6%, and he also got the most votes for the worst president. So that's Trump.

All right, let me ask you a question. I can't tell if this is an artifact of the algorithm trying to serve me what I want mostly on Instagram or is this a trend. So here's the question. Are you seeing a trend on social media or in life in general of mindset affirmations, law of attraction, and manifestations? Are you seeing like a whole bunch of new stuff? Like there's a whole bunch of new gurus. They're usually young people, not always.

So some of this is what I attempt to be following on social media, right? So I'm fed this all day long on Instagram. So it's probably because of my interest. All right, but I wanted to clarify something that I heard and I'm not sure I have a solid opinion on this yet, but I'll run it by you.

I saw one of these mindset gurus say that you should not be thinking in terms of what you want the typical way you do an affirmation. You know, a typical affirmation would be, you know, I will be rich, I will get it, I will have a good love life, I'll be happy, you know, I'll get that raise. Those sort of things, fairly specific. But one expert says that you should instead be telling the universe who you are, not what you want but who you are. And by that theory, once you know who you are, the universe starts delivering. Isn't that interesting?

And I tried to think, I wonder if, because I've talked about affirmations in my career and I have a string of insanely unlikely events in my life that were the subject of affirmations. Becoming a famous cartoonist, the odds against that were like a million to one. Being a number one best-selling author, would know, never wrote a book before, first book number one bestseller. I mean that's crazy stuff. That's just crazy. But those were actually the subjects of affirmations.

Now here's the part that I wonder about. Because while I was asking for specific things with my affirmations, to be a number one bestseller, it was a specific one, I was also thinking of myself as that person. So even though it wasn't part of my process to say I am this person, I was thinking of it that way. I had a strong impression of who I am and that was always present in my affirmations even though I didn't explicitly state it. And I wonder if that makes a difference. I wonder if any of it makes a difference.

Let me be clear. I don't know if any of this works. It seems like it does. It really does seem like it does. And so since I can't know one way or another, I treat it like it does until something falsifies that.

Now my belief of reality is that we're a simulation and it does not seem unlikely that we can create our own environment. Now I'm seeing a lot of people connecting quantum physics with this idea of the law of attraction. And the idea is that we know in physics that things don't become real until they're observed, which doesn't make any sense, does it? How do you understand your place in reality if one thing we know for sure is that something has to be observed or measured, which is similar to observed, that at the quantum level things literally don't exist until they're observed?

Now we're creating all these big telescopes to see further into space. I'm not sure all that stuff was always there. I think it might be created by the simulation because we need it there because our ability to see got better. So it doesn't seem crazy to me that we could be players in a game and that we can steer our impression of reality by what we think of it and what we focus on and what we want and who we are.

Now I don't know if any of that's real, but I also don't know if any is real. You know, I go pretty deep in the skepticism. I don't even know if I'm talking to you. I mean I don't know. I think I am but I don't know. So I just wanted to add that for those of you who are fans of the manifesting, law of attraction, affirmations. It might help you to think about who you are.

I'll give you some specific examples from my case. Before I became a cartoonist I was sure that I could do it better than the people who were already doing it. Now that clearly is not the case if you're looking at the best cartoonists of all time. You know, Calvin and Hobbes was better than anything I could do. Gary Larson, Far Side, I think he was just a better cartoonist than I am. Of course both of them were retired when I hit my peak so I wasn't competing against them. But I imagined myself as a creative person who could do those things.

When I did my affirmations that I'd be a best-selling author, I never thought that was impractical because I imagined myself as someone who could write interesting stuff and that it would be interesting enough that it could be a bestseller. And then it was. So I was never outside of my own impression of myself.

Now part of my advantage is I have an inflated opinion of my abilities, which I do intentionally. I've told you that 100 times. I always keep an inflated opinion of myself because it's useful. It's just utility. So I recommend that. Keep an inflated sense of yourself.

And here's what I would say. If you had to pick one thing as your identity, something that's maybe not who you are yet but somebody you could easily be and talk yourself into being, here's the most important thing you could be: a learner. A learner. That's my number one self-impression. I never really thought about it much until just recently as I was thinking about it. But my number one thing I think about myself is that I'm a learner. That I can learn anything and that if I need to compete with you on anything, I'm going to outlearn you and then good luck. Good luck. I don't know what your strategy is but my strategy is to outlearn you. I'm going to learn the thing you're learning then I'm going to learn three things on either side of it. So I'm going to know everything you know plus four other things, completely different fields that are related. You're not competing with me on one learning. I'm going to outlearn the hell out of you. You don't have a chance.

Now that's always been my opinion of myself and it works for every profession. So I've changed fields a number of times and it always works because I always say in a new field, well I have no idea how to do this but watch me learn it.

Here's a true story from the day I got my offer to be a cartoonist. So as I'm on the phone and the editor for United Media, the company that gave me my first break, the editor said blah blah, we'll offer you a contract. You know, this is my big break. And here's what I confessed. I said, honestly I don't know how to do a Sunday comic because I look at how the experts are doing and the coloring is sort of perfect. You ever noticed that? Have you ever looked at a Sunday cartoon and they never color outside the lines? It's like perfect. For context this was 1988. All right, if I said this today you'd just say, ah that's just Photoshop. You just click on it and it just fills it in. It does it perfectly every time.

So today I know that. In 1988 I didn't know how cartoonists colored it in. So I said to the editor, you know I'd like to accept your offer but I have to confess I don't even know how to do this work. I have no idea how they make a Sunday comic. How do they put the color in to do it so perfectly? Remember this is before Photoshop, etc. And then my editor said, the printer puts the color in. And I said, what? What?

It was the number one thing that was preventing me from becoming a cartoonist sooner is that I thought I didn't know how to do it. It turns out nobody did it. It was a thing that wasn't done. The printer added the color. The printer, now the cartoonist would put a little number and some lines to indicate what color to use but that's the easy part, right? Now at the moment it's just done in Photoshop. It's just click and fill. But I was not afraid of becoming a cartoonist simply because I didn't know how to do any of it. It didn't even stop me a little bit. I mean I admitted it so that I could work through a solution but I knew I could learn it. I just figured I'll learn it.

Same with writing a book. Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a book? Have you ever thought about that? It's insanely hard. It's like really, really hard. Now it's not as hard maybe if it's like a historical story and you know the stories, you're just writing it down, or it's a biography or something. That's a little easier. But if you're writing a book from scratch that is mostly your own ideas and you're trying to fill an entire book and make it all make sense and not be repetitive and all that other stuff, it's crazy hard.

And do you know how much I knew about making a book the first time I tried writing one? Nothing. You should have seen the edits that came back. It was like more edits than there was text. It was just terrible. But I learned how. I learned by doing it wrong. But now I know how to make a book. So this latest one that I just submitted, I've got some more editing to do but basically done, was way easier because I'm a learner. So I learned all the things you need to do to make a book and now I can put together a book pretty easily.

I learned how to do live streaming, you know my own version of it, but I started out terrible and I learned. I didn't even have a voice that worked. I couldn't even speak well without sounding terrible. But I figured it out and I learned and blah blah blah.

So here's my bigger point. I have a theory that wherever education is a top priority, the people do well. That's it. That's it. End of story. Everywhere that people prioritize education, that population does great. And everywhere they don't, it doesn't matter what else they do. All the other things together means nothing.

Let me tell you what my mother taught the kids when I was a kid. You're going to college. But Mom, I'm in kindergarten. You're going to college. That's how you succeed. But can we talk about this later? Really, I'm five. You're going to college. You're going to college. You're going to college. But how could we afford that? Don't worry about it. You're going to college. You're going to college. You're going to college. Learn to read before you get into kindergarten or at least you know the alphabet and stuff. Why? Education is the most important thing. From the time I was a zygote my mother was just drilling that into me.

So what did I do? I thought education was my top priority and I can change to probably 15 different industries today and get a job. Probably there's probably 15 different jobs I could have in different industries just because I'm a learner. I just keep learning and you learn enough, you're just going to do a lot of different stuff.

So here's my problem with everybody who's complaining about their community is not doing so well. Make education the top priority or shut the up. It's not anybody else's problem. If you make education a top priority all the resources will come toward you. They will. It's the law of attraction. You become a learner. Let's say you're a black kid in America and you're in a poor area. You define yourself as a learner and you stick with it. You're going to do fine if you stay out of jail as well. That's it. That's all you need. You need to be a learner.

Now maybe your school is terrible. It's practically impossible. Well go learn something else that's legal and useful. You don't think you can find people to teach you stuff? You don't have access to the internet? You can't learn anything? All right, if you're a learner or a seeker I'll help you all you want. You just have to ask. Hey, I would like to learn this thing. Absolutely. Do you know how many people have contacted me to learn how to be a cartoonist? A lot. When I have time I usually help them. Just ask, right?

You want all the resources you need to be successful in life? It'll come to you. You just got to be a learner. As soon as people realize you're a learner they'll organize around you to make sure that you succeed. Very much like Good Will Hunting. I'll use the fictional story. I mean the hero in Good Will Hunting was a learner and his little town organized to make sure that he succeeded. That's the way it works everywhere. My little town organized to help me succeed as well. They put the fix in because they could see who I was.

And I think that that, getting back to should your affirmations be about what you want or should it be about who you are? Well I'll tell you, if you're a black kid in a poor area and all of the forces of your culture are pushing you toward playing in the NBA which isn't going to happen or being a drug dealer which is a bad idea, if you can define yourself as the one who's going to get out of there by being the learner, you will. You will.

Now my understanding, and of course is very limited because I'm looking from the outside, is if you're in some communities and you're too serious about school that you will be abused by the bullies. You know that's like being too white or something. But if you can't handle that you probably won't be successful anyway.

Do you know how much I got mocked in school for being a good student? Anybody? Does anybody experience that? Have any of you have been like the good student in the class and you get mocked forever for being the nerd? How did you respond to it when it happened to you? This might be just where I'm genetically different but every time somebody mocked me for being smart I felt good. I felt good, period. Every time. Every time. Do you know why? Because they were confirming my own view of myself.

Now they would say words like nerd and I would think, whatever you want to call it. If that's what you want to call someone who knows more than you do, okay. Apparently you're not very good at vocabulary either if that's your best vocabulary word. How about future success?

But here's what I detected. Every one of those people who mocked me for doing well in school, they were all jealous because they knew, they could see it. They knew it was going to make a difference. They knew it. Oh they knew it. And they watched it from the seed stage. People stopped me when I was nine years old and they could predict I was going to be successful. And did you know when I was a little kid people would tell me, well you're going to be rich. And it was always because I was just a learning machine and I was serious about making something work.

So I'm a little bit, I don't know what to do with this exactly, but here's what I would teach any person in a tough situation. So I'm going to use a black American kid in a poor situation as my example but it would apply to everybody, right? It applied to me as a low-income white guy. The system is rigged. The system is totally rigged against you. But there is a cheat code and the cheat code is learning. You can learn your way across past any system. It's the only way. Well maybe crime if you get away with it I suppose. But you can beat every rigged system.

Is there systemic racism? I say yes. I know some of you don't want to accept that but I say yes. I say there's a lot of it and it matters. It's a big, big deal. And you can slice through it like a hot poker through butter by just learning more than the people around you, period. That's it. Straightforward. Learn more than the people around you. You get more stuff. Learn more, win more. Learn more, win more. That's it. It's there for everybody.

How did I get out of my small town? I outlearned the people who didn't. That's it. It's available for everybody.

Now I think just the emphasis on education is what's needed. And if anybody complains about their systemic racism etc. I would say, what's your top priority? And then they'll say something like getting rid of the patriarchy. And then I say, oh you don't understand how success works. Your actual problem is you don't understand how anything works. Let me explain it to you. Education and learning is how you beat every system.

So if your top priority is racism, you lose. If your top priority is equity, you lose. If your top priority is the unfairness, you lose. If your top priority is getting a transfer from other people to you, probably you'll lose. Or you might win in the short term but you lose in the long term. They're all losing paths. There's one winning path: stay out of jail and outlearn the people you want to get away from. Just outlearn them. It's all available. Every bit of that is available to everybody.

So I just don't want to hear anybody who doesn't prioritize school or education. I don't want to say just school. Anybody who doesn't prioritize education first, don't even want to hear about their complaints. Not even interested. Because they need to fix that first. It's a mindset problem which they've decided is our problem or your problem or somebody else's problem.

And I think that we, those who like a system that works better, I think we're always attacking the wrong targets. I feel like there's so many variables swimming around and some people say it's this variable and if you just fix this and what about the school systems and blah blah blah. And I think all of those are maybe areas that need to be improved. But if education isn't your top priority, you're not really a serious person. So I wouldn't even listen to your complaints really.

All right, I solved the excess death problem. It'll take you a while to catch up to me because you won't believe me but it goes like this. Were you aware that loneliness causes heart disease? How many of you knew that loneliness causes heart disease? Yeah, and pretty big difference. The difference between lonely and not lonely is like 11 to 16 percent more cardiac issues.

So I did a little poll, a scientific poll on Twitter, and I asked people if they're more or less lonely since the pandemic. About a quarter of the people, now this is not the 25% like other 25%. This 25% is people just describing their own situation so this is not the 25% who gets every question wrong because when people are describing their own situation they get that right. But imagine if the pandemic and all that comes with it and our screens and our technology and stuff, let's say that's true for the general public. I don't know that it is. Could be more, could be less. But let's say it's a quarter of the people are lonelier and being lonelier gives you a 16% at the high end more cardiac issue