Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
About 12 days ago, I finished making my first composition.
(00:10):
Because just before that, for the couple weeks prior to that, I was focusing on improving my improv skills on piano.
What that means is, I'm about to sing something to you. That was me improvising through the instrument of my voice.
(00:38):
It was just me singing whatever was on my mind, and that probably didn't sound that good.
Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it sounds dumb when it's forced, like how it was just then.
But basically, I had the idea of practicing my improv skills on piano.
(01:02):
Because that's exactly what I, the skill that I need in order to be a good composer, which is what I want to do.
That's the reason why I want to make, that's the reason why I want to learn piano, so that I can compose my own music for my YouTube videos.
And I had this whole plan that I was going to follow before on how to figure out improvise, how to improvise.
(01:30):
I was going to learn music theory, but I realized I got a book called Improvised for Real.
And I realized that music theory is just not relevant if you want to learn how to compose.
It's relevant, I think, once you get to a certain level, but until you're at that point, music theory doesn't matter.
(01:53):
It's just a matter of improving your skills at improvisation.
And that's what I did for a couple of weeks, I was just doing a daily improv video, and those videos sucked.
So I realized that I actually wasn't going to improvise straight onto my YouTube videos.
(02:17):
I was actually going to have a planned song, like a planned piece of music that I was going to play.
So it made sense to, instead of focusing on improving my improvising skills, also improve that,
but instead of doing daily improvise, I would do a daily composition,
which is me literally getting out a piece of paper that has lines on it for the music staff
(02:45):
and drawing out an actual song, a complete composition using all of the music notation.
And that's what I've been doing for the past 12 days.
12 days ago I finished my first one, and I was planning on playing my first one on this monthly update,
(03:07):
but then I realized that that would be kind of stupid because I have 12 more days until the episode comes out.
And there was a study that was done.
It was this pottery teacher. He split his class into two groups.
The first group was being graded on just pure quantity. How many pots can you create?
(03:32):
And this story is also like a photography class.
It's really just about, it's a story about people developing their craft.
So the half of the class was doing, being graded on how many pots can they create.
And then the other half was graded on literally just creating the most perfect pot.
(03:56):
You just need to make one pot, and you're graded on that.
And by the end of the class, the people who did the quantity actually ended up making a better pot,
just because they had just reps. It's just repetitions in the beginning.
And I actually learned about that a while ago, probably a little over a year ago,
(04:21):
when I started making my podcast every single day, I would just get repetitions in.
A daily podcast episode, podcasts every day.
Initially it was like 15 minute episodes, and then over time it ended up being an hour long episode.
I would literally sit down for an hour and talk every single day.
(04:44):
And after a hundred days, I reached the turning point.
And the turning point when it comes to the quantity versus quality game is quantity is good in the beginning.
But then you need to switch to quality because quantity is going to start getting new diminishing returns.
(05:07):
Once I reached around episode 100, I was plateauing.
I wasn't improving as fast as I was around episode 20, for example.
So that's why I switched from going to sheer repetitions, sheer volume,
to really focusing on improving the quality.
(05:28):
And that's when I did weekly episodes instead of daily.
And that's basically what I'm doing. I'm applying that knowledge to learning music,
learning how to compose my own music for my YouTube videos.
I'm just doing sheer quantity right now.
(05:50):
I'm not really focusing on the quality because quality comes from quantity.
But once you have the quality, quantity doesn't help.
Once you've gotten the reps, more reps is not necessarily going to help.
Yes, it's going to help if your focus on those reps is quality.
And this is probably doesn't even make much sense.
(06:14):
Basically, in the beginning of trying to learn a new skill, it's just volume.
It's just repetitions. You just need to do it. Just do it as many times as possible.
But then once you reach a point, there's a turning point where you get diminishing returns,
where you're not really improving that much just by getting reps, just by doing it over and over again.
(06:36):
Then, once you get to that point, forget about reps.
Now just focus on making it the best possible, each individual one the best that it can be.
And right now I'm just in the volume game. I'm just in repetitions for my composing.
So that's why I've been doing a daily composition.
(06:57):
And I completely, last month I talked about how I completely stopped making YouTube videos
because I just wanted to focus all of my energy on music.
And basically getting my music skills caught up with my other YouTube video creation skills.
(07:20):
Because the way I see it is your skill level is like a string.
And different skills, or your overall skill level is like a string.
And since YouTube is a meta skill, which means that it involves many different skills.
You have to be good at creating images for thumbnails. You have to be good at creating editing videos.
(07:45):
You have to be good at filming. You have to be good at brainstorming. You have to be good at so many different skills.
There's hundreds of different skills you have to be good at.
And with meta skills, it's a string.
And different individual skills inside of that meta skill either pull the string up and improving your average,
(08:08):
or pulls it down, pulling down your average.
So basically what I've been doing is I've been focusing on different individual skills for the past year.
And for example, the first one was simply just speaking to a camera.
Or not even to a camera, just speaking. That was the first skill that I focused on.
(08:29):
And over time, I was pulling it higher and higher, that part of the string, higher and higher.
But then I had all of these other skills that were just making the string just super distorted,
where I was pretty good at speaking, but then all of my other skills like making thumbnails,
making editing videos, coming up with ideas, they were all pulling the string down.
(08:50):
So my overall average got better, but all of the other stuff was not helping the average.
So that's why I focused on the next thing, like editing videos.
And then as I pulled that up, it became a little bit, the average grew a little bit higher.
And that's basically the whole game with building a meta skill.
You just keep pulling up different parts of the string, which represent different skills.
(09:16):
Get better at editing, get better at speaking to a camera, get better at making thumbnails,
get better at brainstorming.
And then this whole time, there's been this entire section of the string that I simply just neglected.
I didn't even know that it was a possibility.
(09:40):
Like I didn't even consider it a possibility.
And that's the whole category of music, making better choices with your music in your videos.
So that could be making better choices with choosing better stock music.
Or it could also be literally just making your own music.
(10:02):
Because as I, when I go through the video creation process, I'm basically, I just make the whole video
and then at the end I sit there with this completed video and I scroll through stock music on the YouTube audio library.
And I just listen to the first like two or three seconds of every single song until I find the exact one that I want.
(10:26):
Because I usually have an idea.
I have like this little jingle or this little tune in my head.
I'm like, oh, I want the intro to go like, boom, boom, boom.
Or, oh, I want the intro to go like, boom, boom, boom.
Or something I don't, I always have an idea in my head of how I want it to sound.
And it's just a matter of finding the stock, the right song.
(10:49):
And oftentimes I have to just compromise and deal with some other song that I don't really think matches that well.
And that's where learning music is so great because I can literally just make my own song.
And that's basically what improvising is.
(11:11):
It's you hear this little tune or this little jingle in your mind and then you're able to play it on the keyboard, on the piano.
And that's exactly what I did this morning.
I've been working on this skill for the past couple of weeks.
And this morning I was ready to start my next daily composition.
And I was like, okay, I got to come up with a little jingle.
(11:33):
And right there, a jingle popped up in my head.
It was like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I forgot what it was.
I could play it on the keyboard for you, but I don't have one near me.
But I forgot what the jingle was, but I heard a jingle in my mind.
And then I immediately just played the keys on the keyboard.
(11:54):
And that is exactly the skill that I'm developing so I can do that for my YouTube videos.
But it's not as simple as that because the kind of framework that I came up with was,
there's two pieces to being able to make good music.
First of all, you have to hone your sensitivity to being able to take in little jingles.
(12:19):
For example, that story I just shared of this morning, I had this jingle in my mind.
And that's basically me honing my sensitivity to being able to...
It's kind of like a radio.
There's sound waves, or there's radio waves out in the atmosphere.
(12:42):
And the radio has to hone its sensitivity to a certain radio wave,
and then it'll play that channel or that song that is being sent to it.
And that's exactly kind of like how the brain works,
where you have to hone your sensitivity to be able to register or take in these musical waves
that are floating around the atmosphere.
(13:04):
But then there's the second part.
You also have to be able to develop your craft enough to where you're able to turn that little tune,
that two notes, two or three notes, into a full composition, a full-blown song.
So there's two parts.
There's the part of the spiritual part where you kind of hear something in your head.
(13:27):
And then there's also the physical part, like your craft.
You're able to translate that into reality,
and you're able to basically build an entire song around that little jingle.
That's what I've been working on.
Improvising helps with the spiritual one,
where I hear these little notes, or I sing these little notes throughout the day.
(13:50):
I'm humming or singing little tunes, just naturally.
And then if I accidentally do one that I like,
then I immediately run to the keyboard and I play it on the keyboard.
That's me practicing that skill,
the ability to transfer your inaudible hearings in your mind to a audible keys and notes on the keyboard.
(14:16):
Then the second part is being able to turn those notes and keys from the keyboard into a full-blown composition.
And that's what I'm doing with the daily composition.
It's being able to turn these little jingles into full-blown songs.
And I have definitely gotten a lot better at it,
but I'm not quite there yet,
(14:37):
because I actually just finished recording my next YouTube video.
The one that I started working on over a month ago.
I started working on that.
I made the thumbnail, scripted everything, and then I just dropped it.
I just dropped everything and started working on piano.
But I actually finished recording it yesterday.
(14:59):
I didn't actually execute it the way that I initially planned.
Over the past month and a half,
I actually switched the script two or three different times.
I would get a random day where I'd be super inspired,
and I would just completely redo the entire script,
spend two or three hours redoing the script,
(15:22):
and then I forget about it,
because I'm still working on my music.
But yesterday I actually had that extreme inspiration where I rewrote the script,
and I rewrote it in such a way that it was better than both the other ways,
and I was able to finish, if I did record yesterday,
I would have been able to record it all in one day.
(15:45):
So that's why I just pulled the trigger.
I recorded it all, recorded all the clips.
All I have to do is record the audio,
because I went to record it with this brand new microphone,
and it turns out that the microphone sucks.
It was even worse, even more distorted than my other one.
So on the fly I had to change the video to where it would all be voiceover,
(16:08):
so I can record with the microphone I'm using now,
which is an actual microphone, like a legitimate handheld microphone that singers use.
But that's what I did.
I switched the style of the video to be a voiceover.
So that's what I'm doing after this.
I'm recording the voiceover.
(16:29):
And like I said about how the quantity versus quality with music,
and just developing your craft, with,
I don't know if this is a full blown rule,
but I'm using this as kind of like a guidepost,
with podcasting and just speaking into a microphone,
(16:51):
improving my ability to speak.
It took around a hundred hours of just sheer repetitions
before I was able to reach the turning point to where it wouldn't be as beneficial just to get reps.
It would actually be more beneficial to focus on quality.
Around a hundred episodes, which was around a hundred hours, that's the turning point.
(17:15):
So I'm kind of using that as a guiding post.
I don't know if it's actually like that with all other crafts,
but I'm testing that theory.
If it's a hundred hours of quantity before you reach the turning point to focus on quality,
then I'll know with my music, because right now I'm focusing on quantity,
(17:38):
and I don't know exactly how much time it takes to create one composition,
because there's a process with the music composition.
There's the process of actually crafting out the composition,
but there's also the other process of being able to play it.
So I basically spend the whole morning crafting the composition and writing it down on paper,
(18:01):
but then I have to spend the entire day and through the next morning
practicing, and then I'll be able to play it the next day.
So there's two parts to it.
So I'm basically spending at least three hours per composition of just three hours of just focused work.
(18:25):
And each podcast episode, I would spend one hour of focused work.
So that means that it took a hundred podcast episodes to reach that point, which was a hundred hours.
So that means that potentially it'll take about 30 compositions to reach the point of diminishing returns,
of being able to switch to the quality game.
(18:47):
Now I'm testing it because I'm on composition number 12.
Actually, I'm working on composition 13.
I just finished writing composition 12 yesterday, or this morning,
and I'm about to play composition 12 for you to listen to see so you can hear my progress.
(19:09):
But before I get to that, 30 compositions is kind of like my target number.
When I was podcasting, when I first started podcasting,
I remember I got to like 12 episodes, or 12 episodes,
and I heard this quote where there was someone online who was talking about how 99% of podcasters do not reach episode 21.
(19:40):
99% of people who start a podcast never continue it to the point of episode 21.
So people give up before they even reach 21 episodes.
That's insane.
So that was like my huge milestone.
Once I reached episode 21, that would mean that I'm in the top 1% of all podcasters in the world.
(20:07):
Now there's a difference because top 1% of all podcasters could be interpreted different ways.
It could be all active podcasters, all serious podcasters,
or it could just be all people with a podcast. With all people with a podcast, I'm top 1%.
Simply because I've done it 21 times.
(20:30):
I posted 21 episodes, so that makes me a top 1% man.
But then you reach a point where you actually get to the real competition
because your real competition is the people who made it past episode 21.
All the people that gave up before that, they're not even considered a competition.
(20:52):
They're completely irrelevant.
But the people who are on episode 50, episode 500, those are the real competition.
So that was the milestone that I looked forward to with my podcast.
Now the milestone that I'm looking forward to with the daily composition is composition number 30.
(21:14):
Because that's kind of my theory where at composition number 30, I'll get to the point where I have gotten good enough with quantity
where now I can start focusing on quality.
And if that's not the case, then I'm going to continue on with quantity and go to like 50 or 100
or however long it takes for me to get to that point where it's appropriate to start focusing on quality.
(21:39):
Now, let's listen to composition number 12.
This is 12 reps.
It's incredible how good you can get at something if you simply do it every day.
And I'm not saying that I'm good.
I'm just saying that I've made a lot of progress.
Two months ago, I didn't even know how to play simple tunes on the piano.
(22:01):
I didn't even know any of the notes.
I never played piano in my life.
Two months ago, I was completely ignorant to any skill regarding piano.
And now I'm about to play for you composition number 12.
And it's kind of confusing for me because I haven't actually played it yet.
My skills aren't actually good enough to be able to play it fluently or at least competently.
(22:28):
Basically, my plan is once I'm done with this episode, I'm going to go upstairs and practice this song
and then insert the song into the part appropriate in this video.
So I hope that I get my skills for this song decent enough to where it kind of sounds competent.
(22:49):
Here it is.
(23:19):
Thank you.
(23:49):
Thank you.
(24:19):
Thank you.
I'm so sorry you had to sit through that.
(24:41):
I just spent all morning, or not all morning, but I spent a decent amount of time practicing that song.
And it just is not good.
I've reached the point of diminishing returns, of trying to polish it up by practicing it more,
but it's just not a well-composed song.
So it's just best if I just move on from that and get to work on the next one,
(25:07):
which I've already started the next two.
I've basically started...
So that was composition number 12.
Now, let's talk about importance.
Two months ago, two episodes ago, I was down.
(25:28):
And then last month, last episode, I had completely recovered and I was back.
And I identified the reason was because it was Transurfing.
Transurfing reminded me of these principles.
But I never actually shared what the principles were, because I still kind of forgot.
(25:49):
I was still in that forgetting phase, and I was in the euphoric of remembering.
But now that I've sobered up a little bit and improved my understanding of the Transurfing principles,
I'm now capable of sharing what it is that makes me happy.
And what it is that strips away my happiness.
(26:11):
And this is with everyone.
There is one thing, there is only one thing in the entire world that will make you unhappy.
Take a guess.
No, you don't even have to guess, because I'll tell you, it's called importance.
If you attribute excess meaning to something and then have a kind of like a relationship to that meaning,
(26:41):
then that is importance.
For example, if I were to tell you to just walk along a plank that's laid out on the floor,
nothing could be easier.
But let's say I placed that same exact plank.
You had to do the same exact action, except the plank was laid across two different buildings, two skyscrapers.
(27:08):
Now you had to walk across a plank that was 5,000 feet in the sky, not 5,000, like a couple hundred feet in the air,
where you would surely die if you fell.
Now that is a perfect example of importance.
Now the importance of that situation has greatly escalated.
(27:29):
You had no issue being able to walk across a plank if it was laid out on the floor.
But now there is a huge issue with being able to walk across the plank when it's on the across of two buildings.
Now that's what that's what Vadim Zell and the author of Reality Transurfing, that's what he calls outer importance.
That's where an external event or thing or situation or person, whatever, is attributed excess meaning.
(27:58):
In the situation where the plank was on the floor, there was no excess meaning.
It was just a mundane, ordinary, not necessarily mundane, but it was just normal.
It was like you were indifferent to it. You were treating it exactly as it was.
But then the moment the plank was placed across two buildings, that became an extremely important situation.
(28:21):
You were attributing extreme importance because you were attributing excess meaning because, I mean, rightfully so.
You would literally die if you fell, if you made one wrong step.
But in the other case of when it's laid out on the floor, you can fall off, you can trip and there's no big deal.
That's outer importance. Now inner importance is, oh, and by the way, there are so many different applications to this.
(28:45):
And I'm barely just starting to scratch the surface on my understanding, even though I've spent probably at least six months of my life in deep study of it.
I've nearly read Reality Transurfing four times.
And for three of those times, I've literally taken liberal amounts of notes, like filling up entire journals.
(29:10):
And I still barely even understand this.
But importance, another example of importance is let's say, oh, let's look at common mundane examples.
One extreme case of importance that I used to have was if someone left dishes out on the table, or out on the counter and they were dirty,
(29:35):
and they didn't put it straight into the dishwasher, that was an extremely important situation to me.
Not extremely, but it was important enough to me to where I actually became a little irritated.
Whenever you experience any negative emotion, irritation, anger, distrust, literally any negative emotion, it all stems from importance.
(30:02):
The outer, I had outer importance in regards to someone placing dirty dishes on the counter.
And if you just remain indifferent to it, if you don't have any importance to it, if you don't attribute any excess meaning to it,
if you remain sober, if you have a sober state of mind, then you won't experience that negative emotion.
(30:26):
Don't try to fight the negative emotion, because it's kind of like, it's like fighting the symptom and not the cause.
It's like if you are obese and you try to take a pill to get rid of your obesity, that's ridiculous.
That's fighting the symptom without eliminating the cause.
Eliminating the cause would be fixing your lifestyle, or choosing a different lifestyle, and not fixing, but choosing a different lifestyle to live.
(30:57):
And that has a lot of implications to it too, which I barely even understand, but as I've studied Reality Transurfing more,
I start to understand the little implications on phrases like that of choosing versus fixing.
But anytime you have a negative emotion, if you get mad at your friend, or if you get mad at a little irritation,
(31:21):
or if you just go full rage mode and just get so angry, it's all from importance.
Any experience, any negative emotion is because you have importance.
And so if you can just reduce the importance and let it go, then you experience the thing called happiness.
(31:45):
And that is what I've really started to understand, because I've read this book three times before this, this is my fourth read.
And every single time I'm like, oh, importance, that's the important thing to fix.
But now I'm starting to really understand it because I've experienced in a very quick amount of time both extremes,
(32:09):
where I became, I was extremely, it was extremely important to me for everything to go right.
All my plans, I had an extremely regimented plan, and if anything went wrong, if anything went wrong with my goals,
if anything went wrong with anything, then I would just not fall apart, but I would just get irritated.
(32:30):
And, but then the next day I would read Reality Transurfing, and I would just be reminded of all these principles.
And now I'm just completely free. The less importance you have, the more freedom you have.
Because objectively speaking, I am in the exact same place that I was one year ago.
(32:51):
Literally, I am still, I have no results to show for my efforts.
Absolutely zero results on the output side of things.
And I'm not talking about skill level, because I definitely have results on that side of things.
But I'm talking about output. I've made zero dollars. I only have like 200 extra subscribers.
Or actually not even, I don't even know. But I have the same exact situation that I was in a year ago.
(33:19):
Yet, I feel completely free.
And one year ago, I was, I felt like I was in prison. I felt like I was literally living in a prison cell.
Even though I'm literally, I have near, I mean, a year ago I was in school still.
But let's even say, after I graduated, I was still feeling like I was in a prison cell.
(33:44):
Why is that? Because it's importance. It's all importance.
It was important to me to see results in my business, so I have, so I would have the ability to move out.
It's important to me to have everything go the way I planned. It's important to me, whatever.
Importance is literally the only obstacle to happiness.
(34:07):
And if you can instantly get rid of importance, then you will instantly be overjoyed with happiness.
We are by default, extremely happy. If you don't feel extremely happy, then you have importance.
Now, there is a difference because, or there is a thing that I'm starting to observe where we're not necessarily always joyful, like joyous.
(34:37):
But we could always be happy. I don't, this is a thing that I'm learning a little bit more as I gain more experience and wisdom in life.
But there are still other emotions. For example, like a child is the human being in the most natural form.
They have extremely, an extreme amount of energy, and that's because they have no importance.
(35:02):
Their importance takes, it takes so much energy to maintain your importance levels, which is why if you compare like a kindergarten classroom to just a high school English class
and look at the energy levels of the kids, it's such a stark contrast.
It's like the difference between dark gray, smoky dark gray, and bright yellow.
(35:28):
Because kids, like little kids, they have so much energy because there's no, they never got, they haven't been trained in the art of building importance.
But over time, society trains us to build importance and treat things as important.
(35:49):
And then you look at a high school classroom and all the kids are like dead. They're literally half asleep.
They're all like completely zoned out. They're staring at the clock. They have their headphones in. They have their hoods up.
Their faces on the desk. They're sleeping. Like you look at the difference and it's stark.
And I believe that there's probably other differences too, but the primary difference is importance.
(36:14):
At least in this, with my current knowledge level and my current obsessions in life, I think that the difference between those two is importance.
Now, that brings me to another conclusion.
Why are you not able to just completely get rid of all of your importance right now and experience all the things that I'm sharing with you?
(36:38):
Why not? Because importance is an addiction.
An alcoholic, a drug addict, a TikTok addict, anyone who is addicted to anything finds it extremely difficult to just give up all of their addiction.
And just choose a healthier lifestyle.
(37:03):
Because it's an addiction. You've become dependent on it. You've become attached to it.
It's the same thing with importance.
We have become dependent to the feeling of importance because importance kind of gives you like this specific feeling.
And it's scary to let go of that feeling. The parallels between an addiction to cocaine and an addiction to importance are so crazy how similar they are.
(37:37):
So that's why if you go back to my episodes on my monthly updates, you'll see these oscillations as kind of like what the term that I heard.
It's basically where you make a lot of progress. Your graph looks like you're on the up and up and then you just suddenly drop.
You plummet and then you reach rock bottom and then you go back up. You're like on the up and up, but then you drop.
(38:01):
And with these oscillations, it's not quite like a sine wave where it's all parallel.
It's more like a sine wave that's rotated on an upward slant because you're still making progress.
Your average rate of progress is on the increase, but you're not quite consistent.
You're not quite making as fast progress as you could be. And it's because you oscillate. You go up and then you go down and you go up and you go down.
(38:29):
And that's basically what I've been experiencing with importance because it's an addiction.
I just kind of came up with this idea that it's an addiction partly because I gained the perspective of reading a book called The Ascent of Humanity where he claims that
that human beings have become addicted to technology, like fire-based technology, like basic things.
(38:53):
For example, we have become addicted not just to screens and common mainstream idea of addiction, but also to our homes, air conditioning.
We've become addicted to cars, to little basic things like a bicycle. We've become addicted to bicycles.
What I'm talking about addiction is we couldn't function without it. Once you start using technology, you can't go back because it's just so much better with technology.
(39:27):
That's why we've become addicted to it and we've forgotten. It's a whole thing about separation and stuff.
I kind of already forgot a lot of it, but that book gave me the perspective to parallel importance to an addiction.
Just outright claim that importance is an addiction because once we start having importance, we are like, oh shoot, this is kind of like addicting.
(39:53):
Then we just keep having importance and over time we can't go back. We can't get rid of our importance.
So we're stuck and we're alcoholic for life.
But there is a solution and I'm not quite sure what the solution is, so just read reality, trans surfing and you'll learn the solution for yourself.
(40:16):
Because I don't even know how to explain it. You literally just have to reduce importance.
If I was to hear that statement two years ago, I would interpret it completely different to the way that I'm actually trying to convey the meaning.
So you really just have to read that book if you want to understand.
(40:41):
And that brings me to another point. It's an addiction because like I said, I oscillate with importance. One, like two months when I'm reading trans surfing, I'm on the up and up.
But then when I stop reading trans surfing, I slowly decline until I reach the point where I'm at rock bottom and I go all the way down and then I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta read trans surfing again.
(41:04):
I'm gonna go back up. I'm on the up and up. Now, drug addicts or addicts, alcoholics, whatever, they make progress but then they cope.
They're like, oh, it won't hurt. Let me just try this. Or let me just try this a little.
(41:25):
Or I'm focusing on something else. Let me start drinking alcohol again or whatever.
And then they fall back into the pit and they become an alcohol, or and then they re-addict. They get re-addicted to it.
And then they oscillate back and then they start, they're like, oh shoot, I don't want this. And then they start getting done with alcohol.
And it's a whole cycle where they cope. They start making progress and then they cope their way out of it and then they fall back into the pit.
(41:53):
And then they repeat the process. That's exactly what I'm doing or what I did with importance.
The parallels are actually remarkable.
I am reading trans surfing and I completely reduce importance. I'm completely free. I'm happy, joyful. Everything's going great.
(42:18):
But then I kind of, I'm making a lot of progress but then I kind of forget.
And then I start coping. And I'm like, one of my copes that I remember how I did a couple months ago was where I'm like, okay,
I'm not really going to focus on being consciously aware because I want to focus on my goal. My goal is my main priority.
(42:40):
But that doesn't even make sense because when you're consciously aware, you're more effective at working towards your goal.
But that was the cope that I used because I forgot.
And so I basically kept on finding different copes like that until eventually I just completely forgot about everything.
And now I was back into the pit of importance.
(43:01):
And conscious awareness is when you're consciously aware, you're able to consciously reduce your importance levels.
So it's like being mindful.
That, it's just cope.
If you cope and you find some reason to forget about importance and allow your importance levels to be on the rise or to even have any importance at all,
(43:29):
it's simply just cope. And then you're going to fall back into the pit.
So that was my observation. This is one of the greatest observations I've had in my entire life.
Because the difference in your quality of life when you have importance versus no importance is unbelievable.
It's actually insane. It's almost as if God doesn't exist when you have importance.
(43:57):
And when you do have importance, he exists.
But what kind of I interpret that is more like you completely forget that God exists.
And you, it's kind of like you put shades on and you put like an eye mask over yourself when you have importance.
Importance is like an eye mask.
You, you, you see God right in front of you with no importance.
(44:22):
But then when you have importance, you just lift the eye mask over your eyes and then you just forget about everything and you no longer experience it.
And the reason I use the term God was, I don't know. I had another observation I made this month was I have a lot of importance in regards to
(44:44):
philosophy as well as theology as well as basically any communication over ideas relevant to what I'm learning.
Or not, no, let me restate that.
(45:05):
I have a lot of importance in regards to anything related to higher powers and also worldview and theology and whatever, even though I have never even read the Bible.
And it's ridiculous because I have so much importance where I've become intolerant to a lot of like Christians.
(45:30):
I've, I've, I've completely stopped listening to ideas and I don't even take into consideration any ideas based off of the label that they put themselves over, or they put them, or they put on themselves like the label of being a Christian or the label of being a Jew or whatever it is.
(45:52):
I completely stopped listening to that because I have a lot of importance because I feel like I know something that they don't.
But that's ridiculous because how, how am I supposed to think that when I'm literally not even following the own teachings or the actual teaching that I'm actually studying?
(46:15):
Because in the act of neglecting all the other people's ideas is literally the act of me neglecting my own ideas because it's all based off importance.
I think that I'm so important that I know something that someone else doesn't know.
And that's ridiculous.
And so that's something I was aware of.
(46:36):
And that's basically it.
Importance equals hell.
Goodbye.
About 12 days ago, I finished making my first composition.
(00:10):
Because just before that, for the couple weeks prior to that, I was focusing on improving my improv skills on piano.
What that means is, I'm about to sing something to you. That was me improvising through the instrument of my voice.
(00:38):
It was just me singing whatever was on my mind, and that probably didn't sound that good.
Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it sounds dumb when it's forced, like how it was just then.
But basically, I had the idea of practicing my improv skills on piano.
(01:02):
Because that's exactly what I, the skill that I need in order to be a good composer, which is what I want to do.
That's the reason why I want to make, that's the reason why I want to learn piano, so that I can compose my own music for my YouTube videos.
And I had this whole plan that I was going to follow before on how to figure out improvise, how to improvise.
(01:30):
I was going to learn music theory, but I realized I got a book called Improvised for Real.
And I realized that music theory is just not relevant if you want to learn how to compose.
It's relevant, I think, once you get to a certain level, but until you're at that point, music theory doesn't matter.
(01:53):
It's just a matter of improving your skills at improvisation.
And that's what I did for a couple of weeks, I was just doing a daily improv video, and those videos sucked.
So I realized that I actually wasn't going to improvise straight onto my YouTube videos.
(02:17):
I was actually going to have a planned song, like a planned piece of music that I was going to play.
So it made sense to, instead of focusing on improving my improvising skills, also improve that,
but instead of doing daily improvise, I would do a daily composition,
which is me literally getting out a piece of paper that has lines on it for the music staff
(02:45):
and drawing out an actual song, a complete composition using all of the music notation.
And that's what I've been doing for the past 12 days.
12 days ago I finished my first one, and I was planning on playing my first one on this monthly update,
(03:07):
but then I realized that that would be kind of stupid because I have 12 more days until the episode comes out.
And there was a study that was done.
It was this pottery teacher. He split his class into two groups.
The first group was being graded on just pure quantity. How many pots can you create?
(03:32):
And this story is also like a photography class.
It's really just about, it's a story about people developing their craft.
So the half of the class was doing, being graded on how many pots can they create.
And then the other half was graded on literally just creating the most perfect pot.
(03:56):
You just need to make one pot, and you're graded on that.
And by the end of the class, the people who did the quantity actually ended up making a better pot,
just because they had just reps. It's just repetitions in the beginning.
And I actually learned about that a while ago, probably a little over a year ago,
(04:21):
when I started making my podcast every single day, I would just get repetitions in.
A daily podcast episode, podcasts every day.
Initially it was like 15 minute episodes, and then over time it ended up being an hour long episode.
I would literally sit down for an hour and talk every single day.
(04:44):
And after a hundred days, I reached the turning point.
And the turning point when it comes to the quantity versus quality game is quantity is good in the beginning.
But then you need to switch to quality because quantity is going to start getting new diminishing returns.
(05:07):
Once I reached around episode 100, I was plateauing.
I wasn't improving as fast as I was around episode 20, for example.
So that's why I switched from going to sheer repetitions, sheer volume,
to really focusing on improving the quality.
(05:28):
And that's when I did weekly episodes instead of daily.
And that's basically what I'm doing. I'm applying that knowledge to learning music,
learning how to compose my own music for my YouTube videos.
I'm just doing sheer quantity right now.
(05:50):
I'm not really focusing on the quality because quality comes from quantity.
But once you have the quality, quantity doesn't help.
Once you've gotten the reps, more reps is not necessarily going to help.
Yes, it's going to help if your focus on those reps is quality.
And this is probably doesn't even make much sense.
(06:14):
Basically, in the beginning of trying to learn a new skill, it's just volume.
It's just repetitions. You just need to do it. Just do it as many times as possible.
But then once you reach a point, there's a turning point where you get diminishing returns,
where you're not really improving that much just by getting reps, just by doing it over and over again.
(06:36):
Then, once you get to that point, forget about reps.
Now just focus on making it the best possible, each individual one the best that it can be.
And right now I'm just in the volume game. I'm just in repetitions for my composing.
So that's why I've been doing a daily composition.
(06:57):
And I completely, last month I talked about how I completely stopped making YouTube videos
because I just wanted to focus all of my energy on music.
And basically getting my music skills caught up with my other YouTube video creation skills.
(07:20):
Because the way I see it is your skill level is like a string.
And different skills, or your overall skill level is like a string.
And since YouTube is a meta skill, which means that it involves many different skills.
You have to be good at creating images for thumbnails. You have to be good at creating editing videos.
(07:45):
You have to be good at filming. You have to be good at brainstorming. You have to be good at so many different skills.
There's hundreds of different skills you have to be good at.
And with meta skills, it's a string.
And different individual skills inside of that meta skill either pull the string up and improving your average,
(08:08):
or pulls it down, pulling down your average.
So basically what I've been doing is I've been focusing on different individual skills for the past year.
And for example, the first one was simply just speaking to a camera.
Or not even to a camera, just speaking. That was the first skill that I focused on.
(08:29):
And over time, I was pulling it higher and higher, that part of the string, higher and higher.
But then I had all of these other skills that were just making the string just super distorted,
where I was pretty good at speaking, but then all of my other skills like making thumbnails,
making editing videos, coming up with ideas, they were all pulling the string down.
(08:50):
So my overall average got better, but all of the other stuff was not helping the average.
So that's why I focused on the next thing, like editing videos.
And then as I pulled that up, it became a little bit, the average grew a little bit higher.
And that's basically the whole game with building a meta skill.
You just keep pulling up different parts of the string, which represent different skills.
(09:16):
Get better at editing, get better at speaking to a camera, get better at making thumbnails,
get better at brainstorming.
And then this whole time, there's been this entire section of the string that I simply just neglected.
I didn't even know that it was a possibility.
(09:40):
Like I didn't even consider it a possibility.
And that's the whole category of music, making better choices with your music in your videos.
So that could be making better choices with choosing better stock music.
Or it could also be literally just making your own music.
(10:02):
Because as I, when I go through the video creation process, I'm basically, I just make the whole video
and then at the end I sit there with this completed video and I scroll through stock music on the YouTube audio library.
And I just listen to the first like two or three seconds of every single song until I find the exact one that I want.
(10:26):
Because I usually have an idea.
I have like this little jingle or this little tune in my head.
I'm like, oh, I want the intro to go like, boom, boom, boom.
Or, oh, I want the intro to go like, boom, boom, boom.
Or something I don't, I always have an idea in my head of how I want it to sound.
And it's just a matter of finding the stock, the right song.
(10:49):
And oftentimes I have to just compromise and deal with some other song that I don't really think matches that well.
And that's where learning music is so great because I can literally just make my own song.
And that's basically what improvising is.
(11:11):
It's you hear this little tune or this little jingle in your mind and then you're able to play it on the keyboard, on the piano.
And that's exactly what I did this morning.
I've been working on this skill for the past couple of weeks.
And this morning I was ready to start my next daily composition.
And I was like, okay, I got to come up with a little jingle.
(11:33):
And right there, a jingle popped up in my head.
It was like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I forgot what it was.
I could play it on the keyboard for you, but I don't have one near me.
But I forgot what the jingle was, but I heard a jingle in my mind.
And then I immediately just played the keys on the keyboard.
(11:54):
And that is exactly the skill that I'm developing so I can do that for my YouTube videos.
But it's not as simple as that because the kind of framework that I came up with was,
there's two pieces to being able to make good music.
First of all, you have to hone your sensitivity to being able to take in little jingles.
(12:19):
For example, that story I just shared of this morning, I had this jingle in my mind.
And that's basically me honing my sensitivity to being able to...
It's kind of like a radio.
There's sound waves, or there's radio waves out in the atmosphere.
(12:42):
And the radio has to hone its sensitivity to a certain radio wave,
and then it'll play that channel or that song that is being sent to it.
And that's exactly kind of like how the brain works,
where you have to hone your sensitivity to be able to register or take in these musical waves
that are floating around the atmosphere.
(13:04):
But then there's the second part.
You also have to be able to develop your craft enough to where you're able to turn that little tune,
that two notes, two or three notes, into a full composition, a full-blown song.
So there's two parts.
There's the part of the spiritual part where you kind of hear something in your head.
(13:27):
And then there's also the physical part, like your craft.
You're able to translate that into reality,
and you're able to basically build an entire song around that little jingle.
That's what I've been working on.
Improvising helps with the spiritual one,
where I hear these little notes, or I sing these little notes throughout the day.
(13:50):
I'm humming or singing little tunes, just naturally.
And then if I accidentally do one that I like,
then I immediately run to the keyboard and I play it on the keyboard.
That's me practicing that skill,
the ability to transfer your inaudible hearings in your mind to a audible keys and notes on the keyboard.
(14:16):
Then the second part is being able to turn those notes and keys from the keyboard into a full-blown composition.
And that's what I'm doing with the daily composition.
It's being able to turn these little jingles into full-blown songs.
And I have definitely gotten a lot better at it,
but I'm not quite there yet,
(14:37):
because I actually just finished recording my next YouTube video.
The one that I started working on over a month ago.
I started working on that.
I made the thumbnail, scripted everything, and then I just dropped it.
I just dropped everything and started working on piano.
But I actually finished recording it yesterday.
(14:59):
I didn't actually execute it the way that I initially planned.
Over the past month and a half,
I actually switched the script two or three different times.
I would get a random day where I'd be super inspired,
and I would just completely redo the entire script,
spend two or three hours redoing the script,
(15:22):
and then I forget about it,
because I'm still working on my music.
But yesterday I actually had that extreme inspiration where I rewrote the script,
and I rewrote it in such a way that it was better than both the other ways,
and I was able to finish, if I did record yesterday,
I would have been able to record it all in one day.
(15:45):
So that's why I just pulled the trigger.
I recorded it all, recorded all the clips.
All I have to do is record the audio,
because I went to record it with this brand new microphone,
and it turns out that the microphone sucks.
It was even worse, even more distorted than my other one.
So on the fly I had to change the video to where it would all be voiceover,
(16:08):
so I can record with the microphone I'm using now,
which is an actual microphone, like a legitimate handheld microphone that singers use.
But that's what I did.
I switched the style of the video to be a voiceover.
So that's what I'm doing after this.
I'm recording the voiceover.
(16:29):
And like I said about how the quantity versus quality with music,
and just developing your craft, with,
I don't know if this is a full blown rule,
but I'm using this as kind of like a guidepost,
with podcasting and just speaking into a microphone,
(16:51):
improving my ability to speak.
It took around a hundred hours of just sheer repetitions
before I was able to reach the turning point to where it wouldn't be as beneficial just to get reps.
It would actually be more beneficial to focus on quality.
Around a hundred episodes, which was around a hundred hours, that's the turning point.
(17:15):
So I'm kind of using that as a guiding post.
I don't know if it's actually like that with all other crafts,
but I'm testing that theory.
If it's a hundred hours of quantity before you reach the turning point to focus on quality,
then I'll know with my music, because right now I'm focusing on quantity,
(17:38):
and I don't know exactly how much time it takes to create one composition,
because there's a process with the music composition.
There's the process of actually crafting out the composition,
but there's also the other process of being able to play it.
So I basically spend the whole morning crafting the composition and writing it down on paper,
(18:01):
but then I have to spend the entire day and through the next morning
practicing, and then I'll be able to play it the next day.
So there's two parts to it.
So I'm basically spending at least three hours per composition of just three hours of just focused work.
(18:25):
And each podcast episode, I would spend one hour of focused work.
So that means that it took a hundred podcast episodes to reach that point, which was a hundred hours.
So that means that potentially it'll take about 30 compositions to reach the point of diminishing returns,
of being able to switch to the quality game.
(18:47):
Now I'm testing it because I'm on composition number 12.
Actually, I'm working on composition 13.
I just finished writing composition 12 yesterday, or this morning,
and I'm about to play composition 12 for you to listen to see so you can hear my progress.
(19:09):
But before I get to that, 30 compositions is kind of like my target number.
When I was podcasting, when I first started podcasting,
I remember I got to like 12 episodes, or 12 episodes,
and I heard this quote where there was someone online who was talking about how 99% of podcasters do not reach episode 21.
(19:40):
99% of people who start a podcast never continue it to the point of episode 21.
So people give up before they even reach 21 episodes.
That's insane.
So that was like my huge milestone.
Once I reached episode 21, that would mean that I'm in the top 1% of all podcasters in the world.
(20:07):
Now there's a difference because top 1% of all podcasters could be interpreted different ways.
It could be all active podcasters, all serious podcasters,
or it could just be all people with a podcast. With all people with a podcast, I'm top 1%.
Simply because I've done it 21 times.
(20:30):
I posted 21 episodes, so that makes me a top 1% man.
But then you reach a point where you actually get to the real competition
because your real competition is the people who made it past episode 21.
All the people that gave up before that, they're not even considered a competition.
(20:52):
They're completely irrelevant.
But the people who are on episode 50, episode 500, those are the real competition.
So that was the milestone that I looked forward to with my podcast.
Now the milestone that I'm looking forward to with the daily composition is composition number 30.
(21:14):
Because that's kind of my theory where at composition number 30, I'll get to the point where I have gotten good enough with quantity
where now I can start focusing on quality.
And if that's not the case, then I'm going to continue on with quantity and go to like 50 or 100
or however long it takes for me to get to that point where it's appropriate to start focusing on quality.
(21:39):
Now, let's listen to composition number 12.
This is 12 reps.
It's incredible how good you can get at something if you simply do it every day.
And I'm not saying that I'm good.
I'm just saying that I've made a lot of progress.
Two months ago, I didn't even know how to play simple tunes on the piano.
(22:01):
I didn't even know any of the notes.
I never played piano in my life.
Two months ago, I was completely ignorant to any skill regarding piano.
And now I'm about to play for you composition number 12.
And it's kind of confusing for me because I haven't actually played it yet.
My skills aren't actually good enough to be able to play it fluently or at least competently.
(22:28):
Basically, my plan is once I'm done with this episode, I'm going to go upstairs and practice this song
and then insert the song into the part appropriate in this video.
So I hope that I get my skills for this song decent enough to where it kind of sounds competent.
(22:49):
Here it is.
(23:19):
Thank you.
(23:49):
Thank you.
(24:19):
Thank you.
I'm so sorry you had to sit through that.
(24:41):
I just spent all morning, or not all morning, but I spent a decent amount of time practicing that song.
And it just is not good.
I've reached the point of diminishing returns, of trying to polish it up by practicing it more,
but it's just not a well-composed song.
So it's just best if I just move on from that and get to work on the next one,
(25:07):
which I've already started the next two.
I've basically started...
So that was composition number 12.
Now, let's talk about importance.
Two months ago, two episodes ago, I was down.
(25:28):
And then last month, last episode, I had completely recovered and I was back.
And I identified the reason was because it was Transurfing.
Transurfing reminded me of these principles.
But I never actually shared what the principles were, because I still kind of forgot.
(25:49):
I was still in that forgetting phase, and I was in the euphoric of remembering.
But now that I've sobered up a little bit and improved my understanding of the Transurfing principles,
I'm now capable of sharing what it is that makes me happy.
And what it is that strips away my happiness.
(26:11):
And this is with everyone.
There is one thing, there is only one thing in the entire world that will make you unhappy.
Take a guess.
No, you don't even have to guess, because I'll tell you, it's called importance.
If you attribute excess meaning to something and then have a kind of like a relationship to that meaning,
(26:41):
then that is importance.
For example, if I were to tell you to just walk along a plank that's laid out on the floor,
nothing could be easier.
But let's say I placed that same exact plank.
You had to do the same exact action, except the plank was laid across two different buildings, two skyscrapers.
(27:08):
Now you had to walk across a plank that was 5,000 feet in the sky, not 5,000, like a couple hundred feet in the air,
where you would surely die if you fell.
Now that is a perfect example of importance.
Now the importance of that situation has greatly escalated.
(27:29):
You had no issue being able to walk across a plank if it was laid out on the floor.
But now there is a huge issue with being able to walk across the plank when it's on the across of two buildings.
Now that's what that's what Vadim Zell and the author of Reality Transurfing, that's what he calls outer importance.
That's where an external event or thing or situation or person, whatever, is attributed excess meaning.
(27:58):
In the situation where the plank was on the floor, there was no excess meaning.
It was just a mundane, ordinary, not necessarily mundane, but it was just normal.
It was like you were indifferent to it. You were treating it exactly as it was.
But then the moment the plank was placed across two buildings, that became an extremely important situation.
(28:21):
You were attributing extreme importance because you were attributing excess meaning because, I mean, rightfully so.
You would literally die if you fell, if you made one wrong step.
But in the other case of when it's laid out on the floor, you can fall off, you can trip and there's no big deal.
That's outer importance. Now inner importance is, oh, and by the way, there are so many different applications to this.
(28:45):
And I'm barely just starting to scratch the surface on my understanding, even though I've spent probably at least six months of my life in deep study of it.
I've nearly read Reality Transurfing four times.
And for three of those times, I've literally taken liberal amounts of notes, like filling up entire journals.
(29:10):
And I still barely even understand this.
But importance, another example of importance is let's say, oh, let's look at common mundane examples.
One extreme case of importance that I used to have was if someone left dishes out on the table, or out on the counter and they were dirty,
(29:35):
and they didn't put it straight into the dishwasher, that was an extremely important situation to me.
Not extremely, but it was important enough to me to where I actually became a little irritated.
Whenever you experience any negative emotion, irritation, anger, distrust, literally any negative emotion, it all stems from importance.
(30:02):
The outer, I had outer importance in regards to someone placing dirty dishes on the counter.
And if you just remain indifferent to it, if you don't have any importance to it, if you don't attribute any excess meaning to it,
if you remain sober, if you have a sober state of mind, then you won't experience that negative emotion.
(30:26):
Don't try to fight the negative emotion, because it's kind of like, it's like fighting the symptom and not the cause.
It's like if you are obese and you try to take a pill to get rid of your obesity, that's ridiculous.
That's fighting the symptom without eliminating the cause.
Eliminating the cause would be fixing your lifestyle, or choosing a different lifestyle, and not fixing, but choosing a different lifestyle to live.
(30:57):
And that has a lot of implications to it too, which I barely even understand, but as I've studied Reality Transurfing more,
I start to understand the little implications on phrases like that of choosing versus fixing.
But anytime you have a negative emotion, if you get mad at your friend, or if you get mad at a little irritation,
(31:21):
or if you just go full rage mode and just get so angry, it's all from importance.
Any experience, any negative emotion is because you have importance.
And so if you can just reduce the importance and let it go, then you experience the thing called happiness.
(31:45):
And that is what I've really started to understand, because I've read this book three times before this, this is my fourth read.
And every single time I'm like, oh, importance, that's the important thing to fix.
But now I'm starting to really understand it because I've experienced in a very quick amount of time both extremes,
(32:09):
where I became, I was extremely, it was extremely important to me for everything to go right.
All my plans, I had an extremely regimented plan, and if anything went wrong, if anything went wrong with my goals,
if anything went wrong with anything, then I would just not fall apart, but I would just get irritated.
(32:30):
And, but then the next day I would read Reality Transurfing, and I would just be reminded of all these principles.
And now I'm just completely free. The less importance you have, the more freedom you have.
Because objectively speaking, I am in the exact same place that I was one year ago.
(32:51):
Literally, I am still, I have no results to show for my efforts.
Absolutely zero results on the output side of things.
And I'm not talking about skill level, because I definitely have results on that side of things.
But I'm talking about output. I've made zero dollars. I only have like 200 extra subscribers.
Or actually not even, I don't even know. But I have the same exact situation that I was in a year ago.
(33:19):
Yet, I feel completely free.
And one year ago, I was, I felt like I was in prison. I felt like I was literally living in a prison cell.
Even though I'm literally, I have near, I mean, a year ago I was in school still.
But let's even say, after I graduated, I was still feeling like I was in a prison cell.
(33:44):
Why is that? Because it's importance. It's all importance.
It was important to me to see results in my business, so I have, so I would have the ability to move out.
It's important to me to have everything go the way I planned. It's important to me, whatever.
Importance is literally the only obstacle to happiness.
(34:07):
And if you can instantly get rid of importance, then you will instantly be overjoyed with happiness.
We are by default, extremely happy. If you don't feel extremely happy, then you have importance.
Now, there is a difference because, or there is a thing that I'm starting to observe where we're not necessarily always joyful, like joyous.
(34:37):
But we could always be happy. I don't, this is a thing that I'm learning a little bit more as I gain more experience and wisdom in life.
But there are still other emotions. For example, like a child is the human being in the most natural form.
They have extremely, an extreme amount of energy, and that's because they have no importance.
(35:02):
Their importance takes, it takes so much energy to maintain your importance levels, which is why if you compare like a kindergarten classroom to just a high school English class
and look at the energy levels of the kids, it's such a stark contrast.
It's like the difference between dark gray, smoky dark gray, and bright yellow.
(35:28):
Because kids, like little kids, they have so much energy because there's no, they never got, they haven't been trained in the art of building importance.
But over time, society trains us to build importance and treat things as important.
(35:49):
And then you look at a high school classroom and all the kids are like dead. They're literally half asleep.
They're all like completely zoned out. They're staring at the clock. They have their headphones in. They have their hoods up.
Their faces on the desk. They're sleeping. Like you look at the difference and it's stark.
And I believe that there's probably other differences too, but the primary difference is importance.
(36:14):
At least in this, with my current knowledge level and my current obsessions in life, I think that the difference between those two is importance.
Now, that brings me to another conclusion.
Why are you not able to just completely get rid of all of your importance right now and experience all the things that I'm sharing with you?
(36:38):
Why not? Because importance is an addiction.
An alcoholic, a drug addict, a TikTok addict, anyone who is addicted to anything finds it extremely difficult to just give up all of their addiction.
And just choose a healthier lifestyle.
(37:03):
Because it's an addiction. You've become dependent on it. You've become attached to it.
It's the same thing with importance.
We have become dependent to the feeling of importance because importance kind of gives you like this specific feeling.
And it's scary to let go of that feeling. The parallels between an addiction to cocaine and an addiction to importance are so crazy how similar they are.
(37:37):
So that's why if you go back to my episodes on my monthly updates, you'll see these oscillations as kind of like what the term that I heard.
It's basically where you make a lot of progress. Your graph looks like you're on the up and up and then you just suddenly drop.
You plummet and then you reach rock bottom and then you go back up. You're like on the up and up, but then you drop.
(38:01):
And with these oscillations, it's not quite like a sine wave where it's all parallel.
It's more like a sine wave that's rotated on an upward slant because you're still making progress.
Your average rate of progress is on the increase, but you're not quite consistent.
You're not quite making as fast progress as you could be. And it's because you oscillate. You go up and then you go down and you go up and you go down.
(38:29):
And that's basically what I've been experiencing with importance because it's an addiction.
I just kind of came up with this idea that it's an addiction partly because I gained the perspective of reading a book called The Ascent of Humanity where he claims that
that human beings have become addicted to technology, like fire-based technology, like basic things.
(38:53):
For example, we have become addicted not just to screens and common mainstream idea of addiction, but also to our homes, air conditioning.
We've become addicted to cars, to little basic things like a bicycle. We've become addicted to bicycles.
What I'm talking about addiction is we couldn't function without it. Once you start using technology, you can't go back because it's just so much better with technology.
(39:27):
That's why we've become addicted to it and we've forgotten. It's a whole thing about separation and stuff.
I kind of already forgot a lot of it, but that book gave me the perspective to parallel importance to an addiction.
Just outright claim that importance is an addiction because once we start having importance, we are like, oh shoot, this is kind of like addicting.
(39:53):
Then we just keep having importance and over time we can't go back. We can't get rid of our importance.
So we're stuck and we're alcoholic for life.
But there is a solution and I'm not quite sure what the solution is, so just read reality, trans surfing and you'll learn the solution for yourself.
(40:16):
Because I don't even know how to explain it. You literally just have to reduce importance.
If I was to hear that statement two years ago, I would interpret it completely different to the way that I'm actually trying to convey the meaning.
So you really just have to read that book if you want to understand.
(40:41):
And that brings me to another point. It's an addiction because like I said, I oscillate with importance. One, like two months when I'm reading trans surfing, I'm on the up and up.
But then when I stop reading trans surfing, I slowly decline until I reach the point where I'm at rock bottom and I go all the way down and then I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta read trans surfing again.
(41:04):
I'm gonna go back up. I'm on the up and up. Now, drug addicts or addicts, alcoholics, whatever, they make progress but then they cope.
They're like, oh, it won't hurt. Let me just try this. Or let me just try this a little.
(41:25):
Or I'm focusing on something else. Let me start drinking alcohol again or whatever.
And then they fall back into the pit and they become an alcohol, or and then they re-addict. They get re-addicted to it.
And then they oscillate back and then they start, they're like, oh shoot, I don't want this. And then they start getting done with alcohol.
And it's a whole cycle where they cope. They start making progress and then they cope their way out of it and then they fall back into the pit.
(41:53):
And then they repeat the process. That's exactly what I'm doing or what I did with importance.
The parallels are actually remarkable.
I am reading trans surfing and I completely reduce importance. I'm completely free. I'm happy, joyful. Everything's going great.
(42:18):
But then I kind of, I'm making a lot of progress but then I kind of forget.
And then I start coping. And I'm like, one of my copes that I remember how I did a couple months ago was where I'm like, okay,
I'm not really going to focus on being consciously aware because I want to focus on my goal. My goal is my main priority.
(42:40):
But that doesn't even make sense because when you're consciously aware, you're more effective at working towards your goal.
But that was the cope that I used because I forgot.
And so I basically kept on finding different copes like that until eventually I just completely forgot about everything.
And now I was back into the pit of importance.
(43:01):
And conscious awareness is when you're consciously aware, you're able to consciously reduce your importance levels.
So it's like being mindful.
That, it's just cope.
If you cope and you find some reason to forget about importance and allow your importance levels to be on the rise or to even have any importance at all,
(43:29):
it's simply just cope. And then you're going to fall back into the pit.
So that was my observation. This is one of the greatest observations I've had in my entire life.
Because the difference in your quality of life when you have importance versus no importance is unbelievable.
It's actually insane. It's almost as if God doesn't exist when you have importance.
(43:57):
And when you do have importance, he exists.
But what kind of I interpret that is more like you completely forget that God exists.
And you, it's kind of like you put shades on and you put like an eye mask over yourself when you have importance.
Importance is like an eye mask.
You, you, you see God right in front of you with no importance.
(44:22):
But then when you have importance, you just lift the eye mask over your eyes and then you just forget about everything and you no longer experience it.
And the reason I use the term God was, I don't know. I had another observation I made this month was I have a lot of importance in regards to
(44:44):
philosophy as well as theology as well as basically any communication over ideas relevant to what I'm learning.
Or not, no, let me restate that.
(45:05):
I have a lot of importance in regards to anything related to higher powers and also worldview and theology and whatever, even though I have never even read the Bible.
And it's ridiculous because I have so much importance where I've become intolerant to a lot of like Christians.
(45:30):
I've, I've, I've completely stopped listening to ideas and I don't even take into consideration any ideas based off of the label that they put themselves over, or they put them, or they put on themselves like the label of being a Christian or the label of being a Jew or whatever it is.
(45:52):
I completely stopped listening to that because I have a lot of importance because I feel like I know something that they don't.
But that's ridiculous because how, how am I supposed to think that when I'm literally not even following the own teachings or the actual teaching that I'm actually studying?
(46:15):
Because in the act of neglecting all the other people's ideas is literally the act of me neglecting my own ideas because it's all based off importance.
I think that I'm so important that I know something that someone else doesn't know.
And that's ridiculous.
And so that's something I was aware of.
(46:36):
And that's basically it.
Importance equals hell.
Goodbye.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.