Episode 187 Scott Adams - Have We Reached Peak Trump Derangement Syndrome?

just because it's Sunday that doesn't mean you don't have time to come in here and enjoy coffee with Scott Adams and if you're an early bird and you get here by the time we reach the thousand follower mark which will be any moment we're gonna have the simultaneous sip here it comes one thousand followers and Oh some of you got here in time good job for you so we're gonna check in on the state of Trump derangement syndrome today but first I there was a headline that caught my eye so Kevin Spacey who you all remember was accused of some b2 behavior with some young man years ago so Kevin Spacey has a new movie out and here's the headline on CNN Kevin Spacey movie earns only a hundred and twenty six dollars on day one you heard that right not a hundred and twenty six thousand dollars Kevin Spacey's movie earned a hundred and twenty six dollars on its first day ouch so there's there's a weird little trend that I've just noticed and in just the last few days and the trend goes like this that that even the people who are critics of the president are trying to call back other critics like oh you're going too far and this might be a sign that we've reached peak TDS Peak Trump derangement syndrome and I'm gonna give you three examples some of them you might be familiar with but if you see them in contact they're more powerful so one of them is on Bill Maher show real-time one of the biggest critics of the president is Preet Bharara I think I'm pronouncing correctly so he was he was fired by the Trump administration and he admits he's a critic of the president for a number of things but I want I want to hear you watch him push back when Bill Maher accuses the president of being a traitor so we'll see if we can see this come on oops I've got a sound problem here well maybe I don't I think the first part didn't have sound so Baro was fired he was asked about presidents Trump's lawyer blah blah blah we'll get to the good part moment dammit no sound anyway the this is what it was supposed to say was one Bill Maher referred to the President as a traitor Preet Bharara actually stopped him and said that it degrades the criticism when you take it too far I don't think the phone is on mute let's see if that was the problem but yes so I saw you what I said traitor you looked like you were uncomfortable with the word you can subject yourself to criticism if you are sort of overstating and I'm not saying necessarily are but if you're overstating what other people have done say that so he's an attorney you know one of the top ones in the country you think top prosecutors and he refers to calling the president a traitor overstating and he did that with Bill Maher's all right so that's your first example of a Trump critic calling back another Trump critic saying go up you went too far let me give you a couple more these are fresh ones examples so there's a - I've tweeted so even Rachel Maddow was calling out John Brennan on his BS she wouldn't let him weasel word it I know of course she wanted him to say treason but she was sort of exposing him for you know being erratic so the so the irony is that he lost his security clearance for allegedly being erratic and then he goes on Rachel Maddow and Rachel Maddow can't even numbers he's saying is like seems to me is being a little erratic that's my opinion but here's the best one I think it's Katy tur show on MSNBC and Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for The New York Times in Michelle Goldberg is it is Curry to suggests that the president wants to round up and kill people he just hasn't done it so watch what happens when the Katy tur hears her guest on New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg say this watch Katy tur try to call her back so the no he's not is Michelle Roth in the world in politics right now and he is very vocal and I do agree with you that this does express a level of exasperation among his aides they can't have any control over Michelle Goldberg New York Times columnist who's on television and says with total confidence that she knows what the president is thinking and that he's thinking wants to round people up and kill him now that is so far beyond the realm of you know same behavior I don't think she's you know medically insane but certainly temporarily she's operating like she's got Trump derangement syndrome there so there were there are three examples where you're seeing the anti chompers you wasn't pulling back the other it's like ah and let me put a frame on this the people who are anti Trump errs are starting to embarrass themselves in other words it's starting to get embarrassing to be on the sun to be an anti jumper do you remember this was a prediction I got wrong but probably only because of the timing so that the prediction I made prematurely was that the anti-trump errs would start to be embarrassed would start to be embarrassed by their criticism of the president I just showed you three examples that happened this week in which you saw for yourself three anti Trump errs being a little bit embarrassed by their own team I'm not going to claim that I got that prediction right because I missed it by about a year but yeah pretty mature predict ulation exactly the 48-hour rule so yes the 48-hour rule is in effect but I didn't see anything that any of these folks said there would necessarily be something they would change in 48 hours but if they do if they do if anybody if anybody clarifies in the next 48 hours I will abide by the 48-hour rule for clarification and I will say I accept the clarification do you know why because I don't want to be Michelle Goldberg she believes she can read minds and she is so certain that she said it in public imagine going in public and saying with confidence you can read the mind of somebody else you are a shill let's block that guy yeah how do you how do you clarify it would be a hard one to clarify but hey if somebody does clarify I'm all-in there's another attack in Seattle somebody's saying somebody wearing a mega hat I haven't seen that yet will you embarrassed if will you be embarrassed if you're wrong I'm generally not embarrassed when I'm wrong about anything I was gonna do a periscope about how to not be embarrassed and have to not feel shame it's the reaction to it hmm yeah I'll probably give you a separate periscope on on how to avoid shame and embarrassment I'll give you well maybe I can make it quick I'll give it to you right now so this is how to avoid shame and embarrassment these are just a few tips number one try to be good at something it doesn't matter what it is you could just be have a good character you could be helpful you know it doesn't have to be a world-class skill but you know you could be a good parent you could be a good student it's not a very high bar but try to be good at something because then if you fall on your face doing something else you won't say to yourself oh my god I'm a gigantic loser and everything I do is bad so you need a few things in your arsenal that you can say oh okay I'm bad at this or I messed up on this but I'm clearly not a bad person because I can do other things well and I good character or whatever it is but be good at something that gives you a little protection the next thing is it's a learned ability the ability to withstand shame and embarrassment is completely learned not completely learned but it's very learnable and the way you do it is you put yourself in situations where you will absolutely feel a little bit embarrassed but it won't hurt you I took the Dale Carnegie course somebody mentioned earlier here and one of the exercises was you would do something embarrassing in front of the class now even though it's a you know it's a small group and you get to know them pretty well but maybe 25 people the advice you get is you do here's what we did this was many years ago I'm sure they don't do the same exercise but they make you talk like you're a at least the men they would make the men talk like a weird hillbilly a woman they didn't use the word hillbilly but you would have to go in front of the class and you'd say something like this this is a bad example of it but they'd say I am Scott my name is lug you know and you would just go way over the top in acting about somebody was a different gender yeah so something that would be weird and uncomfortable and there's no way you could do it well so the the exercise by its nature was something nobody was going to do in an elegant respectful way you just couldn't do it you were gonna look like an idiot and you were gonna do it in front of the class and everybody would do it so all 25 people would have to get up and embarrass themselves and even though it's a controlled safe environment you still feel it you still feel embarrassed because we're just wired that way but you do it a few times and then the class simply doesn't care they just don't care about you they're thinking about themselves they're thinking about what they had for breakfast but people don't really care about you just embarrassing yourself and once you go through the cycle enough times you realize hey I've embarrassed myself 15 times this week and nothing's different my coffee tastes the same I still have my job I still you know my loved ones are exactly the same look at all the ways I've embarrassed myself nothing changed nothing nothing physical nothing changed it was all in my mind and it's never enough simply to just tell somebody that like I'm telling you so the fact that I'm just explaining it won't help you a bit you have to actually go and put yourself in positions where you are guaranteed to be embarrassed but in safe ways because you'll still feel embarrassed and then you just get used to it after a while can you imagine the number of times I've been criticized you know in my 30 years of public life you know every single day lots and lots of times how many times if I sent a tweet with a typo or just a word spelled wrong whether yeah I won't even call it a typo because that's letting me not be embarrassed but sometimes I just felt a wardrobe in public I'm a professional writer and it'll spell a word wrong and then tweeted out and quarter of a million people will see it should I be embarrassed by that maybe some people would but other do I people Emma it's hard to block the right people here somebody says never embarrassed equals a narcissist so here's another tip for avoiding embarrassment if you're hung up on who is or is not a narcissist then you don't understand ego if you think ego is who a person is then you're also going to think that if they are not embarrassed they might be a narcissist but none of this is about who you are if you right if you do it right your ego is just a tool and you can ramp it up and you can ramp it down a good time to ramp up your ego is if you're going in for a job interview or you're in some kind of a athletic competition it's good to get your confidence as high as you can in those cases but if you're going into some other situation let's say you're you know meeting the parents of your boyfriend girlfriend or fiance or something you probably don't want to go in looking like a narcissist so you want to dial it down you see the president doing this all the time by the way he dials it up and Donnell's it down so that so the tip is if you're asking the question hey is somebody who is not embarrassed are they a narcissist if you're even asking that question then you're seeing the world in an unproductive way the real question is if I if if all of you accused me of being a narcissist does that embarrass me nope because first of all I don't you know I happen to you know have a better insight about my own but myself and whether it's true or not I wouldn't care because I I can use my tool might use my ego as a tool if I crank it up and you say hey you're a narcissist I don't care because what I need to all crank it down and then somebody will say well you're a very humble person and either those will be true I'm neither the humble person when I ramp it down nor am I the narcissist when I ramp it up I'm not those people I'm a person who understands the ego is a tool and I move it where it needs to be to get me the best result so once you start thinking of it that way and it's not who you are it's just how you manage you know you manage your confidence that's that's a more productive way to look at it another way to avoid or reduce your shame / embarrassment is to use the the imagination and to imagine yourself on your deathbed so this is the deathbed imagination technique so you get embarrassed and you're like you know how sometimes you're just like you're red and you're sweaty and you're like super embarrassed say to yourself okay imagine yourself you know decades in the future and you're on your deathbed are you gonna be thinking about that are you gonna be thinking about that day that you were embarrassed you are not in fact ask yourself how many of your past embarrassments are you thinking about right now personally none zero that's how many past embarrassments I'm thinking about right now so one of the great things about the way humans are designed is that they forget a lot of stuff so however embarrassed you are at any moment you should know with certainty they get to get over it and you don't have to do anything special to do it there's nothing you have to do to get over it it just goes away so you just think yourself into the future and say oh if I do absolutely nothing special this problem that I'm feeling just goes away and that will actually make it or help it you know it helped diminish it in the near term because you know it's not a problem the the way our brains work is that when we're worrying about something at the moment like you let's say you're feeling shame at the moment what you're really doing is worrying that that feeling is going to continue and when you tell yourself it never does it allows you to minimize it at the moment because you're not really worried about the moment because the moment is already past how long is a moment so if you say I feel embarrassed at the moment moment is gone what you were really worried about was the next moment in the next moment and the next moment and the one thing you could say about the next moments for sure is that you will be less immersed so the future looks good when you're embarrassed actually when you're embarrassed the future looks great because it's gonna be better than whatever you're feeling right now guaranteed pretty much always does so those are a few tricks the other thing is you're a couple more tricks you know I've talked about the simulation theory way too much the idea that were not necessarily an original species but we might be a computer simulation created by some other species and the argument there you mostly if you're hurted by now is that if there is ever a species that can create a simulation they'll probably create more than one so the odds that you're the original and not the many copies of of sim you of both worlds is very low so sometimes I tell myself what if I'm just a simulation what if I'm just software is is this feeling that I'm having the feeling of embarrassment is that me it's not gonna last it's now Who I am it's not me it's just transient and you can actually just think your way past it by saying I seem to be whole there's nothing wrong with me my hands my legs my body I can still eat I just there's just no impact from any of these thoughts I'm having so you could sort of think yourself up to instead of being your ego and your ego just got beat up you're not the thing that got beat up you're not that thing so stop thinking for yourself as the thing that just got beat up you are some kind of entity whether you're a simulation or or not you're something bigger than that event that event was not terribly important in you so those are some techniques someone says I always get embarrassed practice so if you always get embarrassed run toward it don't run away from embarrassment if you feel embarrassed if if you're feeling embarrassed on a regular basis run toward it and yeah and here's a little tip for those of you who feel embarrassed about stuff every time you feel embarrassed you become more protected because you have you go through the experience of being embarrassed and then however long it takes you know a few hours or a few days you're over it you're just over it what if he make an important mistake well I'm big on apologies and fixing things in fact one of the one of the main ways that I define character is not by mistakes I do not define character by what you what mistake you made I I define character partly by what you did about it so if I were to if I were to judge any of you by your mistakes well you're all up you're all a terrible bunch of people because you've all done horrible things yeah you haven't killed people necessarily but you've all made mistakes probably most of you have lied some of you have omitted information you know you've done selfish things we've all done some bad stuff but if you make a mistake and then you are tone for it you know you apologize you restate your mistake so people know you understand your mistake and then you do whatever you can do every situation is different but you do what you can do to you know fix the situation you pay somebody back you promise to fix something you talk to somebody you apologize whatever it is in the situation I definitely judge people by how they handle their mistakes and that's the way you should judge yourself so here's another tip you're probably going to judge yourself by a standard that you would judge other people by why wouldn't you right if your standard for judging character is the mistakes you made and the things you did that you you should legitimately feel embarrassed by if those are the things you judge who you are you're probably judging other people that way too that's not a good way to go through your life don't judge people by their mistakes judge them by what they do about them once they have been pointed out that there's a mistake so if I I can think of situations in which I've done something you know usually accidentally there was just bad and I should be embarrassed about it and I find that my level of embarrassment goes way down when I go toward it in other words I go right to the person that you know I I harmed accidently directly apologize directly state what the problem was and directly say what I'm gonna do about it in the future that's the Steve Jobs apology stack if you will so the apology stack is you you restate it so people know what it is you know you're talking about the same thing and you're not trying to weasel out of it so you state it and the most in the starkest you know clearest way and then people go okay you get what went wrong here step one step two you apologize for it in a way that sounds sincere because you know don't apologize if you don't mean it and then you say what you're gonna do about it to make it better in the future can't fix the past can't fix the past but you can do something about in the future so that's the I'll call that the Steve jobs apology stack had to deal with an embarrassing problem if you haven't heard this story I tell it a lot but when when Apple had the an antenna gate problem when you held your phone if your finger was in a certain place it blocked the antenna and the phone would drop it signal what an embarrassing problem for a company that makes a phone you hold in your hand it's made to be held in your hand and it's specific flaw was that you couldn't hold it in your hand it's the most embarrassing thing you could ever imagine for it well I'm sure you could get something more more embarrassing but imagine how embarrassing that is as the person whose identity Steve Jobs is identified with this object hey I made a handheld object I bet my company on it and the only time it doesn't work is when you hold it in your hand how embarrassing would that be with Steve job Jobs embarrassed I'm not a mind-reader but look at the way he handled it he went on a conference call and he said some version of this and paraphrasing he said all smart all smartphones have problems which was brilliant he changed the frame so you could think you could put it in context and by the way that's good for you too if you're if you're feeling embarrassed put it in context you're not the one person on earth who was embarrassed today you're not the one person on earth who was ever embarrassed you're living in a world where there's just embarrassment all over the place and most people don't care about yours they think about their own but they don't really care about your embarrassment and then he said um you know we want to make it better for our customers and then he said to what he was going to do about it so that's so if you handle your embarrassment in a in a proper way that also helps you get past it here's another here's another fact that just helps you put things in perspective and some of you have heard this there's research that shows that the most loyal customer is not the one who had a good experience the most loyal customer and this is counterintuitive but you'll see how this fits in the most loyal customer is not the one who had a good experience the most loyal one is the one who had a bad experience complained and then you fixed it when you fix somebody's bad experience it bonds them to you so you should think you should think you know if you're on the other side of that equation and you know that you've done something embarrassing and bad and you need to apologize for it you're apologizing makes you a better person than if nothing had happened in the first place who would you trust somebody who messed up sincerely apologized understood the problem and said what they were gonna do about it would you trust that person I would that that's a person I would trust a lot in fact my opinion of that person's character would go way up and I wouldn't judge them by the original problem I would judge them by how they handled it so those are a few techniques Trump never apologizes yeah in his case he's got a whole thing going on where he knows that if he starts apologizing he's never going to be done priests don't apologize is that true I don't that may not be true anything new with blight authority I still need to do there are some interesting things brewing with the blight authority that I won't tell you about but there's some very very high-level activity meaning that smart people are are looking at it that's all I can tell you for now can't log into the forum I'll look into that so you're saying that blight Authority com won't let you login I'll make sure that it's working if you tried it the other day it was subject to a denial of service attack so if you tried to log into the platform a few days ago it was down some hackers had attacked it but it was it was back up and if it was a few days ago you had the problem just try it again what's my new book going to be new book is going to be on how to escape your mental prisons somebody asked about the URL I believe that both the URLs work blight Authority and also the blight Authority I think it it it'll send you to the other one as the manuscript going to copywriting yet no I'm only 20% done writing it yeah so it's brand-new I just started am i happier now or before Trump have you ever heard of the theory about baseline happiness it's the idea that it feels like your happiness is being determined by things happening in your life but science has debunked that it turns out that people are born with some kind of genetic biological disposition - how happy they can be and they can have a bad day and still be happy and other people can have a good day and never be happy so there you don't have a lot of movement from your your baseline and if you do it's usually temporary and then you're back to your baseline so when you say am i happier before or after Trump you know in before Trump if you went way back maybe I had bigger problems and you know those made me unhappy but I'd say the same I'm happy in a different way I was happy you know I'm happy when things are going well less happy when they are how do you determine your baseline oh you probably know just over the course of your life where do you spend most of your time are you mostly happy or are you mostly unhappy that's probably your baseline is being happy the same as being positive no but you know I have a very controversial theory hypothesis let's call the hypothesis that everybody gets angry when I stay at it so so you know that when when people are angry at your hypothesis it either means you're way off or you're nailing it and and here's the hypothesis you're gonna hate this by the way and remember I'm calling it a hypothesis so don't take this out of context I hypothesis means I am NOT certain this is true nor am i thinking it's most likely to be true it's just something interesting enough that is worth saying when people are unhappy or even I think if physical depression I won't go that far but let's just say they're unhappy they're having a bad day how often is it that they're also low-energy and I think that people think that they're low-energy because they're in a bad mood or they're low-energy because they're mildly depressed and in this context I'm not talking about clinically depressed where that's a little different deal but just your attitude is somewhat depressed they're almost always low energy meaning that my hypothesis is if you took somebody who is you know just normally miserably unhappy and you just gave them a shot of some drug that just kept him up that they would act Appy and if you ask them are you happy they'd say well at the moment I am and so the hypothesis is that we mistake happiness and energy because when we are happy we're also high-energy lots of times like hey you know let's party I'm happy and when we're unhappy we're often I don't even want to get off the couch I don't want to do and the way we process that is that our attitude has affected our energy my hypothesis is that we have it backwards and that if you could directly affect somebody's energy they would act and feel happy more often than not now like I say I'm not counting clinically you know people have like clinically medical depression and mental problems that's a that's its own category but within the normal zone of happy or not I think it's energy if you want to test this if you have children in your life and those children are like unhappy and fighting and grumpy and you know they're crying and whatever so try feeding them just giving them some food now when you know when you eat it gets your energy up a little bit you know sometimes you're you're hungry and it just saps your energy if you feed kids that are in a bad mood watch how often they get in a good mood instantly it's it's almost phenomenal how well that works likewise if you're if your kids are fighting and angry and miserable about everything ask yourself how much they slept the night before and you'll find an almost perfect correlation with children between those two things did they get enough sleep and have they eaten recently and watch that correlation because those are the energy correlations now also hydration because if you're poorly hydrated you'll actually feel tired even though it's a fake tired it's actually just dehydration so if you're if they're hydrated and they've eaten and they've gotten good sleep watch how rarely children are miserable so that's my hypothesis anyway that's enough for now I'm gonna try to come back later this afternoon and do something on blight Authority so if you can login to blight Authority calm and you have some ideas about how to design a community that would be a great help to the world you can help the world that's not even the exaggeration if you've got a good idea you can go to the blight Authority put it on there I guarantee you'll see it and probably lots of other people who are in we're in the right space to make something happen and your idea could change the world that's not even a little bit of an exaggeration a couple of good ideas might be what we need to to you know make a big difference in your urban urban areas all right so I'm all positivity today and we'll keep it that way and I will talk to you all later later

just because it's Sunday that doesn't

mean you don't have time to come in here

and enjoy coffee with Scott Adams and if

you're an early bird and you get here by

the time we reach the thousand follower

mark which will be any moment we're

gonna have the simultaneous sip here it

comes

one thousand followers and Oh some of

you got here in time good job for you so

we're gonna check in on the state of

Trump derangement syndrome today but

first I there was a headline that caught

my eye so Kevin Spacey who you all

remember was accused of some b2 behavior

with some young man years ago so Kevin

Spacey has a new movie out and here's

the headline on CNN Kevin Spacey movie

earns only a hundred and twenty six

dollars on day one you heard that right

not a hundred and twenty six thousand

dollars Kevin Spacey's movie earned a

hundred and twenty six dollars on its

first day ouch

so there's there's a weird little trend

that I've just noticed and in just the

last few days and the trend goes like

this that that even the people who are

critics of the president are trying to

call back other critics like oh you're

going too far and this might be a sign

that we've reached peak TDS Peak Trump

derangement syndrome and I'm gonna give

you three examples some of them you

might be familiar with but if you see

them in contact

they're more powerful so one of them is

on Bill Maher show real-time one of the

biggest critics of the president is

Preet Bharara I think I'm pronouncing

correctly so he was he was fired by the

Trump administration and he admits he's

a critic of the president for a number

of things but I want I want to hear you

watch him push back when Bill Maher

accuses the president of being a traitor

so we'll see if we can see this come on

oops I've got a sound problem here well

maybe I don't I think the first part

didn't have sound so Baro was fired he

was asked about presidents Trump's

lawyer blah blah blah we'll get to the

good part moment dammit no sound

anyway the this is what it was supposed

to say was one Bill Maher referred to

the President as a traitor Preet Bharara

actually stopped him and said that it

degrades the criticism when you take it

too far I don't think the phone is on

mute let's see if that was the problem

but yes so I saw you what I said traitor

you looked like you were uncomfortable

with the word you can subject yourself

to criticism if you are sort of

overstating and I'm not saying

necessarily are but if you're

overstating what other people have done

[Music]

say that so he's an attorney you know

one of the top ones in the country you

think top prosecutors and he refers to

calling the president a traitor

overstating and he did that with Bill

Maher's all right so that's your first

example of a Trump critic calling back

another Trump critic saying go up you

went too far let me give you a couple

more these are fresh ones examples so

there's a - I've tweeted so even Rachel

Maddow was calling out John Brennan on

his BS she wouldn't let him weasel word

it I know of course she wanted him to

say treason but she was sort of exposing

him for you know being erratic so the so

the irony is that he lost his security

clearance for allegedly being erratic

and then he goes on Rachel Maddow and

Rachel Maddow can't even numbers

he's saying is like seems to me is being

a little erratic that's my opinion

but here's the best one I think it's

Katy tur show on MSNBC and Michelle

Goldberg is a columnist for The New York

Times in Michelle Goldberg is it is

Curry to suggests that the president

wants to round up and kill people he

just hasn't done it so watch what

happens when the Katy tur hears her

guest on New York Times columnist

Michelle Goldberg say this watch Katy

tur try to call her back so the no he's

not is Michelle Roth in the world in

politics right now and he is very vocal

and I do agree with you that this does

express a level of exasperation among

his aides they can't have any control

over Michelle Goldberg New York Times

columnist who's on television and says

with total confidence that she knows

what the president is thinking and that

he's thinking wants to round people up

and kill him

now that is so far beyond the realm of

you know same behavior I don't think

she's you know medically insane but

certainly temporarily she's operating

like she's got Trump derangement

syndrome there so there were there are

three examples where you're seeing the

anti chompers you wasn't pulling back

the other it's like ah and let me put a

frame on this the people who are anti

Trump errs are starting to embarrass

themselves in other words it's starting

to get embarrassing to be on the sun to

be an anti jumper do you remember this

was a prediction I got wrong but

probably only because of the timing so

that the prediction I made prematurely

was that the anti-trump errs would start

to be embarrassed would start to be

embarrassed by their criticism of the

president I just showed you three

examples that happened this week in

which you saw for yourself

three anti Trump errs being a little bit

embarrassed by their own team I'm not

going to claim that I got that

prediction right because I missed it by

about a year but yeah pretty mature

predict ulation exactly the 48-hour rule

so yes the 48-hour rule is in effect but

I didn't see anything that any of these

folks said there would necessarily be

something they would change in 48 hours

but if they do if they do if anybody if

anybody clarifies in the next 48 hours I

will abide by the 48-hour rule for

clarification and I will say I accept

the clarification do you know why

because I don't want to be Michelle

Goldberg she believes she can read minds

and she is so certain that she

said it in public imagine going in

public and saying with confidence you

can read the mind of somebody else you

are a shill let's block that guy yeah

how do you how do you clarify it would

be a hard one to clarify but hey if

somebody does clarify I'm all-in

there's another attack in Seattle

somebody's saying somebody wearing a

mega hat I haven't seen that yet will

you embarrassed if will you be

embarrassed if you're wrong I'm

generally not embarrassed when I'm wrong

about anything I was gonna do a

periscope about how to not be

embarrassed and have to not feel shame

it's the reaction to it hmm

yeah I'll probably give you a separate

periscope on on how to avoid shame and

embarrassment

I'll give you well maybe I can make it

quick I'll give it to you right now so

this is how to avoid shame and

embarrassment these are just a few tips

number one try to be good at something

it doesn't matter what it is you could

just be have a good character you could

be helpful you know it doesn't have to

be a world-class skill but you know you

could be a good parent you could be a

good student it's not a very high bar

but try to be good at something because

then if you fall on your face doing

something else you won't say to yourself

oh my god I'm a gigantic loser and

everything I do is bad so you need a few

things in your arsenal that you can say

oh okay I'm bad at this

or I messed up on this but I'm clearly

not a bad person

because I can do other things well and I

good character or whatever it is but be

good at something that gives you a

little protection the next thing is it's

a learned ability the ability to

withstand shame and embarrassment is

completely learned not completely

learned but it's very learnable and the

way you do it is you put yourself in

situations where you will absolutely

feel a little bit embarrassed

but it won't hurt you I took the Dale

Carnegie course somebody mentioned

earlier here and one of the exercises

was you would do something embarrassing

in front of the class now even though

it's a you know it's a small group and

you get to know them pretty well but

maybe 25 people the advice you get is

you do here's what we did this was many

years ago I'm sure they don't do the

same exercise but they make you talk

like you're a at least the men they

would make the men talk like a weird

hillbilly a woman they didn't use the

word hillbilly but you would have to go

in front of the class and you'd say

something like this this is a bad

example of it but they'd say I am Scott

my name is lug you know and you would

just go way over the top in acting about

somebody was a different gender yeah so

something that would be weird and

uncomfortable and there's no way you

could do it well so the the exercise by

its nature was something nobody was

going to do in an elegant respectful way

you just couldn't do it

you were gonna look like an idiot and

you were gonna do it in front of the

class and everybody would do it so all

25 people would have to get up and

embarrass themselves and even though

it's a controlled safe environment you

still feel it you still feel embarrassed

because we're just wired that way but

you do it a few times and then the class

simply doesn't care they just don't care

about you they're thinking about

themselves they're thinking about what

they had for breakfast

but people don't really care about you

just embarrassing yourself and once you

go through the cycle enough times you

realize hey I've embarrassed myself 15

times this week and nothing's different

my coffee tastes the same I still have

my job I still you know my loved ones

are exactly the same look at all the

ways I've embarrassed myself nothing

changed nothing nothing physical nothing

changed it was all in my mind and it's

never enough simply to just tell

somebody that like I'm telling you so

the fact that I'm just explaining it

won't help you a bit

you have to actually go and put yourself

in positions where you are guaranteed to

be embarrassed but in safe ways because

you'll still feel embarrassed and then

you just get used to it after a while

can you imagine the number of times I've

been criticized you know in my 30 years

of public life you know every single day

lots and lots of times how many times if

I sent a tweet with a typo or just a

word spelled wrong whether yeah I won't

even call it a typo because that's

letting me not be embarrassed but

sometimes I just felt a wardrobe in

public I'm a professional writer and

it'll spell a word wrong and then

tweeted out and quarter of a million

people will see it should I be

embarrassed by that maybe some people

would but other do I people Emma it's

hard to block the right people here

somebody says never embarrassed equals a

narcissist so here's another tip for

avoiding embarrassment if you're hung up

on who is or is not a narcissist then

you don't understand ego if you think

ego is who a person is then you're also

going to think that if they are not

embarrassed they might be a narcissist

but none of this is about who you are if

you

right if you do it right your ego is

just a tool and you can ramp it up and

you can ramp it down a good time to ramp

up your ego is if you're going in for a

job interview or you're in some kind of

a athletic competition it's good to get

your confidence as high as you can in

those cases but if you're going into

some other situation let's say you're

you know meeting the parents of your

boyfriend girlfriend or fiance or

something you probably don't want to go

in looking like a narcissist so you want

to dial it down you see the president

doing this all the time by the way he

dials it up and Donnell's it down so

that so the tip is if you're asking the

question hey is somebody who is not

embarrassed are they a narcissist if

you're even asking that question then

you're seeing the world in an

unproductive way the real question is if

I if if all of you accused me of being a

narcissist does that embarrass me nope

because first of all I don't you know I

happen to you know have a better insight

about my own but myself and whether it's

true or not I wouldn't care because I I

can use my tool might use my ego as a

tool if I crank it up and you say hey

you're a narcissist I don't care because

what I need to all crank it down and

then somebody will say well you're a

very humble person and either those will

be true I'm neither the humble person

when I ramp it down nor am I the

narcissist when I ramp it up I'm not

those people I'm a person who

understands the ego is a tool and I move

it where it needs to be to get me the

best result so once you start thinking

of it that way and it's not who you are

it's just how you manage you know you

manage your confidence that's that's a

more productive way to look at it

another way to avoid or reduce your

shame / embarrassment is to use the the

imagination and to imagine yourself on

your deathbed so this is the deathbed

imagination technique so you get

embarrassed and you're like you know how

sometimes you're just like you're red

and you're sweaty and you're like super

embarrassed say to yourself okay imagine

yourself you know decades in the future

and you're on your deathbed are you

gonna be thinking about that are you

gonna be thinking about that day that

you were embarrassed you are not in fact

ask yourself how many of your past

embarrassments are you thinking about

right now personally none zero that's

how many past embarrassments I'm

thinking about right now so one of the

great things about the way humans are

designed is that they forget a lot of

stuff

so however embarrassed you are at any

moment you should know with certainty

they get to get over it and you don't

have to do anything special to do it

there's nothing you have to do to get

over it it just goes away so you just

think yourself into the future and say

oh if I do absolutely nothing special

this problem that I'm feeling just goes

away and that will actually make it or

help it you know it helped diminish it

in the near term because you know it's

not a problem

the the way our brains work is that when

we're worrying about something at the

moment like you let's say you're feeling

shame at the moment what you're really

doing is worrying that that feeling is

going to continue and when you tell

yourself it never does it allows you to

minimize it at the moment because you're

not really worried about the moment

because the moment is already past how

long is a moment so if you say I feel

embarrassed at the moment

moment is gone what you were really

worried about was the next moment in the

next moment and the next moment and the

one thing you could say about the next

moments for sure is that you will be

less immersed so the future looks good

when you're embarrassed actually when

you're embarrassed the future looks

great because it's gonna be better than

whatever you're feeling right now

guaranteed pretty much always does so

those are a few tricks the other thing

is you're a couple more tricks you know

I've talked about the simulation theory

way too much the idea that were not

necessarily an original species but we

might be a computer simulation created

by some other species and the argument

there you mostly if you're hurted by now

is that if there is ever a species that

can create a simulation

they'll probably create more than one so

the odds that you're the original and

not the many copies of of sim you of

both worlds is very low so sometimes I

tell myself what if I'm just a

simulation what if I'm just software is

is this feeling that I'm having the

feeling of embarrassment is that me it's

not gonna last

it's now Who I am it's not me it's just

transient and you can actually just

think your way past it by saying I seem

to be whole there's nothing wrong with

me my hands my legs my body I can still

eat I just

there's just no impact from any of these

thoughts I'm having so you could sort of

think yourself up to instead of being

your ego and your ego just got beat up

you're not the thing that got beat up

you're not that thing so stop thinking

for yourself as the thing that just got

beat up you are some kind of entity

whether you're a simulation or or not

you're something bigger than that event

that event was not terribly important in

you

so those are some techniques someone

says I always get embarrassed practice

so if you always get embarrassed run

toward it don't run away from

embarrassment if you feel embarrassed if

if you're feeling embarrassed on a

regular basis run toward it and yeah and

here's a little tip for those of you who

feel embarrassed about stuff every time

you feel embarrassed you become more

protected because you have you go

through the experience of being

embarrassed and then however long it

takes you know a few hours or a few days

you're over it you're just over it what

if he make an important mistake

well I'm big on apologies and fixing

things in fact one of the one of the

main ways that I define character is not

by mistakes I do not define character by

what you what mistake you made I I

define character partly by what you did

about it so if I were to if I were to

judge any of you by your mistakes well

you're all up you're all a terrible

bunch of people because you've all done

horrible things yeah you haven't killed

people necessarily but you've all made

mistakes probably most of you have lied

some of you have omitted information you

know you've done selfish things we've

all done some bad stuff but if you make

a mistake and then you are tone for it

you know you apologize you restate your

mistake so people know you understand

your mistake and then you do whatever

you can do every situation is different

but you do what you can do to

you know fix the situation you pay

somebody back you promise to fix

something you talk to somebody you

apologize whatever it is in the

situation I definitely judge people by

how they handle their mistakes and

that's the way you should judge yourself

so here's another tip you're probably

going to judge yourself by a standard

that you would judge other people by why

wouldn't you right if your standard for

judging character is the mistakes you

made

and the things you did that you you

should legitimately feel embarrassed by

if those are the things you judge who

you are you're probably judging other

people that way too that's not a good

way to go through your life don't judge

people by their mistakes judge them by

what they do about them once they have

been pointed out that there's a mistake

so if I I can think of situations in

which I've done something you know

usually accidentally there was just bad

and I should be embarrassed about it

and I find that my level of

embarrassment goes way down when I go

toward it in other words I go right to

the person that you know I I harmed

accidently directly apologize directly

state what the problem was and directly

say what I'm gonna do about it in the

future

that's the Steve Jobs apology stack if

you will so the apology stack is you you

restate it so people know what it is you

know you're talking about the same thing

and you're not trying to weasel out of

it so you state it and the most in the

starkest you know clearest way and then

people go okay you get what went wrong

here step one step two you apologize for

it

in a way that sounds sincere because you

know don't apologize if you don't mean

it

and then you say what you're gonna do

about it to make it better in the future

can't fix the past can't fix the past

but you can do something about in the

future so that's the I'll call that the

Steve

jobs apology stack had to deal with an

embarrassing problem if you haven't

heard this story I tell it a lot but

when when Apple had the an antenna gate

problem when you held your phone if your

finger was in a certain place it blocked

the antenna and the phone would drop it

signal what an embarrassing problem for

a company that makes a phone you hold in

your hand it's made to be held in your

hand and it's specific flaw was that you

couldn't hold it in your hand it's the

most embarrassing thing you could ever

imagine for it well I'm sure you could

get something more more embarrassing but

imagine how embarrassing that is as the

person whose identity Steve Jobs is

identified with this object hey I made a

handheld object I bet my company on it

and the only time it doesn't work is

when you hold it in your hand how

embarrassing would that be with Steve

job Jobs embarrassed I'm not a

mind-reader but look at the way he

handled it he went on a conference call

and he said some version of this and

paraphrasing he said all smart all

smartphones have problems which was

brilliant he changed the frame so you

could think you could put it in context

and by the way that's good for you too

if you're if you're feeling embarrassed

put it in context you're not the one

person on earth who was embarrassed

today you're not the one person on earth

who was ever embarrassed you're living

in a world where there's just

embarrassment all over the place and

most people don't care about yours they

think about their own but they don't

really care about your embarrassment and

then he said um you know we want to make

it better for our customers and then he

said to what he was going to do about it

so that's so if you handle your

embarrassment in a in a proper way that

also helps you get past it

here's another here's another fact that

just helps you put things in perspective

and some of you have heard this there's

research that shows that the most loyal

customer

is not the one who had a good experience

the most loyal customer and this is

counterintuitive but you'll see how this

fits in the most loyal customer is not

the one who had a good experience the

most loyal one is the one who had a bad

experience complained and then you fixed

it when you fix somebody's bad

experience it bonds them to you so you

should think you should think you know

if you're on the other side of that

equation and you know that you've done

something embarrassing and bad and you

need to apologize for it you're

apologizing makes you a better person

than if nothing had happened in the

first place who would you trust somebody

who messed up sincerely apologized

understood the problem and said what

they were gonna do about it would you

trust that person I would that that's a

person I would trust a lot in fact my

opinion of that person's character would

go way up and I wouldn't judge them by

the original problem I would judge them

by how they handled it so those are a

few techniques Trump never apologizes

yeah in his case he's got a whole thing

going on where he knows that if he

starts apologizing he's never going to

be done

priests don't apologize is that true I

don't that may not be true anything new

with blight authority I still need to do

there are some interesting things

brewing with the blight authority that I

won't tell you about but there's some

very very high-level activity meaning

that smart people are are looking at it

that's all I can tell you for now can't

log into the forum I'll look into that

so you're saying that blight Authority

com won't let you login I'll make sure

that it's working if you tried it the

other day it was subject to a denial of

service attack so if you tried to log

into the platform a few days ago it was

down some hackers had attacked it but it

was it was back up and if it was a few

days ago you had the problem just try it

again

what's my new book going to be new book

is going to be on how to escape your

mental prisons somebody asked about the

URL I believe that both the URLs work

blight Authority and also the blight

Authority I think it it it'll send you

to the other one as the manuscript going

to copywriting yet no I'm only 20% done

writing it yeah so it's brand-new I just

started

am i happier now or before Trump have

you ever heard of the theory about

baseline happiness it's the idea that it

feels like your happiness is being

determined by things happening in your

life but science has debunked that it

turns out that people are born with some

kind of genetic biological disposition -

how happy they can be and they can have

a bad day and still be happy and other

people can have a good day and never be

happy so there you don't have a lot of

movement from your your baseline and if

you do it's usually temporary and then

you're back to your baseline so when you

say am i happier before or after Trump

you know in before Trump if you went way

back maybe I had bigger problems and you

know those made me unhappy but I'd say

the same I'm happy in a different way I

was happy you know I'm happy when things

are going well less happy when they are

how do you determine your baseline oh

you probably know just over the course

of your life where do you spend most of

your time are you mostly happy or are

you mostly unhappy that's probably your

baseline is being happy the same as

being positive no but you know I have a

very controversial theory hypothesis

let's call the hypothesis that everybody

gets angry when I stay at it so so you

know that when when people are angry at

your hypothesis it either means you're

way off or you're nailing it and and

here's the hypothesis you're gonna hate

this by the way and remember I'm calling

it a hypothesis so don't take this out

of context I hypothesis means I am NOT

certain this is true nor am i thinking

it's most likely to be true it's just

something interesting enough

that is worth saying when people are

unhappy or even I think if physical

depression I won't go that far but let's

just say they're unhappy they're having

a bad day how often is it that they're

also low-energy and I think that people

think that they're low-energy

because they're in a bad mood or they're

low-energy because they're mildly

depressed and in this context I'm not

talking about clinically depressed where

that's a little different deal but just

your attitude is somewhat depressed

they're almost always low energy meaning

that my hypothesis is if you took

somebody who is you know just normally

miserably unhappy and you just gave them

a shot of some drug that just kept him

up that they would act Appy and if you

ask them are you happy they'd say well

at the moment I am and so the hypothesis

is that we mistake happiness and energy

because when we are happy we're also

high-energy lots of times like hey you

know let's party I'm happy and when

we're unhappy we're often I don't even

want to get off the couch I don't want

to do and the way we process that is

that our attitude has affected our

energy my hypothesis is that we have it

backwards and that if you could directly

affect somebody's energy they would act

and feel happy more often than not now

like I say I'm not counting clinically

you know people have like clinically

medical depression and mental problems

that's a that's its own category but

within the normal zone of happy or not

I think it's energy if you want to test

this if you have children in your life

and those children are like unhappy and

fighting and grumpy and you know they're

crying and whatever so try feeding them

just giving them some food now when

you know when you eat it gets your

energy up a little bit you know

sometimes you're you're hungry and it

just saps your energy if you feed kids

that are in a bad mood

watch how often they get in a good mood

instantly it's it's almost phenomenal

how well that works likewise if you're

if your kids are fighting and angry and

miserable about everything

ask yourself how much they slept the

night before and you'll find an almost

perfect correlation with children

between those two things did they get

enough sleep and have they eaten

recently and watch that correlation

because those are the energy

correlations now also hydration because

if you're poorly hydrated you'll

actually feel tired even though it's a

fake tired it's actually just

dehydration so if you're if they're

hydrated and they've eaten and they've

gotten good sleep watch how rarely

children are miserable so that's my

hypothesis anyway that's enough for now

I'm gonna try to come back later this

afternoon and do something on blight

Authority so if you can login to blight

Authority calm and you have some ideas

about how to design a community that

would be a great help to the world you

can help the world that's not even the

exaggeration if you've got a good idea

you can go to the blight Authority put

it on there I guarantee you'll see it

and probably lots of other people who

are in we're in the right space to make

something happen and your idea could

change the world that's not even a

little bit of an exaggeration a couple

of good ideas might be what we need to

to you know make a big difference in

your urban urban areas all right so I'm

all positivity today and we'll keep it

that way and I will talk to you all

later later