January 26, 2024 • 51 mins
FEEL FREE welcomes the insightful Ryan A. Bush, author and founder of Designing The Mind, creator of the Psychitecture platform mindform.io and upcoming author of Become Who You Are.
Join us as Ryan unravels the complexities of maintaining a virtuous character amidst modern temptations and negative psychological structures and how skewed self-perceptions can impair our mental health.
We probe the notion that surface-level self-improvement lacks the fortitude of virtue-driven disciplines, and we marvel at the courage that lies at the heart of every search for meaningful bonds in community and our own work.
So join us, as we offer guidance, hope, and the wisdom found in Ryan A. Bush's "Become Who You Are," equipping you with the tools for resilience and the art of personal transformation.
Check the links below for Ryan's resources on self-mastery!
Designing The Mind website - https://designingthemind.org/
Ryan's Books - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B08Q8P63CF
Mindform - https://mindform.io/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/designing_the_mind/
Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@DesigningtheMind
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome back to another episode of Feel Free,
the only podcast that'll tellyou to chase your dreams and
call you out and all yourbullshit Myself included,
extremely excited for thisweek's episode.
We are joined by Mr Ryan A Bush, the author and founder of
Designing the Mind, the upcomingauthor of Become who you Are
and the creator of the world'sfirst psychotexture platform,
(00:27):
mindform.
His ability to blend creativitywith research, with
introspective thinking, has beena huge hit in the
self-development community, andon this week's episode we talk
about our mutual love forphilosophy and then get into
some of the themes of hisupcoming book, become who you
Are, which you can pre-order onhis website.
I will be dropping links to allof his products and resources
(00:50):
down below.
So show the man some love andsit tight, because we're getting
into the episode.
Yeah, eudimonia, eudimonia, didyou want to go into that topic
at all Because I, honestly, amnot well versed in that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I'd love to.
So you can think of Eudimonia.
It's the term that the ancientGreeks used for sort of the
ultimate happiness, the goodlife, and it means something a
lot deeper than I think.
What happiness means when weuse it a lot, it's a momentary
feeling of pleasure or joy.
It was a very deep satisfactionwith your life and yourself.
And what's interesting is thatall the ancient Greeks pretty
(01:30):
much agree on this thatEudimonia is closely linked to
virtue or something like virtue.
Right, Arete is the word theyused, which has been translated
a few different ways.
One is excellence, and that cansometimes be more clear to
people than virtue.
It's not just this preachymorality thing.
It's about striving forexcellence and bringing out your
(01:53):
own personal excellences.
And they argued that it reallydoesn't matter what happens to
you in your life.
Right, Socrates was putsentenced to death, essentially,
and he chose to stay and choseto be executed because he wanted
to reach toward Eudimonia.
He wanted a deeper kind ofhappiness that had to do with
(02:14):
your character and your choices,and these thinkers often said
no one can hurt you if theycan't harm your character.
So it doesn't matter what yourcircumstances are.
You can achieve Eudimonia in aprison camp.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I think one of your quotes was like nobody or
their actions can take yourvirtue away from you, and I was
like damn, that's so true, and Ithink we get caught up in our
own heads a lot with these.
I think you also mentionedthese self-narratives, or
negative self-narratives thatare in our heads, and I think
(02:49):
trying to dispel those is so keyto reaching that state.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Another thing on the ancientGreeks is that the Stoics really
inspired the practice ofcognitive behavioral therapy
that we have today.
They were really the originatorof a lot of these ideas about
how our thoughts and beliefslead to our emotions and our
moods, and so I think thoseself-narratives, they very often
(03:18):
become distorted, especially inthe modern world, and that
requires a kind of restructuringprocess that you see in
Stoicism, you see it in CBT ifyou seek out therapy.
But other than those schools,most people aren't really
exposed to these ideas and mostpeople don't know how to go in
and actually change theirbeliefs that are causing them to
(03:38):
suffer and rework them, and sothey're kind of just trapped in
their own personal narrativesand that can get ugly.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And for someone to write a book on this, you've
obviously had to have dealt withthings of this nature.
So you're pulling a lot ofinspiration from philosophy and
psychology, and then your ownups and downs as well.
So why are we struggling somuch in this century with these
(04:10):
behaviors and these habits andstuff?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, a lot of layers to that, and I will get into my
own sort of personal challenges.
But just to address that lastpoint, a big part of why people
are struggling so much withthese things is that our brains
weren't really built for theworld that we live in.
We were built to live in tribesof 150 people where things like
(04:35):
social media and cocaine and allthese other addictive things
didn't exist, and they've sortof been designed to hijack our
natural reward systems, and soit is very easy to get caught up
in behaviors that you're notproud of, that don't serve your.
You know talking about virtueand eudaimonia, and so I think
(04:56):
it's not too surprising that wesee things like depression on
the rise.
There are more temptations thanever pulling you away from what
is ultimately a good life, andthere's also more things
distorting your views onyourself.
Right, you know, if you'regetting all your information
about who you are and how youfit into your community from,
(05:16):
you know, a social media app,how is that going to affect the
signal your brains receiving?
And so I think a big part ofthe answer is the world is just
so different and getting moreand more different from the one
that our brains sort of evolvedto exist in.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and you know I could talk for days about the
social media, the technology andstuff like that, and that's big
, and you used a word calledvirtue domain.
Now do these, this onlinecommunity, this social media or
the society we're living in now?
That's not designed for usright now.
Where do we find these virtuedomains at?
(05:53):
Where do we find these placeswhere we can, you know, achieve
our virtues or even find ourvirtues?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, that ties in pretty well, actually, with my
challenges.
So, you know, a few years ago Iwas working at a company where
I decided to go part time andwrite my first book and you know
, I was pretty much strugglingto write this book a few days a
week.
It wasn't going as smoothly asI thought it would, getting my
(06:23):
ideas on paper, as a lot offirst time writers find.
You know, I was at this jobwhere I was kind of I'd kind of
become relegated to doing thesereally tedious sort of
engineering drawings instead ofthe creative work that I started
doing when I joined the companyand I really wasn't good at it
and I had, you know, I hadco-workers who were criticizing
(06:45):
me and who had taken a disliketo me and I, you know, was
struggling with that.
And then there was also aglobal pandemic, which doesn't
tend to help if you're goingthrough an identity crisis.
So, I really was at a placewhere none of the main areas of
my life or very few of them Idid have a very, you know, happy
relationship that I'm verythankful for, but pretty much
(07:08):
everything else it was notserving to show me what I'm good
at and to bring out my greateststrengths or virtues and, as a
result, my view of myself, myself-esteem and my mood in turn
was kind of going lower andlower during that period and it
kind of hit a point that youwould say is sort of mild to
moderate depression for a whileduring that period.
(07:31):
And I think this really is whatcaused a lot of these ideas I'd
been studying for so long toclick into place.
This lived experience allowedme to piece together this theory
about what actually causes ourwellbeing, what causes
depression, and you know howdoes self-esteem work, all these
things.
And so, talking about virtuedomains, I think what's crucial
(07:53):
is that you build sort ofvessels in your life that allow
you to exercise your greatestpersonal strengths, the actions
that make you proud of who youare, that you admire and other
people, and I think this cancome through your work, it could
come through your relationships, your hobbies, communities and
yeah, I mean, I think even asocial media network in theory
(08:14):
could do it.
I built what you might call asocial media network, but it's
an online community calledMindform, where it actually has
been designed for humans and notfor advertisers, right?
It actually is built to bringout the best in us and help us
achieve self-mastery, and Ithink it does serve as a virtue
domain for members.
(08:35):
But ultimately, a lot of usdon't have these core avenues in
our lives.
We have jobs that aremonotonous and repetitive and
don't allow us to be creativeand be the person we want to be.
We've got relationships,potentially, that don't bring
out our greatest strengths and,particularly for people who
aren't religious, we don't havea lot of really great
(08:57):
communities that bring about alot of social connection, and
that's just.
There's a lot of issues withthe modern world that sort of
cause people to get trapped in aplace where they can't see
what's great about them, andI've argued in this book that
your brain is really trying tosee what's great about you and
it's regulating your moodaccording to what it sees.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Damn.
Yeah, that last part, yourbrain, or I didn't even say
yourself.
You mentioned the ego a lot.
I think your ego is trying totell yourself that you have
these things to be proud of,these virtues, as you're saying.
Ok, this kind of segues alittle bit, but the ego has been
given a bad rep here in thewestern world and even the
(09:40):
eastern world, you know, andthose sects and stuff like that.
I don't believe that you cantotally get rid of the ego
because, in a sense, if you canlearn to live with it in a
healthy manner, then you findthings to be proud of.
You know that give you thispurpose and this meaning.
And right at the start of yourbook you said something finding
meaning in meaningful projects.
(10:02):
And I was like damn, becauseyou know, if you just go to work
and come home and scroll yourphone like where's the meaning
in that?
You're just paying bills tosurvive, right, and we don't
have a lot of communities thatare showing us how to be the
best person we are, you know,and that's sad.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, I agree, I think you know, especially on
the on the ego point, I wouldsay, you know, the eastern world
started it.
A lot of these, a lot of theseeastern philosophies have argued
that you know that the ideal isto transcend ourselves, whereas
the ancient Greeks said theidea, you know, the ideal is to
(10:40):
build ourselves up, right,eudaimonia.
It's pretty different as anideal from enlightenment or self
transcendence or ego death.
But the West recently hasreally taken a liking to these
eastern ideas and, and you know,now you find them in every self
help book and every you knowspiritual work, so that your ego
is your enemy.
(11:00):
It's a, it's this, you know,evil sort of mechanism in your
brain and you have to get rid ofit.
And I've sort of questioned well, you know, is anything lost if
we destroy our egos, if wedisable this mechanism that is
presumably in our brains for areason, at least an evolutionary
reason, why are we trying to,you know, permanently disable it
(11:22):
or escape it?
And you know, what I found isthat really the ego does cause a
lot of suffering, the you knowwhat I've called the self
appraisal system in our brains.
It does create a lot of negativethoughts and negative moods.
But it's doing that because it'sit's trying to find good things
about us, things to like and beproud of and to show off to our
(11:43):
social tribes and friends andpotential mates and all these
things.
And so, yes, it's responsiblefor the suffering and the self
critical monologue, but it'salso responsible for the pride
and the admiration we feel forourselves.
It's responsible for the goodmoods, along with the bad.
And so my stance is that weshould, you know, have a healthy
(12:04):
respect for our egos.
We should be trying to designbetter egos that are better
capable of seeing our strengthsand acknowledging them, but we
should also be trying to sort ofprove ourselves to our own egos
.
We should be going out everyday and trying to give ourselves
reason to be proud of us, andthat'll result in the ego
(12:25):
producing positive thoughts andhealthy moods and happy you know
lives essentially, and that'seasier said than done, but I do
provide a number of sort ofsteps and exercises in the book
for actually going about thatproject.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
Another thing that you hadmentioned was embracing the ego,
or having the ego embrace yourvirtues.
So I mean, we've talked alittle bit about virtue, but for
the people who are listening,what do you define virtue?
As it's a good question.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
It certainly includes the things that we think of as
virtue.
You know the moral things likehonesty, but I think it includes
everything from compassion tocourage to creativity, anything
that we look at another personand we say, wow, I really admire
that about them, that's a goodtrait that they have, right,
this is really what a virtue is,and I think it's important, too
(13:19):
, that we observe other culturesto make sure it's not just
something that our culture sortof tends to admire.
You know like there are plentyof skills like stock trading
that our culture sort of values,but that an indigenous tribe
wouldn't care about but thereare also virtues that you know
you could go to any culture inthe world and they would admire
(13:41):
it.
Courage is admired in everyculture, and so these are what
we really need to be payingattention to, because it means
there's something very deeplyingrained about these traits in
our brains.
And so you know, martinSeligman and Christopher
Peterson came out with a list of24 virtues that they observe in
every culture, and I think, youknow, creating a finite list is
(14:01):
always going to simplify thingslike this, but it's a great
starting point to just look atthis list and say these are the
things that humans universallyvalue, and so chances are I
value them and I should learn toembody them as much as I can.
I also think it's important tostudy your own greatest virtues
(14:22):
and identify what those are.
You know Martin Seligman same,you know, pioneer of psychology,
of positive psychology.
He created a test that you cantake, called the signature
strengths test.
That'll basically give you astarting point and tell you
these are your top five virtuesand you can sort of home in on
those and say how can I amplifythese, how can I bring these out
(14:45):
more in my life?
That's really going to be thekey question when it comes to
improving your life and yourhappiness in the next stage of
your life.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, and I think, yeah, that's crazy because a lot
of people get lost when theytry and like better themselves.
You know, they think I'm justgoing to like die it and go to
the gym and my life's going toget better, and then people end
up like losing steam.
They're like, well, I'm notpassionate about trying to heal
myself, you know.
Well, it's like you haven'tfound your virtues, you haven't
(15:15):
found a reason to want to getbetter.
Yet you know you can fill yourtime with a lot of really good
habits and activities, but yougot to have a reason for doing
it, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I agree.
If you are, you know, motivatedto say, go to the gym and
exercise because you want to geta six pack for the summer, you
know that motivation is going toreally have some ups and downs
and it's probably not going tobe sustainable.
But if you want to do it,because you want to exercise
your virtue of discipline on aregular basis and you want to
(15:46):
make this a part of yourlifestyle and not just use it to
achieve some external results,it's going to be a lot more
powerful and sustainable andit's also going to do what what
I would say is more valuable,which is to actually show your
brain look, I have discipline, Ihave this positive trait that
we admire in others and hence Iadmire myself, and that's that's
(16:08):
.
That's really.
The core question is how can Iearn my own admiration more?
That's, I think, what should beunderlying our desire to
exercise and to write books andto, you know, create music.
It's all, ultimately, aboutexercising our own strengths,
and I think that's why that'sthe biggest reason why I go on
(16:29):
podcasts and maybe why you hostthem.
It's because I have strengthsthat I can bring out and I can
do it through this avenue.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Essentially, and it's enjoyable to.
You know, finding somethingthat's difficult to do because
it's, you know, if everythingwas always easy.
I find that we get very boredwith life, you know, so we need
to have those difficult thingsto do.
And, specifically, one storythat stood out in the book was
you had been homeschooled andthen you decided that you wanted
(16:58):
to go to real school, which wasa shock.
And then you also join thefootball team, right, and you
play for four years.
Yeah, that is, I'll be honest.
I played two years of football.
I played in sixth grade and Iplayed freshman year and I was
just getting knocked around, man, I'm like, yeah, I belong in
golf I'll be honest.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Oh, you and me both, I was getting knocked around too
.
I just didn't, for some reason,stop getting knocked around.
But no, I think it served itspurpose for me, which was not to
become a starter on the teamand be the all star, but to get
out of my comfort zone.
Because, yeah, I didn't havethe social skills that I knew I
(17:40):
should at that point in my lifeand I felt like I was afraid of
the world.
I was afraid to talk to people,afraid to be seen, and so I
kind of asked myself at onepoint and I don't know how I
knew to ask myself this as a 12or 13 year old, but you know,
what could I do to get as farout of my comfort zone as
possible?
What would be the just thecraziest thing for me to do?
(18:02):
And for a little 100 pound kidwho probably belongs on the
chess team, joined the footballteam, was it?
And it ended up doing, yeah,exactly that.
It did get me out of my comfortzone.
It allowed me to connect andbuild camaraderie with a lot of
people that I'm still friendswith today, and it also gave me
this kind of referenceexperience where I can pretty
(18:24):
much remember what it was likeon game night of a football game
.
Anytime I'm doing somethingthat I might be nervous about.
If I'm going on a podcast, Ican be like, well, at least it's
not game night.
So, yeah, it's really valuableand I talk about this a lot in
my anxiety program the anxietyalgorithm, how really going
(18:45):
toward the thing that scares youis exactly what you need to do
if you want to get rid of thatfear that's holding you back.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that's honestly thevirtue you probably got.
Going to school with thefootball was probably courage,
you know, the courage to stepout of your comfort zone like
that.
That's huge.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I think I gained several virtues through the
experience, but definitelycourage.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, that is, that is for sure.
I played a lot of sports inhigh school.
I played baseball, basketball,basketball and golf.
So that sense of community,that camaraderie, you really
can't replicate it.
And it's so sad to see us, ormillennials and people who are
older, like we, leave highschool and college and then we
(19:30):
don't have this sense ofcommunity.
And the sense of communitycomes up a few times in your
book when you're talking aboutdepression and the virtue
domains and stuff and we need.
You've created a communityonline with the mind form thing,
which is, which is awesome.
I'm actually heading to anarcotics anonymous meeting
tonight because I'm looking fora different type of community as
(19:50):
well, other than the people Iplay basketball with.
So stepping out of that comfortzone.
It gets a little more difficultas we get older, don't you
think?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
As far as the community goes,it is really difficult.
One thing that you brought upI've got this online community,
but I actually have ambitions ofturning it into a real in
person community.
I want to build mind formcenters around the world so,
(20:20):
just like you have a gymmembership or a health club
membership, you can have amental health club or mental
training center membership and aplace where you go and build
community and work on yourselfand your mind and improve your
emotions and habits and values.
So this is maybe a little bitlonger term vision, but
(20:40):
absolutely something I plan ondoing and scaling mind form to
kind of a bigger level.
And then, what did you bring upafter the community part?
What was the end of thatquestion?
No, it's okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Well, like the depression thing is bent on the
rise and you would think, withthe rise in technology and
social media and it's like I cantalk to my family members who
are thousands of miles away youwould think, with this ability
to integrate on a digital scalelike this, that people would be
more connected.
Right?
But why we feel so disconnectedand I think that was huge
(21:23):
during the pandemic too becausewe were locked down too.
We have the ability to call andtalk to people and stuff, but
we still feel like hold up, youknow.
Yeah, no, I was going to sayit's tough, because I try and
watch my screen time too, andI've talked about the dangers of
social media on my podcast aswell, but there needs to be a
(21:43):
better way at like being able toregulate that and even teach us
how to use it properly.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know, yeah Well you know these tools really
haven't been designed, you know,to be healthy.
It's like you can do your bestto teach people how to think
critically and how to, like youknow, respond to these things in
an emotionally mature way, butthe engineers at Metta are going
(22:08):
to keep trying to design theapp to get you to do all the
wrong things, because that makesmore money, and so it's a
general systemic issue that thefurther we go down, you know,
this road with the incentivesthat we have, the more the world
is going to be designed toextract value from humans
instead of bring value to humans, and so that's a challenge.
(22:32):
But I definitely think strivingfor our own self-mastery right,
educating ourselves on how todo these things, is certainly
better than nothing, and so wedo have to sort of fight back in
that way.
As far as depression goes, youknow being on the rise and kind
of what to do about it, I thinkthere are really two general
(22:56):
possibilities for someone who is, you know, experiencing
depression.
One is that your brain isn'tgetting the signal of your
personal virtues because youaren't sending them, or in other
words, you're not taking thebehaviors that give you reason
to be proud of yourself, andthis is really common in people
who are depressed.
(23:16):
They get trapped in thisvicious cycle where you know
you're not taking actions,you're sort of you've adopted
this lifestyle of idleness andsocial media and streaming video
games, whatever, and, as aresult, you don't have reason to
believe positive things aboutyourself, which makes you feel
bad, which makes you not want todo anything, and so on and so
(23:37):
on.
And so the way to get out ofthis trap, if you're in it, is
to create an activity scheduleessentially, where you gradually
and I mean baby steps getyourself out of this by saying
okay, every day I'm at leastgoing to tidy up my room and go
for a walk, and then, onceyou've got that down, you say
(23:59):
I'm going to read a book andcall a friend, and then, as you
slowly add these things, youpull yourself out of this sort
of trap that is socharacteristic of depression.
On the other hand, the secondpossibility is that you are
living a good life that shouldbe giving you reason to be proud
of yourself, but for somereason or another, you can't see
(24:20):
it, and so your beliefs aredistorted, you have a warped
worldview, and this can happenfor a lot of reasons your
upbringing trauma, whatever.
But in this case it may not bethat you need to create an
activity schedule.
You may need to go throughwhat's called cognitive
restructuring in CBT to actuallywork through those beliefs and
(24:43):
correct those distortions.
Yeah it's.
We have a lot of these commondistortions, like black and
white thinking, for example,assuming well, if I'm not a
genius, I must be an idiot.
Right, it was the only options.
And and we get trapped in thatthinking and we really hold on
to those beliefs for yearssometimes.
And so learning how to log yourthoughts and go in and actually
(25:07):
reframe and question andchallenge your beliefs is really
critical To you know.
Getting out of a depressed sortof space and a negative view of
yourself and really using thesetools in combination is one of
the most powerful ways to sortof get out of this trap.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, and that the, the funk is dangerous, as I call
it.
When you're in that type of pit, I Can't say I don't see the
world a little black and white,unfortunately.
I'm zero to a hundred person.
I'm, you know.
I go to narcotics anonymous.
I'm four and a half years soberfrom drugs and alcohol, and
that's awesome, thank you.
And To say that I've alwaysbeen zero to a hundred is, you
(25:49):
know, that's that's just the wayI've been.
But because I couldn't see theBeauty and myself for those
eight long years of using, Ijust kept digging a deeper and
deeper pit.
And then I Like how youmentioned, you know, the baby
steps with the activity schedule, because Realistically that's
kind of how I got off ofeverything I was addicted to
alcohol, cocaine, weed, ecstasyand a bunch of stuff, and I'm
(26:12):
like, all right, I got to getrid of this one first and then
introduce a healthier habit, youknow, because when you try and
do it all at once, you just getover.
Yeah, and you fail, and you getdiscouraged, you know, and
Sometimes you don't really seethe results like instantly.
We have this delayedgratification over here in in
2024, you know, and people wanteverything fixed right now.
(26:36):
But that's, that's not how itworks.
Yeah, wish you could, like Itell people now.
I'm like listen, you spentyears screwing your life up.
You're not gonna fix it in in aday or a week or a month.
You know, you're gonna live thebest life you can live.
You got to put in some time,you know.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, it really is the, the baby steps in every
area.
I talk about it, too, withAnxiety.
For example, you know, peoplewill try to face their fears all
at once, or what's calledflooding.
And if you go from from zero toten in terms of, you know,
taking on the scariest thingsthat you can, you're very likely
(27:14):
gonna freak yourself out.
You're gonna, you know, escapethe situation and you're gonna
teach your brain that this isactually dangerous and you're
gonna, you know, reinforce thefear.
So you're more scared than ever.
And that's why you have to havethe patience to say, okay, I'm
gonna take my fear to a levelthree, then I'm gonna face it,
I'm gonna sit there, I'm notgoing to run, I'm just going to
(27:36):
wait until my anxiety lowers,and then tomorrow I'll take it
to a four, and and so on.
And I think that's Criticalwith addiction and that kind of
thing too, you cannot try to doeverything cold turkey, because
you will, you will learn thewrong things and your brain will
walk away from it with somevery distorted beliefs, right
(27:56):
and yeah, you try and apply thatlater on in life too, and you
know the zero to a hundredlifestyle it's.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
You know it's not sustainable, it's dangerous to
the human.
You know, the only time I everlook at it as something that you
can throttle is like withcreativity, or like the will to
write or the will to dance or becreative.
It's like you don't necessarilywant to throttle, that you want
to express yourself because youknow that's, that's what living
is.
If you're a creative person,but you know, don't don't stop
(28:26):
eating or don't stop sleepingbecause of it.
You know, like I think peopleforget that we're still human.
We try and compare ourselves tocomputers all the time right,
and then we start to embody thesmartphones that we're holding.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's a good point, I certainly do.
I I've talked about how, likeone of the roles that my partner
plays in my life, she will snapme out of my, you know,
computer obsession like Statewhere I just, you know, forget
about eating and sleeping andforget to just be like goofy and
be a person and, yeah, she'sgreat about just pulling pranks
(29:04):
or whatever is needed to.
You know, remind me that I'm ahuman and I have human needs
basically.
But absolutely we do get sortof trained into this like
Obsessive state where we, weturn into computers and I think
that's probably not too healthy.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No, and I you know I don't talk like much about you
know politics and other stufflike that, but you know the
whole grind culture here inAmerica it's just it's, it's not
good.
You know this whole got a grind, got a hustle, get aside hustle
, keep making money, climb,climb, climb.
You know you're just gonna getburnt out.
(29:42):
You know that's not what lifeis.
No.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I agree.
I mean it's funny how you evensee this showing up in the
Philosophical spaces that youand I are interested in.
I've been Seeing all this.
I call it mixed stoicism, butlike I saw a Thumbnail the other
day that was like Stoicism howto tell if a woman is secretly
(30:05):
trying to seduce you orsomething and there's like how
to use Stoicism to get rich andget jacked and it's like, well,
this is really not what this isabout.
It's.
It's actually like the oppositeof that.
You know, these philosophiesare there to help you not Feel
the nagging need to get more andto you know, work harder to
(30:27):
earn this External outcome,because really it's not about
the external outcomes and you'renot gonna be happy even when
you get those and You're gonnago your whole life forgetting to
actually be happy and make thechanges to your mind that will
allow you to achieve that piece.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, and, like you said, meta's designing stuff to
Take the veil, extract the valueout of everything you know and
insert money in its place.
So that's, that's tough.
I did want to say one thingthat I laughed when I was
listening to the book is becauseyou had mentioned you're like,
(31:04):
well, it's a global pandemic.
Surely I can play AnimalCrossing all day and I'm like,
then we talk about like thisidleness and it's like you know,
I play a lot, you know I play alot of video games, watch a lot
of anime and stuff.
It gets to a point where it's,yeah, it's de-habilitating, you
(31:24):
know, because you get, it's notthe best virtues to have, right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Sure, I mean, you know there's nothing problematic
about playing an occasionalvideo game, but you know they're
also designed to be addictiveand they can take over your life
and ultimately what you'redoing is, you know, spending
your time building up the wrongcharacter.
Video games are essentiallylike what real life is, in that
you are leveling up a characterin this game, and if you were
(31:53):
doing the same thing to your ownreal life character, you would
actually be getting the deeperbenefits, but instead, when you
turn off that game, you don'tfeel any better and you actually
feel worse because you'veneglected yourself.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, theproblem with that period is I
kind of let myself be lazy for alittle while.
I gave myself permission not todo all the things I've been
(32:15):
doing for years the exercise,you know, the music, the all the
things that sort of build me upas a person and I learned what
I had always suspected, which isthat that's really not good for
your mental health.
Like you always have to keeppushing, you don't ever get to
stop.
In that sense, you don't haveto push in the hustle culture.
You know productivity andprofit sense, but you need to
(32:38):
always be striving to be abetter person, and some of that
can be creative and professionaland some of it is interpersonal
and has to do with you knowyour relationships and how you
treat them.
But I think you always need tohave goals and ambitions.
You always need to have thingsthat you're doing to grow and
(32:58):
strive for more.
And the minute you let yourselfbe lazy, your brain notices.
It starts saying, oh, I'm notseeing evidence of those
strengths that I always thoughtI had, and then before long
you've forgotten that you evenhave them.
You forgot that you're acreative person because you
haven't shown yourself in sixmonths.
And so you know I even worry,like people see retirement as
(33:22):
this golden you know in state,and then once they actually ride
off into the sunset, they'relike now what Now?
I, you know, my whole selfesteem was coming from my job,
and now I don't have my jobanymore.
What am I good at?
I don't even remember.
So it's really important tothink about how we sort of
demonstrate what we're good atto our own brains and build our
(33:46):
own self esteem.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I think with the video game thing, or even
the community aspect of like theonline community is, we can be
something that we're not outhere in reality, right, and the
things that we don't like aboutourselves we don't have to take
into the online world with us,you know.
So, yeah, and then when we turnthat game off, like you said,
(34:07):
we come back and we're like Idon't feel fulfilled at all.
Now, I got to deal with thisheaping pile of human that I
just don't know what to do with,you know.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, and, and you know there is something
extremely important to belearned from video games.
There's a book called realityis broken that talks about all
the ways that video gamedesigners have learned how to
create this kind of ideal world,ideal system that makes you
actually want to do it.
And we haven't designed ourreal world in the same way.
(34:38):
It doesn't tap, all the same,you know neurons.
It doesn't make us want to goout and do these things, and so
we kind of sometimes have to doa dopamine detox and step away
from these things to learn toappreciate how rewarding it is
to have real life relationshipsand do real life creative work
(34:59):
and all these other things.
And so, you know, I thinklearning from video games and
how we structure the world canbe really valuable.
I mean, if people can get soaddicted to World of Warcraft
where you know you basically, Imean some of these are sort of
simulating real life.
You have this character, youput in a lot of hard work and
(35:22):
time and you build up thesepoints and kind of level up.
You know how can we make reallife and real character building
just as addictive as that?
Essentially, I think for someof us it is, but it's an
acquired taste for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think it's an acquired taste, but also like a
muscle you got to work.
You know, because, like youknow, right when you start, I
actually got a buddy.
He's, he just hit his 12 monthsobriety mark from alcohol and
heroin and he comes into town acouple of months ago and I was I
wasn't doing so hot because mycat died right, and you know I'm
(35:59):
still sober, thankful for that,obviously always grateful and
he comes in with like man, sucha fire for like wellness and
like improving his life, and I'mlike looking at him and I'm
like, damn, that's awesome.
You know, because once youstart that six month period of
not being creative, not doinggood things, and you get used to
(36:20):
putting yourself down, and thenjust like one instance of
somebody doing it, and you seeit and you're like, oh shit,
like life can totally be likethat, right, I just don't know
how to go about it.
And that's where most peoplestruggle with, honestly, you
know.
Yeah, well, I think.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I think that you know you bring up a really good
point, which is kind of likerole models and the importance
of having people you admire thatshow you these things.
One of the things I talk aboutin the book is how important it
is to build a list of the peopleyou admire most.
You know these can be likepeople in your life, historical
(36:59):
figures, fictional characterseven but essentially like
creating this list and thengoing through it and writing
down specifically what youadmire about these people, each
person, what are the traits theyhave that you really like, what
are these specific types ofactions they take that you wish
you could be more like, and thatthat is a pretty good blueprint
(37:22):
for who you need to become next, and you can break it down into
individual habits that willallow you to be more like these
people.
But essentially, your ownimpulses of admiration tell you
everything you need to knowabout where to go.
This is your built-in compass,essentially, and paying more
attention to that and learningwho you admire and what you
(37:45):
admire about them basicallytells you where your next step
needs to be.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, and having, I think having role models is so
important.
I mean everybody here inAmerica or in the world.
You know, with the rise ofHollywood and movies and media
and stuff, we have all of thesefictional characters that we
look up to, right, but we don'tknow how to go about embodying
those virtues right, because itrequires a lot of hard work.
(38:13):
I think at the start of yourbook you said you have to go
through suffering in order toaccomplish things of that nature
.
You know something along that.
But if you're not likesuffering and struggling to be
better, like if we were all justlike, you know, marvel,
superhero, physical Specimen,demigods who are all insanely
(38:37):
smart and stuff, like we're justpeak everything, it's like and
Everything was peak everything,and people call that heaven and
it's like, well, it's kind ofboring, everything's done right,
mm-hmm, but right now we we'renot grateful for the fact that
we do get to grind and trainourselves and heal, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think we we don't tend to be grateful
enough for our challenges andstruggles, because they're what
we usually look back on and say,wow, I'm so glad I went through
that, that's what I'm mostproud of, like I'm.
You know, that's what turned meinto who I am.
I also think that you know itto, and to some extent we, we
(39:17):
glorify suffering more than weshould.
I think it really depends onthe circumstances.
You know, some types ofsuffering are completely
unnecessary and and you know itdoesn't help us improve at all
and we just put ourselvesthrough these things
Unnecessarily.
And other types of suffering, Ithink, really do Cultivate
greatness and and creativity andcharacter and all these things.
(39:40):
I sort of use this dimensionalmodel to get this across, where
you've got an x-axis whichrepresents pain and pleasure, a
y-axis which represents loss andgain, and then a z-axis that
you could think of as depth, youknow, mountains and valleys,
essentially which representsvirtue, and so really it's the
z-axis that matters.
You want to build the mostvirtue that you can, but
(40:03):
sometimes you'll have to go into, you know, you'll have to go
towards suffering in order toclimb up that mountain.
Other times You'll have to go,you know towards towards
pleasure to climb the mountain.
So really keeping your eye onthat core element of virtue and
just using your circumstancesand your suffering or your
pleasure, really just usingthese as Instrumental steps
(40:26):
toward that virtue, I think isthe key.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, I mean the whole what doesn't kill you
makes you stronger thing.
I definitely rings true and youknow, before Katy Perry started
singing it, there was, you know, some, some German man in the
mountains writing it.
You know which is definitelyone, definitely one of my
favorite quotes by him too.
Yeah, I think finding Findingthose challenges and then not
(40:51):
always heading towards suffering, but those uncomfortable
moments you had talked aboutwith like anxiety, it's like you
want to actually go towards thethings that make you
uncomfortable.
You want to have theseambitions.
You want to heal yourself.
You, deep down, we all want tobe better people.
I just think we we forget thatbecause it's hard facing what,
the things we were wrong about.
(41:11):
You know that ain't easy shit.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, no, I think you're right, especially about
Nietzsche.
I mean he, he's certainly likethe right person to take it from
.
He spent his whole lifesuffering, basically right.
I mean, he was extremely sicklyhis whole life.
He descended into madness laterin life.
He struggled with people andyou know, rejection of
(41:35):
throughout his life too.
And so if he's coming out of itand saying, you know, I think
this is actually what makes usbetter people, you know we
should listen.
I think you know we can look atVictor Frankel too.
He was in a concentration camp,and I'm certainly not
advocating for concentrationcamps.
But if you can come out of thatkind of experience and say,
yeah, it's really not having acomfortable, easy life that
(41:58):
makes a life good.
It's about virtue, it's aboutmeaning, it's about character,
it's about who you, who you'reable to become, yeah, I think we
should be listening to that alot more.
I think we're our brains arewired to pay a lot more
attention to the flashy thingsthat don't really deliver.
I mean, drugs are a greatexample.
They deliver the short-termhigh, but not the long-term deep
(42:22):
satisfaction.
So actually internalizing thissort of deeper,
three-dimensional way of lookingat our lives, instead of
continually chasing the thingthat we desire now but that
we've learned time and timeagain, doesn't actually make us
happy, I think.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I think it takes work to overcome our natural biases,
but I do think it can be done,yeah, I think it can be done
with the the right help and theright drive, obviously, and
reading and listening to books,like Like yours, and listening
to podcast.
I have a lot of people who aregetting really into podcast,
like like Huberman lab and andmodern wisdom and other podcasts
(43:03):
like that which are, which areawesome and inspirational and
stuff, and I believe we're atthis, we're getting to this
point in Humanity where we aregoing to heal.
You know, before it was justabout survival.
Now we have survival down patand now we're like, well, what
do we do with all this free time?
now, right, I I think, we'regonna get to this really nice
(43:24):
point where Everybody's able tolike heal from whatever trauma
or messed up stuff They've beenthrough, you know, with the help
of people like you and me.
So that's always something tolook forward to.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
That's definitely an optimistic take.
I can see it going that way andI can also see the systems in
place and, and you know,advanced artificial intelligence
Making things worse foreverybody.
I'm very much hopeful for the,for the better version of that,
but I think we need to Some.
Some things needed dramaticallysort of turn around for that to
(43:57):
happen.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Of course, yeah, but I mean, you wouldn't be doing
what you're doing if you didn'thave a little hope about it,
right?
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Sure, I mean I've, I've, at the very least, I've,
impacted thousands of people atleast, that's what I see in my
inbox and my Amazon reviews butbut, but we, you know, we need
larger scale change and I, yeah,I do have a sort of glimmer of
hope that I could, you know,keep developing my work and and
be at the right place in theright time and have some ability
(44:26):
to impact things on a moresystemic level.
So, absolutely, I'm, I'm, I dothink there's, I think we got a
shot here.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Honestly, it couldn't have said it better I yeah,
yeah, that's uh.
I yeah.
It's just really nice beingable to talk to people who also
not only want to change theircells but also want to help
change the world for the better.
You know, cuz we have our facesin our phones, we go to our
jobs and we come home and welook at more screens, you know,
and we're not Seeing anyevidence that there is any hope.
(44:59):
You know, but talking to youright now, we're talking to
other people in my life who areexcited to hear about the
podcast, or they're excited tohear about A new book or
something like.
There is that part of humanitythat's still living there, even
if you know these institutionsare gonna pile Substances and
products on top of us.
Like, there, there is a glimmerof hope, you know, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
I am a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well, good, we got through it all.
That's all.
Yeah, is there?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
anything.
Is there anything else youwanted to talk about?
I mean, I was actually gonnaask you a few personal questions
like Favorite video games orbooks or TV shows, favorite food
and stuff like that, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, let's do it sure you got a favorite video
game.
Oh man, I'm a Nintendo guy tomy core, so Me too, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah, I had all the systems growing up.
I Remember when I got my firstNintendo 64 and and those were
good times.
But uh, yeah, I mean smash broshas a special place in my heart
.
Zelda I did.
I did have to get the newestZelda and and spin a good 60, 70
hours playing, so, uh, that's agood one.
(46:19):
I mean you can't beat that.
But uh, yeah, yeah, that's.
Uh, that's most of my favoritevideo game.
I really like that.
I think that's my favoritevideo game.
I really like far cry as welland like some of those kind of
open world like stealth typegames.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I just got into open world games the last Three years
.
Actually, I didn't play thembefore.
The first open world game Iplayed was, uh, breath of the
wild actually, and Wow okay, Iwas like damn, this is lit, you
know.
And then Then I get the witcherthree which got ported to
switch.
So I'm a huge Nintendo guy.
(46:55):
Um Uh, I actually refurbish oldGameboy sp's and Gameboys and
stuff like that.
Um really, I just, like you know, have something to do with my
hands.
It's a little technical.
My favorite game is probablyfire emblem, though, so, um, I
okay, I have not really gotteninto fire emblem, that's
interesting.
I'm all turn based strategy, sothat's um.
(47:18):
You know the pokemon games hada little turn based in it, but
fire emblems definitely up therefor me.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Oh, I played a lot of a lot of the pokemon games
growing up, so good.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah, yeah, do you got any favorite books you're
reading right now?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Oh well, favorite books.
I've got Several hundredfavorite that I'm reading right
now.
We're actually on mineform, we,we have a different book we
read every month and we happento be reading, uh, epic tituses
and Kyredian, which is one ofthe original stoic works, and uh
, it's just, uh, it's brilliant.
Every time I read it it'sprobably the fourth or fifth
(47:54):
time I've read it.
And, uh, love that one, loveyou know Marcus Aurelius as well
.
The Tao to Ching is great.
Um, you know I love Maslow aswell.
Um, but uh, yeah, I startedreading, reading on the origins
of political order recently, soI'm trying to branch into
(48:15):
understanding more about howsociety works, beyond, you know,
kind of the individual mindthat I've mostly been studying
for the last decade.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, it's tough to branch out into that.
You know, even when I wastaking political philosophy at
college, I'm like man, this justain't it.
Chief, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
But actually, while you brought this up so before we
go.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the
resources you have available toeverybody out there.
Now, you just said on Mindformyou guys read a new book every
month, is that right?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, there's a lot going on on Mindform right now.
If you want to learn more, youcan go to Mindformio, but you
know, essentially it is anonline community.
It's got a number of like fulllength programs that I've
created on anxiety anddepression, and there's one on
sleep and optimizing it, andthen hundreds of my articles and
(49:12):
those of members and, yeah, wedo read a different book every
month.
We have live events on a weeklybasis to connect and discuss
these things and for a lot ofpeople, this is, you know, some
of the first people who reallythink like them that they've met
in their lives.
I went most of my life notthinking anyone else was like
obsessed with psychology andphilosophy, and then I start
(49:35):
this and I meet hundreds of them.
So, yeah, mindform is reallycool.
And then, in general, if you goto designing the mindorg slash
becoming you can put that in theshow notes One you can preorder
the new books that we've beentalking about become who you are
.
But if you put in your email,I'll also send you a couple of
free books digitally thepsychotex toolkit and the book
(49:58):
of self mastery, which is kindof a quote compilation that
brings in ideas from all thesephilosophers and thinkers.
So it's good stuff.
You can get it all at thatlength.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Nice.
Yeah, I was actually going tosay I am going to be dropping
links for all of this lovelystuff that Mr Ryan a bush has
for all of you listeners outthere Before we go.
Is there anything you wanted tosay to the listeners about
becoming who you are?
Maybe we're to start with that.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Yeah, let's see, we've covered understanding your
own virtues and how to identifythose.
We've covered how to identifythe people you admire most and
sort of deriving your valuesfrom that behavioral activation
restructuring.
We've hit all the main pointshere, I think.
Now you just need to read thefull book and see how it all
(50:48):
comes together.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Appreciate everybody coming outfor another episode of feel
free.
Check the notes.
I'll be dropping links foreverything by this guy's book.
Get on that stuff.
We're all trying to be betterand we're trying to heal and
we're trying to become who weare.
So y'all have a good rest ofyour night, stay up and feel
free.
Welcome back to another episode of Feel Free,
the only podcast that'll tellyou to chase your dreams and
call you out and all yourbullshit Myself included,
extremely excited for thisweek's episode.
We are joined by Mr Ryan A Bush, the author and founder of
Designing the Mind, the upcomingauthor of Become who you Are
and the creator of the world'sfirst psychotexture platform,
(00:27):
mindform.
His ability to blend creativitywith research, with
introspective thinking, has beena huge hit in the
self-development community, andon this week's episode we talk
about our mutual love forphilosophy and then get into
some of the themes of hisupcoming book, become who you
Are, which you can pre-order onhis website.
I will be dropping links to allof his products and resources
(00:50):
down below.
So show the man some love andsit tight, because we're getting
into the episode.
Yeah, eudimonia, eudimonia, didyou want to go into that topic
at all Because I, honestly, amnot well versed in that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, I'd love to.
So you can think of Eudimonia.
It's the term that the ancientGreeks used for sort of the
ultimate happiness, the goodlife, and it means something a
lot deeper than I think.
What happiness means when weuse it a lot, it's a momentary
feeling of pleasure or joy.
It was a very deep satisfactionwith your life and yourself.
And what's interesting is thatall the ancient Greeks pretty
(01:30):
much agree on this thatEudimonia is closely linked to
virtue or something like virtue.
Right, Arete is the word theyused, which has been translated
a few different ways.
One is excellence, and that cansometimes be more clear to
people than virtue.
It's not just this preachymorality thing.
It's about striving forexcellence and bringing out your
(01:53):
own personal excellences.
And they argued that it reallydoesn't matter what happens to
you in your life.
Right, Socrates was putsentenced to death, essentially,
and he chose to stay and choseto be executed because he wanted
to reach toward Eudimonia.
He wanted a deeper kind ofhappiness that had to do with
(02:14):
your character and your choices,and these thinkers often said
no one can hurt you if theycan't harm your character.
So it doesn't matter what yourcircumstances are.
You can achieve Eudimonia in aprison camp.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, I think one of your quotes was like nobody or
their actions can take yourvirtue away from you, and I was
like damn, that's so true, and Ithink we get caught up in our
own heads a lot with these.
I think you also mentionedthese self-narratives, or
negative self-narratives thatare in our heads, and I think
(02:49):
trying to dispel those is so keyto reaching that state.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, yeah, I mean.
Another thing on the ancientGreeks is that the Stoics really
inspired the practice ofcognitive behavioral therapy
that we have today.
They were really the originatorof a lot of these ideas about
how our thoughts and beliefslead to our emotions and our
moods, and so I think thoseself-narratives, they very often
(03:18):
become distorted, especially inthe modern world, and that
requires a kind of restructuringprocess that you see in
Stoicism, you see it in CBT ifyou seek out therapy.
But other than those schools,most people aren't really
exposed to these ideas and mostpeople don't know how to go in
and actually change theirbeliefs that are causing them to
(03:38):
suffer and rework them, and sothey're kind of just trapped in
their own personal narrativesand that can get ugly.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
And for someone to write a book on this, you've
obviously had to have dealt withthings of this nature.
So you're pulling a lot ofinspiration from philosophy and
psychology, and then your ownups and downs as well.
So why are we struggling somuch in this century with these
(04:10):
behaviors and these habits andstuff?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, a lot of layers to that, and I will get into my
own sort of personal challenges.
But just to address that lastpoint, a big part of why people
are struggling so much withthese things is that our brains
weren't really built for theworld that we live in.
We were built to live in tribesof 150 people where things like
(04:35):
social media and cocaine and allthese other addictive things
didn't exist, and they've sortof been designed to hijack our
natural reward systems, and soit is very easy to get caught up
in behaviors that you're notproud of, that don't serve your.
You know talking about virtueand eudaimonia, and so I think
(04:56):
it's not too surprising that wesee things like depression on
the rise.
There are more temptations thanever pulling you away from what
is ultimately a good life, andthere's also more things
distorting your views onyourself.
Right, you know, if you'regetting all your information
about who you are and how youfit into your community from,
(05:16):
you know, a social media app,how is that going to affect the
signal your brains receiving?
And so I think a big part ofthe answer is the world is just
so different and getting moreand more different from the one
that our brains sort of evolvedto exist in.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, and you know I could talk for days about the
social media, the technology andstuff like that, and that's big
, and you used a word calledvirtue domain.
Now do these, this onlinecommunity, this social media or
the society we're living in now?
That's not designed for usright now.
Where do we find these virtuedomains at?
(05:53):
Where do we find these placeswhere we can, you know, achieve
our virtues or even find ourvirtues?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, that ties in pretty well, actually, with my
challenges.
So, you know, a few years ago Iwas working at a company where
I decided to go part time andwrite my first book and you know
, I was pretty much strugglingto write this book a few days a
week.
It wasn't going as smoothly asI thought it would, getting my
(06:23):
ideas on paper, as a lot offirst time writers find.
You know, I was at this jobwhere I was kind of I'd kind of
become relegated to doing thesereally tedious sort of
engineering drawings instead ofthe creative work that I started
doing when I joined the companyand I really wasn't good at it
and I had, you know, I hadco-workers who were criticizing
(06:45):
me and who had taken a disliketo me and I, you know, was
struggling with that.
And then there was also aglobal pandemic, which doesn't
tend to help if you're goingthrough an identity crisis.
So, I really was at a placewhere none of the main areas of
my life or very few of them Idid have a very, you know, happy
relationship that I'm verythankful for, but pretty much
(07:08):
everything else it was notserving to show me what I'm good
at and to bring out my greateststrengths or virtues and, as a
result, my view of myself, myself-esteem and my mood in turn
was kind of going lower andlower during that period and it
kind of hit a point that youwould say is sort of mild to
moderate depression for a whileduring that period.
(07:31):
And I think this really is whatcaused a lot of these ideas I'd
been studying for so long toclick into place.
This lived experience allowedme to piece together this theory
about what actually causes ourwellbeing, what causes
depression, and you know howdoes self-esteem work, all these
things.
And so, talking about virtuedomains, I think what's crucial
(07:53):
is that you build sort ofvessels in your life that allow
you to exercise your greatestpersonal strengths, the actions
that make you proud of who youare, that you admire and other
people, and I think this cancome through your work, it could
come through your relationships, your hobbies, communities and
yeah, I mean, I think even asocial media network in theory
(08:14):
could do it.
I built what you might call asocial media network, but it's
an online community calledMindform, where it actually has
been designed for humans and notfor advertisers, right?
It actually is built to bringout the best in us and help us
achieve self-mastery, and Ithink it does serve as a virtue
domain for members.
(08:35):
But ultimately, a lot of usdon't have these core avenues in
our lives.
We have jobs that aremonotonous and repetitive and
don't allow us to be creativeand be the person we want to be.
We've got relationships,potentially, that don't bring
out our greatest strengths and,particularly for people who
aren't religious, we don't havea lot of really great
(08:57):
communities that bring about alot of social connection, and
that's just.
There's a lot of issues withthe modern world that sort of
cause people to get trapped in aplace where they can't see
what's great about them, andI've argued in this book that
your brain is really trying tosee what's great about you and
it's regulating your moodaccording to what it sees.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Damn.
Yeah, that last part, yourbrain, or I didn't even say
yourself.
You mentioned the ego a lot.
I think your ego is trying totell yourself that you have
these things to be proud of,these virtues, as you're saying.
Ok, this kind of segues alittle bit, but the ego has been
given a bad rep here in thewestern world and even the
(09:40):
eastern world, you know, andthose sects and stuff like that.
I don't believe that you cantotally get rid of the ego
because, in a sense, if you canlearn to live with it in a
healthy manner, then you findthings to be proud of.
You know that give you thispurpose and this meaning.
And right at the start of yourbook you said something finding
meaning in meaningful projects.
(10:02):
And I was like damn, becauseyou know, if you just go to work
and come home and scroll yourphone like where's the meaning
in that?
You're just paying bills tosurvive, right, and we don't
have a lot of communities thatare showing us how to be the
best person we are, you know,and that's sad.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, I agree, I think you know, especially on
the on the ego point, I wouldsay, you know, the eastern world
started it.
A lot of these, a lot of theseeastern philosophies have argued
that you know that the ideal isto transcend ourselves, whereas
the ancient Greeks said theidea, you know, the ideal is to
(10:40):
build ourselves up, right,eudaimonia.
It's pretty different as anideal from enlightenment or self
transcendence or ego death.
But the West recently hasreally taken a liking to these
eastern ideas and, and you know,now you find them in every self
help book and every you knowspiritual work, so that your ego
is your enemy.
(11:00):
It's a, it's this, you know,evil sort of mechanism in your
brain and you have to get rid ofit.
And I've sort of questioned well, you know, is anything lost if
we destroy our egos, if wedisable this mechanism that is
presumably in our brains for areason, at least an evolutionary
reason, why are we trying to,you know, permanently disable it
(11:22):
or escape it?
And you know, what I found isthat really the ego does cause a
lot of suffering, the you knowwhat I've called the self
appraisal system in our brains.
It does create a lot of negativethoughts and negative moods.
But it's doing that because it'sit's trying to find good things
about us, things to like and beproud of and to show off to our
(11:43):
social tribes and friends andpotential mates and all these
things.
And so, yes, it's responsiblefor the suffering and the self
critical monologue, but it'salso responsible for the pride
and the admiration we feel forourselves.
It's responsible for the goodmoods, along with the bad.
And so my stance is that weshould, you know, have a healthy
(12:04):
respect for our egos.
We should be trying to designbetter egos that are better
capable of seeing our strengthsand acknowledging them, but we
should also be trying to sort ofprove ourselves to our own egos
.
We should be going out everyday and trying to give ourselves
reason to be proud of us, andthat'll result in the ego
(12:25):
producing positive thoughts andhealthy moods and happy you know
lives essentially, and that'seasier said than done, but I do
provide a number of sort ofsteps and exercises in the book
for actually going about thatproject.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
Another thing that you hadmentioned was embracing the ego,
or having the ego embrace yourvirtues.
So I mean, we've talked alittle bit about virtue, but for
the people who are listening,what do you define virtue?
As it's a good question.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
It certainly includes the things that we think of as
virtue.
You know the moral things likehonesty, but I think it includes
everything from compassion tocourage to creativity, anything
that we look at another personand we say, wow, I really admire
that about them, that's a goodtrait that they have, right,
this is really what a virtue is,and I think it's important, too
(13:19):
, that we observe other culturesto make sure it's not just
something that our culture sortof tends to admire.
You know like there are plentyof skills like stock trading
that our culture sort of values,but that an indigenous tribe
wouldn't care about but thereare also virtues that you know
you could go to any culture inthe world and they would admire
(13:41):
it.
Courage is admired in everyculture, and so these are what
we really need to be payingattention to, because it means
there's something very deeplyingrained about these traits in
our brains.
And so you know, martinSeligman and Christopher
Peterson came out with a list of24 virtues that they observe in
every culture, and I think, youknow, creating a finite list is
(14:01):
always going to simplify thingslike this, but it's a great
starting point to just look atthis list and say these are the
things that humans universallyvalue, and so chances are I
value them and I should learn toembody them as much as I can.
I also think it's important tostudy your own greatest virtues
(14:22):
and identify what those are.
You know Martin Seligman same,you know, pioneer of psychology,
of positive psychology.
He created a test that you cantake, called the signature
strengths test.
That'll basically give you astarting point and tell you
these are your top five virtuesand you can sort of home in on
those and say how can I amplifythese, how can I bring these out
(14:45):
more in my life?
That's really going to be thekey question when it comes to
improving your life and yourhappiness in the next stage of
your life.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, and I think, yeah, that's crazy because a lot
of people get lost when theytry and like better themselves.
You know, they think I'm justgoing to like die it and go to
the gym and my life's going toget better, and then people end
up like losing steam.
They're like, well, I'm notpassionate about trying to heal
myself, you know.
Well, it's like you haven'tfound your virtues, you haven't
(15:15):
found a reason to want to getbetter.
Yet you know you can fill yourtime with a lot of really good
habits and activities, but yougot to have a reason for doing
it, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
I agree.
If you are, you know, motivatedto say, go to the gym and
exercise because you want to geta six pack for the summer, you
know that motivation is going toreally have some ups and downs
and it's probably not going tobe sustainable.
But if you want to do it,because you want to exercise
your virtue of discipline on aregular basis and you want to
(15:46):
make this a part of yourlifestyle and not just use it to
achieve some external results,it's going to be a lot more
powerful and sustainable andit's also going to do what what
I would say is more valuable,which is to actually show your
brain look, I have discipline, Ihave this positive trait that
we admire in others and hence Iadmire myself, and that's that's
(16:08):
.
That's really.
The core question is how can Iearn my own admiration more?
That's, I think, what should beunderlying our desire to
exercise and to write books andto, you know, create music.
It's all, ultimately, aboutexercising our own strengths,
and I think that's why that'sthe biggest reason why I go on
(16:29):
podcasts and maybe why you hostthem.
It's because I have strengthsthat I can bring out and I can
do it through this avenue.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Essentially, and it's enjoyable to.
You know, finding somethingthat's difficult to do because
it's, you know, if everythingwas always easy.
I find that we get very boredwith life, you know, so we need
to have those difficult thingsto do.
And, specifically, one storythat stood out in the book was
you had been homeschooled andthen you decided that you wanted
(16:58):
to go to real school, which wasa shock.
And then you also join thefootball team, right, and you
play for four years.
Yeah, that is, I'll be honest.
I played two years of football.
I played in sixth grade and Iplayed freshman year and I was
just getting knocked around, man, I'm like, yeah, I belong in
golf I'll be honest.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Oh, you and me both, I was getting knocked around too
.
I just didn't, for some reason,stop getting knocked around.
But no, I think it served itspurpose for me, which was not to
become a starter on the teamand be the all star, but to get
out of my comfort zone.
Because, yeah, I didn't havethe social skills that I knew I
(17:40):
should at that point in my lifeand I felt like I was afraid of
the world.
I was afraid to talk to people,afraid to be seen, and so I
kind of asked myself at onepoint and I don't know how I
knew to ask myself this as a 12or 13 year old, but you know,
what could I do to get as farout of my comfort zone as
possible?
What would be the just thecraziest thing for me to do?
(18:02):
And for a little 100 pound kidwho probably belongs on the
chess team, joined the footballteam, was it?
And it ended up doing, yeah,exactly that.
It did get me out of my comfortzone.
It allowed me to connect andbuild camaraderie with a lot of
people that I'm still friendswith today, and it also gave me
this kind of referenceexperience where I can pretty
(18:24):
much remember what it was likeon game night of a football game
.
Anytime I'm doing somethingthat I might be nervous about.
If I'm going on a podcast, Ican be like, well, at least it's
not game night.
So, yeah, it's really valuableand I talk about this a lot in
my anxiety program the anxietyalgorithm, how really going
(18:45):
toward the thing that scares youis exactly what you need to do
if you want to get rid of thatfear that's holding you back.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, that's honestly thevirtue you probably got.
Going to school with thefootball was probably courage,
you know, the courage to stepout of your comfort zone like
that.
That's huge.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I think I gained several virtues through the
experience, but definitelycourage.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, that is, that is for sure.
I played a lot of sports inhigh school.
I played baseball, basketball,basketball and golf.
So that sense of community,that camaraderie, you really
can't replicate it.
And it's so sad to see us, ormillennials and people who are
older, like we, leave highschool and college and then we
(19:30):
don't have this sense ofcommunity.
And the sense of communitycomes up a few times in your
book when you're talking aboutdepression and the virtue
domains and stuff and we need.
You've created a communityonline with the mind form thing,
which is, which is awesome.
I'm actually heading to anarcotics anonymous meeting
tonight because I'm looking fora different type of community as
(19:50):
well, other than the people Iplay basketball with.
So stepping out of that comfortzone.
It gets a little more difficultas we get older, don't you
think?
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
As far as the community goes,it is really difficult.
One thing that you brought upI've got this online community,
but I actually have ambitions ofturning it into a real in
person community.
I want to build mind formcenters around the world so,
(20:20):
just like you have a gymmembership or a health club
membership, you can have amental health club or mental
training center membership and aplace where you go and build
community and work on yourselfand your mind and improve your
emotions and habits and values.
So this is maybe a little bitlonger term vision, but
(20:40):
absolutely something I plan ondoing and scaling mind form to
kind of a bigger level.
And then, what did you bring upafter the community part?
What was the end of thatquestion?
No, it's okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Well, like the depression thing is bent on the
rise and you would think, withthe rise in technology and
social media and it's like I cantalk to my family members who
are thousands of miles away youwould think, with this ability
to integrate on a digital scalelike this, that people would be
more connected.
Right?
But why we feel so disconnectedand I think that was huge
(21:23):
during the pandemic too becausewe were locked down too.
We have the ability to call andtalk to people and stuff, but
we still feel like hold up, youknow.
Yeah, no, I was going to sayit's tough, because I try and
watch my screen time too, andI've talked about the dangers of
social media on my podcast aswell, but there needs to be a
(21:43):
better way at like being able toregulate that and even teach us
how to use it properly.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
You know, yeah Well you know these tools really
haven't been designed, you know,to be healthy.
It's like you can do your bestto teach people how to think
critically and how to, like youknow, respond to these things in
an emotionally mature way, butthe engineers at Metta are going
(22:08):
to keep trying to design theapp to get you to do all the
wrong things, because that makesmore money, and so it's a
general systemic issue that thefurther we go down, you know,
this road with the incentivesthat we have, the more the world
is going to be designed toextract value from humans
instead of bring value to humans, and so that's a challenge.
(22:32):
But I definitely think strivingfor our own self-mastery right,
educating ourselves on how todo these things, is certainly
better than nothing, and so wedo have to sort of fight back in
that way.
As far as depression goes, youknow being on the rise and kind
of what to do about it, I thinkthere are really two general
(22:56):
possibilities for someone who is, you know, experiencing
depression.
One is that your brain isn'tgetting the signal of your
personal virtues because youaren't sending them, or in other
words, you're not taking thebehaviors that give you reason
to be proud of yourself, andthis is really common in people
who are depressed.
(23:16):
They get trapped in thisvicious cycle where you know
you're not taking actions,you're sort of you've adopted
this lifestyle of idleness andsocial media and streaming video
games, whatever, and, as aresult, you don't have reason to
believe positive things aboutyourself, which makes you feel
bad, which makes you not want todo anything, and so on and so
(23:37):
on.
And so the way to get out ofthis trap, if you're in it, is
to create an activity scheduleessentially, where you gradually
and I mean baby steps getyourself out of this by saying
okay, every day I'm at leastgoing to tidy up my room and go
for a walk, and then, onceyou've got that down, you say
(23:59):
I'm going to read a book andcall a friend, and then, as you
slowly add these things, youpull yourself out of this sort
of trap that is socharacteristic of depression.
On the other hand, the secondpossibility is that you are
living a good life that shouldbe giving you reason to be proud
of yourself, but for somereason or another, you can't see
(24:20):
it, and so your beliefs aredistorted, you have a warped
worldview, and this can happenfor a lot of reasons your
upbringing trauma, whatever.
But in this case it may not bethat you need to create an
activity schedule.
You may need to go throughwhat's called cognitive
restructuring in CBT to actuallywork through those beliefs and
(24:43):
correct those distortions.
Yeah it's.
We have a lot of these commondistortions, like black and
white thinking, for example,assuming well, if I'm not a
genius, I must be an idiot.
Right, it was the only options.
And and we get trapped in thatthinking and we really hold on
to those beliefs for yearssometimes.
And so learning how to log yourthoughts and go in and actually
(25:07):
reframe and question andchallenge your beliefs is really
critical To you know.
Getting out of a depressed sortof space and a negative view of
yourself and really using thesetools in combination is one of
the most powerful ways to sortof get out of this trap.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, and that the, the funk is dangerous, as I call
it.
When you're in that type of pit, I Can't say I don't see the
world a little black and white,unfortunately.
I'm zero to a hundred person.
I'm, you know.
I go to narcotics anonymous.
I'm four and a half years soberfrom drugs and alcohol, and
that's awesome, thank you.
And To say that I've alwaysbeen zero to a hundred is, you
(25:49):
know, that's that's just the wayI've been.
But because I couldn't see theBeauty and myself for those
eight long years of using, Ijust kept digging a deeper and
deeper pit.
And then I Like how youmentioned, you know, the baby
steps with the activity schedule, because Realistically that's
kind of how I got off ofeverything I was addicted to
alcohol, cocaine, weed, ecstasyand a bunch of stuff, and I'm
(26:12):
like, all right, I got to getrid of this one first and then
introduce a healthier habit, youknow, because when you try and
do it all at once, you just getover.
Yeah, and you fail, and you getdiscouraged, you know, and
Sometimes you don't really seethe results like instantly.
We have this delayedgratification over here in in
2024, you know, and people wanteverything fixed right now.
(26:36):
But that's, that's not how itworks.
Yeah, wish you could, like Itell people now.
I'm like listen, you spentyears screwing your life up.
You're not gonna fix it in in aday or a week or a month.
You know, you're gonna live thebest life you can live.
You got to put in some time,you know.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, it really is the, the baby steps in every
area.
I talk about it, too, withAnxiety.
For example, you know, peoplewill try to face their fears all
at once, or what's calledflooding.
And if you go from from zero toten in terms of, you know,
taking on the scariest thingsthat you can, you're very likely
(27:14):
gonna freak yourself out.
You're gonna, you know, escapethe situation and you're gonna
teach your brain that this isactually dangerous and you're
gonna, you know, reinforce thefear.
So you're more scared than ever.
And that's why you have to havethe patience to say, okay, I'm
gonna take my fear to a levelthree, then I'm gonna face it,
I'm gonna sit there, I'm notgoing to run, I'm just going to
(27:36):
wait until my anxiety lowers,and then tomorrow I'll take it
to a four, and and so on.
And I think that's Criticalwith addiction and that kind of
thing too, you cannot try to doeverything cold turkey, because
you will, you will learn thewrong things and your brain will
walk away from it with somevery distorted beliefs, right
(27:56):
and yeah, you try and apply thatlater on in life too, and you
know the zero to a hundredlifestyle it's.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
You know it's not sustainable, it's dangerous to
the human.
You know, the only time I everlook at it as something that you
can throttle is like withcreativity, or like the will to
write or the will to dance or becreative.
It's like you don't necessarilywant to throttle, that you want
to express yourself because youknow that's, that's what living
is.
If you're a creative person,but you know, don't don't stop
(28:26):
eating or don't stop sleepingbecause of it.
You know, like I think peopleforget that we're still human.
We try and compare ourselves tocomputers all the time right,
and then we start to embody thesmartphones that we're holding.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's a good point, I certainly do.
I I've talked about how, likeone of the roles that my partner
plays in my life, she will snapme out of my, you know,
computer obsession like Statewhere I just, you know, forget
about eating and sleeping andforget to just be like goofy and
be a person and, yeah, she'sgreat about just pulling pranks
(29:04):
or whatever is needed to.
You know, remind me that I'm ahuman and I have human needs
basically.
But absolutely we do get sortof trained into this like
Obsessive state where we, weturn into computers and I think
that's probably not too healthy.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No, and I you know I don't talk like much about you
know politics and other stufflike that, but you know the
whole grind culture here inAmerica it's just it's, it's not
good.
You know this whole got a grind, got a hustle, get aside hustle
, keep making money, climb,climb, climb.
You know you're just gonna getburnt out.
(29:42):
You know that's not what lifeis.
No.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I agree.
I mean it's funny how you evensee this showing up in the
Philosophical spaces that youand I are interested in.
I've been Seeing all this.
I call it mixed stoicism, butlike I saw a Thumbnail the other
day that was like Stoicism howto tell if a woman is secretly
(30:05):
trying to seduce you orsomething and there's like how
to use Stoicism to get rich andget jacked and it's like, well,
this is really not what this isabout.
It's.
It's actually like the oppositeof that.
You know, these philosophiesare there to help you not Feel
the nagging need to get more andto you know, work harder to
(30:27):
earn this External outcome,because really it's not about
the external outcomes and you'renot gonna be happy even when
you get those and You're gonnago your whole life forgetting to
actually be happy and make thechanges to your mind that will
allow you to achieve that piece.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, and, like you said, meta's designing stuff to
Take the veil, extract the valueout of everything you know and
insert money in its place.
So that's, that's tough.
I did want to say one thingthat I laughed when I was
listening to the book is becauseyou had mentioned you're like,
(31:04):
well, it's a global pandemic.
Surely I can play AnimalCrossing all day and I'm like,
then we talk about like thisidleness and it's like you know,
I play a lot, you know I play alot of video games, watch a lot
of anime and stuff.
It gets to a point where it's,yeah, it's de-habilitating, you
(31:24):
know, because you get, it's notthe best virtues to have, right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Sure, I mean, you know there's nothing problematic
about playing an occasionalvideo game, but you know they're
also designed to be addictiveand they can take over your life
and ultimately what you'redoing is, you know, spending
your time building up the wrongcharacter.
Video games are essentiallylike what real life is, in that
you are leveling up a characterin this game, and if you were
(31:53):
doing the same thing to your ownreal life character, you would
actually be getting the deeperbenefits, but instead, when you
turn off that game, you don'tfeel any better and you actually
feel worse because you'veneglected yourself.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, theproblem with that period is I
kind of let myself be lazy for alittle while.
I gave myself permission not todo all the things I've been
(32:15):
doing for years the exercise,you know, the music, the all the
things that sort of build me upas a person and I learned what
I had always suspected, which isthat that's really not good for
your mental health.
Like you always have to keeppushing, you don't ever get to
stop.
In that sense, you don't haveto push in the hustle culture.
You know productivity andprofit sense, but you need to
(32:38):
always be striving to be abetter person, and some of that
can be creative and professionaland some of it is interpersonal
and has to do with you knowyour relationships and how you
treat them.
But I think you always need tohave goals and ambitions.
You always need to have thingsthat you're doing to grow and
(32:58):
strive for more.
And the minute you let yourselfbe lazy, your brain notices.
It starts saying, oh, I'm notseeing evidence of those
strengths that I always thoughtI had, and then before long
you've forgotten that you evenhave them.
You forgot that you're acreative person because you
haven't shown yourself in sixmonths.
And so you know I even worry,like people see retirement as
(33:22):
this golden you know in state,and then once they actually ride
off into the sunset, they'relike now what Now?
I, you know, my whole selfesteem was coming from my job,
and now I don't have my jobanymore.
What am I good at?
I don't even remember.
So it's really important tothink about how we sort of
demonstrate what we're good atto our own brains and build our
(33:46):
own self esteem.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I think with the video game thing, or even
the community aspect of like theonline community is, we can be
something that we're not outhere in reality, right, and the
things that we don't like aboutourselves we don't have to take
into the online world with us,you know.
So, yeah, and then when we turnthat game off, like you said,
(34:07):
we come back and we're like Idon't feel fulfilled at all.
Now, I got to deal with thisheaping pile of human that I
just don't know what to do with,you know.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, and, and you know there is something
extremely important to belearned from video games.
There's a book called realityis broken that talks about all
the ways that video gamedesigners have learned how to
create this kind of ideal world,ideal system that makes you
actually want to do it.
And we haven't designed ourreal world in the same way.
(34:38):
It doesn't tap, all the same,you know neurons.
It doesn't make us want to goout and do these things, and so
we kind of sometimes have to doa dopamine detox and step away
from these things to learn toappreciate how rewarding it is
to have real life relationshipsand do real life creative work
(34:59):
and all these other things.
And so, you know, I thinklearning from video games and
how we structure the world canbe really valuable.
I mean, if people can get soaddicted to World of Warcraft
where you know you basically, Imean some of these are sort of
simulating real life.
You have this character, youput in a lot of hard work and
(35:22):
time and you build up thesepoints and kind of level up.
You know how can we make reallife and real character building
just as addictive as that?
Essentially, I think for someof us it is, but it's an
acquired taste for sure.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I think it's an acquired taste, but also like a
muscle you got to work.
You know, because, like youknow, right when you start, I
actually got a buddy.
He's, he just hit his 12 monthsobriety mark from alcohol and
heroin and he comes into town acouple of months ago and I was I
wasn't doing so hot because mycat died right, and you know I'm
(35:59):
still sober, thankful for that,obviously always grateful and
he comes in with like man, sucha fire for like wellness and
like improving his life, and I'mlike looking at him and I'm
like, damn, that's awesome.
You know, because once youstart that six month period of
not being creative, not doinggood things, and you get used to
(36:20):
putting yourself down, and thenjust like one instance of
somebody doing it, and you seeit and you're like, oh shit,
like life can totally be likethat, right, I just don't know
how to go about it.
And that's where most peoplestruggle with, honestly, you
know.
Yeah, well, I think.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I think that you know you bring up a really good
point, which is kind of likerole models and the importance
of having people you admire thatshow you these things.
One of the things I talk aboutin the book is how important it
is to build a list of the peopleyou admire most.
You know these can be likepeople in your life, historical
(36:59):
figures, fictional characterseven but essentially like
creating this list and thengoing through it and writing
down specifically what youadmire about these people, each
person, what are the traits theyhave that you really like, what
are these specific types ofactions they take that you wish
you could be more like, and thatthat is a pretty good blueprint
(37:22):
for who you need to become next, and you can break it down into
individual habits that willallow you to be more like these
people.
But essentially, your ownimpulses of admiration tell you
everything you need to knowabout where to go.
This is your built-in compass,essentially, and paying more
attention to that and learningwho you admire and what you
(37:45):
admire about them basicallytells you where your next step
needs to be.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yeah, and having, I think having role models is so
important.
I mean everybody here inAmerica or in the world.
You know, with the rise ofHollywood and movies and media
and stuff, we have all of thesefictional characters that we
look up to, right, but we don'tknow how to go about embodying
those virtues right, because itrequires a lot of hard work.
(38:13):
I think at the start of yourbook you said you have to go
through suffering in order toaccomplish things of that nature
.
You know something along that.
But if you're not likesuffering and struggling to be
better, like if we were all justlike, you know, marvel,
superhero, physical Specimen,demigods who are all insanely
(38:37):
smart and stuff, like we're justpeak everything, it's like and
Everything was peak everything,and people call that heaven and
it's like, well, it's kind ofboring, everything's done right,
mm-hmm, but right now we we'renot grateful for the fact that
we do get to grind and trainourselves and heal, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think we we don't tend to be grateful
enough for our challenges andstruggles, because they're what
we usually look back on and say,wow, I'm so glad I went through
that, that's what I'm mostproud of, like I'm.
You know, that's what turned meinto who I am.
I also think that you know itto, and to some extent we, we
(39:17):
glorify suffering more than weshould.
I think it really depends onthe circumstances.
You know, some types ofsuffering are completely
unnecessary and and you know itdoesn't help us improve at all
and we just put ourselvesthrough these things
Unnecessarily.
And other types of suffering, Ithink, really do Cultivate
greatness and and creativity andcharacter and all these things.
(39:40):
I sort of use this dimensionalmodel to get this across, where
you've got an x-axis whichrepresents pain and pleasure, a
y-axis which represents loss andgain, and then a z-axis that
you could think of as depth, youknow, mountains and valleys,
essentially which representsvirtue, and so really it's the
z-axis that matters.
You want to build the mostvirtue that you can, but
(40:03):
sometimes you'll have to go into, you know, you'll have to go
towards suffering in order toclimb up that mountain.
Other times You'll have to go,you know towards towards
pleasure to climb the mountain.
So really keeping your eye onthat core element of virtue and
just using your circumstancesand your suffering or your
pleasure, really just usingthese as Instrumental steps
(40:26):
toward that virtue, I think isthe key.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, I mean the whole what doesn't kill you
makes you stronger thing.
I definitely rings true and youknow, before Katy Perry started
singing it, there was, you know, some, some German man in the
mountains writing it.
You know which is definitelyone, definitely one of my
favorite quotes by him too.
Yeah, I think finding Findingthose challenges and then not
(40:51):
always heading towards suffering, but those uncomfortable
moments you had talked aboutwith like anxiety, it's like you
want to actually go towards thethings that make you
uncomfortable.
You want to have theseambitions.
You want to heal yourself.
You, deep down, we all want tobe better people.
I just think we we forget thatbecause it's hard facing what,
the things we were wrong about.
(41:11):
You know that ain't easy shit.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah, no, I think you're right, especially about
Nietzsche.
I mean he, he's certainly likethe right person to take it from
.
He spent his whole lifesuffering, basically right.
I mean, he was extremely sicklyhis whole life.
He descended into madness laterin life.
He struggled with people andyou know, rejection of
(41:35):
throughout his life too.
And so if he's coming out of itand saying, you know, I think
this is actually what makes usbetter people, you know we
should listen.
I think you know we can look atVictor Frankel too.
He was in a concentration camp,and I'm certainly not
advocating for concentrationcamps.
But if you can come out of thatkind of experience and say,
yeah, it's really not having acomfortable, easy life that
(41:58):
makes a life good.
It's about virtue, it's aboutmeaning, it's about character,
it's about who you, who you'reable to become, yeah, I think we
should be listening to that alot more.
I think we're our brains arewired to pay a lot more
attention to the flashy thingsthat don't really deliver.
I mean, drugs are a greatexample.
They deliver the short-termhigh, but not the long-term deep
(42:22):
satisfaction.
So actually internalizing thissort of deeper,
three-dimensional way of lookingat our lives, instead of
continually chasing the thingthat we desire now but that
we've learned time and timeagain, doesn't actually make us
happy, I think.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
I think it takes work to overcome our natural biases,
but I do think it can be done,yeah, I think it can be done
with the the right help and theright drive, obviously, and
reading and listening to books,like Like yours, and listening
to podcast.
I have a lot of people who aregetting really into podcast,
like like Huberman lab and andmodern wisdom and other podcasts
(43:03):
like that which are, which areawesome and inspirational and
stuff, and I believe we're atthis, we're getting to this
point in Humanity where we aregoing to heal.
You know, before it was justabout survival.
Now we have survival down patand now we're like, well, what
do we do with all this free time?
now, right, I I think, we'regonna get to this really nice
(43:24):
point where Everybody's able tolike heal from whatever trauma
or messed up stuff They've beenthrough, you know, with the help
of people like you and me.
So that's always something tolook forward to.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
That's definitely an optimistic take.
I can see it going that way andI can also see the systems in
place and, and you know,advanced artificial intelligence
Making things worse foreverybody.
I'm very much hopeful for the,for the better version of that,
but I think we need to Some.
Some things needed dramaticallysort of turn around for that to
(43:57):
happen.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Of course, yeah, but I mean, you wouldn't be doing
what you're doing if you didn'thave a little hope about it,
right?
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Sure, I mean I've, I've, at the very least, I've,
impacted thousands of people atleast, that's what I see in my
inbox and my Amazon reviews butbut, but we, you know, we need
larger scale change and I, yeah,I do have a sort of glimmer of
hope that I could, you know,keep developing my work and and
be at the right place in theright time and have some ability
(44:26):
to impact things on a moresystemic level.
So, absolutely, I'm, I'm, I dothink there's, I think we got a
shot here.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Honestly, it couldn't have said it better I yeah,
yeah, that's uh.
I yeah.
It's just really nice beingable to talk to people who also
not only want to change theircells but also want to help
change the world for the better.
You know, cuz we have our facesin our phones, we go to our
jobs and we come home and welook at more screens, you know,
and we're not Seeing anyevidence that there is any hope.
(44:59):
You know, but talking to youright now, we're talking to
other people in my life who areexcited to hear about the
podcast, or they're excited tohear about A new book or
something like.
There is that part of humanitythat's still living there, even
if you know these institutionsare gonna pile Substances and
products on top of us.
Like, there, there is a glimmerof hope, you know, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
I am a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well, good, we got through it all.
That's all.
Yeah, is there?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
anything.
Is there anything else youwanted to talk about?
I mean, I was actually gonnaask you a few personal questions
like Favorite video games orbooks or TV shows, favorite food
and stuff like that, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, let's do it sure you got a favorite video
game.
Oh man, I'm a Nintendo guy tomy core, so Me too, yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Yeah, I had all the systems growing up.
I Remember when I got my firstNintendo 64 and and those were
good times.
But uh, yeah, I mean smash broshas a special place in my heart
.
Zelda I did.
I did have to get the newestZelda and and spin a good 60, 70
hours playing, so, uh, that's agood one.
(46:19):
I mean you can't beat that.
But uh, yeah, yeah, that's.
Uh, that's most of my favoritevideo game.
I really like that.
I think that's my favoritevideo game.
I really like far cry as welland like some of those kind of
open world like stealth typegames.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I just got into open world games the last Three years
.
Actually, I didn't play thembefore.
The first open world game Iplayed was, uh, breath of the
wild actually, and Wow okay, Iwas like damn, this is lit, you
know.
And then Then I get the witcherthree which got ported to
switch.
So I'm a huge Nintendo guy.
(46:55):
Um Uh, I actually refurbish oldGameboy sp's and Gameboys and
stuff like that.
Um really, I just, like you know, have something to do with my
hands.
It's a little technical.
My favorite game is probablyfire emblem, though, so, um, I
okay, I have not really gotteninto fire emblem, that's
interesting.
I'm all turn based strategy, sothat's um.
(47:18):
You know the pokemon games hada little turn based in it, but
fire emblems definitely up therefor me.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Oh, I played a lot of a lot of the pokemon games
growing up, so good.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
Yeah, yeah, do you got any favorite books you're
reading right now?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Oh well, favorite books.
I've got Several hundredfavorite that I'm reading right
now.
We're actually on mineform, we,we have a different book we
read every month and we happento be reading, uh, epic tituses
and Kyredian, which is one ofthe original stoic works, and uh
, it's just, uh, it's brilliant.
Every time I read it it'sprobably the fourth or fifth
(47:54):
time I've read it.
And, uh, love that one, loveyou know Marcus Aurelius as well
.
The Tao to Ching is great.
Um, you know I love Maslow aswell.
Um, but uh, yeah, I startedreading, reading on the origins
of political order recently, soI'm trying to branch into
(48:15):
understanding more about howsociety works, beyond, you know,
kind of the individual mindthat I've mostly been studying
for the last decade.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah, it's tough to branch out into that.
You know, even when I wastaking political philosophy at
college, I'm like man, this justain't it.
Chief, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
But actually, while you brought this up so before we
go.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the
resources you have available toeverybody out there.
Now, you just said on Mindformyou guys read a new book every
month, is that right?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, there's a lot going on on Mindform right now.
If you want to learn more, youcan go to Mindformio, but you
know, essentially it is anonline community.
It's got a number of like fulllength programs that I've
created on anxiety anddepression, and there's one on
sleep and optimizing it, andthen hundreds of my articles and
(49:12):
those of members and, yeah, wedo read a different book every
month.
We have live events on a weeklybasis to connect and discuss
these things and for a lot ofpeople, this is, you know, some
of the first people who reallythink like them that they've met
in their lives.
I went most of my life notthinking anyone else was like
obsessed with psychology andphilosophy, and then I start
(49:35):
this and I meet hundreds of them.
So, yeah, mindform is reallycool.
And then, in general, if you goto designing the mindorg slash
becoming you can put that in theshow notes One you can preorder
the new books that we've beentalking about become who you are
.
But if you put in your email,I'll also send you a couple of
free books digitally thepsychotex toolkit and the book
(49:58):
of self mastery, which is kindof a quote compilation that
brings in ideas from all thesephilosophers and thinkers.
So it's good stuff.
You can get it all at thatlength.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Nice.
Yeah, I was actually going tosay I am going to be dropping
links for all of this lovelystuff that Mr Ryan a bush has
for all of you listeners outthere Before we go.
Is there anything you wanted tosay to the listeners about
becoming who you are?
Maybe we're to start with that.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Yeah, let's see, we've covered understanding your
own virtues and how to identifythose.
We've covered how to identifythe people you admire most and
sort of deriving your valuesfrom that behavioral activation
restructuring.
We've hit all the main pointshere, I think.
Now you just need to read thefull book and see how it all
(50:48):
comes together.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Appreciate everybody coming outfor another episode of feel
free.
Check the notes.
I'll be dropping links foreverything by this guy's book.
Get on that stuff.
We're all trying to be betterand we're trying to heal and
we're trying to become who weare.
So y'all have a good rest ofyour night, stay up and feel
free.
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