Episode 791 Scott Adams Excerpt: I Will Rewire Your Brains to Relieve Anxiety

all right we're gonna change topics right now I'm gonna raise my hands in the air because later when I edit this I might I might add it down to the first part with the politics and just keep the second part that's coming up in the second part I told you I was going to cure some of you of anxiety related problems some of you may not believe that's true some of you probably think it's probable now all of you are going to have a different experience and some will have a profound experience some of you may cry some of the you may scoff a lot of you will just change the channel but let me go through my let me go through the presentation and you can leave whenever whenever you feel you would like to I'll give you this following warning I am going to be rewiring the brains of the people who stay I'm a trained hypnotist most of you know that and what I'm going to be talking about has some basis now none of it is dangerous there's no there's no risk of anything bad happening to you I promise you that likewise for those who have been watching me for a while there are two two things the hypnotists do they have already been accomplished I wasn't trying to do that we in this context but it happened one of them is credibility you have to have credibility in the hypnotist your therapist your doctor it helps I have credibility to many of you because you've been watching me for a long time and you wouldn't be watching unless you thought I have some credibility so the first part is satisfied for most of you second part is pacing this is what hypnotist do they match you in some way until you feel compatible with them and then whatever message comes from the hypnotist feels like it's something very comfortable and familiar because you've already you've already pasted them or matched them in some way now unintentionally wasn't what I was trying to do but those of you who have been doing the simultaneous sip those who have been watching me for a while have somewhat accidentally paced me meaning that you feel some comfort with me that's requirement number two so the first two requirements of hypnosis have been satisfied I'm not going to put you into a trance per se but I am going to have you go through a guided visualization which I think you will find in some cases profound in other cases you all feel I think so everybody will have a different experience from this all right let me give you some background this is called the pre talk in hypnosis this is also a part of the technique so I'm going to make you feel comfortable with what I'm going to do next as part of the technique alright here's some background I keep hearing from people and maybe you saw yesterday that that I had cured them of their Trump derangement syndrome prior to the election in 2016 or in some cases after and so many people have told me that independently they thought huh there must be something through that so here people had a specific kind of anxiety fear that the world would be destroyed by this orange monster and there's something I did or some things I did over time which caused people and and they're telling me I'm not making this up this is what they report to me lots of people lots of them lost their anxiety and felt comfortable with the president after they listen to me so that's one example of where I know based on reports from lots of people that they had a specific kind of anxiety that I cured but I heard an even more interesting example the other day and it came from somebody who who reported having a lifetime of anxiety crippling mental problem anxiety the kind of really ruins your life now anxiety disorders take many forms you could be afraid of and I may be using the the language a little different then maybe an expert in mental health would so take it with take it as an approximate so anxiety would describe somebody at a phobia fear of the public fear of danger fear of this might describe somebody who had OCD OCD is kind of anxiety because you feel if I don't you know do this thing ten times or whatever the number is some bad luck will happen so sort of this general anxiety fear many many of you probably are experiencing anxiety in the last several years that you had never felt before and there's something about modern life and about I don't know maybe it's about the the news business that gets people worked out maybe it's our our technology but whatever it is there's a gigantic whole ball of different anxiety related problems that people have so there's one individual told me a few days ago that I had cured a lifetime of anxiety problems and I thought to myself I did what was it I said and so I asked what was it I said that cured a lifetime of anxiety problems that all the medical professionals couldn't make a dent in and this person told me and I started to connect it with other things I knew and develop an idea of what causes it now let me give you some more background and I'll pull this all together I've talked and of course you've seen it in the news about how hallucinogens specifically psilocybin that comes from hallucinogenic mushrooms LSD and some other hallucinogens are being used by medical professionals to cure various anxieties from PTSD to all kinds of stuff and almost instantly in other words one dose in some cases is curing people of a lifetime of mental problems and there's so much of that and there's so many stories of it that it's considered one of the most exciting fields in mental now if you read up or if you've had the experience as I have of having any kind of hallucinogenic experience I did mushrooms in my 20s and I and I talked about how it was one of the most my most meaningful experiences and I read about other people's experience and the most common thing that people say is that they describe it as ego death ego death now if you've never experienced ego death and you've never experienced any kind of hallucinogenic experience at all that doesn't mean anything to you if I said hey ego death what does that even mean so everybody probably has sort of a personal experience that they they tend to describe that way it's exactly how I described it before I've ever heard anybody else use those terms it was exactly the words I used it's ego death now for our purposes I'm going to define your ego as that part of you that makes you feel special the thing that makes you feel like you're special and important that's your ego I'm giving you a very friendly definition you know so no no deep psychology here but the thing that makes you really feel special is your ego and let me tell you why this is important by an analogy now analogies have not good for persuading as I often say but they're good for explaining a new concept so here's the new concept suppose I said to you I would like you to take this potato just a regular uncooked potato and could you walk it half a mile that way and give it to somebody now forget about why you know why you need to deliver this potato that's not important but if I say could you take this potato and deliver it over there and you've got the time and the inclination to do that would that give you any exact sighting probably not because what's the worst that could happen you drop the potato well it's just the potato you lose the potato it's just a potato you you get busy and you don't make it with your potato what's the difference it's just a potato that person can get a new potato potato has no value now let's say I said instead of a potato could you take this priceless painting by Picasso and just just walk it down the street to my you know where it needs to go to the museum could you do that for me now let's imagine it's a world where there's no crime so you're not worried about crime you're only worried about the safety of the painting and all you're doing is just carrying it half a mile that way I'm giving it to the museum how much anxiety would you have if you were holding a priceless irreplaceable painting and you're just walking down the sidewalk with it you'd be plenty for worried because of the value of the painting you'd worry that a bird would do something that there a wind would come up and put some dirt on it you'd worry that you'd trip you'd worry that somebody come along you'd worry that a car would splash water on it it would be your fault you'd have to pay for it you'd have all kinds of things to worry about and it's only because the painting is so valuable the potato was not so what you need to learn is to be the potato don't be the painting be the potato now why is it that a psychedelic experience would give you Y go death and would turn you from somebody who's trying to deliver a priceless painting into somebody who says no care in the world it's just a potato and here's my hypothesis the hypothesis is that when you have the ego death you have nothing to worry about because there's nothing to protect and I think that the way that you come about that is indirectly the way that you get to that is by being in the hallucinogenic experience you see your environment completely differently for the first time and yet and here's the important part you understand it you see your world as if it's brand-new but you still understand it and by the way other people experience that explain it the same way now once you've experienced that you could have a completely different set of subjective interpretations of your environment what does that tell you about your old view of the world it was subjective it wasn't right more importantly it wasn't important the way you always saw the world before that first time you saw it differently was never real and it was never important and if the way you see the entire reality is unimportant and you just feel that you're part of that larger reality and that it is subjective you suddenly start to feel that you are not that important but here's the important part you never lose you never lose the sense that you need to you know take care of your life and your health and all that there's no danger you simply take your unreasonable fear of protecting yourself and it comes down to a normal well I have to eat today gotta sleep okay you know if I cross the road still got to look both ways there's no downside you still would be fully protective of yourself but you will just learn that you're more like a potato then like the priceless painting once you get that feeling that your ego is not important what would you ever be afraid of would you be afraid of the future no there's nothing to be afraid of because there's nothing at risk but a potato so I'm going to walk you through something a set of thoughts that will reproduce what is that what a what a hallucinogenic trip would do so I'm going to give you without the hallucinogens and therefore without the risk of that any hallucinogens might have there's a small risk but you won't have any of that I'm going to give it to you without that all right and bear with me it's going to take a little bit of setup and then and then we're going to do it the first thing you need - no and this will be helpful is that there are different filters in the world and you have probably experienced them for example did you know that in quantum physics the a particle that exists on the other part of the universe that has never been seen and never been measured in any way doesn't actually exist did you know that this is actual scientific truth matter the actual building blocks of our reality we know don't actually exist except as probability until a human or a machine or an animal or something that can see something and detect something until something is seen and detected it doesn't actually exist now all the things in your room around you exist in a sense because you're looking at somebody is measured it touched it looked at it but scientifically we know and by the way this is not any there's nothing controversial this this would be something every every scientist would agree matter doesn't exist until its witnessed by a machine or a person what's that mean well it probably means that there's some subjectivity to your perceptions let me give you some other examples religion how many people are walking around they have different religions if somebody is let's say a Hindu and they believe that they have reincarnated and are going to reincarnate and they're standing in the same room with somebody who's a Muslim or a Christian are they experiencing the same reality I would say no I would say no if you believe that everything that's happening to you is God's will that's not really the same reality as a person who thinks it's their own doing or the person who thinks they're in the simulation these are completely different subjective realities you also know because you've been following me for a while you know that in politics we can look at the same set of facts and see a different movie I call it the two movies on one screen you've seen in how a hundred times you see it every time anybody looks at a document I see this a crime I obviously a crime I'm looking at the same document so you can see in real time on the news every single day that people who are sincere and they're not lying in every case there are Liars of the news but they're not lying about their perception they are looking at the same stuff you are but they're seeing a different reality normal completely common once you understand that you can start to release on your preferred version of the world yeah you've seen it with the optical illusions like Laurel and Yanni that you could hear the Laurel or the ami you've seen the ones where you can think a different word and then the word you're hearing starts to sound like that word but then you can think of a different word and the sound you're hearing that's the same sound sounds like the other word you get you see lots of tests like that and again it's showing you that you worry that your impression of reality is subjective now here's another framing that will change your frame instead of seeing the world as there's you and then there's this reality that's sort of fixed and you're just looking at it think of yourself as almost like the person in the robots hat think of your body as a big old robot in this case it's a moist robot or biological robot but imagine yourself as a person in the control room inside your head you're looking at your eyes and you're controlling this big robot that is your body just think about that and then think about the fact that there are different filters as I call them on your perceptions and so sometimes your big robot body is hungry you know that you see the world differently when you're hungry things bother you that wouldn't bother you you're angry about things you didn't need to be angry about but you're not really seeing those things you're seeing it through a filter of your own hunger and it makes you angry sometimes likewise if you're tired that's a different filter likewise if you're an optimist you're seeing the world through a different filter if you believe you live in a simulation you're seeing the world through a different filter if you have a different religion it's a different filter once you start to understand that your filters are interchangeable and it has nothing to do with you whoever is you whatever is this thing called you your preferences your experiences your memories whatever it is it can be all kinds of different things in terms of how it sees the world but you don't really change not that much anyway what changes is your filter take your filter down hey this president is a big ol monster change the filter oh he's just operates differently now now I see it through a different filter this mental exercise of being able to see the world as a filter will D personalize things and give you very close to your escape route but we're going to take you all the way there in a moment and it goes like this are you ready here's the here's the payoff and next few moments some of you not all of you because everybody's gonna have their own experience some of you are going to have a deep experience in the next minute or two watch this all right I want you to relax I'm not going to hypnotize you but I'm gonna take you through some guided imagery you don't have to close your eyes in fact keep them open keep your eyes open take a deep breath loosen your shoulders and now I want you to imagine not as if it's true but just imagine that everything you see in your environment your room the device you're looking at the table the objects the whatever you were using to drink imagine them as if they're a virtual reality imagine that you're not in a real reality but rather you're in a virtual one now it's a special one because if you touch something you can feel it but imagine that's just an illusion and imagine without touching anything you just look around and you look at an object pick an object in your room and just look at it and imagine instead of it being real then it's a perfectly rendered a virtual reality simulation now watch how that makes you feel just feel yourself in the moment just looking at your environment don't think of anything else don't think of anything outside of your direct immediate experience look at them and imagine them as a virtual reality construct and see what happens do you feel it yeah some of you are already feeling it keep doing it stay in the moment stay in the moment the future doesn't matter just look at your objects look around you and imagine that they're not real they're subjective they're just like a virtual reality now do that and then repeat the first time you do it some of you will have a profound experience you see in the comments somebody says goosebumps somebody else no experience whatsoever for those of you who have had a lifetime of anxiety issues keep these thoughts in mind because it's the setup as much as the exercise think about life as filters think about your ego as unimportant worth protecting but it's not the be-all end-all just see yourself in a simulated subjective reality and know that you can change the subjective reality if you need to you have control you can see in the comments somebody is crying some of you not all of you some of you were just released from a lifetime of pain a lifetime of anxiety some of you just got released some of you will be released later you'll think about this and you won't be able to get it out of your mind and you'll repeat the exercise on your own you'll look around wherever you are you'll imagine it as a virtual reality and it will give you the same sensation that people have when they experience ego death and it will free you and that's all you need and I'll end it right there and you have a great life

Channel: Real Coffee with Scott Adams

Views: 53,790

Keywords: Anxiety Relief, Ego Death, Scott Adams

Id: nWhKDqwgyv8

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 18 2020