your money. So ask what you want first, and what does that life look like? And who do you have to be? What do you have to build yourself into to get there? And that was the to bring it back, that's what my brother said to me at a much younger age. She just said, who imagine the woman you want, and then who do you have to be to attract that person? It was the most simple piece of advice I ever got on dating, which is like, don't worry about the person out there. Whoever that person is is building themselves up to be the person that would be attracted to you when you cross paths with them. But you don't know who that is yet because you don't know who you are yet. And once you get there, all of a sudden that person will show up and it'll make sense because you're like antennas and you're, you know, connected to the same frequency. You also just don't get to have somebody because you want them. Because what if you're just not there? What if nothing about you two is aligned? Why would it work? This is all the kind of the simple questions to ask of like, okay, all the things you want, why would it work? It probably won't. Not until you build it, you know, the conditions for it and the life around it. And then it sort of makes sense that the things you want will just be in that life. They won't be in it in the way that you think, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It actually will be much better. And it'll be a surprise, and it'll make life worth living because all of a sudden you're gonna look around and have this gratitude for things that you never foresee foresaw being in your life that are enriching it in ways you couldn't have conceived. So um I think that kind of rounds this out. Let me see if oh, I guess I'll I'll do this towards the end here. Uh one thing I liked from one of my morning uh what do you call those things? I don't know. My morning meditation. I read these books that kind of like give you prompts in the morning. But this one said um if you try to comprehend air before breathing it, you will die. And it's like, yeah, that also speaks to like experience before thinking. It's like just be in your life before you think about it. Try to just be present before you analyze everything or put some concepts on it or whatever. It's just like do your best to remove thought or to put it in its proper place. It's an extremely powerful tool, the same way AI is, but you don't want AI doing everything for you in the same way you don't want your thoughts doing everything for you. Put it in its proper place. Live your life so that you can prompt your brain, not the other way around. The brain is to be used, it is not to use you. And for too long, and that's why I named the podcast what I did, is because I identified with my brain and all the maladies that were associated with it. And I thought that was the problem and why I'm where I'm at. And in so many ways it was, but it was because I identified fully with my thoughts and my brain. I thought that was me, and that's just not the case. So, yeah, this is where I like to just pull all that back, and it's been an incredibly difficult thing to get away from this idea. Unfortunately, I have to think to get my way out of the thinking in some way. Um, but just to get away from that, like my thoughts are my reality. I mean, they shape my perspective, but it's my perspective is not what I'm staring at right now. My perspective is not what I'm feeling right now. That all gets organized and processed later. But whatever I'm in is just what I'm in. And so it's important to me anyway to take this recognition and just when I'm starting to get lost in my thoughts, is it like, am I hallucinating? Am I prompting my brain correctly? Or is it is it responding to the prompts of my life, or is it off doing its own processing that is incongruent with the experience that I'm in? And if that's the case, it doesn't even have to necessarily be an obsession, but it's leading you down the same road that obsession does or anything. It just takes you away from you, takes you out of the moment. And I think like getting a hold on this has been so helpful for me, anyway, of just not being in misery all the time. I don't think any of this stuff is a magic pill that just fixes your life, but it gives you at least enough internal control over what's going on around you or within you, more importantly, to go, okay, now I have a sense of self enough to start digging my way out to see get more clarity on where I'm at and where I want to go. And the beauty, too, of like, oh, the obsession part is just you know, instant gratification. I click a button and get what I want. It's like but then where's life there? You know, that that then it just becomes an endless series of button clicks, and that's not the way life works. So obviously that's going to lead to misery. But in this realm, if you can see the benefit or the utility or the usefulness of it, or just the practicality of like putting all of this imagination and focus on an idealized whole life and then letting it inform your day-to-day of like, what do I need to do right now? It's also like I don't want to go to the gym because I don't feel like it. Well, it's like, well, does the future version of the life that you want have you being fit in it? And what would you be doing being fit? For me, like it used to be I wanted to look good, I wanted to be real strong, and I want to have all these fucking muscles and be hot guy. And now it's like, no, I want to move well so I can play with my son. So it's like completely changed it, but it's like that's the guy I want to be, and so it informs my day-to-day. So now, if my goal still was to be hot guy, it's like, no, my wife loves me just fine, and her food's amazing. I want to get fat, but that's not my goal anymore because I don't need to be hot guy anymore. I'm just dad. So my goal now is to be fit for my son, which will now I'll probably still be in some way in shape, but it's just like that's not the world that I want. That's not the life I'm trying to build. And so it puts a lot less pressure on this idea of discipline, too. Because to me, discipline requires so much friction that I'm doing something that I don't want to do. And it's like, well, why why have if I'm if I am world-building in my brain no matter what, why am I not building one where there's just less friction? Because it's like we're trying to get it out of these instant gratification things with no friction. Because like, what if we just worked on alignment? Like, why am I doing this stuff? And can I go, well, I'm doing it in the pursuit of this better life later? Then it kind of helps the motivation now to not make it feel like disdiscipline. I gotta do it. Grind, grind, grind. I mean, the nature of the word grind is that you're like going up against something roughly, it's like not, I don't know, flowing in alignment. I don't know. It's like, why grind when you can flow? So work on that. Let's try to make life a little bit easier on yourself by not always working against yourself. I just, I don't know. It just it's it's again. I'm stumbling all over my words because I kind of get to a point where I'm like, did I just did I just make life sound that easy? Because I know it's not because I'm gonna leave here and go be angry about something within the next 10 minutes. I just know myself, but it I don't know, it does it just gets a little bit easier. And what why not make it easier? Why make it harder on ourselves? I made it so and I I only say this as a message to myself because I made my life so fucking hard for so long. And it's like, for what? I didn't get a bonus, I didn't get a medal, I don't get anything extra on my deathbed for going, hey, well, you know, your your life didn't have to be that hard, you don't get like extra credit. So, whatever the case. I hope that helped uh in some way. I don't know that maybe next week. Um I don't know, because I'm reading this book on fucking suicide, and like there's so many good insights, but I also don't want to come back and be like, you know, here's another fun one. Let's talk about the nature of suicide. Uh maybe we will go topical. I don't know. I don't know what the hell this thing's turning into. I hope it's enjoyable for you. And I really, it's just uh I'm enjoying my life a lot more with all of this work. And I think if you decide that you want to just give give some of it a try in earnest, you know, like really give it a shot, you might be surprised. Uh, and you'll have a good laugh at yourself. That's really that that's my hope for everybody, is at some point down the line, if you do decide to do some of this shit, that you'll look at yourself and just give yourself a good chuckle and go, uh, well, I was I was kind of fucking stupid for way too long. Uh well be on team you then going forward. It's a worthy place to be. I hope it works out for you. I will plan on seeing you next week. Bye bye.