eople are lucky, some people are not, and that's the end of the story. But that's sort of a loser's frame. The truth is that you can make your luck happen by going where there's more of it. So that's your first little lesson. And as Sam Altman says, although he talks about increasing your superlinearly surface area, I just say go where there's more stuff happening. That's the dumb guy's version, my version.

All right, allow me to tell you a story that went over really well on my Man Cave live stream last night on Locals, so I think you'll like it too. It goes like this. There are two stories, and then I'm going to connect them.

Story number one: If you have children, especially teens, you may have had this experience that you think they're not listening to any of your wisdom because you're always trying to drop it in. You know, you're trying to be subtle about it. It's like, well, you know, in this situation it's always a good idea to handle it this way. You know, you just sort of slowly let your magic of your wisdom seep in. But you can never tell if it's working because they're not going to give you feedback. Like, the thing you're not going to hear is, "My goodness, that's the best idea I've heard all day. I've been alive for 10 years already and I don't think I've ever heard a better idea. I'm going to adopt your idea now because it seems so sound." No, that doesn't happen. That doesn't happen. So just keep in mind that sometimes they're listening and absorbing, but you're not going to know right away.

All right, now take that story, put it aside, but don't forget it. It's coming back.

So yesterday I finally got my own copies of my own book, because when you do independent publishing you have to buy your own book. If you do regular publishing, the publisher sends you a box of them you can give to your friends and stuff. But I had to wait for my own book to come, just like you did. Ordered it from Amazon. And I was standing in the kitchen and I was flipping through it, you know, just to make sure it looked the way I wanted it to look, and it looked great. And I sort of randomly picked out a chapter and just started reading it, which is weird because I wrote it, but it's been so long since I wrote it it's actually like a new experience sometimes when I read it.

And the reframe that I was reading about, I'm going to share with you so you get a freebie now. I swear this will change some of your lives in a small way. Right, this one's not going after a big thing. This is going after a small annoyance, and I'm going to completely solve it for you right now. Watch how happy you are when you try this reframe.

And the reframe is to solve the problem of deciding where to eat with your partner. Have you ever had that problem? "Where do you want to eat?" "I don't care. Where do you want to eat?" "How about here?" "No." Right, it's a continuous problem that we all have. There is a solution, and it requires a reframe. If the frame you've adopted is that you're trying to make a decision with somebody who's not good at making decisions or doesn't make them the way you'd like them to.

Now let's take the classic, let's say traditional stereotype situation of a boring, boring heterocouple. They're so boring they bore me. And we'll just use that as an example. Obviously I can't speak for the LGBTQ community. Maybe it's a little different there. I don't know. Wouldn't know, so I won't speak for that. But in the hetero community, generally it goes like this. The guy says, "Hey, do you want to eat at X place?" Because he wants to take charge. Like, guys, even women like it. They say it all the time. Women like it when the man will sometimes make a plan, because women are planning all day and often taking care of kids. So they're kind of planned out, and they kind of like it. It would feel really good if the guy would just say, "Hey, I got a plan. Let's do this."

So if you're a guy, you have two things you need to accomplish. Number one, you have to be the take-charge person who makes a plan for dinner. But also you've got to make sure that you don't do any decision-making on your own, because you're getting clowned in about a minute. You know you're going to get clowned. So you can't make a decision, but also you must make a decision. So that's impossible. How do you make a decision and not make a decision at the same time? That's the only way you can satisfy the situation.

So you reframe it. Instead of saying I'm trying to make an eating decision with a crazy person, for which there is no solution, nobody's ever come up with a solution, you do the Kobayashi Maru Star Trek reference, and you reframe it so that the real problem is you have a puzzle to solve. You're not deciding where to eat. You're solving a puzzle, which is how do you take charge and not take charge at the same time. That's the puzzle.

And here's how you do it. You pick two places you're willing to eat, and you say to your partner, usually the guy saying to the wife in this classic stereotype situation, and you say, "Let's go eat. I suggest one of these two places." Now what you've done is you've taken charge. You've said let's go out. You've narrowed it to two. But still the wife has a choice. Excellent, right? She has a choice.

So then she says, "Oh, that's a good idea. I love it. You're taking charge." She's thinking that, not saying it.