Why Pessimism Quietly Ruins Your Life | Episode #138

0:00 Pessimism is an antisuccess engine masquerading as deep wisdom.

0:05 Over time, being highly pessimistic trains

0:09 your mind to notice threats and ignore openings.

0:14 Ignoring openings is a surefire way to almost completely curb success.

0:21 Because how can success possibly happen

0:24 if you're not taking advantage of openings?

0:30 Hey folks, Dr.

0:31 Mike here for the Making Progress channel.

0:34 We're going to talk today about the 10 ugly consequences of pessimism.

0:39 You know what doesn't get enough hate?

0:41 It's a fun way to start out a video.

0:44 Pessimism does not get enough hate.

0:48 I've already done a video about the pessimistic fallacy.

0:51 It's a fallacy in economics that people will look

0:55 at historical well they won't look at historical trends they'll hallucinate

0:58 that the historical trend of things is getting worse all the time

1:01 when in reality nine times out of 10 it's getting better.

1:05 Uh that's a separate thing uh related but separate

1:09 to this video which is going to focus

1:12 on more personal effects of pessimism to you

1:15 the human and to the people around you.

1:17 Pessimism in my view has kind of especially in its extremes, right?

1:22 Very high pessimism, super toxic effects on you,

1:28 your decision-making process, and the people around you as well.

1:33 So, let's dig into some of these effects right now.

1:36 Here are 10 of them.

1:39 First one, pessimism shrinks your action down before

1:45 reality even gets a say about the situation.

1:50 Pessimism can reduce your ideas about what's best to do by a large fraction.

1:58 There is a world of possibility out there before you act on it.

2:03 If you're pessimistic, you are erasing viable outcomes.

2:10 If I was pessimistic about YouTube,

2:14 getting on YouTube in 2020 with Scott the Video Guy,

2:17 and I just didn't think it was going to become anything,

2:19 why the[ __] would I ever have gotten on YouTube?

2:25 It's been hard.

2:26 It's It was tough for years.

2:27 We didn't make a dent until we made a dent.

2:30 And so if I was pessimistic upfront,

2:32 I would have never even conceived that it is possible to be successful.

2:37 Pessimism is an antisuccess engine masquerading as deep wisdom.

2:42 Don't let it[ __] you like that.

2:46 Pessimism next turns caution into paralysis, which is so helpful, right?

2:54 Pessimistic people are the people that go into the cave

2:59 and just do this because there's too many predators out there.

3:02 They ain't getting food.

3:02 They ain't getting water.

3:03 And they ain't getting that you know

3:04 what that makes for next generations vagina.

3:10 I was just I just want to be clear about that.

3:13 Paralysis is not helpful at all.

3:17 Extreme pessimism paralyzes you because if

3:20 something's extremely likely to go very bad, why would you do it?

3:25 Just sit this one out is what pessimism tells you.

3:30 Here's a real nasty one.

3:32 Over time, being highly pessimistic trains

3:37 your mind to notice threats and ignore openings.

3:42 It doesn't look at openings.

3:43 Cuz remember, pessimism says, "Oh, you think that's an opening.

3:46 you think that's an opportunity.

3:47 It's probably not.

3:49 But for some reason, pessimism doesn't look the same way at threats.

3:53 It's not like, oh, you think that's a threat, but it's probably not.

3:55 It's not even intellectually consistent.

3:57 It's like, oh, that's a threat.

3:58 That's probably going to be even worse than you think.

4:01 Now, noticing threats can be a good thing.

4:05 You want to notice threats so you can stay

4:06 the[ __] away from them and manage them properly.

4:09 But ignoring openings is a surefire way to almost completely curb success.

4:16 Because how can success possibly happen

4:19 if you're not taking advantage of openings?

4:23 Imagine you're a pretty gifted singer and after you sing at some kind of club,

4:27 open mic night or something,

4:28 a record executive comes up to you and goes, "Hey, I'll pay for your trip to LA.

4:33 Come audition in front of the crew.

4:34 I think you really got something here." If you're really pessimistic,

4:38 you're like, "Nah, man.

4:40 No, I'm not going to go.

4:41 It's just a opportunity for me to clown myself." Maybe, maybe.

4:45 And if the record executive looks an awful lot like Harvey Weinstein,

4:49 maybe you're good at catching the threats and well,

4:52 just bringing a I don't know, a stabbing implement or mace.

4:56 But if you don't get on the plane to LA and you don't audition,

5:01 what is exactly the probability that you're going to become a star?

5:06 is zero, right?

5:07 Or real close to it.

5:08 Now, you could go and it could be a flub.

5:10 You could go and it could be okay.

5:12 But you could go and it could be amazing because

5:14 remember people who are in production in the music field,

5:18 they're only united by really one thing and that's greed.

5:21 And so they don't go out of their way to tell people like give them random hope.

5:25 Like, hey, record exact guy.

5:26 He's like, yeah, you ever go tell people

5:28 that are totally talentless like they should try out?

5:30 He'd be like, what[ __] would I do that for?

5:32 Even if he's a scumbag and doesn't care and would love to clown

5:35 on people and get their hopes up just to dump on them,

5:37 he's almost certainly not going to do that cuz he

5:40 he's two two two uh two-tier bandwidth problem, maybe even three.

5:44 One, he doesn't have the time to talk to your dumbass.

5:46 He's not going to be inviting you anywhere.

5:47 Number two, he's sure[ __] if he didn't mean it,

5:49 not going to try to schedule you in for you

5:51 to come to LA so everyone can laugh at you.

5:52 That doesn't happen.

5:53 And third, is an opportunity cost of having real talented people in front of him

5:57 when he's in LA and he's at Capital Records and he's talking to people.

6:01 He wants everyone to come through the door.

6:02 This is the ideal ideal music executive thing.

6:05 Every single person who comes through the door

6:07 on a try out is a platinum artist.

6:09 Dylan, am I misconstring that?

6:10 That's the ideal, right?

6:11 Every single person who tries out at your record company goes platinum.

6:15 Every single one.

6:16 You would you would want only that.

6:18 Only that.

6:19 And so, nobody's interested in clowning on you.

6:21 It's just not a thing that happens.

6:23 So, if a record executive or anyone associated music goes,

6:26 I really think I like what I see here, you better get on that[ __] plane to LA.

6:29 And if you're being pessimistic about it,

6:31 stop being a little[ __] You could fail.

6:34 Accept that possibility and get the[ __]

6:36 out of that plane and make something happen.

6:38 Big deal.

6:39 Big deal.

6:42 There's another thing about threats.

6:44 As humans, most of our cognitive architecture is designed

6:50 to parse a world of hunter gathering with a couple dozen

6:54 of our probably close relatives in a little tribal village

6:59 or nomadic uh situation in the savas of a of Africa.

7:04 The vast majority of what you had out there was threats.

7:07 Opportunities were small or infrequent and hard to come by.

7:12 Threats were everywhere.

7:13 We're That's why we're all naturally pessimistic, by the way.

7:16 What about in today's world?

7:19 How many threats are there really?

7:22 Right.

7:23 There's been a there was a a wave of uh um kind of mass psychosis,

7:28 mass delusion in the 1980s that there was a lot

7:31 of kidnappings happening to bring children into satanic cults.

7:36 Upon a grand grand series of investigations that were exhaustive,

7:40 approximately almost zero satanic cults were found

7:44 and approximately[ __] no one was kidnapped by them.

7:48 Millions of parents were sure their kids were just going

7:52 to get kidnapped out of the blue and it just wasn't happening.

7:55 People hallucinate problems into the air.

7:57 The vast majority of people who are listening to this right now

8:00 live in a compared to our evolutionary

8:03 timeline serene landscape of almost uniquely

8:07 unfiltered opportunity and no more threats than like I guess you could

8:13 just walk into traffic and get clipped off by a[ __] Tesla plaid.

8:18 Yeah, but like just don't walk into traffic, right?

8:22 Threats are very low in our current environment.

8:25 opportunities are massive.

8:27 If you are a pessimist, you're delusional.

8:30 Straight up.

8:31 You're you're just misconstring reality.

8:35 It doesn't feel like you are because evolution is telling you,

8:38 seriously, be pessimistic.

8:39 I've been trained on multiple generations of this.

8:41 Shit's always bad.

8:43 __] is outdated.

8:44 Things are really good now.

8:45 There's more opportunities by a factor of 10 than there are threats.

8:49 So, if you're not aware of that, you're

8:50 probably not going to be that successful.

8:52 You're going to be real pessimistic though, and that's cool.

8:55 I guess it's not cool at all.

8:58 Next, pessimism makes effort feel foolish and surrender feel rational.

9:05 Why would you try?

9:07 If the odds are stacked against you,

9:10 and if you already know the odds are stacked against you, you don't do it.

9:13 Pessimism feels like this in its best moments.

9:17 You're stuck inside a warehouse in Jurassic Park.

9:21 All the dinosaurs are outside the warehouse making chomping noises, right?

9:26 And there's there's five of you and one of you is like, "Guys,

9:29 we can make it to the helicopter pad if we run." Like,

9:33 you[ __][ __] The helicopter pad is a mile away.

9:37 Do you know how to fly a helicopter?

9:39 Well, I don't, but it's better if we try, right?

9:43 And you're like, "No, you dummy.

9:45 They're already on their way to save us.

9:46 It's just going to be a few hours.

9:48 All we need to do is stay in the[ __] warehouse and shut

9:51 the[ __] up cuz you're going to get us killed even opening that door.

9:55 That's what it feels like to be a righteous pessimist.

9:57 You're that guy speaking reason to this total

9:59 lunatic idiot who wants to go pretend

10:02 fly a helicopter but honestly just run out and get eaten by the T-Rex instantly.

10:07 In reality, we don't live in that time.

10:12 We don't live in that place.

10:14 Almost everything that you want success-wise

10:17 is a matter of informing yourself about

10:18 what it is and making marginal gains in it and voila, you're successful.

10:22 So, if you want to start an online business and someone's like,

10:25 "I don't know." Like, "Oh[ __] what's going to happen, Frank?

10:27 A[ __] Velociraptor is going to eat me." Like,

10:30 oh, you could you could spend money on it.

10:32 Like, oh yeah, how much does it cost?

10:35 How much does it cost to get Shopify spun up?

10:38 Get out of my face.

10:39 It's like 20 bucks a month.

10:42 Pessimism sets you up for failure because it already assumes failure is coming

10:47 and then it makes you just just sit there and see if the situation changes.

10:53 Cuz in our ancestral times, if you were in the cave and there was tigers around,

10:57 yeah, man, you probably want to chill in the cave a little bit longer.

11:00 And if you're going to do something about it,

11:02 you had better be really thinking it through.

11:04 So pessimism worked much better.

11:06 Nowadays, you're just missing a shitload of opportunities at the time.

11:11 Pessimism can corrode your resilience by making setbacks feel final.

11:17 Or if not final, at least habitual, like I'm just a loser.

11:21 If you're pessimistic enough, what is even the point of being resilient?

11:27 Resilient to continuing to suck.

11:31 If you always think your setbacks are

11:34 massive and mega and fatalistic in your head,

11:37 you ain't never going to try anything.

11:39 And then how the[ __] are you supposed to succeed?

11:43 A real good example of this is talking to girls

11:45 that you want to have fun adult times with.

11:48 What is the probability that you're going to have

11:50 fun adult times if you don't speak to girls?

11:52 Well, girls generally don't have balls.

11:54 And I mean that both literally and metaphorically.

11:57 They're not going to come talk to you unless you're like over-the-top

12:00 handsome or some[ __] Then you ain't got nothing to worry about anyway.

12:03 Uh I guess you do because most girls still won't come up and talk to you.

12:06 They'll expect you to talk to them.

12:07 will just have a better reaction to it.

12:09 So, if you're never going to talk to girls

12:11 because you're pessimistic about how that's going to go,

12:13 you've taken your chances of scoring from two out of 100 to zero

12:19 out of 100 cuz ain't nobody going to talk to you, pimp.

12:21 Ain't nobody to talk to.

12:22 You're literally saying, "Oh, I don't know if I can hit the ball

12:25 with my bat." And you drop the bat and walk away.

12:28 At least throw the[ __] at least swing the bat a couple times, man.

12:31 You might get lucky.

12:32 Some girl's like, "Ah,

12:33 I'm drunk and I've always wanted to[ __] somebody that looks like Harry Potter.

12:36 Let's go home.

12:37 Then you're in, my man.

12:41 Next.

12:42 Pessimism invites self-fulfilling prophecies.

12:47 It kind of sums up all the other downsides we've been talking about.

12:50 If you never try your best because you don't think you can do well,

12:56 your body and brain are literally saving

12:59 resources for the next fight you're going

13:02 to have cuz you're sitting this one out cuz you don't think you can win.

13:07 If you're going to do anything and you're pessimistic about the outcome,

13:12 you'll already[ __] up.

13:14 Whatever you do, you have to be optimistic about your ability to make a dent.

13:21 And then you're going to liberate psychologically

13:24 and physically energy to do something about the thing.

13:28 Dylan, imagine laying down on a bench press and being like,

13:31 I don't think I'm going to get this.

13:32 Can you imagine spotting someone that says that?

13:34 You might as well get off the bench.

13:35 Like, I'm not going to spot you, dumb[ __] Are you nuts?

13:38 You better believe that that bar is moving

13:41 and you're going to have something to say

13:42 about it because otherwise you're literally not going to be able to try as hard.

13:48 How many pessimists are at the top of their field in sport?

13:53 What?

13:53 The answer is basically zero, you guys.

13:56 Because you need to believe in yourself in order to do your best.

14:00 MMA fighters are a great example of this.

14:02 Before the fight, they're all like, I'm undefeatable.

14:05 I'm gonna hit this guy do this this guy

14:07 once and his relatives are going to feel it.

14:09 Of course that's delusional.

14:10 Optimistically delusional.

14:12 They do the fight and if they win,

14:14 they're like, "Dude, my opponent was really tough.

14:16 It was an awesome match." Well, hold on a sec.

14:18 I thought you said you were immortal.

14:19 They're like, "Well, I got to I got to talk my[ __] up so that I feel free

14:23 and in my flow when I'm in that[ __]

14:25 cage." Because if you're a pessimistic walking into the cage,

14:28 you're not walking out of that cage.

14:29 You're getting taken out of that cage on a[ __] stretcher.

14:33 That's a big deal.

14:35 And if the MMA fighter loses, he goes, "Well,

14:38 my my opponent was really great and he really he got me this time." Right?

14:41 You're like, "But shouldn't you have been pessimistic?" Yeah.

14:44 If I wanted to be correct about predicting my own loss,

14:47 what the[ __] Can you imagine telling an MMA fighter like, "Hey man,

14:51 you really clowned yourself." Or like, "Pow,

14:53 you said you were going to beat Johnson

14:54 in that title fight and you lost." Like, uhhuh.

14:56 Would you prefer I said that I was going to lose?

15:00 Dead in their tracks.

15:01 that critic is gonna be like, "Uh, wait." Because if you try on that hat, like,

15:05 "Yeah." Can you imagine, Dylan,

15:07 can you imagine a conference where one MMA fighter is like, "Yeah,

15:10 I'm gonna beat him." And the other guy's like,

15:11 "Yeah, he's probably going to beat my ass." People like,

15:13 "What the[ __] There's no way you're

15:15 going to try your hardest." And that's true.

15:17 The whole thing is nonsense.

15:19 If you're going to want to do some[ __] you're going to want improvement,

15:21 you have to believe that improvement is possible,

15:23 and you have to believe that you are

15:25 the person that's going to do the improving.

15:26 If you don't believe that, step the[ __] off.

15:29 And if you don't believe that, you are a pessimist and then you're stepping off

15:32 and then your probability of success drops

15:33 to zero because you ain't even doing the thing.

15:38 To that end, pessimism weakens your ambition

15:43 by mocking success ahead of time, right?

15:47 Like, oh man, you know, all this winning[ __] it's probably not going to happen.

15:51 __] it.

15:52 Dope.

15:52 __] it.

15:54 But I I sort of maybe misread the note

15:56 to myself here I'm reading off of because what's success?

16:01 That super unlikely thing that you're shooting for, that thing

16:04 you know is probably not going to happen.

16:06 Why even try?

16:08 Pessimism loops around and cuts off even its own efforts.

16:13 Here's a huge one.

16:16 Pessimism spreads helplessness socially in any

16:20 group and drags your group morale downwards.

16:26 This is such a big deal.

16:28 I have seen this countless times in groups that I was in.

16:31 Sometimes I was a person doing the dragging.

16:34 Having pessimistic teammates on your team, on your group,

16:40 is a practice in one of two things.

16:45 One, you practice uplifting the pessimistic person.

16:48 You go, "Hey, man.

16:49 I know you think State's going to crush us in the big game,

16:53 but I think it's possible to meet their quarterback tonight

16:57 outside of his house with a crowbar." And no, I'm kidding.

16:59 Jesus Christ, I'm doing Russian things again.

17:02 No, like you're like, "Hey, like, you know,

17:04 um, everyone's got a chance and if they fumble,

17:07 we can recover the ball and really turn the tide."[ __] happens.

17:10 Underdogs win consistently and regularly.

17:14 It happens all the time.

17:14 That's why they make movies about the[ __] It's possible.

17:17 So, either you uplift them and say, "Hey,

17:19 I think we could do this." Or you show them the[ __] door.

17:22 Because pessimism, especially in sports,

17:24 but in kind of any any kind of teamwork, is look,

17:28 you either have actionable[ __] that's going

17:30 to make us better or see you, right?

17:34 Like imagine like just like you know clanking the guns

17:37 and you know putting in the clips and checking

17:40 your your scope and stuff like that before you

17:42 like bust out of some place shoot your way out to get to safety with like five

17:46 of your friends right and one of us is like I

17:48 don't think we can do it like all right

17:50 don't so are you going to stay here cuz we're

17:51 leaving oh you're not going to stay here do

17:54 you think we can make it I want to hear

17:55 you[ __] say it we're going to make it because you need to pull up that[ __] gun

18:00 to help us make it so you either stay here

18:02 and we'll just do a coordination without you or you

18:04 need to be able to clack and bang with us

18:06 because otherwise like it's just not going to work.

18:09 Pessimism is inadmissibly toxic to team culture.

18:12 That doesn't mean you shove people out of the way.

18:14 It means the first thing you try to do

18:16 is try to talk themselves into one of two things.

18:19 Ideally, positivity at the very least neutrality.

18:23 Pessimism is a non-starter for anything that needs to be done.

18:28 Period.

18:30 Do not put up with unchecked pessimism.

18:35 This next one is a personal favorite observation of mine.

18:40 Pessimism can disguise emotional pain as intellectual sophistication.

18:48 I didn't think that was a thing.

18:50 I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

18:53 I talked to Chat PT about it for a while.

18:55 I was like, you know,

18:56 metadata and all that[ __] Is that really a thing that happens?

18:58 are pessimistic people actually people that are suffering more

19:01 on the inside but trying to look smart and he's like

19:04 yeah man that happens a lot now here's an example

19:11 I am a card carrying delusional AI optimist fact total respect

19:18 and I have a shitload of respect for intellectually grounded

19:22 AI pessimism and especially AI dumerism And I do sometimes

19:29 worry about how much of my own internal AI optimism

19:32 is just me trying to like scream sing my demons away.

19:36 Like my demons in my head are like everything's going to suck.

19:38 The world's going to get[ __] up.

19:39 And I'm like la I can't hear you.

19:40 The singularity is near.

19:42 Sure, that might be happening.

19:44 Almost certainly happening to some extent.

19:46 But the same way I worry that I'm just trying to be optimistic to like cuz

19:49 you I'm trying to deal with my own[

19:51 __] I worry that the emotional states of continually

19:54 cynical and doomobsessed AI community folks uh are

19:58 just real toxic in there and pessimism is

20:02 the thing they do to try to look like they have some control over the situation.

20:05 They're like, "Oh, that that's never going to happen." Like,

20:08 what if it does happen, though?

20:10 Have you considered that?

20:12 But the reason they're pessimistic isn't because

20:14 they've thought through a lot of stuff.

20:16 It's because they're having a real bad time in their head.

20:19 They they're miserable.

20:22 And deep misery means a recanting of hope,

20:27 a recanting of the possibility that things could be well because then that makes

20:31 you have to deal with the fact that you're still in the fight.

20:34 But a lot of people have given up in their own heads.

20:36 And so they're like, "Nah, that'll never work." Like,

20:38 "What if it does?" Oh,[ __] I got to worry

20:41 about whether each subprocess of this thing is going to work.

20:44 It's a rocky ride to say, you know,

20:46 maybe AI could get real smart and really help us,

20:49 but there's trials and tribulations along the way.

20:51 It's much easier to sound real smart and be like,

20:54 "That'll never happen." Also, um,

20:57 being pessimistic and being cynical can make you sound intelligent because you

21:01 get to render an opinion as if you're an an authority figure.

21:06 And the people making the[ __] happen sound like Polyiana lunatics.

21:10 Like Elon Musk says, "We might have universal high income." I mean,

21:13 you're like, "It'll never happen." And someone's like, "Whoa, you're real smart.

21:16 You're debating with Elon Musk." Where actually

21:19 you're just being a[ __][ __] Dylan,

21:21 do we have to Is that possible to leave in or probably not?

21:25 Uh, I think we can probably leave it in.

21:27 Uh, one little C-word, never hurt anybody.

21:30 I legitimately think that a lot of pessimism is just neuroticism in disguise.

21:35 Intellectual pessimism is actually,

21:37 I think many times, just people being neurotic.

21:40 they don't feel very safe in their own heads and they're just pessimistic,

21:44 kind of lashing out.

21:46 If we recognize that a lot of pessimism

21:49 is maybe mildly pathological neuroticism at its core,

21:54 um it removes some intellectual air uh to it.

21:59 And I think it injects uh an opportunity to work

22:02 on the self and become less neurotic and also

22:05 realize that the world is maybe full of more

22:07 options opportunities than that pessimism allows you to see.

22:10 It's like a you know a kid who like you're like hey you want

22:12 to go uh trick-or-treating and he's like oh no way I could get hurt.

22:16 Things could go wrong out there.

22:17 You're like I don't think these are like

22:18 sober assessments of the world of modern suburban trick-or-treating.

22:21 I think that kid has like legit clinical anxiety and neuroticism.

22:24 You're probably going to be correct about that.

22:26 When that kid grows up and you're like, "Hey, AI is gonna help us make robots

22:30 and transform the world into another industrial revolution." Like,

22:33 I don't think so, man.

22:34 I think it's going to be spying on us

22:36 and the robot girlfriends are going to destroy all relationships.

22:39 And it's like, I think the way this works is it's not the AI,

22:44 it's not the AI eventuality assessment that made you uh seem to be pessimistic.

22:48 The pessimism came first and it came from neuroticism.

22:52 And that doesn't come from anything super analytical or intellectual.

22:55 It can, but in many cases, I don't think it does.

22:59 Lastly, last problem with pessimism is that it makes

23:03 the future look smaller and bleeer than it really is.

23:07 Can you imagine if all of the great inventors of history were pessimistic?

23:13 We'd still be clinging rocks together.

23:15 We wouldn't have[ __] The ultimate optimist is

23:19 the inventor because they go, "You know what?

23:22 I think I can make this work.

23:24 You got to believe in it." Right?

23:26 My own little[ __] contribution to the world, which means almost nothing,

23:30 is that when I was writing the uh one of the chapters in the RP diet book,

23:34 the original one, the Renaissance diet,

23:36 it was about how to design your own diet.

23:39 And I was looking at that and I was like, "This is an algorithm.

23:42 This is mathematics.

23:43 We could have an app do this." And at first

23:46 we made proto app with templates and then we eventually made

23:48 the app and we helped like I don't know coming up

23:51 to like a million people now improve their bodies, lose weight,

23:54 feel better about themselves, get more muscle and it's like none of that[ __]

23:57 would have happened if I didn't think like uh you know

24:01 yeah I think if we codify this I I think we

24:04 could like people can use it and it could actually work.

24:07 If I was ultra pessimistic I'd be like no one's

24:09 ever going to pay us money for some stupid book wrong.

24:13 We made a bunch of money on the book.

24:14 No one's going to use these dumbass templates.

24:16 That'll never work.

24:17 Hundreds of thousands of people used them, loved them, got incredible results.

24:21 No one wants an app.

24:22 App was a massive success.

24:24 I'm not trying to wave my own flag here.

24:25 I've done basically nothing in this world on the aggregate.

24:28 But even in my own little[ __] sphere,

24:29 if I was always doubting myself, nothing would happen, right?

24:34 Nothing at all.

24:35 Because what are the Wayne Gretzky quote?

24:36 Like you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

24:40 And I know what you're thinking.

24:41 You're cynical like, "Yeah, but you're not Wayne Gretzky." Yeah,

24:44 Wayne Gretzky makes 98 shots.

24:46 I at least make two.

24:48 What if I don't take any shots?

24:49 I make zero.

24:50 Not trying is the ultimate[ __] beta move.

24:55 Here's the thing.

24:56 You do not have to become a stark raving optimist.

24:59 In fact, having psychotically amazing expectations almost logically

25:04 sets you up for just a bunch of disappointments.

25:07 But do not fall for the opposite.

25:09 Do not fall for the hype of pessimism.

25:11 Do your best and plan to have moderate success.

25:15 If your success is not even moderate, you can be upset.

25:18 It's okay.

25:19 If your success is moderate, feel grateful.

25:23 If your success is beyond moderate,

25:25 feel extra[ __] grateful and be super goddamn

25:28 proud of yourself and the alignment of the universe.

25:31 That way, you're not shooting for the[ __]

25:34 stars or the moon or some[ __] You just believe that you can make the world

25:38 and your own situation in it a little bit better.

25:40 Sometimes that doesn't work out like that.

25:42 You can become a pessimist if you want to become irrational and disempowered.

25:45 For sure.

25:46 Don't let life beat you down.

25:48 Plan that some pretty good shit's going to happen.

25:51 Nine times out of 10 it will.

25:53 One time out of 10 psychotically good[ __] will happen.

25:58 If you were pessimistic, good[ __] won't happen.

26:01 And if good[ __] happens, when you're a pessimist,

26:03 it could have been better if you weren't a pessimist

26:05 because you would have tried harder and seen more clearly.

26:07 And also, when you're a pessimist and good[ __] happens,

26:09 a lot of times you start second guessing the good[ __] You,

26:12 oh, good shit's happened, but oh, but it's all limited.

26:14 Oh boy, it's going it's going to be over soon.

26:16 And then I'm going to be sad that good[ __] only happened once.

26:19 How do I know all these things?

26:20 Because I'm a pessimist in here as well.

26:23 Ah, you didn't know that one, did you?

26:25 Ashkanazi Russian Jew, what do you think?

26:28 Anyway, sometimes my pessimism gets a little out

26:30 of hand and I have to learn to quiet

26:33 my mind so that the waves of pessimism start

26:35 receding and the low-key optimism of calm can reveal itself.

26:41 And I do that with the waking up app by Sam

26:44 Harris and I encourage you to give it a shot.

26:45 Link in description.

26:46 I think I'm bad at this monetization thing, but uh that's what I got.

26:51 See you guys next time.

26:52 Cheer up a little bit.

26:54 Peace.