Psychologist Shows How to CHANGE the Way You THINK About LIFE | Benjamin Hardy

I think it's helpful when you look at your past self to actually regularly analyze how your thinking is different from your past self, how your decision-making is different from your past self, um how what you care about, maybe your money habits, maybe how you how you do anything, how you talk with your wife. You know, like it's really good to appreciate how you're evolving regularly so that you can see that actually my entire mental model of the world is different. That allows you to actually see that things are different than how they used to be. And so you can then start to project forward. Yes, my future self is going to be really, really different. That takes your current self off the hook. It immediately eliminates a fixed mindset. Then that allows you enormous flexibility for your current self. Growth mindset is willingness to learn, make mistakes. You're not so caught up in being right. It doesn't matter exactly what happens right now. You're going to change, and so it allows you immediately to be completely flexible in the present. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, welcome back to the show. Yeah, man. Happy to be with you. Our first time in person, very excited. And uh we've got a new book, Be Your Future Self Now. Talk to me about your future self. I There's a a sort of interesting twist in the book about, which we actually talked a tiny bit about in the last episode, but what's the idea of your future self and how do you pull it into the present? Yeah, actually interestingly like that's that's kind of the secret to being in the present. So like the the Stoics would have like memento mori, which is basically the idea of always thinking about your death so that you can actually like appreciate this moment. So what do you think about that? Does death really make the now better? I don't really know. I just know the idea of actually appreciating that that is a reality to some degree from the Stoics' perspective makes you believe that the present is more valuable. Um that's just one example of like a future cast allows you to be in the moment more. Um so Hal Hershfield, he's a UCLA psychologist. He's been spending a lot of time studying future self. And what his perspective is is that the more connected you get to your future self, actually contemplate who your future self is, what they're up to, the more connected you get to the future self, the more able you are to actually appreciate this moment. The more you're able to see that what you do here and now matters, but you can also use future self as an example. Me thinking about hanging out with my kids. Like in in the future, 20 years from now, my kids are going to all be adults. And so if I actually appreciate that and how my future self would say, "Dude, Ben, be present. Hang out with them. This is going to be over soon." Um you can kind of use your future self to be right here, be right now. So, it's counterintuitive. a really cool story in the book about that exact thing. Yeah. Walk people through that idea of being your future self now commenting on how to frame this moment. I think you just had like a really busy day. You come home, kids are in chaos. Yeah. So, there's a Frankl quote that I kind of used to frame this. And I didn't even know about the Frankl quote until I was studying this Basically, what Frankl said is that what you should do is imagine that you've already lived this moment and that it was over and that you were art and that you acted as poorly as you're about to act. Like literally. Like it could be in any situation. And then that you could come back and redo it. And now you have more awareness. And so, that's one way of looking at it. But basically for me, that example that you're talking about was me just driving home. I come home, six kids, house is crazy a lot of times. I'm tired from work. And frankly, I just zone out, you know? I'm just tired. Don't I'm not the best dude sometimes. Um and I was just thinking about my own self 20 years into the future, you know, 33. My 53-year-old future self would be, you know, all these kids are adults. This moment in time would be gone. And so I just thought, I know my future self would look at this situation a lot differently than me. Like I think from my future self's perspective, everything has more weight than I see it right now cuz they've got a much deeper perspective. And so, just like I see things radically different from my former self. Even a year ago, I don't see things the same way. And so, if you can tap into if my future self could just come back. And this is what I was just thinking while driving home. If my future self could come back, 53-year-old, all these kids are gone, and just live in my shoes for an hour, or just for the rest of the day. How much differently would they see it? How much differently would they handle this moment right now? And so, I was just thinking about that. I'm like, I'm just going to mess with this. I'm just going to be my future self for a minute, and just imagine that I'm back here in time kind of like Marty McFly style, and just actually see what it feels like. And I pulled up, and my daughter was just hanging out, 3-year-old girl Phoebe, and she just wanted to play. And I I I think in a lot of cases, I might just pick her up, hug her, go inside, and not really think about it. But I was just like, if my future self was actually here, and like actually got to relive this moment, like this is really a special moment. And so, I just enjoyed it. And it was really interesting cuz I And I I do this now more regularly, but this is just one episode. But then I go into my house, and it's a mess, and usually I'd be upset, but instead, I'm just like, none of this stuff even matters. Like, the it's just cool that I'm here, and that I have this life, and I have this situation. And so, I I think that often we we miss this moment because we we don't connect it to the future. And what a lot of the researchers on meaning say is is that this moment only has meaning because of what it means in the future. And so, it's kind of interesting cuz a lot of people don't think that a lot of people think being present means you block out the the past and the future, but this this moment only has context if you connect it with what's going to happen in the future. So, it's just a different it's a different lens. Part of what makes the idea that you go through in the book interesting is that it isn't just contextualizing it to the future. It's taking control of what you paint the future to be like so that you can really impact the present. What is that process like? How cuz like I imagine, in fact, I know from your own story, there was a period in your life in your teenage years where the future just looked like You weren't interested, and you thought this going to suck. And that was that. So, how do you take control of constructing the future in a way that pulling that into the present is actually useful? Yeah. I mean, one thing that I think is super important to note is that everyone is being impacted by their view of the future. If you have a pessimistic view of the future, if you have a lack of hope towards your future, like that's dramatically going to impact who you are and how you're being. Like if you think that the future is going to suck, um that's obviously going to impact who you are right now. And so, any form of hopelessness or just a lack of, you know, anything. Even if you think that today is going to be a terrible day is going to impact who you are through it. Um but as far as there's a lot of different approaches, you know, I'd be interested in your take cuz obviously you've you've you've achieved many goals, but there's a lot of different approaches. One is bring your future self to you. And obviously a lot of it's just thinking about where you want your future self to be, thinking about the context of your future self. Um Hal Hershfield's perspective is it's a lot easier to bring your future self to you. So, one way you could do that is simply by just imagining some future case scenario. It could be 3 years, 5 years. You can kind of choose a time frame based on whatever next context you're thinking of. It could be, you know, me in 5 years after my kids have moved, you know, some of them have moved out of the house. I can I can choose different time frames for my future self. But then you can just put yourself in your future self's shoes, think about the context, and you know, one of my friends literally films videos talking as his future self and just saying, "This is where my life's at right now. This is what's happened in between. These are some of the unexpecteds that happened between now and then." Um so, you can actually, you know, I I I don't really film videos. I usually just do things by journal, but you know, you can write a letter from your future self to you. Uh and just like paint the picture. Get as Get as into the moment as you can. What this does is it builds empathy. It builds It builds the ability to actually see that your future self is a real person. They've got a different perspective. They They see things totally different than you. They care about different things than you. And then they can be talking to you. And that kind of brings them to you. You said that one mistake people make is that they think their future self will be like themselves now. Why do you think our future self is so different? So, that idea is actually called the end of history illusion in psychology. Daniel Gilbert, he wrote Stumbling Upon Happiness, he came up with that concept, but basically this is just kind of a psychological thing that people do. You know, they they can see that they're not quite the same person they were 5 10 years ago, but as a whole we lack imagination towards our future self. It's a lot easier to just remember, you know, who I was 5 years ago and that I had different goals, different habits, maybe different priorities, different values. Like I don't listen to the same music I did exactly 5 10 years ago. But people have a really hard time imagining their future self as a totally different person cuz they just don't really think about it too much. Um the changes sometimes happen subtly, they happen systemically. And so yeah, people just don't take the time to think, "Actually, my future self is going to be a really different person. They're going to see things very differently." But if you but the truth is they will be. They will be. In 10 years from now um you know you encourage them at that point to start, "Okay, since you know your future self is going to change anyway Yeah. don't think of that as being glued down, really don't think of it as being based on who you were in the past, and now take control of who you want to become, and as you start writing that journal or whatever is it an optimized version of the self that you encourage people to aim for? Like because if you're right how they begin to imagine their future self and sort of somewhat solidify those elements are going to be pretty important to how they'll act today. How they act today is the only thing that matters in terms of becoming that actual version. I think I think first off you can get really stretchy with it. You know, so like I like what Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." So, I think first off just coming to the grips, and I think it's helpful when you look at your past self to actually regularly analyze how your thinking is different from your past self, how your decision-making is different from your past self, um how what you care about, maybe your money habits, maybe how you how you do anything, how you talk with your wife. You know, like it's really good to appreciate how you're evolving regularly so that you can see that actually my entire mental model of the world is different, how I make decisions is different than my past self. That allows you to actually see that things are different than how they used to be. And so you can then start to project forward. Yes, my future self is going to be really, really different and you can actually get as stretchy as you want. Like how different? What are the ways in which they're different? What are How do they see the world differently? You know, what matters, what skills do they have that you don't have now? What's their environment like? If you can really That's where you you can start to imagine. But what it does for you because you can because you can appreciate that they're very different. Um that takes your current self off the hook. It immediately eliminates a fixed mindset because basically fixed mindset is the belief that who you are right now is primarily who you're going to be. And so once you realize future selves are already going to be very different even if I don't do much, but they can be radically different. Um they can be way the change in my future self can be way beyond compounded beyond anything of changes I've had in the past. Then that allows you enormous flexibility for your current self. Growth mindset is willingness to learn, make mistakes. You're not so caught up in being right. It doesn't matter exactly what happens right now. You're going to change and so it allows you immediately to be completely flexible in the present. You talked about something in the book that I found I'm I'm obsessed with it right now and I was very surprised though to find it in the book about future self. So I'm super curious. You go into detail about how societies collapse. You quote Ray Dalio. What what can we take away from that idea in the book? Yeah, it reminds me of sports teams who get to the top. You know, even like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this year. They weren't that great this year compared to last year. They just won the Super Bowl. And so, that's kind of the idea that success often leads to the complacency, lack of vision, uh you know, conflicting goals among the parties. You know, when when when things start going really well or moving forward, um that's where often either your goals change without you realizing it. Maybe maybe the people on the Bucks like really a lot of the players, maybe they didn't really need another Super Bowl. Honestly, if they were honest with themselves, maybe their goal changed. Um but they were still kind of playing that part. And so, from a societal perspective, yeah, there's lots of different beliefs about how, you know, a business can really go really well and then things are killing it and it can be hard for them to maintain that. And on an individual level, you can get really successful in some area and then you can start to throw it away. And what do you think that is? Is that goals change, not being honest with yourself? Is it you were doing it for the wrong reason? I don't think you're doing it for the wrong reason. Uh I think that So, like Gay Hendricks and certain other like psychologists would call it just you subconsciously self-sabotage. You know, you might be moving forward, you achieve a lot of things, and it's outside of your homeostasis. And so, you, you know, you subconsciously like wreck it. Like that's one way of looking at it. You're going to have to define the idea of homeostasis. That people have this idea of how big they are, how great they are, whatever. What people do Yeah, so homeostasis is how I would see it is just this is your subconscious baseline. It's what you're comfortable with. It's it's where you're at at your emotional development. It's what your comfort zone is. And so, if you start advancing way beyond that, like Gay Hendricks would call that like an upper limit problem. And advancing how? You could advance in any way. Maybe you're someone who grew up in a bad situation or just had repeated repeated bad unhealthy relationships. And all of a sudden you start getting in good relationships. Um and so, it's a little outside your comfort zone to actually be happy in a relationship. And so, because it's outside your homeostasis, it's outside your comfort zone, maybe you don't think that this is something you deserve, maybe it's just that this is uncharted territory. So, you're a little uncomfortable with what's going on. It's past your It's past your vision. You just you you can revert back. Like I think that's one way of looking at it. Um I think another way is just honestly, you reach a certain place where you you become unclear of your goals. I mean, often you achieve goals because you have clarity. You work towards those goals, uh you achieve them, and you reach a certain place where you you lack a future self. You lack clarity about your future, and then there's all sorts of things coming at you because you're in a more successful place, you've got more options. And so, um you know, one of my favorite quotes, which I share multiple times in the book, but it's just honestly my favorite quote, comes from Robert Brault. He says, "We're kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to lesser goals." And so, I think, you know, the more successful you become, the more options you have. And so, there's a lot of lesser goals that can be quick dopamine hits. You can you can get quick wins, uh and you think you're making progress, but you're not actually clear on a direction anymore. And so, you you just start breaking things apart. Okay, so, getting into that idea, the clear path to a lesser goal is I think really interesting. I've told entrepreneurs like a million times, people don't end up failing because of a lack of opportunity, they end up failing because they pursue the wrong opportunity. Um how do people orient themselves in such a way that they understand what goals to pursue, and then what is it just the ease of the lesser goal that makes them go after it, or are there some other warning signs, or is this all tied to self-sabotage? So, motivationally, there's there's two theories that really helped me with this. One is It's called expectancy theory. It's one of the the core motivational theories in psychology. The other one's called hope theory. They're essentially very similar. Hope and motivation are very connected. Um but both of those theories basically have three similar elements. One is in order to have motivations and hope, you need a clear goal. You need to see some form of pathway of getting there or some mechanism, some means. So, you you see a goal that compels you, that's exciting. The more clear, the more compelling, personally, obviously, the more motivating. You need to see some pathway to getting there or be able to create a pathway to getting there. Then you need either the confidence or sense of agency that you can actually fulfill on whatever's required. So, it makes sense that simple like lesser goals with clear paths would be motivating. There's a clear path. Often, your future self or some big goal doesn't have as obvious of a pathway and you've got to adjust pathways all the time. And so, if you're presented an easy path to a lesser goal, often you take it. Maybe it's a job that pays really well um or it's a relationship that you're already in and there's sunk cost bias, but it's an easy, you know, so you it's easy to um take clear paths to lesser goals because the reward's easy, the path is straight, uh it's just easy to get that quick reward. And that's actually one of the like fundamental problems with uh future self that Hal Hershfield found is is that the present is so much such a pull that often you'll you know, it's it's hard sometimes to invest in your future self when you can just get dopamine hits right now. So, how do you invest in your future self in a way that's useful Yeah. if you don't see that clear path. I mean, I think that most paths are not clear initially towards a really cool big goal. Towards, you know, like as an example, like my own writing career, there was not a clear path. There's not a clear path for you. You know, you kind of invent the path as you go. Um But I think that's what breaks most people. Like they legitimately don't know they don't know how to create momentum, which is already a huge thing. They don't know how to set a goal, which is already wildly problematic. Yeah. And then they really don't understand what I call the physics of progress, and so they think, "Oh, I got it wrong. I guess I'm never going to be able to do this." So, what advice do you give people in that moment knowing that there's a lot of friction that they're going to have to overcome, but if they don't overcome it, they're sort of dead in the water? Yeah. Uh I think that your your last question about like choosing something, like you have to take the time to actually know what you want to commit yourself to in my mind. Like if you're if you don't get committed to it, you won't you won't be able to go through the process of finding the path. And so, taking the time, and you don't have to commit to something for the rest of your life, but like what do you want to commit to for the next 3 to 5 years? Like what are you going to start really investing in, start figuring out? Cuz right now, you know, where I want to get to in 5 years from now, I have no clue how to get there. But if you start to clarify like what are you committed to, what do you actually want to do, um we're all committed to something. Like um one of my favorite quotes or ideas is just you can know what you're committed to by the results you're producing. And so, like you and I were obviously committed to having this conversation because we're both here. Our behavior is evidence that we've committed to this, and so anything that a person does evidences their commitment to something. So, if they're going to their 9-to-5 job and they hate it, if they're still going to that 9-to-5 job, they're committed to it. Um and so, I think taking a step back and just asking yourself like what is it that I would commit myself to? And it's not like for the rest of my life, but it's like what's the most important thing right now? Like what's the absolute most important thing I could accomplish right now? And maybe you need a journal, maybe you need to take an extra 30 or 60 minutes to like start reading books and giving yourself space away from the noise to start to clarify that. Uh how I like to look at it is with like the Jim Collins quote, "If you have more than three priorities, you have none." Like what are the three areas of your life that matter most? I think that people can clarify where they want to go in the next 3 to 5 years if they just gave themselves the space to be honest, write, journal about it, and then stop worrying about what everyone thinks. All right. So, there's a lot in that one little sentence. So, one, how do peop- why journaling? How journaling? And then, how do people really detach from what other people think? Yeah. So, all three, such cool concepts. But, why journaling? Journaling is the place where you can be honest with yourself. It's the place where you can start to play with your imagination. Um I think walking, too. Exercise, but giving yourself space to be alone. Um there's so many, you know, obviously inputs coming in. And so, space to actually just be by yourself. And is the journaling for you a stream of consciousness? Usually, yeah. I mean, I think I think all journaling is stream of consciousness. I mean, you can have prompts, but it still just comes out. And so, yeah, I mean, I have just blank pieces of paper. Um and you can structure it, you know, what do I want to accomplish in the next 3 years? Who do I want to Who do I want to be a year, you know, a year from now? But, I think just actually giving yourself the space to address yourself. Like, when I was 19 years old in a traumatized state, I started running. And so, when I was running by myself, that was the time alone with my thoughts where I could actually address some self-honesty that maybe I don't like where I'm going in my life, or maybe I don't Where do I want to go? Start thinking about my future self. Start thinking about the repercussions of what what's going on in my life right now. Um so, I think the why of journaling is is that it it kind of clears you up. It gives you some space to think. Um the how of journaling for me, a lot of it's just writing things down, writing down what's going on in my life right now, writing down um maybe what I what I would like to change, writing down the areas in my life that I want to learn more about, the areas I want to accomplish, writing down my goals, thinking about my future self. Um there's not extreme structure, um but it's just giving yourself the space to think about it. So, I just think think about it, write about it. It clears your thinking. It gets you clear on where you want to go. Uh it also, obviously journaling can help you emotionally regulate. You can start to reframe Obviously emotionally, uh journaling can help you emotionally regulate. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'll give it obviously. I agree, but how do you get people there? And then we'll definitely still get to the how do you stop caring about what other people think? But I'm really curious. So, journaling I think it's one of the you know most uh Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, please. You're answering the question. Well, I think that uh like from a research standpoint, like journaling, gratitude journaling, stuff like that, like that's one of the most uh like clear-cut ways to emotionally regulate. Because it externalizes things? It does. I mean, you get the if if you don't get things out into an external form, like a narrative, a structure, then it's just swirling in your head. It's impacting you subconsciously without you knowing it. But really, everything is about framing, you know? A book is a good book if it's framed a certain way. It may be saying the same thing as a different book, but it's the framing that matters. And so, everything's about framing. And so, uh how you view a past situation may have been framed by your former self a certain way, but your current self can reframe it and look at it from a different lens, which gives it an entirely different perspective, different meaning, different emotional uh you know, set of cues. And so, uh yeah, I mean, journaling is just a way for you to actually structurally reframe anything that happened and then turn negative events into positive growth. It's just actually thinking about it, choosing a lens, choosing a frame. Um in psychology they call it psychological flexibility, which is the just the ability to look at things from different angles, emotionally detach from it, or just connect to it in different ways. And so, I I find it a very useful tool for just looking at past scenarios and and looking at them from different lenses, looking at them from different angles, and and thinking why am I better because of that? Or what do I now know that my past self didn't know because of that? Um why why is that to my benefit? You know, you can just you can just look at it from a bunch of different angles. You read a new book, you got a new lens. You can just look at a different a different experience with ton of different angles. I think that is one of the most important ideas in in trying to improve yourself. If you don't understand what I call frame of reference, which sounds 100%. I mean, framing is literally everything. is literally everything. Getting people to understand that. So, I just um in my NFC journey uh I've created this thing called the life map for people. And as I sat there and I'm asking myself like, what is the most fundamental thing that if people don't understand this, they're never going to be able to make progress? It was frame of reference. And getting people Did you um hear David Foster Wallace's This Is Water? No, no, no. What Oh my god, you're going to love the most. All right. So, well, it's a whole it's like 7 minutes long or something. Uh but the idea is that the fish is the last one to realize that it's in water. And so, he starts with this joke where uh you know, an old fish swims by these two young fish and says you know, "Hey boys, how's the water?" And he swims past and they look at each other and go, "What's water?" And that to me is frame of reference. People don't even realize that they have a frame of reference, let alone that it was a choice, as you said, to choose the lens that you have. Yep. And even if they understand that they have a frame of reference and they choose it, they don't realize how distorted their frame of reference is. And so, getting people to understand, okay, everything you think, feel, your dreams, your nightmares, they're all a reflection of your frame of reference. And your frame of reference has been created over a lifetime, often in invisible moments, in moments of trauma. You're making a decision about what is true about the world. But because you mistake it for objective truth, you don't realize that, oh, I actually decided that the world works this way just now in this moment right here based on this trauma. And you just get all these layers of distortion and because people aren't aware that they're living inside of that frame of reference like even just to get to the point where people like oh, I see what you're saying. Like it really takes a lot. Yeah. Um I mean, it reminds me of two different psychologists. One is obviously Adam Grant more recently with his book Think Again. I think he spent a lot of time helping helping you see that your current self just has one frame of reference. Even yourself 5 minutes ago, 10 minutes ago may have had a slightly different nuanced frame of reference. And so, he calls it the joy of being wrong. And that again is I think one of the appreciations I have about future self. It's just my current self has just one frame of reference. In in a week from now, I'm going to have a totally different frame of reference. But um have you ever heard of Robert Kegan? From you. Okay. But otherwise, no. Okay. So, yeah, Kegan was a Harvard psychologist back in the day. He studied like organizational structures. And he had a different model. It was similar to Covey's like dependent, independent, interdependent model. But it was a lot more psychological. Where he talked about how he called it I think a socializing self that a lot of people go through high school kids where their whole actions and behaviors are motivated by pleasing others or fitting in or something like that. Then you reach this authoring stage, which is a lot more competitive where everything you see is just to further your own aims and your own agendas, but you can't see outside your frame of reference. And so, he's from Kegan's belief and perspective, only 8% of people reach this level that you're talking about where they can actually he calls it the transforming self. Where they start collaborating with people um and they can see that they have a frame, that other people have frames, and that you can consciously step out of your frame and and look at different frames of the same situation. And you recognize that your frame is just one frame. It's one way of seeing things. Um it's very limited, very inac- it's very inaccurate. Um, but that doesn't limit you. You know, then you can try different frames, you can learn different things. You're always seeking to reframe and get new perspective, new angles on the same situation. Kind of reminds me of like a tennis tennis player who goes into a lesson actually wanting to learn. You know, it's like that beginner's mind where you can learn something from every situation rather than just I know what I'm doing. Um, but from Keegan's perspective only about 8% of people get to this place uh and organizations where this is just one frame. My future self will see things different. There's a lot of different angles on this. But I think that that's a skill you could practice. No doubt. How? I mean, for me one is just recognizing that my current self sees things different again than my past self 10 minutes ago and just regularly being open. Uh, I think this is again another reason why to journal is just how do I see things? I mean, I can I can't ever see from your frame. I could ask you though, you know, and I could ask you how you see things and I could be more curious. Um, rather than competitive. Like rather than me trying to prove that my perspective's right, um, actually ask you what you think about it. Um, be more of a curious learner and actually have a more flexible frame a frame. Um, for me I really like referencing back to my past self regularly and just asking myself and actually analyzing like why things turned out the way they did. Like not not being judgmental towards my former self, not being mad if a if a you know, I get angry at one of my kids like rather than being upset about the past, just actually what was the what was the frame that led me to coming to that conclusion and how do I see things differently? It allows you to actually squeeze more juice out of things you learn. If I read a book, I can actually analyze how did my frame of reference change or why do I or can I see things differently because I now have this information? And I think that this is a an act of ac- like an aspect of learning is if you actually learn something that is a little outside your current frame of reference, are you willing to be honest with that new learning and start to like apply it, or are you going to reject it and stick with your current, you know, your former way of learning? So, I think learning new frames, but then being honest with the new information you get and letting go of old ways is a big aspect of learning. Mhm. Did you see the movie The Sixth Sense? Yeah, but I have I have not seen it for probably 20 year like 15 years. Do you remember the ending, I'm assuming? Maybe. Tell us specifically. It's been that long. Dude, it's been that long. Well, this is fun. This is the perfect example to me of what frame of reference is. So, spoiler alert for anybody that's that hasn't seen it, but the whole movie is you're watching it unfold, and everything seems normal, and you're not thinking anything of it, but this guy keeps having these weird run-ins with like his wife, and it just doesn't go the way you're thinking it will go. And then you finally get to the end of the film, and you realize that the main character that you've been following this whole time is dead. Yeah, yeah, I remember. And he's a ghost, and then they play back little snippets of the movie so that you realize no one ever actually had an exchange with him. You feel like they kind of do, but when you play it I have the chills right now. And that's frame of reference, where you suddenly see the exact same moments. But when you thought he was alive, you read the interactions one way. When you realize he's a ghost and wasn't actually there, and so they were just having a, you know, a lonely moment where they went to their favorite restaurant on their anniversary to mourn, but because you see it as he's sitting there with them, you read the exchange as this really cold exchange where she's basically ignoring him and sort of dumping him. And that's frame of reference. And it it can be that profoundly like jarring where you're like, "Whoa! There is this entirely other oblique angle with which I can look at my life for good, bad, and different, whatever, but suddenly like this these vistas of possibilities open up before you. For instance, to bring this back to letting go of what other people think, I think so many people construct their life around, okay, what are they going to think? One, you have to be honest, like you you've said multiple times, this is so important. You have to be honest with yourself that you want their approval, seek their approval, or have historically sought their approval, whatever, so that you can now begin to look the world, what would this look like if I actually didn't care what they thought, and how differently would I move and would I act? I think people would often be startled to see the answers if they were journaling honestly what their life would look like if they didn't worry about their significant others' thoughts, the social media people's thoughts, their parents' thoughts, like that their life would look dramatically dramatically different. Yeah. Yeah, so many so many things come to mind, and now I do remember that movie. One thing that I love about that is is that once you get the new frame, right, it changes everything. In the past, you look back at all the old perspectives now with the new frame. And that's really how memory works. They call memory a reconstruction. And so, like, you never actually see the past as it is, but only as your current self perceives it, right? You won't you know the So, there's a really great quote from Brent's life. He wrote a book called Time and Psychological Explanation. You would actually really love it as But basically, he said that it's more accurate to say that the present causes the meaning of the past than the past causes the meaning of the present. Because Yeah, because the present causes the meaning of the past cuz it's the present frame. And so, whenever you pull up a memory, it's from the frame of your current self. And so, you get that new information, like at the end of the movie, boom, it changes the meaning of everything that occurred in the past. And so, that that's that's one nice part is as you get new information, new perspectives, you actually automatically reframe the whole past from the present. And so, any view you have of the past is actually just a reflection of where you're currently at, which is really interesting. What's up, everybody? Tom Bilyeu here, and I have a question for you. At the start of this year, you likely set some goals for yourself, and I want to know how those are going. Most people give up on their goals and dreams by February, but I have some good news. If you're not on target to succeed at the things that you want to achieve this year, it's not too late, and trust me when I say you are not alone. Everyone gets stuck and loses momentum towards their goals at some point, myself included. If you know what you're doing and you're willing to take massive action, though, you can get back on track. The trick is not to think about being stuck as a problem with your motivation, or to interpret your lack of results that you're getting as a sign that you're not smart enough. The trick is to recognize that the game that you're playing is a game of neurochemistry. It's about managing the way that you think about yourself and framing things in the right way. If you use your brain more effectively, repeat things that empower you, you can actually find ways to solve problems faster, create positive habits and behaviors that you know are going to help you reach your goal. I want you to take massive action right now, so I pulled a workshop from Impact Theory University called the six steps to getting unstuck, and I want you to watch it right now. It's going to help you get back on track with your goals, and make the rest of this year your most successful ever. To watch it, go to unstuckclass.com and register for access. I'll walk you through the same process that I use to get through obstacles and make fast progress towards my goals whenever something slows down. All right, guys, enjoy this and be legendary. Take care. Now, the question is, how do you keep your present frame positive? So, life is amazing, but it's also difficult. Yeah. And we tend to accumulate scar tissue psychologically as we get older. Yeah. And I have found in my own life that it's only through careful management of my framing of the experiences that I'm able to be optimistic and keep moving forward. And when I look at people that just get eaten alive by their frame, which has sort of gotten worse and rusty and scarred and scabbed over as they go, I get it. It takes a lot of management. So, how do you, either in your own life or how do you advise people to make sure that your frame of reference is getting better as you go along and that the knocks and bruises and defeats of life don't end up giving you a gnarly outlook? Yeah. I'd also love your perspective on this cuz I love the idea of maintenance or just I actually see it more as just constant improvement. Um Hm. I mean, certainly a continuous journaling practice is helpful for me as far as just continually updating it. Um I definitely like simplifying my life continuously. Like, I think as you continue to grow, you know, there's there's weeds and so I'm always simplifying down what matters to me right now. What Like, a lot of the stuff that I cared about, you know, back to the idea of other people's opinions, like, maybe I cared more about what that person thought 4 months ago. But now I do have a new perspective. I do have new goals. And so, um I mean, I really know the best answer to your question except for as you're gaining new information, new knowledge, new experiences, like, be true to your evolving self. Like, you know, if if you're now clear because of what you know that a certain relationship is actually detrimental to you even though in the past you thought it was high quality, like are you going to be honest and true to that new information or are you going to just pretend it doesn't exist? And so for me it's not really like you're maintaining uh something that has a single form. Like you're maintaining in a lot of ways where you're growing into. You're maintain you know, it's it's more continuously growing into the best or the newest version of yourself, which means maintenance at that level is going to look different than maintenance you know, 4 years ago. And so I I do think that if you're in a state of constant learning, improving, you get better and better at cleaning up those messes faster, being a lot quicker when you gain information or an insight um to go and have that conversation, maybe readjust, readdress that relationship or end it um or change it. Or if you feel inspired to go and start something, maybe start a new habit or start a new business or whatever that you you orient your life towards what you feel most held to do quicker rather than put it off for a week, a month, a year. So I think it's just keeping a continuous flow of um what you feel most most pressed to do. I don't know. I don't I'd be interested in your take cuz that was the first time I've actually really thought about that question, so Yeah. So the way that I think about it is what's useful. And so like dude, bad things happen in life, good things happen in life, and people tend to discount the good and focus on the bad. There's an evolutionary reason for that. True. And so you know, like it could be your parent dies. It could be um you lose your job. It could be uh a whole host of things. And I try to remind myself that I'm going to choose what I take away from everything. And so my hygiene is around the story that I allow myself to repeat. So I think a lot about what do I repeat? What am I saying over and over and over? And just by tracking things that I say over and over or things that I think about over and over, I know, ah, whatever I'm doing right here, I am holding that memory or that idea in my working memory. I'm adjusting it and then I'm going to just restore it in long-term memory, but I'm going to pull it back forward again cuz I keep thinking about this. And so, as I pull it back forward, I want to make sure that I look for the useful way to contextualize this. And I define useful as that which moves me towards my goals. Now, you need to be very careful that your goals are what I'll say should be two-pronged, exciting and honorable. Honorable meaning that it elevates not only yourself but other people to pursue that thing. Um, but if you do that and then you say, okay, what's the right way to think about this failure? And let's make it a catastrophic failure. You're married and your marriage of 25 years dissolves and you're like devastated, totally rocked, and you are just buried under a weight of guilt and, you know, the things I did wrong and I, you know, never should have done XYZ. And or, it's them, the Like, I can't believe it. And my thing would be, okay, in that moment, if I give up my power and I'm saying it's the other person's fault and not mine, is that going to help me move towards my goals? No, because it takes me out of the driver's seat and just life is happening and there's nothing I can do. Or, hey, I'm really feeling like a lesser version of myself because I have failed at that thing. Does that move me towards my goals? No, because I'm going to need confidence to move towards my goals. Okay, so what would be useful in this situation? Okay, I'm going to take ownership. I'm going to make sure that I look at what I can learn, but I'm going to remind myself that whatever kick in the ass I'm giving myself, it should only be enough to get me moving towards my goals and it shouldn't be so hard or so continuous that it begins to diminish my sense of self. And so, I think because I and a core idea I'm really trying to get across to the world is you're having a biological experience. And so, your brain works in a certain way and you're prone to like negativity bias. And so, I know that my likelihood of when something bad happens, I'm likely to grab the negative frame. But if the negative frame moves me away from my goals, then I'm just going to have a rule that I don't do that. But I also don't want to be delusional. So, it's this really interesting friction between what I'm telling myself needs to be both optimistic and true. And whenever I can find those two things, then then I run the test against does it move me towards my goals? Because if it's a lie, it won't move me towards my goals because it's just it's not real, right? So, you're making up and it's not going to go anywhere cuz it's not based in reality. Or it is real, but it makes me feel less confident in taking a step. And so, either of those tests will lead me to ultimately what is both true and useful. Because if you failed at marriage, it's very fair to say that I failed at my marriage, right? So, it isn't a lie to say, "Look, I made mistakes and I failed and I may fail again in the future." But it also is true to say, "I've learned from these mistakes. I'm willing to look at them nakedly and because of that, I'm more likely to get it right in the future." So, either one of those is grounded in truth. So, either one of them will help you move forward, but one of them is more likely to help you move towards your goals. Yep. And so, that's that's like the process of of hygiene I run through basically every belief. I I love that model. Um Dan Sullivan, uh he's the strategic coach founder guy, but he and I actually wrote a book called The Gap and the Gain. Oh, I know. That that model is the easiest model I think I've found for describing yours what you just described. Like as an example, recently I gave a a talk at an event, and it just wasn't There were a lot of things outside of my control. And so, it wasn't going what I would call effectively. Or or optimally. It wasn't optimal. But I realized, and this kind of go This kind of hits a lot of the things that we're talking about in this conversation, um there's so many things I can't control or even comprehend. One is your frame of this event, anyone else's frame. And so, I just realized you know, I think it's a big aspect of emotional freedom and emotional maturity is just realizing you're the only person who's comprehending your own experience, and so you get to define it however you want. Uh and so, back to the idea of the gap and the gain, the gap is when you measure an experience against what you ideally thought it should have been. And so, you're measuring yourself against an ideal, which is immeasurable, which is always changing. And so, if if you have a bad event as a child, you know, your parents get divorced and you're in the gap about that, then what you're doing is is you're measuring your past against what you thought it should have been. And that that that just creates all sorts of trauma cuz you're like you're you're letting the event happen to you. You know, you know, the event happened to you and you're the reason, you know, the past is driving you, essentially. Um whereas the gain, which is kind of what you're describing, I think it creates this extreme psychological flexibility where you're saying, "What was the gain in that? How can I turn this into a gain? Even if it didn't go how I thought it should have, who cares? Like, what what can I do with that?" And so, if you're always creating gains from an experience, doesn't matter what actually occurred, you're not attached emotionally to what happened, instead you're just turning it into gains, then it doesn't really matter what happens in your life, you are gaining from your former self. You know, my your parents got divorced. All right, so like what are all the reasons why you now know things your past self didn't know? What are you going to do differently because of this event? You know, if you're always gaining because of every experience, then you're always further along than your past self. You're always, you know, you always have a better frame. You're you know, even if something really bad happens, you can turn that into a gain. And that's that is essentially what post-traumatic growth is. Is any event that happened, you genuinely look at it as I'm glad this happened. I'm grateful for it. Um gratitude for past events enhances post-traumatic growth. You have new meaning, new perspective that your past self didn't have. And so, you can quickly turn any experience into a gain. And so, that's I think that's kind of the a model I I found to be the easiest working one. Mhm. You said this earlier and it's so true. Reminds me of a Tony Robbins quote that um basically, if you want a better outcome, ask a better question. And that your life is going to be determined by the questions you ask. So, and I remember one example he gave and this all this hit me so hard is think of the worst thing that ever happened to you and ask, "How is this the best thing that ever happened to me?" And your brain will actually come up with an answer, which is pretty crazy. Um how do you leverage that? As far as asking better questions, I I like that example because usually once someone reaches a certain frame or once they reach a certain level of maturity, they realize that often it was the worst things that happened to them that were the best. You know, they lost that job or you know, something bad happened. I mean, even recently one of my good friends, their their child died. And like No, seriously. I mean, can you imagine, right? And like it's easy as an outsider to say, "Dude, one one day you're going to really like be glad this happened." That's so you can't really see that from an outsider, right? But from an insider, you can use that to say "Everything that's happening to me is the best thing that can be happening to me." Um and then you can start to realize, and I think that this is actually a key to happiness, is that everything that happens is the best thing that could have happened. You just you It's kind of a detachment from outcomes to some degree. Um I believe outcomes really matter. I don't believe I don't believe that um, you know, you can fully be detached, but at the same time, whatever happens, you just accept that that was the best thing that could have happened and you learn as much as you can from it. Uh, as far as applying better questions to your future self, uh, I think asking rather than like, you know, I mean, you could just change you first off ask yourself, what's the questions you're currently asking? Uh, I think a really easy way to analyze that is just what are you currently measuring? You know, so like, I may be measuring how many likes are on my social media account. I may be measuring my current bank account. Uh, and so starting to analyze, what are the questions I'm currently asking which are leading to the current results I'm getting and then just changing the question. If maybe it's rather than how can I how can I make, you know, a $100,000 this year? How could I make 10 million? Like, you know, you don't It doesn't have to be about money. How could I How could I have, you know, enormously better experiences with my wife? How could you know, like you just start asking questions about the future um, that you've never asked before and it starts to give new lenses. And so I think you can first off, start to ask yourself, what are the questions I'm currently asking which are leading to whatever I'm currently measuring as success and how could I change those measurements or how could I change the questions entirely so that I could start seeing different frames. I think yeah, different questions are just different frames. And what do you do in terms of encouraging people to dream big? I mean, one of the things that I'm thinking about right now, so like I'm writing a book right now, totally separate from this one called 10x is easier than 2x. And like this is this is a really interesting model, but an aspect of this model is is that if you're going to go 2x, it's kind of the 80/20 principle in action. If you go 2x, you can keep 80% of your existing life and 20 only 20% has to be new. Right? So like, to go 2x, I can pretty much carry my current self forward 80%. 80% of me is forward. I can pretty much, you know 2% 20% will be new. But if you want to go 10x, um only the top 20% of what you're doing can stay. So 20% of existing whereas 80% has to be new if you're really going to go 10x. Um and so like 80% of what you're currently doing is irrelevant at your future selves in your future selves life if you were actually to 10x in certain metrics. So for example, if I wanted to be a 10 times better writer or or sell 10 times more books, 80% of my current self is irrelevant at that 10x version. Literally 80%. cool way to say it. what I mean? Only the top 20% of what I'm doing right now is actually scalable. do you figure out the 20 from the 80? This goes back to um you know, we're kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal. How much of what I'm currently doing right now is maintaining my former selves goals or just keeping things in place, going to meetings, doing things that honestly now from my current reference frame are not useful to my future self. Like again, it takes it takes honesty. Maybe something that was an amazing opportunity, you've outgrown it and it's it's now a distraction from where you want to go. And so I think you can analyze it you know, one simple aspect of 80/20 is just what are the what are the few things that I really do that bring me the most excitement right now or what are the few things that I really that I'm doing right now that if I had if I gave more time and attention to, it'd be really easy to to go to another place, but I'm spending all my time over here. Um so I do like um I like 10x thinking, but I do like thinking like you know, as far as imagination is more important than knowledge. Like really thinking differently about your future self. Like how different can they be? Uh in what few areas would you really love to see massive change? Uh I really like in a again, the the Collins frame of no more than three priorities. Like what if you if you just had three areas of your life choose any three and then you just stretch those. Like, how different could they be? How great could they be? The initial reaction and seriously like having having done this, a lot of people they hear these ideas and they never actually genuinely sit and think about it. Like, they hear the idea, yeah, imagine it differently, but actually quantify it a little bit. Like, if I actually sat and thought if my future self 5 years from now was 10 times the more successful writer or even a better writer what does that actually look like? Can I actually quantify? What is my current self? How many books am I currently selling? What if I 10x that? Or just looking at the book. What do you do though when that's like overwhelming and it's just ah Yeah, it sounds dope. It sounds dope. Sell 10 times more books. I love it. How do you get there? And how is the person when they dared to journal that and dared to write it down? How does it not become almost a throwaway joke? One is to realize that you've already done it. So, if you look at your current self If I look at my current self it's not a stretch to say that I'm 10x some former version of myself in many different metrics. Uh you know, 5 years ago yeah. I got my first book deal ever. Like, you know, and so like even going back a little bit further like, you know, there's many areas of my life where and it you know, 10x is just an idea, but like there's many areas in my life where certainly I'm way beyond what my former self was imagining. Um and so obviously I've done it before and I've now created a new homeostasis and so I've I've done this before. And I think anyone, you know, listening yourself you've done things in your life is at a place beyond the imagination of of your former self at different stages. You've already done it. And so why get to a place when you stop living that way? Because at some point some past version of you took that idea seriously and you started dreaming of a bigger goal, and you actually then committed yourself to that and started orienting your life towards that. And so, because you've done it before, like why stop? And so, I I know I've done it before. And so, uh I I I know that I know that I'll get I know that I'll get there, but also I'm not really competing with anyone. I'm not trying to prove myself to anyone. Like, if I don't get there, there's no failure. Like, why I don't really see the fear and the outcomes matter. They do. They do. it would be a failure. How do they deal with that? Well, it it's only a failure from a certain lens, right? Like, you can you can turn a failure like thinking like I like I like football, so I'm talking Joe Burrow now. Joe Burrow just went to the Super Bowl. He could call it a failure cuz he didn't win the Super Bowl. The Bengals just lost um to the Rams. Um you know, he can he can certainly view it as a failure, right? He didn't achieve his goal. Um but viewing it as a failure over time stops being useful. It's just like, how can you turn it into a gain? How can you learn from it? The event already occurred. You can't change the event. You can change how you frame it, and you can change what you get out of it. You can change what you do because of it. You can't actually go back and change. Joe Burrow can't change that he missed you know, that they they lost. So, he can be mad about it and feel like a loser, or he can get mad at his former self. I've reached the place in this is my own belief that it I nothing is actually a failure. Like, you created what you created. You can now choose to do something differently. You can choose to learn from it. If I don't hit a goal, um I can either be in the gain about or the gap about it. I can change because of it, or I can be mad at myself and turn into a trauma. Now, if you miss the goal, would you just reset that same goal and keep getting after it so that the goal like keeps moving off into the horizon. Maybe maybe because of what you learned the goal stops being relevant. Honestly, you're you're not competing against anyone. Like that's the great part. You get to choose your future self. You get to choose what you commit yourself to. So, maybe going through that experience you now can slightly adjust the goal. Maybe you can adjust what you're going for or you can recommit to that same goal if you want. Um but you're not really competing with anyone. You're in your own internal experience and so you get to choose what you commit yourself to. Um just by actually attempting the thing you've probably gained a lot of experience that your former self who initially set the goal didn't have. So, now you can either keep going for your former self's goal or you can set something totally different. Have you encountered people that are unable to be honest with themselves about what went wrong? I think I think it takes all of us a little bit of time and digestion to figure figure that out. Um Yeah, I think all of us are that in varying degrees. I don't think anyone is 100% honest with themselves. You know, like it takes time um to get increasingly honest with yourself about why something went the way it did. So, yeah. And so, yeah. I mean obviously a lot of people they'll just be delusional about it and just either blame the situation, blame the other person, never actually look in the mirror and realize that they're the ones creating the outcomes of their lives. Um Um and I think all of us are doing that in different degrees. Yeah, I would say so. It's interesting. There's a frame of reference that I think so many people spend their entire lives victimized by their own psychological immune system. And the psychological immune system is an incredible gift and I'm very grateful that we have it. But when people So, So, the immune system kicks in to say, "Don't worry, it's not your fault." this is just like the buffers just to keep you feeling good. Bowl because your coaches called the wrong play. There was too much noise in the stadium that day. Whatever, right? pushing everything out. Exactly. And it helps. And the happiest people on planet Earth are the most delusional. That's like the results of a real study. And but I also worry that there's a fragility to that. There's something that feels off, and I'm speaking from experience. Like my entire up till I don't know, 25, 26, was me not being completely honest with myself, definitely making things other people's problems because I was very afraid that I had a fixed mindset, so I was very afraid that I wasn't smart enough to achieve the things that I wanted to achieve in life. And I was constantly like, "Is this proof that I'm not smart enough? Is this proof that I am smart enough?" And so, it really made a big emotional difference when I could side on the side of it really was somebody else's fault. And that was so emotionally useful that man, it What What's the line? Uh were it not but for the grace of God, there I go. Like when I see somebody trapped by the psychological immune system where they needed to be somebody else's fault because just emotionally it would be too devastating to face it, I spent so much time there, and it was only encountering you know, the ideas we've been talking about today that finally allowed me to say, "Okay, this sucks. This is really going to hurt, but I'm going to own everything that was my fault. I did this, I did that, the other, whatever. I'm not good enough yet." But that word yet became this magical thing that I could append to anything. But I think most people, they're never able to get past that. And I'm curious, like especially as somebody with six kids, like how do you How do you instill that willingness to stare nakedly at one's inadequacies. I mean, I think it's I think it's awesome. Uh I think that uh how I see it is is you can stay on a a track that you're on, right? It's got rust, you know, you can just push forward uh and stay on the track you're on or you can get off the track. Um And it it you know, it's kind of like a it's kind of like a bow and arrow. You got to pull it back to get the tension to release it. You know, I think about even Tiger Woods who at some point when he was at the top of his game like stepped away for 2 years to re- redo his swing. Um sometimes it's very painful in the moment to face truths. The more head-on you face the truth, the more initial pain, but also the faster the release. Uh the more you free yourself up from that, it's like either stepping onto a new track with like rocket ship or getting into an airplane, right? So, like um I think that facing that and being as honest with yourself as possible in the short term is potent, you know, it's potently painful. Um you know, to admit to your wife or your kids that you have a problem or to admit to yourself and actually just be naked like one you know, my dad as an example, he was an extreme drug addict, you know, when I was growing up. Meth addict, did everything like literally in the room right next to me and my friends while we were playing World of Warcraft. Like it was gnarly. And one of the things that he said when he went through like a recovery process was just becoming completely like naked psychologically with yourself, but then with everyone else. And I think that that he from his perspective that actually makes you bulletproof psychologically because now you have nothing to hide. Now you have nothing to worry about. Like if you actually start to admit to yourself um and others um that you have a problem or that you're or even just that you're concerned about something, you're confused about something, the more you just you actually voice it, first off, you realize other people are not as emotionally attached to it as you are. Um you know, even if you've done something that you think is absolutely terrible and then you go and you talk about it. Maybe start with a counselor, start in your journal, but then get faster and talk talk about it to people who really matter or who may be affected by it. Um that's when actual progress occurs. You know, there's the quote, "All progress starts by telling the truth." And so you can continue to bury it. You know, there's a there's a twin quote to that one that you're only as sick as your secrets. You know, so that's Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah, so it's like you can you can maintain this, but you realize that because you're maintaining this, you're on that track with all that friction, you know, like at some point you're burning things out. It's going to age you, it's going to exhaust you. It's creating all this decision fatigue. Um face it, free yourself from it, and then life becomes so much better. Yeah, you may need to learn something, you may need to learn some skills, you know, in a totally different context rather than me trying to like um fix some problem. If I want to be honest with myself and become a better writer, right? I might have to do some serious deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is the exact opposite of habits. It's it's going outside your habits. It's like actually developing new skills. It's facing your weaknesses. It's getting hard feedback. It's it's it's it's learning things new. You know, back to that 10x model, 80% new, 20% existing. If I really want to become a better writer or become better as a father, I've got to learn a lot of things that my current self doesn't know. That's going to be difficult. All All real learning uh is difficult, but you can have a good mindset toward it. And you know, deliberate practice is hard. And so uh it's the willingness to face the difficulty for the short run for the investment in your future in the long run. I mean, that's the idea. It's just that if you're willing to make this investment, whether that's having that hard conversation, practicing the skill, every time you do that, you've just freed so much energy up for your future self. They're getting bigger and bigger and bigger, which by nature makes your present better and better and better. So, it's worth it. It's hard. It It get easier at every next level. There's new truths to unfold. No doubt. So, other than journaling, what's the best way to continuously pull that future self into the present to make sure that it's getting stronger in your mind, that it's getting bigger, that it's getting better, that you're updating it? Yeah. Um I mean, vividness is the key of future self, getting really vivid about it. Um you know, so you know, journaling about it's great. Um committing to it's great. Starting to invest money into it. Starting to invest money in whatever goal you have. You know, like actually, you know, investment investment financially creates uh commitment emotionally. You know, that's what sunk sunk cost bias really is. Um but you can leverage that. You know, so if you start investing a little bit of money here and there, or just actually learning it. Um I mean, the goal is to get yourself committed because once you get committed to whatever it is you want, then I mean, that's really what identity is. Identity is is the thing you're most committed to. And everyone's committed to something, you know? And once you stop being committed to something, you know, you stop caring about the piano or you stop caring about a certain business or relationship. Once you've once it's stopped being something you're committed to, it's it's no longer a part of your identity. And so you're you go somewhere else. And so the goal is just to get yourself committed um to whatever it is you want. Do you formalize that? Like if you're committing to something new, do you tell people? Do you write them down? Yeah. I I think that there is different layers. Um and sometimes it takes continuous recommitment. But certainly writing about it, thinking about it, deciding about it, telling people about it, formalizing plans about it, investing money in it, making plans, uncommitting to every other things, lesser goals. Whenever you uncommit to something, you know, again, back to that 80/20 model, you get rid of 80% of your current existing. You don't have to do that all at once, but you can start to let go of some of that so that you can put more and more energy into this. Um scheduling it, you know? If you look at a lot of people's schedules, their schedule looks like their current self, not their future self. Could be meetings, you know, urgent versus important. So, if you actually like put it on the schedule and like start saying no to cool opportunities that get in the way of that, you know? Um for me for most of my writing career, which is really at this point only like six or seven years, writing was never on my schedule. And so, like when I was a PhD student, I would just write in the mornings, but even when I got out of my PhD and I was running a business, like I still didn't do it even though that was the main thing that I saw myself as and like and so, like literally, no, I'm going to own my time. I'm going to own my schedule. These are the times I write. Um these are my goals. This is what I'm committed to in 2022. And I'm going to start saying no to other stuff, even cool things that I think are interesting or stuff that um maybe used to pay the bills. No, we're going to figure out some other way. You know, you you you start to actually say like, I'm going to figure it out right here. Future self, man. Be your future self now. Where can people follow along with you and when does the book come out? Book comes out in June. Uh futureself.com. I cheated. I got an early copy. Of course. Thank you, by the Yeah, I mean uh book comes out in June. Um you know, I'll just keep writing, but uh futureself.com is where people can learn more about all the jazz on future self. That's pretty much it, man. I love it. Guys, truly be your future self now. It is such a powerful way. One thing I've always said is my future always needs to be bigger than my past because it gives you something exciting to chase. So, make sure that you do that, that you have that exciting thing that gets you up and gets you going. And speaking of things that will get you up and get you going, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.