Episode 2992 CWSA 10/18/25 — Scott Adams Philosophy

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MainContent Cognitive Reframing

Back to episode — Episode 2992 CWSA 10/18/25

Context —

ter. It's called the simultaneous sip. And that happens now. Go. Oh, so good. So good. Well, I gave an update to my local subscribers, but I'll give you a quick update. Yesterday I did a special kind of a medical PET scan that is specific to test to see if you would be a good candidate for this new cancer drug called Pluvicto. I do not know how to read the results of my tests, but the results do…

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cause when it's over, it's completely over. I mean, it takes 60 seconds to get in a position that doesn't hurt. So what a day.

Anyway, so the good news, maybe we'll have to see, is that I should be qualified for the drug and there's probably a one in three chance it'll make a big difference. So we'll see.

Well, I know that you like to see the reframes from my book, Reframe Your Brain, Changing Your Life One Thought at a Time. So here's one of the reframes, and I'll just pick one here randomly. This is one of my favorites.

One of the usual frames that people think is that the odds of success are low. Whatever it is you're doing, you know, it doesn't matter what you're doing. We often think our odds of success are low. But the reframe is maybe I'm bad at estimating the odds because I remember when I tried to become a cartoonist, I was told the odds were one in 10,000. But it turns out I was bad at estimating the odds because I made it. And it turns out that it never was one in 10,000. If you looked at all the people who tried to beco

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me a cartoonist, there might be 10,000 a year who try to become professional cartoonists and fail because it's hard. But the number of those 10,000 who actually could draw a comic and write a joke? A dozen. So I was really only competing with maybe a dozen people in the entire country. All the rest wanted to be cartoonists, but even you could look at their work and sa

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Wisdom from this episode

"One of the usual frames that people think is that the odds of success are low. But the reframe is maybe I'm bad at estimating the odds because I remember when I tried to become a cartoonist, I was told the odds were one in 10,000. But it turns out I was bad at estimating the odds because I made it. And it turns out that it never was one in 10,000."

People usually assume their odds of success are very low, but a useful reframe is to realize you might simply be bad at estimating odds. Scott succeeded as a cartoonist despite being told it was a one-in-10,000 shot, proving the real probability was far higher.