Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive May 24, 2026
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Episodes Episode #3007 Segments
MainContent Cognitive Reframing

Back to episode — Episode 3007 CWSA 11/03/25

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eled pleasure of the dopamine blast of the day. I'm super high right now. Sorry about that. Medically though, doctor's orders. Got some painkillers in me. You may have heard I'm dying of metastatic prostate cancer, but unless you slept all of yesterday, did any of you sleep all of yesterday and miss the trouble I caused? I caused so much trouble yesterday, but it worked out. Maybe I'll give you a…

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What would that be? Oh, huh. Looks like my appointment at Kaiser just changed. Or are there two appointments? Don't know. I guess I'll find out.

But since you're here, I thought I would read you some reframes at least. You want some reframes from my book, "Reframe Your Brain"? Man, do I need that. Yeah. Yeah, right. Trump was not on vacation. Damn right. Damn right he wasn't on vacation. And Don Jr., I don't know if he was on vacation or he was just in Africa for business or what, but he got back to me from Africa. From Africa.

Okay, let's see what else we got there. Oh, here's one of the most important ones in the entire world. So the usual frame if you're, let's say, analyzing somebody's performance, let's say you're the boss, or you're in some position, maybe you're a spouse, but you're in some position to have an opinion on somebody else's performance in any domain, whatever the performance is. The normal way that people approach that is to tell you what you did wrong. Am I right? Hey, you know, if you'd done this differently, looks like you did that wrong. Here's the right way to do that.

What will that do to people? Well, it will actually make them better in some cases because they'll stop doing the thing that's wrong. And there's nothing wrong with that, stopping doing the things that are wrong. But the reframe which is even more powerful is you tell people what they did right and the rest takes care of itself. And this is sort of a magic trick. You would not believe that if you simply make somebody feel good about what they're doing and you say, "Wow, that was great. That part of what you did is really amazing," etc. They will end up fixing the thing you didn't even mention because they'll be so inspired and enjoy it so much. They'll be like, "Oh, every time I can do something a little better, I get a little praise." So telling people what they did right is like a nuclear weapon. Telling them what they did wrong might be like artillery. Really strong and you could probably win a war with artillery, but it's not nuclear. It's not nuclear.

So yeah, tell people what they did right. That is your lesson for the day.

But you know what? You've been so nice to me. How many people are actually watching this? A thousand on Rumble. Thirty-four thousand watching this. That's pretty big. Well, then you deserve another reframe. Oh. Oh, this one's good. Okay, you're lucky. You get to the good stuff. This one could change your whole life.

By the way, if you're not familiar with the reframe concept, I'm a trained hypnotist. So when I write a reframe, I'm doing it from a position of some skill. And the beauty of a reframe is that you don't have to keep a diary or go to therapy or talk it through. You don't have to do exercises. You don't have to eat different. You literally just have to hear it once. So my claim is that a reframe will change your life if, and this if is the important part, it's the one you needed. If it's one you didn't need, it probably won't even register. You won't even remember it. But if it's one that you're like, "Oh, that's the one I needed," it will change your whole life. It will rewire your brain and it will do it instantly and with no effort on your part whatsoever. That's my claim.

Now until it happens to you, and it probably will if you stick with me and I keep reading these, until it happens to you, you won't believe that's necessarily possible. But once it happens, you're going to be so sold on reframes that you'll be talking about it to all your friends until they're sick of it.

All right. So have I built that up? This might be the strongest reframe you'll ever hear. The usual frame, the old way of thinking is if things are going wrong, the universe is acting against you. Have you ever thought that? Have you ever thought, my god, the whole universe is acting against me. Nobody could have this much bad luck, one thing after another. Right? Ever have that? Very, very suboptimal way of seeing your world.

Now I'm going to reframe it. The universe owes me.

Kaiser is just lighting up my phone today. They're just setting up appointments. That's what all that beeping is.

So again, since I got interrupted by Kaiser, the universe is acting against me will make you feel like you're a loser. It will make you feel like quitting. But if you think that the universe owes you, which is exactly what I think, if you had a bad childhood, the universe owes you. If you had a bad divorce, the universe owes you. It's your turn. It is almost impossible for anybody to have bad luck all the time. So if you have a string of bad luck, it is the surest sign that some good luck is on the way. Does that make sense? Because luck always reverts to the average. People have average luck over time. In any small period of time, they might have extraordinary luck or bad luck, but over time it's definitely going to go back to something like average.

So if you're in one of those, man, I can't believe how bad this is this week, this is the surest sign that the universe owes you and it's going to pay you off. It's the law of odds. The universe couldn't change itself if it wanted to. It is absolutely bound by the odds and it owes you.

All right. Now let me check in with you. How many of you were feeling that the universe was just kicking your ass? And when I told you that the universe owes you, you could feel it actually feel it like some kind of a physical sensation. I don't know how you would describe i

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t. Maybe tingles, maybe something in your chest. You can feel this one, can't you? You see what I'm doing? I'm just taking the persuasion. I'm just pushing it a little extra 'cause it's good for you. You like it. There you go. There you go. Oh, here's a good one. Damn, these are good. So the usual frame. This is one you've heard before, but no matter how many times you hear it, it's not enough. T…

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