ry relevant to me. So the usual old frame is that if you're having some bad luck, you think that you're unusually unlucky because they happen to you. You think of all the things that could happen to anybody and then you think, "Oh man, why are all these things happening to me? Why me? Why do I have all these problems?" That's the old way of thinking.

Here's the reframe. Everyone has problems. Everyone has problems. Just the fact that you don't know somebody else's problem, that's pretty gutsy of you to think that your problem's bigger than theirs. You don't know their problems. You don't know anything about people's problems. The really big ones they keep to themselves. You know, sometimes you see it if it's a physical thing like in my case, but generally speaking, people's battle is inside their head and that could be quite a fierce battle. You don't know what's going on in there.

So the moment you think why me? Why me? The reframe is everybody's got problems. You don't have the special problems. What makes your problem so special? And weirdly, it makes you feel better because you don't feel targeted. You still have the same number of problems, but you don't feel targeted by the universe, which is worth something. Because if you don't feel targeted by the universe, then it's going to be much easier to use the earlier reframe where you say, I'm just going to make something happen.

All right. Is anybody enjoying this yet? I want to see if I should do more of these or we should pivot. Today's experimental and if I'm being perfectly transparent, there are I guess three reasons I'm doing this today despite being near death and not feeling good at all. Don't feel good at all and a lot of pain. It's a really good distraction for me. So when I'm distracted, I'm not in pain. And my favorite distraction, the best distraction you could ever have is that you're doing something that's useful for somebody else, right? So I'm trying to do something that's useful for you guys 'cause that will make me distracted and feel good. So it's selfish, but it's symbiotic. Little symbiosis going on here.

All right. The other reason is that I'm like a tuna. I am so trained to work at this time of day that I was downstairs fifteen minutes before going live, saying to myself, I guess I'll just skip today. And then something happened like some kind of tuna instinct. And next thing I know, I'm pushing my little walker. Yeah, I stayed in it and push it backwards toward the elevator. Next thing I know, I got a cup of coffee and next thing I know, I'm live. It's like there's some kind of instinct or habit that's been so deeply ingrained in me, I couldn't help it.

So there's that. And the third reason, do you know what the third reason is? One is just a distraction. Two is habit. And three is I love you madly. That's it. I just love you madly. So spending time with all of you is just great every single time.

All right, let's do another one. Oh, here's one from my mom. So if my siblings are watching, you'll recognize this one. Do you know how everybody in the world says things should be fair? Everything should be fair. Oh, that's not fair. It's not fair. Politicians say it, children say it. I jokingly sometimes say that fairness was invented so that idiots and children could have something to talk about. Have you ever heard me say that? Fairness was invented so idiots and children would have something to talk about. That's not fair, right?

But so everybody thinks that fairness is a desirable trait. Correct? Probably every one of you would agree with the statement. It's better to be fair than to be unfair. I think every one of you would agree except my mother, my dearly departed mother. What she taught me was that fairness is sort of the enemy of success and that you should strive to get more than other people. And if you're shooting for fairness, you're a sucker. No, she didn't use those words. I'm making up all those words, but in essence, old Virginia Adams, she wanted you to try as hard as you could and do your best possible work so you could have the best possible benefit from your work. Why would you want me to play for a tie? Why would your mother want you to play for a tie? No, no. She wanted me to win. She didn't want me to play for a tie. Fairness is the enemy of success.

Anyway, she never used those words. I sort of put those in her mouth, but she certainly was on the concept.

Here's another one more relative to the artists. How many of you are artists? Either for a hobby or for your job. Show me the artists. Got a lot of artists. We often have a lot of artists. The people who most follow me are lawyers, medical people, engineers, and artists more than anybody else. Look at all the artists. Damn, look at all you. That's a lot of artists. There are more on Locals than there are on YouTube. A lot of them on Locals. Look at all that. Wow. A lot of artists. It's good to see you artists.

All right. Here's your reframe for the artists. Generally speaking, you would, let's say, if you're not a good artist, this would be your frame. For those who are good artists, you have probably already discovered what I'm about to reframe. So this might be for the people who are not as accomplished as all of you are. You would think that here's the old frame. The old frame would be you want to avoid mistakes, right? It doesn't matter what you're doing. Doesn't matter if you're doing art or music or what, you want to avoid mistakes. Duh. Everybody wants to avoid mistakes.

But that's the old way of thinking. Here's a reframe. Invite mistakes into your art and keep the good ones. Invite mistakes into your art and then keep the good ones. And the reason that you do it that way is that you can't always anticipate what the art will feel like until you do it. You have to do it and then feel it. And then if you feel it and it feels right, but it looks wrong, you keep it. Did you hear that? It looks wrong, but it feels right. It looks wrong, but it feels right, so you keep it. That's art.

All right. These are all gems. I don't know why this is a more popular book. I'm completely aware of the fact that this is having a big impact on the lives of the people who happen to be here today. You kind of got lucky that, and I say that with all due humility, the reframes are doing the work, not me. I'm just reading them. But they are powerful and if you endure a couple dozen of these, the odds of it changing your life are really good. Really good.

All right, here's the next one. Have you ever been tasked with coming up with a good idea? You know, you knew you needed a good idea. Maybe it was your job to come up with a good idea, but you didn't have one. So the old frame is that you need to come up with a good idea. So it's the come up with that's the active part. You're coming up with it. You're inventing it out of nothing. But that's an old frame. Here's a better one. I need to release all my bad ideas as quickly as possible.

Sounds like the opposite, doesn't it? So instead of coming up with a good idea, you focus on releasing the bad ideas. Meaning that if you keep thinking of a bad idea and it's stuck in your head, it's more important to get rid of that bad idea because a new idea will come in automatically. Ideas come in, well, if you're a creative person at all, creative ideas will come in automatically as long as there's a landing space. So you have to clear the landing space. It's less important that you're producing ideas, producing, producing, producing. It's more important that you're getting rid of them because you're producing so many. And if the old ones are getting in the way, they'll really slow you down. So get rid of the old ones.

Excuse me. All right. Here's one. Do you ever have that, what's it called when you feel like an impostor at your job? That would be impostor syndrome. I always confuse that with Dunning-Kruger, but Dunning-Kruger is different. It's just impostor syndrome, right?

So if you have impostor syndrome where you think, I'm just faking it. Everybody else seems like they know what they're doing, but I hope they don't find out I'm just faking it. So almost everybody will have the impostor feeling at one time or another. So the old frame is I feel like an impostor at my job.

Here's a reframe for feeling like an impostor. You ready for this? This will completely wipe that away. If you've ever had impostor syndrome, I'm going to remove it forever now with one sentence. Do you think I can do it with one sentence? I will cure it forever. If you have the feeling that you're ever an impostor, here it comes. Everyone is an impostor. And we're done. Everyone's an impostor. There's no such thing as the non-impostor. Everybody is pretending to be a little bit better than they are. Some are pretending to be a lot better. Some are pretending to be a little bit better. But everyone's an impostor. And they also, if they're smart at all, they know they're an impostor. They know you're an impostor. But here's the important part. They know you know they're an impostor. As soon as you think there's such a thing as impostors and non-impostors, well, then you're in trouble because you won't have anybody to certify that you're not the impostor. Because we all feel like impostors. But as soon as you realize that everyone's an impostor, it's not like, well, here, let's divide them up. We got a bunch of impostors over here and a bunch of real ones over here. No, they're all impostors, just different degrees.

All right. That one will change some lives.

All right. Well, here's a useful one. So this one would be almost the basis of maybe half of all mental health technique. So this one will look familiar but the more you remind yourself of it the more useful it is. So the old frame would be that the way your mood is determined is by your internal thoughts. If you're in a bad mood probably your internal thoughts are bad. If you're depressed or anxious or whatever, it's 'cause your internal thoughts are bad, you know, or suboptimal.

But here's the reframe. You can improve your mood by completing meaningful tasks. You can improve your mood by completing meaningful tasks. That's it. Just get some work done. Get something done. Everybody feels better when they get some done. Maybe just cleaning the house. But if you do something meaningful, especially if it's meaningful toward your future, such as signing up for college classes or increasing your talent stack or something like that, it's all going to be good.

All right. So you can improve your mood by completing meaningful tasks. But more generally you can improve your internal feeling by changing what your body is doing because I always tell you your body is your brain. If you take your body and go for a run your brain will feel better. If you do anything that's good for your body your body will reward you and your brain will like it.

All right. Here's one that maybe this one won't help you too much, but it made me feel good. The old frame is some kind of art is good and some kind of art is bad. Would you agree that that's basic? Some art is good, some art is bad. Everybody would agree with that. Nope. That's an old frame.

Sorry, for some reason my nose is running. So the old frame is some art is good and some is bad. Here's my reframe. And again, this is purely self-serving as hell. If there's a market for the art, it's good art. That's my reframe. My reframe is, is somebody going to buy it? If somebody's going to buy it, it's good art. If they would only be willing to look at it if you paid them, I'm not so sure that's good art.

So the reason I think that this is funny is that my art would often be considered substandard, but it is highly purchased. You know what I mean? So Dilbert is not considered a Mona Lisa kind of work of art. But people buy it. So you tell me. If people are going to put their money on it, isn't that a better sign that there's some art going on?

All right, that one's just for me.

Here's one I've taught you before, but again, every time you hear this, it's more powerful. The old way of thinking of things is that if you create something, let's say you make a TV show or a song or something and somebody praises it, could be a product, but somebody praises it, you've got something good. Would you agree? If you make a thing, whatever the thing is, and then people say good things about it, you've got a hit, right? Nope. Nope. What people say about your creation is almost unrelated to its potential success.

Instead, the reframe is only action predicts a hit, not words. So you want to watch for people to extend or modify your creation. Does that make sense? I'll give you an example. When Dilbert first launched, a lot of people said, "Oh, I like that." And some people said, "I don't like that." But the words were not really predictive. Some liked it, some didn't. Probably more didn't than did. But at the same time that people were talking about it, the part that's not predictive, there were other people who were making their own Dilbert books by taking my comics and cutting them out, organizing them by theme, and then putting them in a binder, and effectively making their own book.

Now, the first time I heard somebody do that, I go, "Really? You literally have been cutting them all out, organizing them, and making your own book?" Yes. And then I heard somebody else do it. So completely unrelated, somebody who had nothing to do with the first person. And I thought, "Really? There are two people in the world who would make their own book out of the scraps of comics I'm making?" And then it turned into three people, four people, five people. If you have multiple people who are taking your product and turning it into some form of a related product like the book, that is 100 percent predictable that you have a hit. What people do is really predictive. What people say, well, we say a lot of stuff, but we don't spend our time on anything that we think is not worth the time. But we'll talk about things that aren't too important. We'll lie. But nobody lies by making a Dilbert book, right? There's nobody who ever woke up and said, "I'm going to fool people by making a Dilbert book when there's not a Dilbert book." This was before there was any Dilbert book. So yeah. So watch what they do, not what they say.

Here's one for writers. Anybody have writer's block? If you have writer's block, next two reframes are for you. Okay? If you have writer's block, you often say to yourself while you're sitting there, I have writer's block. The worst thing you could do is sit there with writer's block and say, I have writer's block. So I deny that it exists. That's part of my technique. That's not the reframe. I'm just telling you. I deny that it exists. I have been personally asked, do I get any kind of writer's block? It's probably the single most frequent question I've ever been asked. Do you ever get any writer's block? Do you know what I always say? Nope. Never. Not once. It's not even a thing. As soon as you allow that it's a thing, it kind of becomes a thing.

But let me tell you the reframe. So it'll never be a thing. You ready? I will solve writer's block for you right now. So instead of saying I have writer's block, the first thing, this is just one of two reframes. Instead of saying you have writer's block, say I'm trying to write at the wrong time of day. It's the wrong time of day. Because I can tell you that I can write early in the morning. I have no writer's block ever. But by mid-afternoon, I might be tired. So I might be trying to write at the wrong time of day. That's not really a writer's block. That would be a time of day problem. So you solve the time of day problem, not the writer's block problem.

The other reframe is I might be in the wrong environment for writing. I've told you too many times that when I go to Starbucks, as soon as I sit down in Starbucks, all writer's block goes away. Now, I can't say that works for everybody because it's sort of magical the way it works even for me, but there's something about the time and place and the environment and the noise and the sound and the smell, the familiarity. I don't know what it's all about, but sometimes it's the time of day, sometimes it's where you are. Likewise when I go to Hawaii, which I probably won't do again, but when I went to Hawaii, I would get so much good work done 'cause if you sit on a balcony looking at the beach in Hawaii, you don't ever want to leave, but you don't have anything to do except work. So it turns out that the work becomes so fun that you just don't have any writer's block at all.

All right, here's the payoff. So the first few were good writer's block reframes, but they don't get you there. This is the one that's going to bring you across the finish line. You ready? Instead of thinking, I can't think of anything good to write, think I can write something bad and fix it. The reason that you don't write something on the page is not exactly because you can't think of anything. Everybody can think of something. It's just that you don't think it would be worth writing down. So instead of judging it before you write it down, you write it down first. You look at it. If you don't like it, you delete it or you edit it or you change a word. But it's way easier to tweak something that's already on the page than it is to put something on the page. And the moment you realize that you can write something bad, that's totally allowed. It's completely allowed to write something that you won't ultimately use. You can write anything. Nobody's watching. And if you write something bad, it's more likely to suggest something to you that's not bad. You just have to do something. So the do something is the key part of not having writer's block.

So if you were to watch me writing like over my shoulder and I didn't know you were there, you would see me write a sentence, delete it, write a sentence, delete it, write a sentence, delete it. And I'm a professional writer. You would imagine that I could write the sentence I want and then move on. It doesn't really work that way. It's way easier to tweak than it is to just know the right thing.

All right. How we doing? Is everybody still having fun? Well, I'm changing lives. Do we really have eighty-four thousand people watching this live? That's not even counting X. X is usually thirty thousand. So that would be about a hundred thousand people watching live. I guess I should have done this before.

If you're just joining, I did give a health update in the beginning of the stream. If you wanted to go back and you could catch up on that. But since I'm not prepared and not feeling good today, I'm reading out of my book, "Reframe Your Brain" and I decided I would change some lives while I'm here. And I don't have much of a plan except that I'm going to do that. All right, we'll do it live.

All right, these are the mental health reframes. Now we're into some good stuff. Did you ever have, well, I've done this one before in a number of ways, but the more ways I do it, the better it is. Did you ever think that you are your inner thoughts? Sometimes I say that. I think my Akira the Don song says something like that, that you are your inner thoughts. How many of you think that who you really are, the real you, is what you're secretly thinking that maybe not everybody knows. Is that who you are? Are you your secret thoughts? It feels like it, doesn't it?

Well, that would be the normal way of thinking of things. But I'm going to give you the Dr. Laura reframe that blew my mind when I heard it years ago. Instead of you are what you think, you are what you do. You are what you do.

Now this might confuse you because the Akira the Don song that features my podcasting voice put to music which recently released, I say, what do I say, that you are what you think about the most. Now that would be confusing wouldn't it? I said you are what you do not your inner thoughts but I also said you are what you think about the most. The way to reconcile that is that the you are what you think about the most is in the context of you can change what you do which is what you think about. So thinking is doing. So if you consciously change the amount of time you're thinking negative thoughts and you consciously make sure no that was a negative thought let me throw in some positive thoughts. Well, then you can actually change who you are to a happier person, for example, less neurotic. But generally speaking, you are what you do. So if you have some bad thoughts about people that you never mention, but you save babies from a burning building, you're still the person who saved the baby from the burning building. That's way more who you are than the secret thoughts that you didn't tell anybody. So you are what you do. If you want to be a better person, do better things. Do something nice for somebody. If you want to be popular, do something nice for somebody.

All right. Here's one. How many of you have ever thought or maybe gagged when you heard somebody else say it that they were trying to find themselves? I need to find myself. I need to figure out who I am. Bad idea.

Here's a reframe. Instead of being an explorer and trying to figure out who you are, how about authoring yourself to be what you want to be? You can author your situation. You don't have to discover who you are. You can make yourself who you want to be. That's one of the great things about human life is that you don't have to be anything. You can author yourself into almost any kind of situation. You know, obviously you can't author yourself a billion dollars just because you want to. Maybe some people can. But I love these words. Instead of finding yourself, author yourself. That's very powerful if you take that to heart, author yourself, because sometimes we forget that we have that power that we can turn ourselves into whatever we need to turn ourselves into.

All right. Oh here's a good one. So if you tend to be judgmental, does anybody have that problem? Is there anybody here who tends to be too judgmental and you know it's hurting you because people don't like it and maybe you don't like it either but you're just too judgmental. All right. Yes. All right. If you're judgmental, here's a reframe for you. Instead of the usual frame for judging people, which is that some people are good and some are not, it would make more sense to say we're all flawed and we're all good at different things. We're all flawed and we're all good at different things. Isn't that fair? It's not like you're the good one and the person you're judging is the bad one. You don't think you've got some flaws?

What is that? I'm getting many phone calls from people I don't know. All right, so let me finish that one up. Yeah, people are flawed, but in general, almost everybody that you're judging is going to be better than you at at least one thing. Almost inevitably, no matter how much you judge somebody, there's probably at least one thing that they're just better at than you. So don't be so judgy.

Here's one. Your critics are evil monsters. Do you ever think that about your critics? The people who don't like you, they're evil monsters. Well, I like to reframe my critics as my mascots. You've heard me do that. If somebody's enough of a critic that they can't leave you alone and they just make it their life's work to criticize you specifically, just stop calling him a critic and stop calling him anything else really.

It's funny the phone's not even ringing and it's doing that. I better see if any of these look like. All right. Okay. Don't know most of those people. Something's going on.

All right. How about this? Oh, here here's one on criticism. If you hate criticism, does anybody hate being criticized? If I get criticized, it's just a Monday. Doesn't mean anything because I do this for a living. But if you get criticized, it probably stings. I'll betcha. Nobody likes being criticized. But the old way of thinking of criticism is it feels like a dagger to your heart. Like, oh, I hate that criticism. It's like a dagger to my heart.

Here's a reframe. Criticism is a chemical reaction in the skull of someone who isn't in the room. Criticism is based on a chemical reaction in the skull of someone who isn't even in the room with you. Now, it could not be less important. If it were in the room with you, maybe. But if they're not in the room with you, all that's happening is there's like this little chemical recipe that's boiling in their head. Is something happening in their head? It is no more meaningful than if you walked by the stove and some water was boiling and you'd be like, "Hey, there's some water in that bucket. It's boiling." Well, that's all that's happening with your critic except the inside of the bucket, it's a skull and instead of boiling water, it's just their brain chemistry is doing whatever. Has nothing to do with you. It just doesn't have anything to do with you. It's just some chemicals boiling around inside a skull that's not in the room. That's it.

All right. Here's one. I've been hearing other people talk about this more as well because once you hear it, it's so useful. You'll end up saying the same thing. Here's the one that is most likely that you will use and tell to somebody else that I think the most likely. So the usual frame and we all fall into this is that everybody's thinking about us. You ever think that you think oh my god they're judging me they're thinking about that mistake I made. They're watching me. Nobody's watching you. Nobody cares. You know, maybe if you're in seventh grade or something, but if you're an adult, people aren't really paying too much attention to you. So as soon as you imagine that other people care, probably not about whatever it is you're fretting about. I mean, they might care in various ways, but not about whatever you're fretting about. They're not thinking about you at all.

Once you realize that people don't really think about you, it really makes everything easier. You won't get embarrassed. You know, even if you did get embarrassed, you'd be like, "Okay, they will care about that for ten, nine, eight, done." You might care about it for longer, but you don't need to 'cause they don't care. If they don't care, why would you care, you know, even after they've forgotten it. So nobody cares. It's easier. Your critics, you know, obviously your loved ones care about you, but your critics, they're not really thinking about you too much.

All right. Here's a good one. Is there anybody here who's a germaphobe? I actually have a reframe that can cure a germaphobe. You know, again, not every person every time, but for some people, some of the time it will cure a germaphobe. And this is one that cured me. Instead of thinking that germs will harm me because of course germs will have the potential to harm you. Now, when I say germs, I'm talking about really anything that you don't want to get on you, but I'm just using a generic germs. Instead of saying that germs will harm you, I actually say this, this is like a real thing. I say germs make me stronger. And you've probably seen some science that if you were a kid and you grew up in a sterile environment, you would not be ready for the real world because you hadn't been exposed to enough germs and cooties. So germs is how you tune your body. And I literally tell myself, "Oh, there's no problem getting some extra germs because I'll just be tuning my defenses." And it went from, "Oh my god, I don't want a germ. Germs" to "All right, load it up. Load it up. Stronger today than I was yesterday." And it's remarkable how easy it is to go from these germs are