f wood. That's just me.

They did the same thing during World War One and Two. They did. Yeah I'm not saying it's a bad strategy. I'm just saying it doesn't sound like the winner's strategy. It sounds like in addition that the other side has better weapons. Because I don't think Russia is doing that. Do you think Russia is making a bunch of wooden artillery? They don't need to because they have so much of the real stuff. Yeah I mean it's just an indicator of what's happening there.

All right. I was asked on the locals platform somebody asked me what's the difference between affirmations and wishful thinking. So an affirmation is when you're imagining the thing you want to be true as an aid to making it true. And wishful thinking is just when you wish you had something. And my answer is this. Wishful thinking is just wanting. Affirmations is closer to deciding. Because if you can chant or write down or visualize this goal every single day you probably decided. Because you just wouldn't do that unless you had really committed yourself to it. Because the affirmations are sort of the last thing you do sometimes at first. But typically you know you're already trying to do something in that regard. You're trying to make something happen and then you say all right how about affirmations.

So affirmations are a pretty good sign because you're going to do it every day that you're committed to this thing. Wishful thinking is like me thinking well you know if I were Elon Musk what would I do today. Right? But I'm not trying to make myself Elon Musk. It's just uh wouldn't that be fun. And then you watch a movie and you see somebody's having a good life you say oh wouldn't that be fun. But that's just wanting. And there's no faith involved in either case. Let me be clear. Believing and having some faith has nothing to do with any wishful thinking. There's no faith required for wishful thinking but there's no faith required or belief for affirmations.

The idea behind affirmations which may be not even true is that the simple process of concentrating on a goal makes it more likely to happen. There are several ways that could be true. Way number one is that there's some backwards causation happening. And the way that works is if you can spend 15 minutes a day focusing on your objective it probably means you already decided to do whatever it takes to get there. So it's the deciding whatever it takes to get there that was probably the operational part. But by coincidence there's a correlation between people who are going to do whatever it takes and people who would also do an affirmation. So it could be the affirmations are just attached to people who are going to do whatever it takes. So that you would see a correlation between affirmations of success. Then that would be the least magical explanation right? That would just be pretty straightforward. People who do one thing are likely to do the other thing as well. So it's not the other thing that's predictive it's just associated. So that could explain it all.

I would be one of those personalities. So my personality is once I've decided to do something I'm going to do all of the things. You know I'm going to do all of the things. And one of them might be affirmations whether I think it works or not. Because once I've decided I'm going to do all the things I'm not going to leave out any of the things like if they might work. All right try it.

So that could be one reason they appear to work. Another would be that you there's something called a reticular activation. I didn't make this up. It has to do with the fact that you notice things that are relevant to you. And repeating a goal makes something more relevant to you because it's at the front of your mind. So whatever is at the front of your mind tends to be the filter where you notice things in your environment.

For example if your best friend bought a certain color and model of car from that moment on the moment after you saw your friend bought this car a certain color model you'll see that car everywhere. You get on the highway there's one there's one and you never noticed before. It's because your friend's car moved to the front of your mind and it became your filter and now you're seeing things that you just wouldn't have noticed before because you changed your filter. That's how it works.

Now suppose that you did an affirmation about becoming a famous cartoonist and you didn't know how to do it. Would you notice some opportunities that you wouldn't have noticed before because you set that in the front of your mind? Well that's what made me a cartoonist. I literally was doing the affirmations but didn't know how to become one. And I turned on the TV and I noticed, would I have noticed before don't know, I noticed there was a TV show telling people how to be a cartoonist. Now I missed the show and I wrote a letter and asked some questions and that got me started. But would I have even noticed if I hadn't put that filter in the front of my mind to become a cartoonist? No no.

So it could be just filtering for opportunity. There's a study by Dr. Wiseman who studied luck. Luck. He wanted to see if there was such a thing as luck. There isn't. So it turns out nobody can guess things better than other people. But he did this study I talk about all the time where he asked people to sort themselves by optimists and pessimists. And then he gave them all the same tasks which was to count the number of photographs in a newspaper.

So the pessimists counted the number of photographs and on average they got the right number. Let's say that was 42 just to make up a number. And but it would take them several minutes to go through the newspaper and count them all up but they'd get the right answer. The optimists would also get the right answer but it would take them seconds. They were done in seconds but it took the others minutes. And the reason that the optimists were done in seconds on average again this is just on average is that the optimist noticed that on page two of every newspaper in big writing it said stop counting the photographs there were 42. It was right there in big writing. Stop counting them they're 42.

Now the pessimists were not expecting any luck. That's what pessimists are. So they just said one two photographs three Droopy Dog four five forty two. The optimists are always looking for luck all the time. Something good is going to happen to me. Something good is going to happen. And they're like all right let's start this task. Hey I guess I can stop. I got some luck. I thought this was going to be boring but look I got lucky. Page two it says stop counting. Boom done.

So Dr. Wiseman hypothesized that what's happening here is that people who expect luck are actually adjusting their filter to see more of it. So is it possible that when I was expecting good things to happen you know to become a cartoonist that I just set my filter for good luck and then I saw it and then I saw some good luck?

Maybe. The other possibility for why affirmations could work is it just makes you more serious about your goal. You basically talk yourself into being more serious about it by thinking about it and repeating it every day. So it could be just that. Maybe it makes you focus better. But the experience that people have is almost magical. Like there was some luck that popped up. Maybe they're just noticing the luck.

But here's the weirdest explanation. That we live in a simulation. That this reality of ours is a simulation. And that the way you navigate the simulation is by your intentions. Your intentions. That's what an affirmation is. An affirmation is your intention put into words. When you put an intention into words what happens? Words are the operating system of your brain. They're words just words. So as soon as your intention turns into a set of words then you can reprogram your brain. The intention isn't good enough. You need to word it reinsert it and repeat it and then it becomes the code in your brain. That's what a reframe is.

All right so my book teaches you how to use words in a short sentence to reprogram your brain. There's no effort involved. You just read the words you're done. Read it once and that's all you have to do. That's the entire change. Read one sentence once. And there are 160 of those sentences.

So one possibility in the simulation is that you're not just programming your brain with words which would be good but there might be something even weirder. If we're a simulation it could be that's the way we steer within the simulation. In other words maybe we have lots of possibilities but when you focus on one it actually veers you into a reality in which it's true. So it's not that there's one reality and there's one set of things that could happen. There are infinite dimensions and you can through your affirmations move your path off of a dimension that you're heading toward and toward a different one. So you're not making something happen. That's the way it feels like affirmations feels like you made your environment change. But what if the environment's never changed and all that happened was you moved to a new one? That would be perfectly possible if we're a simulation but not possible under more normal understanding of reality.

Now given that I'm pretty sure we are a simulation because the odds are a trillion to one that we're anything but that. That's a longer discussion. My understanding my operating understanding of affirmations is that it's a steering mechanism to steer toward a reality that's more in my liking.

So wishful thinking is just some thinking about some good things. There's no operational part to that. It's just thinking. Once you have an intention and that intention turns into words and you either read it as a reframe such as my book or you turn it into an affirmation where you say I Scott Adams will have a best-selling book. I actually use that one on my best-selling books. And so that would give you all the tools you need to change dimensions.

All right how many of you just had your minds blown? And anybody's mind just blow up? Laughs. I love watching the comments when I know something's happening. Yeah yeah this is one of those moments when you're saying to yourself holy cow. Yeah this is sort of a holy cow moment isn't it?

Now you understand my entire life. The filter that I just explained to you with affirmations and the simulation and all that that's what I live every day. That's my everyday understanding of my environment is what I explained. It's really nice. It's nice to live in that frame. Whether I don't know what's true. Maybe truth is beyond us. But I can live in that frame and it's really pleasant. Where because I feel like I'm changing my environment but really I'm just changing which environment I choose to experience.

And I would argue that there are other forms of affirmations. Somebody mentioned prayer. If your frame is that there's a supreme being and that praying to that supreme being is the mechanism that causes the thing to happen in your real life that could be nothing but another way to steer toward another dimension. You know one where the things are happening that you want. So it could be that the god model works perfectly well or as well as affirmations because it would be just a steering mechanism in both cases.

Yeah but in my telling of things the faith wou