20.

Million books sold.

Zero fucks given.

It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Hanson. Scott, it's great to have you here.

Mark, it is so good to chat with you again.

One of the first guests on the new podcast, an old friend of mine, it's an honor to have you here. Speaking of honors, you were recently named by Stanford in the top two % of scientists.

Your so I really don't like to make a big deal out of that, but technically, my ranking put me at 0.05 %.

Who's.

Counting? I didn't want to be douchey about it. I did technically make the within the top two %.

Okay, so we'll edit that top0.5 %. 0.05. 0.05. Okay, 0.05 %. What's interesting about that, though, and you mentioned this on Twitter, you were put in a special education class.

That's right.

I've actually never talked to you about this, about your childhood. I'm curious to open up with that and talk about it.

Thank you. I mean, it is linked to this ranking thing because it really didn't feel real at all. And it's like, I wonder what point in my life am I going to feel like I didn't fake it in some way?

We're all wondering that.

About me? No. You're way to make me feel better about myself. You're like, We've all been worried about you. That's good. It makes me feel better when I hear that because I had friends who were like, Oh, we believe it. I was like, I wish I didn't need to hear that. Yeah. For the first couple of years in my life, I had basically a lot of food in my ears, and it made it very hard for me to hear anything. I was effectively deaf. For the first three years of my life, I was crying a lot, walked around crying. I don't know. It's funny. It's not funny. I couldn't express what I wanted to express, and I was super frustrating. Teachers thought I was stupid. Also, they said I was immature. They had me repeat third grade, and I was bullied a lot, and I kept in this remedial classroom until ninth grade.

What changed?

Well, this teacher who had never seen me before she was coming for the regular teacher, it was the start of high school. By the way, it was like a fresh start. I love fresh starts. I love when people view you anew with.

Fresh eyes. Especially when you're not the cool kid, the fresh start is a godsend. Yeah, that's right. That's so true.

This special ed teacher took me aside. I was taking this on-time test. They take you out of the regular classroom and they put you in this special. I remember how frustrated I was, and I think I made a stalky comment like, I have the rest of my life to finish this on-time test, so what's the point? What's the rush? She took me aside after class. Everyone was leaving. She said, I just want to talk to you for a second. She tilted her head and she's like, I think I see you. I know. I was like, Oh, fuck. I don't want to see if my zip was down. She's like, Why are you here? I see your frustration. I went in my head and I was like, Why am I here? Then I replayed the question in my head, and then it really got to, Yeah, why am I here? It's crazy how there are moments in our life where we are just waiting for someone to ask us the right question, and then it can just activate everything. In this surge of inspiration went and searched through me and I ran to the payphone, called my mom and I said, I'm not reporting back to special Ed tomorrow.

She's screaming, freaking out. She's like, What are they doing to you over there? What happened? But I became the first one in my school's history for the kid himself to break out of special Ed. Really? Yeah. I was the first one for it to dawn on me that, Wait, I can take myself out? It was nice to be prompted and to be asked why am I still here? But I said to her, You know what? You're right. I want to see what I'm capable of.

Wow. And then did you Excel in high.

School after that? I did. I won't say I excelled at everything, but what I did is I really fell in love with learning. It almost became like a challenge, a fun challenge to myself to see, Well, what can I handle? Because I went through so many years where I didn't think I could handle anything. I was in all remedial classes. It was so boring. I was so curious, what could I handle? I signed up for some things I did well, like the Labkinn-Latin scholar. Wow. Yeah, I was in front of my senior year of high school. I signed up for West Side Story, the musical, and that I did not do so well. I dropped out. I said I can't handle the dancing. I couldn't handle it. I love the orchestra. I asked my grandfather if he would teach me how to play cello because he was a cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and he was retired at that time. He was delighted to teach me how to play. I learned over a summer how to play cello well enough to join the orchestra, at least play the downbeat of every measure in the beginning.

But I quickly, the crutches came off quickly, and I've realized I had a knack for music. Must have been in the jeans somewhere with my grandfather, and I also joined the choir. Joining the choir was actually a fluke. I was hanging out with my friends in the choir room after class one day, and I was making fun of them. I was like, You guys sound like this.

The.

Choir teacher heard me and she said, Would you like to join our choir? I think you are really talented. And then I- The rest.

Is history.

-ended up becoming a professional opera singer for a short period of my life. Wow, man.

So given your history, what's your take on standardized testing? That's been in the news a lot again lately. It's a controversial topic within educational circles. What's your take?

Great question. Standardized testing, like we're talking about academic standardized testing in K-12, is actually very highly correlated with IQ tests. In a lot of ways, they're really thinly disguised IQ tests. So if you don't have the mind that aces abstract reasoning and working memory, which a lot of people on the neurodivergent spectrum do have trouble with working memory, that's their defining thing, is they have trouble with organization, they have trouble keeping lots of things in their mind at once, then you'll have trouble on standardized tests. Not deterministically, but there's a probability that you'll have trouble in standardized tests. I think that we need to, first of all, call speed to speed. In some circles, it's even controversial to say that they're thinly discussed. The SAT is a thinly discussed IQ test. It is. I have research dated proving. They don't prove anything, in fact, but showing that to ensure highly probable. The SAT, the board, they don't want to say that. They want to think that if rich people put in enough money for tutoring, then they can improve their scores. But no, it's a thin lead.

Which is part of the controversy, right? Because if you do have a very highly intelligent child from a poor socioeconomic background, that test can actually be the thing that pulls them out of that or maybe sorts.

For them. Excellent point. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that doing well in standardized tests can actually be a golden ticket for people who are living in poverty and can't demonstrate their intelligence in any other way. By the way, I'm not one of these people who is anti-IQ. This is how I phrased in the past. I'm not anti-IQ, but I'm anti comparing everyone on a single standardized metric. And that's different because there are people who are generally a high-IQ minds, and they are not winning either. And no one's winning in education system. Intellectually gifted kids from an IQ perspective are not winning. You put them all in one room and say, Go be gifted together. Bye. And then the teachers go drink coffee. How is that winning for them either? Does that make sense? There's a certain level of nuance there, like to bring to the table.

Well, you brought up this term of neurodivergents, and you are actually the first person I ever heard this term from. Really? Like maybe five or six years ago. I love that it's starting to catch on, and I'm starting to see it in a lot of different places. But talk about what is neurodivergents? How does it differ maybe from other definitions of the previous categories that were common in parts of psychology? And why is it important?

Yeah, I was just on a panel in New York on what is neurodiversity, and I think no one could agree on it definition.

Classic psychology.

Yeah. It's become one of those things where when a term becomes so, it's starting to mean anything. It's like a rubber band. It's going to snap and not mean anything. I fear that's what's starting to happen with neurodiversity. It started off pertaining mostly or really just exclusively to the autistic community, and I'm happy that it expanded to things like dyslexia and other learning disabilities, ways of learning in a school system. It has expanded even further, and I'm still okay with that, to certain forms to mental illness. I think bipolar, it really does give you a different way of experiencing a world that puts you in extreme modality. But right now where we're at with it is, I feel like if it hasn't snapped, it's very, very close to snapping that rubber band, because if you go on TikTok, everyone, every kid on there on TikTok is neurodivergent now. The neurodivergent and trauma, the two biggest boys, they're both. Now you can't even say one without the other. There's almost become like a... Now it's super cool. Whereas back in my day, I was bullied.

Every day for it. Right. There's status attached to it.

Yeah. I wish I grew up in 2023 because I just want to say in my day in the '80s, yes, that's how I was all of you. I wish I could have gone TikTok and get like, and for my peers to be like, Oh, that's cool. You're neurodiverging. You're weird. You're corky. You're slow. That's so cool. Be part of our group. But instead, I was just bullied every day.

Why do you think that that status has been associated with things like trauma, neurodivergents, gender identity, things like that?

I think that these kids are having identities identity crisis. I think that we're living in an age of identity crisis, and there's so much unknown. Whenever your environments where there's so much insecurity around you, talk about the pandemic, talk about uncertainty, people tend to claim more to belonging and finding somewhere where they belong. And teenagers throughout the course of human history, it's no big shocker that teenagers are the prime identity crisis age. So you just compound that with such great uncertainty and such a craving for belonging into some group. Personally, I think we need to help children and all of us learn how to belong more to ourselves, to our unique selves and lead from that sense of confidence and self-esteem. But I don't think that's what's happening. People are so desperate to seek belonging to a group, and they've forgotten to belong to themselves.

Sometimes I feel like teenagers, unconsciously, they find the thing that is going to upset the older generations the most instinctively latch onto that. If you look back through the generations, you see that happening repeatedly. In the '60s, it was free love. Then in our generation, it was sex, drugs, rock and roll. And then with this generation, it's social media and identifying with all these different ways of life and everything. But it's interesting because it's almost like now that I am one of the older generations, I think if I saw kids doing what I was doing when I was 16, I'd be like, Oh, he's 16. Of course he's doing that. He'll be fine. It's like they need to find that new limit to test.

Yeah. It's to.

Get everybody, all the old people freaking out. I agree with you that adolescence period is just an extended identity crisis. It's the first time in your life that you are discovering who you're going to be in the world and who you want to be and who you're going to associate with. I also feel like that just on a more macro scale, there's this cohort, identity-seeking process of like, Who are we as a generation?

I wish the kids didn't feel so much pressure to lock in their identity. I wish we had cultures that really valued exploration. Think how many years it takes for me to feel like I know who I am, answer, I still haven't figured it out.

Yeah, you never totally know.

I'm still like, I'm much clearer than I was when I was 17, but I'm still not quite there because there's so many sides of me. And what I've learned to embrace isn't just that fact, there's so many sides of me. But I don't feel like we encourage kids to embrace that fact of being human, being a whole person. Instead, I feel like they put so much pressure on themselves. And I think we put pressure on them too to figure it out so you can write it in your college essay and get into Harvard. Interestingly enough, I think we're actually rewarding the kids the most who are the most fragile. So that's an interesting one.

How so?

You get so many points in college essays now for the more vulnerable you are. You have all these vulnerable identities. You're as fragile as possible. Please take pity on me in a 500 ways. Therefore, I shouldn't get in college. Whereas in my day, I feel like we had to write our essays how strong we were. But I think that setting off a process where we allow kids to show over a longer period of time as they're trying to pursue their self-actualization, being vulnerable is great. Being vulnerable is wonderful. But then also what do you do with that vulnerability? I have a phrase, like I coined called Confident vulnerability, where you can be vulnerable, but you can also have self-belief as you're being vulnerable. And also I'd like to distinguish between Laura K. C. V. And Upper K. V. Laura K. V. Is vulnerability just for the sake of vulnerability, for getting attention, for getting something else. Capital V. Vulnerability is like being vulnerable in the service of realizing future goal you have in growth, in the service of growth versus in the service of, dare I say, narcissism. Sure. I think there's a difference between Laura K.

V. And Upper K. V. I think we should reward Upper K. V. More.

I wrote my dating book, Models, 12.

Years ago. Which was about statistical models, right?

Yes, those models. Did I read the right book? The right book, yeah. But that book talked a lot about vulnerability, and it was specifically directed at men. I remember at the time, vulnerability wasn't as common. It was much more taboo back then, especially among a male audience. I went through great pains in that book to point out that this is not wallowing on the floor in a fetal position saying, Oh, poor me. Look at all the horrible things that have happened to me. Actually, it's the opposite. It's being comfortable and sharing and expressing, not being owned by the pains or struggles that you've gone through.

Your book is about confidence and vulnerability in so.

Many ways. It really is.

Developing a confidence in your vulnerability. Yes. Because when a guy of shy approaches a woman, and it's a very vulnerable thing. It's a form of vulnerability. To say like, Hey, you're cute. I like you. Yeah, exactly. And then if you're rejected, the question is, what happens? What do you do with that? I have taken actually consent courses. I know it sounds really not courses. I've been part of like there's cuddle parties. Maybe this is too much information. But I've been to these parties where.

You actually-It is L. A.

They do a whole practice where you approach someone and say, Hey, would you like a hug? And if they say, No, I'm good. Then you say, Thanks for taking care of yourself. And you smile and walk away. And you just practice. I don't think young people really practice that and really being able to still stay confident in who you are.

Well, I will say there's definitely much more awareness around it than when we were young.

That's true. Actually, that's true. Yeah. I loved your book, by the way. I was joking about statistics. No, I know. I read your book, and your book resonated within my soul a lot more than maybe some other How to Pick Up Chicks Mucks. Yeah, for sure.

It's funny, when I wrote that, I think Bernie Brown had just come out that year. And it's funny because the whole vulnerability thing, I was not aware of her when I wrote Models. And then I became aware of her stuff around the same time that models came out. I remember at the time, I was ironically being very vulnerable, taking a big chance in my industry by saying, Hey, the path here is not to be more bullheaded and more aggressive and less sensitive. The past year is to actually be more aware of your emotions and your flaws and your issues and become comfortable with them. Develop a confident vulnerability. It's been weird over the last 10 years to see vulnerability to come and dominate the culture in so many ways. I never would have predicted that it would get turned into this toxic status signifier that it has become. I remember in the early days after Models came out, guys would email me and they would say, Hey, man, I tried your whole vulnerability thing. It didn't work. I told this chick about this horrible thing that happened when I was a kid and she still didn't hook up with me.

I'm like, Dude, that's not it.

There's so much there. What you were selling is different than what the pickup artists were selling. I don't mean we don't need to go to a whole rabbit hole, but there was said, I won't paint all the pickup artists with the same brush, but I'll say some of them really were, their pitch was foolproof method to getting laid in five seconds upon meeting a girl. They already put in guys had some unattainable, and also I would say, psychopathic way of thinking about women in the world and that you should be entitled to anything. That reaks of entitlement when someone says, Hey, man, I was vulnerable and I didn't get lead. That's like the nice guy syndrome, right? You think if you're a nice guy, you should be entitled to get lead, and that's not how it works. I can assure you.

That's not how it works. You're like, I've been trying for 20 years. It's interesting because I feel like a lot of the stuff that I see online now feels like a permutation of that. It's like, I was so vulnerable about these things that happen to me. Give me attention, give me likes, give me share my Instagram or whatever. The social media question is interesting in general. I'm curious, what is your take on the supposed link between social media and mental health crisis?

What I've seen on that data and from talking to my colleagues about it, social media has had a very significant impact on mental health, and especially young girls like 13-year-old girls. It has really magnified the pressures we already put on young girls. Boys aren't winning either there. There's a lot of anxiety. I think that's cool they call it, that Jonathan is calling it the anxious generation because there really is a lot of anxiety to keep up with, to be as cool, to get as many likes as this person. It creates a whole comparison game that is already since the dawn of human teenagers has caused anxiety, that game of comparison, and it's put it-.

Puts it on.

Steroids, basically.

-on steroids, yes. Amplifies it.

I'm 44, and I feel 17 when I'm on Instagram. I feel 17 all over again. We're like, Oh, my God. Bobby Schmoul gets so many likes for that post, and I don't get any likes for my post. I try to curve that. I mean, I have better self-regulation skills than I did when I was 17 where I am like, Don't worry about that, Scott.

It's hard. I find myself getting sucked into it sometimes as well. And it's hard in our situation as people with online platforms and online businesses because let's say we post something on Instagram and it bombs. It does terribly. I'll get really annoyed. I always justify that annoyance or that being upset about that by like, Well, it's bad for the business. This is reflecting poorly on the brand and it's going to lower conversions and all this stuff. If there's a bunch of bad posts in a row, I'll get mad at my team. But then sometimes when I'm sitting alone, quiet at night, I'm like, Am I really mad about the business? Or is it just am I that 15-year-old girl who's like, Well, Susie is getting more likes than me? What does she have that I don't?

There's something really profound there, so I want to double-click on that. I feel as though sometimes I ask the question, Do I exist if I have no social media presence? It's the weirdest thing where we come to the point where the extent to which a person exists is the extent to which they have a big presence. There's this one guy, and I'm not going to mention his name. He's like my arch nemesis. He can say the dumbest things and immediately gets four million likes with four million comments saying, You're a genie, pets. He'll say something like, To have confidence, you must be confident. I'll look through like, Hot girl, being like, You're amazing. You're amazing. You're amazing. Okay, I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. Are you? But it's a fascinating phenomenon. I sit back and I'm like, Wow, does that motherfucker... Can I curse here? Yeah. I'm not. I'm in your old podcast called the Go Fuck Yourself Podcast.

Yeah, it's the Fuck Yourself Podcast. We'll call it the Fuck.

Yourself Podcast. I just renamed our podcast to the Go Fuck.

Yourself Podcast. This is the special edition of the Go Fuck Yourself Podcast. What's crazy too is that at this point at a certain level of social media following, half the stuff that's going out isn't even created by the person whose face is on the profile picture. I have a team that goes through my 300 articles and sources different quotes and creates lists and all sorts of stuff. So at that end of the spectrum, it gets weird in that way. And then I guess on the lower end of the spectrum, if you're a teenager and you're probably living and dying by a dozen likes, right? Yeah. You post and your best friend posts something and gets 10 likes and you post it and get four and you're like, Oh, he's so much cooler.

The cooler part is there, and I also think the existence part, I can't get away from that question I just keep thinking about.

It's the new, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, if a social media profile has no followers, does that.

Person-it's exactly right. I remember the time when I was in grad school and there was no pressure at all to signal or showcase anything that I was doing. I was proud of whatever I was doing. During the course of my day, if I read a journal article and I understood it, I was proud of myself, and I was good. Now there's this just feeling constantly like it doesn't matter if it's not for everyone else to see.

Okay, I'm glad you brought that up because doesn't this happen a little bit in academia with how often you get published? Or what's the score on -H index? -h index on.

Google Scholar? That's what the rating was. That's what this ranking was.

-oh, look at you.

See?

Maybe you're not crushing it on social, but your H index is fucking.

Through the roof, man. I have a big H index. I should put that in dating resumes.

I don't. That's why I have a big iPad.

You're.

Nice. Compensate for my.

Low H index.

But seriously. Yeah, I know. Someof this, humans will always play status games. You're right. I think there's this tendency, and this happened when I was a kid with different things, whatever the new technology is, that becomes the organizer of the new status game. Then people blame the technology, they don't blame fucking humans being human. My personal opinion is I'm a little bit more skeptical of the social media stuff, but I think if there is anything inherently problematic with social media, it's that it accelerates and amplifies the status game that's there. It makes it way more legible. It makes it way more widespread, easier to communicate, easier to reference. When we were in high school, if you were a dork or if your friend was cooler than you, nobody really noticed, except maybe the 10 kids in closest proximity to you, maybe the 10 kids that knew both of you. I think the problem now is if your friend's cooler than you, the whole school knows because the whole school sees they have more followers. It's so true. So it's almost like ranking people. Instead of ranking people by grades, it's like social media is like a never ending high school and we're all stuck in it.

That needs to be a social clip. What you just said.

That's so true. Clip that.

It's so true. It's so true. But you feel cool if you're winning in that world.

You feel cool if you're winning at anything. You're winning in that world, Mark. Well, I mean, you're cool. We both are. We tend to justify and sympathize with the status games that we win, and we blame the status games.

We lose. Mark Leary, the social psychologist, has this idea of the sociometer. It suggests that our self-esteem rise or falls to the base to which we're perceiving that we have social value, or he calls it relational value. But I feel like social media has created a sociometer where our self-esteem rise and falls based on how many likes we get.

I think part of the trickiness there is that there was no eligibility for that. You could easily convince yourself that you were much cooler than you are. You could easily convince yourself that people like you more than they actually do. Whereas with social media where everything is being measured and the numbers are public and it's all there completely legible for anybody to see, it becomes much harder to kid yourself. If you're posting things into the void and nobody's responding, including your own family and friends, it's really hard to convince yourself that you're actually a really interesting person.

I feel really sad. I feel really sad all of a sudden.

It is fucking sad.

For people who... But also, I think that even add more complexity to this conversation, there are some people where they have huge audiences, but I don't want that audience. I wouldn't feel cool if I had neo-Nazis being like, Oh, we like your stuff, Scott. I think who your audience is matters as well as just the metric. Do you have a big audience? 100 %.

You took a break from Twitter for about a year.

You're giving me way too much credit. You mean two months? Two months?

It felt like an eternity, Scott. My feed was so empty without you on it.

It might have been four months. No, it wasn't a year, but it was less than six months.

So we'll say half a year.

Half a year. Half a year.

The break from Twitter, how did that affect you personally?

I was more in touch with my body. I noticed that my actions in my everyday life felt more authentic. I felt like I wasn't worried or thinking about if I do that or that or that, how am I going to be judged? Which is weird because it's not like I broadcast everything I do anyway when I am on Twitter. But for some reason, when I'm online, I feel like every single thing I do in my life has a different layer of it's like a Black Mirror episode that we're living in. I can't really.

Describe it. Is it the potentiality of sharing something?

Yes, everything has the potentiality to get likes.

So it's like you're at a dinner conversation. You say something really clever, funny, and you're like, Oh, that'd be a killer tweet.

I absolutely do do that. I'll be in situations where I will say, Oh, that would make a good tweet. Hold on. I'll be in a conversation with someone. Let me tweet that out. Yeah, there's something extra in life that it brings me that I'm not sure it's a good thing. But someday I just want to be like, Harry Potter, I'm taking a break from public life. That would be the big one. Someday where I have enough certain number of books, or I'm like, You know what? I'm good for a year or two. I want to just say, I'm taking a break from public life, and see what that's like.

In one of your earlier books, you talk about mastery goals versus performance goals. I think this relates to social media. By the way, I selfishly really like this concept because it maps really well to one thing I've long talked about in the relationship space, which is that there's two ways to approach relationships. One is through authenticity and the other one is through performance. Approaching relationships through performance, seeing people as algorithmic, if I say or do this, then they will like me, they will give me the affection I want. When you see it in a transactional way, that's actually what undermines the intimacy and the health of the relationship. And so when I came across the mastery versus performance goals, it struck me how similar, the way you were describing how people's attitudes developed towards their pursuits is very similar to that. When people are too performative, they become overwhelmed with anxiety, they start struggling with self-judgment, they feel lots of shame. I was like, Wow, you can have a toxic relationship with a goal.

It's such a good point. A lot of people talk about the growth mindset. They go crazy over growth mindset. Some research shows that more educators have heard of growth mindset, and they've heard of the name Freud. Wow. It's big in education circles. It's also concerning that there are teachers out there that who've never heard of the Freud. That's also a problem. What I like to say is I'm more into growth and motivation than I am into growth and mindset because you can have growth and mindset up the kazoo for the things that are wrong for you.

Growth mindset towards alcoholism or something.

It's like, Well, I.

Blacked out last night, but I think I can black out.

Better today. Yes. But yeah, no, exactly. I think that growth and motivation, it's the motivation that matters. Are you going toward goals that are wise goals for you that will fit in your deepest skill set, interests, and will also be likely to improve the world in some way? Growth goals are what really matter. I just think just like this blanket love for growth mindset as well as grit. The person who likes growth mindset, they also like grit. I think, I'm not seeing my hand tied in grit. No, grit is important. But blind grit, blind to growth mindset are nothing to be celebrated. Serial killers are greedy.

Very true. Some of them. Yeah, some of them.

The ones that don't.

Get caught. Some serial killers are lazy. Let's be honest.

That is what I'm saying. I don't mean to shame. I don't mean to shame anyone.

Yeah, we don't want to shame serial killers. If you're a serial killer, I'll tear it down. Scott's not trying to shame you right now. Oh, my God.

I'm so ridiculous. I'm so ridiculous. Sorry to interrupt you.

What I was going to say, so I feel like this is a story that plays out in psychology over and over, which is a brilliant researcher finds a concept or some measurable thing, does a bunch of research around it, gets a lot of great results. Everybody gets super excited. And then when it comes to the implementation into the real world, it gets watered down. You lose all that context. This is the thing that's so frustrating about psychological concepts. Everything's interrelated. Everything matters to everything else. And so as soon as you remove, you disembody that shiny new concept of all the context of like, Well, you need to make sure that you are properly motivated and you have good values and you have a strong support network around you and all this stuff, and you just put it in a vacuum, you start to see mixed results or unintended second order effects. I feel like we saw this with self-esteem decades ago, and I didn't follow it closely, but it seems like this has happened a little bit with the growth mindset stuff.

It's also happened in the trauma world.

Yes.

Yeah, the body keeps the score has just expanded in the public eye to everything. Everything's trauma now. I got an ad on my Instagram the other day that said, Do you procrastinate? It's a trauma response. It's like, Okay.

Okay, yeah. Apparently, we're all fucking.

Survivors then. Yeah, it's an easy way to blame anything, so you don't have to take responsibility for anything. You can say, Oh, that was my trauma.

Well, this is another interesting tendency that I think happens with these nebulous concepts, which is, I don't know what the term is, but the expansion of the definition.

Yeah. I mean, everyone's an oppressor, depends what your vantage point is. I mean, it's like a profound truth. Yes. Quite controversial. But your perception matters, and whether or not your perception is from the in-group or it's from the out-group completely matters.

It reminds me of the Soldier's in quote about the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

It always is perception. It's hard to stand back and objectively have the nuance where you say, Well, there's not always just one oppressor. You're allowed to have more than one victim at a time. Yes. You're allowed. And yet no one ever brings up that possibility. It's always like, There's the victim and there's the perpetrator. But things often emerge and things often interact and it gets complicated and then there's complexities there. Humans are messy. The whole idea that we can reduce one person to an angel, another person to the devil is ridiculous.

Yeah. It's never worked before, so there's no reason it would start now. Yeah. Why is self-expression potentially healing or therapeutic?

I like to distinguish in my work between healthy authenticity and asshole-y authenticity. Just saying whatever is on your mind at all times, some people have a concept in their head that's authenticity. But I think healthy authenticity, it involves four components. One is radical self-honesty. You're really honest to yourself about your talents, your skills, your areas of strengths and weaknesses. Radical self-awareness. Not just self-awareness, or just awareness. Awareness in general of the world. If you're talking to someone, you're aware of what's actually going on in front of them and in front of you, and you're also aware of what's coming up inside you and things like that. Yeah, I also think that another aspect of is integrity and really staying true to your values, acting in accordance with your values and the who you want to be as well. Authenticity is allowed to not always be aligned to with who you are. It can also be aligned with who you would prefer to be. There can be authenticity to a future self that you want to become. I think that's important.

Would that be fake until you make it? Yeah. Where does that come in? Does that.

Come in? Yeah. The whole idea of faking it is interesting. You are doing theaction. In that moment, that is who you are. If I do something that goes against the grid of my normal patterns, that still is a real new action. So the idea of faking is an interesting one to me because...

Actually, so I'd like to dig into this a little bit because this is a topic in the self-help space that makes me squirm a little bit, but you do see it a lot. And some people, classically, it was fake until you make it. I think these days it's a lot more around doing hypothetical visualizations, like asking yourself what would this feel like if you were a confident person? Or, How would you do this presentation if you were a great speaker? I can see the utility of that. That to me, for some reason, that feels more authentic than fake until you make it. There's also a strand that is into this idea of an alter ego, creating a side personality that you step into, like one Batman puts on his mask and cape. It's not necessarily an authentic. It's just a separate identity that you have constructed within yourself to perform in this particular context, and then when you're out of that context, you take it off. I'm curious what you think about that.

This is a great topic of conversation because I'm a big fan of integration. I'm not a big fan of having multiple personalities. Me too. Yeah. In other words, now in this extreme thing that I usually am never at, I never am, and usually never is in contact with that guy. I really like the idea of an inner harmony where multiple sides or selves are working as a team. I don't think that inner peace comes when you feel like you're fighting a civil war within yourself. The side is like, Oh, I hate that guy. And that guy is like, Oh, but that guy comes out when I have my alter ego. Then I'll ignore the rest of myself when that guy is... I hate this fuck you all. Because this is the fuck you podcast. Yeah, go fuck yourself podcast. That guy, the Alter Ego is basically like, Go fuck yourself, Scott.

That's this podcast, Alter Ego, is to go fuck yourself. Yeah. I see why that advice is effective.

Yeah, me too. For people that really need confidence too.

It feels like a short term tool. It's a short term. If I'm going to go on a speaking tour and I'm really anxious about it and it's a month long and I'm going to do 10 dates, I could see like, Okay, for this tour, I'm going to have my little alter ego. I'm going to have my pump-up music. I'm going to have my outfit that I put on every day. I get that. That can help you get to the finish line. Where I start feeling uneasy is I'm like you, that my instinct and based on everything that I know and understand about psychology is like, yeah, you want harmony and integration are good things.

Well, I'm a big fan of the behavioral activation approach to change within psychology. Big, big fan. My dear friend Seth Gillihan pioneered the field of mindful, cognitive behavioral therapy, and he has this whole approach act thing could be. And all three are important. But interestingly enough, if he knows act was the first one.

Yes.

Then think and then be. I love it because he does make a point, which is we can overthink things. We can get in our own head too much. There is a great value. Even though we're not waiting till we're ready for it, but to be activate the rest of the system through actions to move in the direction of where we want to go. I can say I am a fan of that. Make it to make it, phrasing, the alter ego phrasing. I feel like that's a different thing. To me, you can be aligned and integrated and have the behavioral activation approach. The point there is don't wait until you're ready to act because you'll never act. Yeah. That's the important point there. But still get in touch with your being with your mind. Is this something I really want to become? Is this someone that I really feel aligned with? And if it is, there's integration there. And how often, how many young men in the clubs are like, I want to talk to her, but I'm just not ready. I'm going to wait. I'm going to have two more drinks. And then does that person ever talk to her?

No, she's off making out with Solanol before you have your second drink. That's the story of my life. But when I was younger. But I think a lot of people, a lot of guys can relate to that. But the real key there is the behavioral act of depression. It says don't wait to that conditional. Another big, I'll generalize this more to all our listeners, not just them, but I'll be happy when I... That's a huge one. That's a huge cognitive distortion. This is why I like the mindful CBT approach because that falls in the category of a cognitive distortion. But being mindful about it, wow, I'm mindful that I have that cognitive distortion, and I'm going to override that through the behavioral activation approach. I'm not going to wait till I do X, Y, and Z to be happy. I'm going to go towards this action right now that I know is going to make me happy. It's so weird. We have a thing right in front of us. We can be happy if we want to, but our mind has these cognitive distortions like, Oh, but I'm not ready for that, or I need this, this, and this before I'm ready to accept that.

If someone's giving you love, how many people with low self-esteem are like, Oh, I can't accept that love until I've done something for them first, or that I've done this, this, and this. Just accept the love. Just accept it. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

But why is it so hard to act before thought?

Yeah, right. You're right.

It's so hard to flip.

That around. Flipping the script, and yet that's what really cause real transformations in one's life is if you make that flip. We get stuck in our heads. We overthink things because of our cognitive distortions. That can go down the list. There's like 14-20 cognitive distortions that we all would resonate with. If I was like, I'm often, of course, your daily of black and white thinking. Do you have catastrophizing? I already talked about the conditional, I'll be happy if thing, entitlement is a cognitive bias. It's such a distortion, cognitive distortion to think that you're entitled to everything good in the world. Get rid of that. You just go down the list. And then if you have mindful, if you practice mindful CBT, as I've really been trying to practice mindful CBT, and I love Seth's new book on the topic, you just throughout the course of the day, you really are mindful about this cognitive distortion. You realize, Holy shit, I have been walking around with just a non-stop replay of cognitive distortions that are holding me back from my own wellbeing and growth. I know once you're really mindful of that, you're like, Wow, I can really change.

The best way I ever heard it expressed was in the context of meditation. A good friend of mine who I've known forever is a meditation teacher. I remember I was talking to him once and I was saying, I can never stick to a meditation habit because at least one or two days a week, even if it's 10 minutes, it just feels overwhelming. It's like, Wow, I don't have 10 minutes. I've got all this shit to do this morning. I didn't sleep well last night. I got to go do this thing. I got to do a podcast.

Yeah, the irony there is that the second you shift into a mindful state of being, that whole way of thinking disappears immediately. The more when you act to be any, spend five minutes in a mindfulness meditation, that all that disappears.

But that doesn't matter, Scott, because I've known that for fucking 20 years, and I still do it. But I remember I was talking to him once about it, and he was like, Well, why do you need to do 10 minutes? I was like, Well, I picked 10 because that just seems… He's like, Why not just do one? It's so true. He said he was like, Lower the bar until it gets you to go sit on the pillow. Then once you're on the pillow, be like, I'm going to go do 30 seconds. You could always do 30 seconds. And then once you've done the 30 seconds, be like, Okay, I'm going to do three minutes. So true, Mark. And then once you do the three minutes, they'll be like, You know what? I'll stay for 10.

I'm getting chills because there's a topic that just gets me emotional. I've been obsessed with the getting in the arena idea. It's a Roosevelt thing, but I'm obsessed with this because- Great quote. -it's really changed my life. I start to think every time I want to do something and it feels like such a big, big task, I think to myself, my only goal is to just state my intention that I'm in the arena. Just get in the arena. Even if it means you're watching everyone else in the arena, you're still in the arena. To me, that's so important in various areas of your life to just get in there.

I've found it with writing. I find that if I need to write a script for a video or something and I'm procrastinating for days, I just force myself to open up an empty document and write the title. And then once I've done that, I'm like, Well, I'm here. So I might as well start writing the first time. It's so true.

Start writing the first book. That's the hardest part. But that's the hardest part is just the phase shift between you don't exist in this person's life and now you just said hi. There's a world of difference between not existing and hi.

It's like zero to one compared to one to two.

Not even being on someone's radar.

It's infinite.

It's an infinite difference. We can build this up to any example of anything. Just you don't know the ripple effects that can happen. You need to trust in the universe. That sounds really- Trust the universe? I know that sounds unscientific.

Scott Bericop, PhD, top 0.5 % scientist. Trust the universe.

But in a certain sense, isn't that what you're doing? Technically, even scientifically, that makes sense. You can't control all.

The factors. Trust whatever you want to call it. Trust the universe, reality, the future, just existence.

Trust yourself. You let go. Yeah. Because you can't control. And there's also a entitlement there, a big presumption that you know how someone's going to react to you or you know, yeah, the universe is going to do its thing. We're often surprised. So you have to let yourself go to the surprise of life.

We've spent a lot of this conversation talking about victimhood culture, which you're writing a book about right now.

I haven't announced that. But why not? Let this be the announcement. Okay.

Okay. If you're cool with that, we'll leave you then. Why not? We talked a lot about social media. We've talked a lot about education and the younger generation. I'm curious, since you're very focused on this topic at the moment, this group of topics, what do you think is the most under-broadcast piece of advice or piece of wisdom out there? What's the thing that needs to be said more, but it's not getting said enough?

Let's double-click on the victim mentality for a second. What I think I bring to the table about that is that I'm not the guy you'd expect to write about overcoming a victimhood mentality. What I see in this is that the people that are people of the victim mentality, they're always pointing their finger at someone else. If you're on the far right you're like, Oh, those liberals with a victimhood mentality. Even the liberals saying, Oh, look at these publicans are always crying about their... What I want to bring to table is this notion that all of us, no matter our political party, no matter our background, whether we've gone through trauma or we haven't gone through explicit trauma, we can really make profound transformations to our lives with a simple mindset shift of, I am not a victim of my circumstances. I mean, toreally to get in the arena of I'm not a victim of my circumstances is a true game-changer for your whole life. But it's something that I want to divorce it from its political connotations. I want to divorce it from... Because it applies to all of us. Again, I don't care. I do care if you're in poverty, but I'm saying regardless of if you're in poverty or how many people within the top 1 %, how many billionaires have a victim mentality right now?

This is not something only to a certain... Everyone's playing this card right now and they're holding themselves back from growth and their own self actualization.

I don't remember if I wrote it in SubtleArt or everything is fucked, but I made the observation that it's an interesting period in history in that every person and group seems to feel victimized simultaneously. It's just such a strange situation, like how that's come to be. When my last book came out, I talked a lot about entitlement and victimhood and entitlement, developing a sense of control over your own life.

I think I blurbbed that book.

Yeah, you did. Yeah, you did blurb that book.

I loved it.

I loved it. And as a result, at the time, given everything that was happening politically, I got invited to go on the Fox News a bunch of times. And it was funny because one of the times I was on one of the Fox News shows with one of the more popular anchors, and the whole time they're just peppering me with questions about snowflakes and victim, all the people complaining about their lives and how nobody takes responsibility anymore and all this stuff. I was like, Man, it feels shitty. I'm totally getting used for this political narrative right now. I can feel it. I'm trying to stay as neutral as possible on the show, but they just keep framing it the way they want to frame it. And it goes to commercial break. And during the commercial break, the anchor leans over the desk and they go, You know who the biggest Snowflakes are? The people who watched the show. I was like, Oh, shit. I was like, Holy fuck.

I wish that was a.

Hot like moment.

Oh, my God.

-it's obvious, right? But I think the media on all sides, they know.

Not only do they know, they use that knowledge.

To get more-They're.

Taking advantage of it. -take it, exploit it. I would say trauma is big business right now. The wood culture is big business. Keeping people there is big business, not helping to get people to the place of healing. That's where my heart is at, is that I want to get people to the promised land. I don't want to keep them stuck. I don't make more money if I keep them stuck in the victim mentality.

This is a criticism I've long written about the self-help industry, is that as soon as you feel better, you're no longer a customer.

Boom. Yeah. That's exactly what I.

Was saying. Yeah.

So it's a -I'm okay for you not to need me someday.

Exactly. That's what a great coach or teacher is. The whole goal of being a good coach or teacher is to get you to a place where you don't need the coach or.

Teacher anymore.

Yeah, I want you to get to that place. And so if you are following somebody or listening to somebody who is keeping you in the same spot emotionally -.

Remember we had our podcast, Improv Jam on my podcast, and I said something which you really agreed with. I said, The whole self-help industry dynamic, our granularly narcissists who exploit vulnerable narcissists in a co-dependent relationship with.

Each other. 100%. And they -The advice is basically teaching the vulnerable narcissists how to behave like grandiose narcissists. Yeah, that's correct.

I mean, I.

Think that's -Yeah.

That's it. Fucking nailed it. That's it. All right. On that note, I want to go to the last segment. I'm doing this segment with each guest. Are you familiar with the game Fuck, Mary, Kill?

I'm not familiar with that, no.

Okay, so Fuck, Mary, Kill, traditionally, the way it works is a popular game among teenagers. So you pick three people, and out of those three people, you have to pick one to fuck, one to marry, and one to kill.

I.

Got you.

You're not going to make me play this game, are you? Yeah. We're a million people to hunt. Yeah, we're.

Totally going to play Fuck, marry, kill right now. But don't worry, we're not going to do people.

I thought you were going to say don't worry, we're not actually going to fuck, marry, or kill them.

That's what you were going to say. Okay, so fuck.

Marry, kill. Who are the people here? Oh, not the people, though.

No, no, no. Okay, fuck, marry, kill. Meditation, therapy, psychedeladics.

I'm really bad. Okay. No, this is forced choice. I just want to make this clear that I would not have said this just out of the context of.

-we understand. We're going to edit to make it sound as horrible as possible. Okay, kill meditation.

I have nuance there because I prefer mindfulness every day than meditation. Meditation is different than mindfulness. Meditation practice.

Let's call it mindfulness.

Oh, really? Oh, shit, you're changing the... Oh, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Because then you get me out of my… First.

Of all, what's the difference between meditation and mindfulness?

Yeah. Well, when I think meditation, I think of a specific practice where I sit on the cushion and I close my eyes and I have a certain designated period of time. Whereas mindfulness to me is something that you apply in your everyday life. I'm applying it right now with you in action, not just sitting in a cushion and closing your eyes and tuning yourself out from the world.

Okay, so let's do meditation. Yeah. Okay, good. Okay. Mindfulness is more of a... Okay, yeah, that's too broad. So you'll kill meditation. Why do you kill meditation?

Well, hold on. Hold on.

Hold on.

I would marry mindfulness. Can you actually make it? Because I would kill therapy. I would kill therapy. I would marry mindfulness. Okay. What's the third thing?

Psychadel.

What am I doing to psychadil?

Fucking them.

Yeah.

Perfect.

That's perfect. I feel aligned with all three of.

Those things. Awesome. So explain yourself.

Oh, I'd explain it to you?

Yeah.

What's the reasoning? I definitely would love to marry mindfulness. I would love that to be something that is just incorporate into my moment to moment existence and to make mindful decisions and not be controlled by my naughty subcontexts. Ultimately, when therapy is done, we talked about this, its whole function should be to erase itself. That it should be its function. I mean, being a co-dependent relationship with your therapist is horrible. Yeah. So yeah, ultimately, if I was able to kill that, that means I'm in a place where I can really be more mindful of my life and maybe get my therapy through making sweet, sweet love with the psychologics. There's actually a lot of good research suggesting that psychologics can be a good integrative form of therapy with a good guide.

Yeah, I believe it. I totally believe it.

I understand that what I said doesn't paint therapy in the best light. That's funny for someone who hosts the psychology podcast to say that. I just do want to clarify that ultimately to kill it will be good. But I don't want to kill therapy.

Therapy is a funny one. I think it's actually it's probably good to dig into this a little bit because I have recommended therapy to my audience my entire career. I still actively recommended. I think it's something everybody should at least try at some point in their life. And it does have pretty incredible benefits for a lot of people in a lot of circumstances. That said, it's so situational. So much of it really seems to depend on the unique relationship between the patient and therapist. So much of it depends on finding a good therapist. So much of it depends on your attitude going into the therapy and what you're willing to focus on and work on, how mindful you're willing to be about what's going on in your life. Therapy has had the best PR. It's the most widely accepted mainstream form of psychological intervention. And when you actually look at the data on its track record, it's not stellar.

There's actually med analysis that shows very small effect size.

Yeah, it's barely above placebo. Not to say that anything else in psychology has a stellar track record either, but therapy seems to be very effective in specific context, generally mildly effective across many contexts, and also often not effective at all, unfortunately.

Yeah. And there's so many different orientations, and I think that depending on the orientation, they proved effective, the shown effectiveness differs quite dramatically. And also what complicates that whole situation is that you can look at these meta-analyses and pull out different factors to see which ones increase effectiveness versus decrease it. Overall, it's looking bad for therapy. But when you zoom in on certain things like the presence, you can actually rate the presence of the therapist and you look at that factor, that's actually a big one, the extent to which a client feels a patient feels seen and heard, I don't like calling them patients.

I vaguely recall seeing some data on that, and it found there's almost like therapist, superstar.

Therapists- Yeah, there.

Are superstar. -who just consistently get great results and then they pull the average up for.

Everybody else. They have great presence. I think the ACT approach has been getting some good effectiveness.

Actives acceptance and commitment therapy.

Yes, yes.

John, I'm a.

Big fan of as well. Yes, but he makes it very clear that it's not an acronym. I was on it. He was all apocasal and said, What does Act stand for? He's like, It does not stand for anything. But actually, yeah. No, I love it. I love him. And has a lot of research, but it's not the right fit for everyone. See, the fit is what also complicates the situation.

From what I've seen, CBT is greater.

For.

Anxiety. It seems to outperform people with anxiety issues and then everything else, it's in the miasma.

I'm a fan of bringing back depth psychology, Julian depth psychology. I've argued that that's really missing. Then humanistic psychology is not as prominent as it once was. Also, I think psychoanalysis can be incredibly beneficial. Just not always. I think that a multitargeted approach is going to be the best therapist.

All right, one more.

Yeah, okay. This is fun.

Fuck, Mary Kill. Extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to new experiences.

Okay, well, I mean, that's really hard. That's really, it's like killing my babies. That one's really hard. I guess I have to choose, right? This is one of those horror movies. This is a forced choice.

It's like.

Saw.

Six. Yes.

No, Scott, you have no choice. Openness to experience is my favorite. I'm going to say love, marrying, openness to experience, marrying because that leaves me to others. Extraversion is not my defining trait, so I'm going to kill it. Yeah, and conscientiousness, and that leads me to what I'm doing, a conscientiousness? Fucking it. I'm fucking conscient. Wow, that's so interesting. I think about fucking conscient. Maybe I should be fucking openness. Oh, maybe I should be fucking openness. Yeah, I know. Okay, I'm fucking openness, and I'm marrying conscientiousness, and I'm killing extraversion. That feels more aligned. That feels more aligned. Because I don't know what it would mean to fuck conscientiousness. I feel like that's something you really need in your life on a regular basis.

Explain yourself. Why are you-.

I'm being ridiculous.

Well, the whole game is fucking ridiculous. Explain yourself. Why are you marrying conscientiousness? By the way, for people listening, these are three of the big five personality traits.

Now I feel like I'm going back. I'm feeling like I'm going back. Now I feel like I want to marry Openness again. This is why I have commitment issue. You have hidden verbally triggered all of my issues that I have in my life right now. I just don't know what it would mean to make love to conscientiousness. That I just don't even know.

It just means that you would fuck it very conscientiously. Be very care, a lot of care.

Wait, but fucking is not love. Wait, so actually, fucking is different than marrying, right? Yeah, it's fucking love. The point is that you're fucking it, which is like, That's not.

Even love. It's like a fling.

Therefore, I am fucking conscientious. Yes, that makes sense now. That makes sense. Now it all makes sense because I don't want to want to... I do want to live in an open state of being all the time. It would love it and I marry it. Consciousness comes along every now and then when I have to get something done. Got you. And then when I have to pound it, I'll pound it. But I don't want to pound it all the time.

Yeah.

No pun intended. When I want to crush something, I think.

Awesome. Scott, it was a pleasure. So much fun.

I'm fun.

But nice. Thanks, Ben. This was the Subtle Art Not Giving a Fuck podcast. Sign up for the newsletter your next breakthrough. This is Scott Berikoffman, and we will be back next week. So don't fuck your conscientiousness. Too much.