#192: A Flinstonian Perspective

So when we say we can predict it, we can pattern analyze your behavior, we're not saying that you're simple. We're saying that there's certain things that you love that you will choose even when faced with alternatives. Now, what changes that? Cops chasing me, I'm a criminal, I have blonde hair, I got to change to black hair. Or

Yeah.

I'm in a white car and I got to change to a black car. You get it? Those are the simple things, right? But the central focus of who you are, how you live, the things you like, what gets you off, what you enjoy eating. Those become your human behavior. They

Right.

become your personality profile, right? And your behavior is...

Welcome to the Left of Grag podcast. Hello, and thank you for tuning in to the Left of Greg podcast. I'm Brian Marin, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert Mr. Greg Williams, who the show was affectionately named after. Here on the Left of Greg show, our goal is to increase your advanced critical thinking ability through a better understanding of what we call human behavior, pattern recognition, and analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, you can check the episode details. If you have any questions or would like us to cover a specific topic. Please reach out to us at leftofgreg at gmail dot com. On today's episode, we are having a discussion centered around three questions that have been asked by some of our listeners. Those questions are, what drives human behavior in decision making? How do our past experiences shape our current behavior? And how do social influences shape our behavior? Although you can go into a lot more detail on each of these questions, we chose to discuss all three on one episode because they are all deeply related to one another in some manner. We appreciate those of you who reached out to us with these questions, and we encourage all of you to reach out to us with any other questions you may have. Please don't forget to follow us on social media. You can find the links in the episode details, and if you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends about it.

Good morning, Greg, on this wet and rainy morning for me. Finally, It's I think. three degrees here. No rain. I don't believe it Yeah. would call it rain if it was happening at three degrees. It No, would be called it's something not. else. But yeah, And that's Fahrenheit, you bastards. yeah. So we're going to be.

talking about a few things in general about

Yeah,

human behavior so we'll probably get into some maybe some specific cases or examples but there's this more today's kind of discussion is generalized and i wanted to have this with you because there's we get a lot of folks who write in an email and have some questions about things we always try to answer them specifically and then especially if you're on the patreon side we'll do we definitely go like hey here's your questions here's how we'd address it I said this is what it looks like but in general there people have a lot of questions and I get people that you know I meet or something find out what I do and when I have a questions there's general stuff that I look at and I always try to stay on top of it because I want to answer some of those in the way that that we do it and we see it and so today sort of the three general questions I kind of want to answer or discuss really I don't know if you're going to get a definitive answer but but an explanation I guess I should say say is there's three things and and the first one would be um what drives human behavior and decision making so we could talk about what defines human behavior versus other behavior and then decision making there's a whole science behind decision making right um then how do our past experiences kind of shape or impact our current behavior and then the third would be How do the social influences, how does societal, you know, shape or impact our behavior? So

Yep.

those are the three, and I'll put those in sort of the episode details as well so we can go back and maybe put some time markers on here when we get to it. So there's a lot of places we can start. There's a lot of things we could talk about in this, but before we even answer the first one about what drives human behavior and decision making, we kind of have to, I think, initially talk about sort of what people call. about genetics and personality of who we are sort of as a person and how that forms because that informs all of these things right so my my my personal behavior is uh affected by who i am as a person which comes from both nature and nurture right biology

Yeah,

my

exactly.

the electrochemical

Yep.

neurotransmitters in my head what the chemical makeup is which is different for me than it is for you slightly you know in some ways and then how i was raised and all those influences especially you especially the when you're young right those formative years even before you're a teenager are are the most formative for how your brain in a sense starts its like wiring process we'll say how it starts to create neural networks happens so so young and and you know we tie everything back to your survival and limbic Yep. system but i do want to start there so i'll actually throw to you greg to start and then we can sort of kind of go down from there if that if that makes sense and

No,

you know

it does.

mind i'm like

Well,

I might, I might interrupt you or say, hang on, you know, explain

yeah,

that or,

of course.

you know, give them like that.

So

So I

let's

won't throw to you.

use a Flintstonian perspective.

Flintsonian.

Let's let's let's look back because the idea for the question that you're asking, I have two sides of the same coin. I'll give you the first side. The first side is. The basic source of personality development is obviously heredity and environment. And when you talk about genetic codes, heredity means the genetic code that we inherit when we're conceived. So genes are passed on, hereditary characteristics include that of the donor, and then that code is passed on with the other donor, and now that continues to be passed on with those personality characteristics. fixed, attained through heredity, but shaped by environment. So environment means that societal influence that you're conceived into, yet we have to go further back and say that, listen, when you're first conceived and you're a zygote, was the mother or the host sad or happy or healthy or on drugs? So all of those contributed as well. Then when you're growing inside. then when you're pooped out and you're growing on the outside, so you're exactly right. And then there are key markers along your evolution from, let's say, a childhood to a late child to puberty, Brian. Oh, my gosh, the

Yeah,

change

this

in chemicals.

is huge.

And then

Yeah,

the

yeah, yeah.

brain of a teen compared to a preteen or a late teen.

Yeah.

So the very simple thing is together heredity environment form your personality. and your personality forms your behavior. So the other side of that coin, just very briefly, people argue, people talk to me all the time, but they bring up a shitty argument. They start to bring in stuff about their, you know, emotion meaning not clinical emotion, their personal emotions. Well, I don't feel that's as powerful or important as this. Well, you don't get a choice, okay?

I see what you're saying.

The way that you're raised. contributes to

Yes.

how you produce in a society and whether that production is good or bad for the rest of society. What I mean by that, there's an evolutionary imperative to live in teams, tribes, gangs,

Yes.

and cohab.

And real quick, you just explain, because evolutionary imperative, meaning it's imperative for the survival of the human species to have Exactly. cohabitation.

Exactly. So cohabitation. I'll give you an example. you cohabitate i cohabitate many of our friends cohabitate i could go down the list of people that don't that have a manifesto and

Yeah,

become a serial

yeah,

killer or

yes.

say that they're uh an insult what do i mean by that what i mean is it's healthy for you to cohabitate because my gut microbes make you sick and that makes you stronger and and my uh uh reticence to clean the bathroom drives you fucking insane and that changes how you teach our children about cleanliness. You So get what

no,

I'm trying to

no.

say. So from a biological code all the So way through to...

real quick, what you just said there is you went exactly what you mean from before even our genetic code and hereditary traits from our parents that we get literally in our DNA, you went one step. Before that, just in general, there's a general wiring sort of code for all humans. So you

started Exactly.

there and went, OK, well, we need others to survive, right?

Yes.

That's an imperative for literally. So there's the biology that underlies all of this is the same biology for all of us that is basically tied to keeping the human race alive. That's number one priority is to survive. Any organism. them is is wants to survive so as a human he did that then he said okay that goes into then we have my parents have their DNA and their hereditary markers that could mean like um that puts my eye color skin color hair color whether or not i have hair um you know all of that stuff to include the chemical makeup of me so maybe uh i don't produce as much dopamine as you do or oxytocin or cortisol or testosterone there's there's all of those in there and then you said that all informs how we act act around each other which then influences our behavior i love your bathroom example and you

Yeah,

know and that influences you know me and my wife mckaley i influence her which influences how we raise our kids so like it you just

it has to,

i

right?

i think that that's a great intro for what we mean when we say it which is also why we tie a lot of our stuff that we talk about back to survival and limbic system and that because everyone likes to have the debate is it you know nature versus nurture that you get You get rid of the versus. It's nature and nurture and

It has

they

to be.

influence each other. Now, when you talk about biological traits or hereditary traits, I would say that if I have some sort of hereditary trait that caused me like alcoholism is a good one. Like if I was, you know, an alcoholic or born

Quite

that way.

a door you said that. It's a good one.

Yes.

In your fair point,

No, it's

it's a, it's

a good example

a defining trait, Brian.

meaning. Like,

Yeah,

if you are, you know, if you have that sort of genetic makeup or predisposed to that,

yeah

it's very, very difficult. as a human to sort of overcome that or or fight that like it's going to be a constant struggle so sort of that what i'm trying to get at is that that you know biology nature if i was a if i was a gambling man i would say i would i would gamble on a nature over nurture for most of these situations i

Exactly. So,

wouldn't

no.

be always right but i would probably be right more than i'm wrong you get maybe it's only 51 of the time but But but.

I would tell you you're onto something and I would tell you this. Sometimes we look at something like a person that's predisposed to diabetes or a person that's predisposed to the gout. Those things don't happen accidentally unless you're like the dog in Cujo that gets bit by a bat and becomes rabid and then does all that other stuff. What happens is those things are put into the human code at certain parts in our development to create something to create. a smarter or a more resilient human or to disrupt something, to form a... genetic code that will burn out more quickly and not be as strong going forward and people hate that this is you get great questions i get the person sitting next to me in the airport and they say something like uh hey i read your stuff about the coolidge effect and that's total horseshit well no what

No,

it

it's

is is

an you explanation.

emotionally have

Yeah.

a bad reaction to something so uh really quick folks coolidge effect You're walking with your significant other, a breedable person that walks by you, draws your attention, and you actually turn no matter what you're doing and glance at that person's secondary sex characteristics. One, it's science,

Yeah.

so cut it out. Don't be thinking we're trying to be salacious. The second part is it's an imperative. You have to constantly look for a breeding model. to push your seed going forward. Now, I'm old. I don't look for those breeding models anymore. Why? Because it's unlikely that I'm going to breed and create progeny that's going to go forward. You get what I'm trying to say? So these are logical things. People look at me like I'm the Antichrist because I bring up something. No, one, stop naming biases because you're renaming the same ones over and over and look back at the true science here. Brian, what we're talking about is that hereditary characteristic of pick up the donors will take precedence all the way through the life cycle of that that family right Yeah. so therefore you say that when something upsets the apple cart like alcoholism that's a genetic twist a modification to the code that it's going to be hard to overcome yes every single day that you get up that's the most important day to influence the rest of your life and your family and how your kids see the world world or whether they're adopted or they're genetic. Why? Because if you don't constantly push back in between the lines, you know that little game with the balls and the eye and the cat,

Yeah.

you know, the little pellets that you get in, that's what life is. Life is designed for you to make little adjustments over your entire lifestyle. That's what behavior is. And if you have good foundational elements for your behavior and your personality, you'll succeed. guess what if you have bad ones brian you'll be a social pariah people will hate you you're not going to get those opportunities to breed all the time coolage effect isn't going to be as profound for you you know that's and if you get what i mean that that we never set out to insult somebody but there's a lot of times that we've had people that we know really well

Oh,

that come up to us and they're bent out of shape over science well

yeah, it's like, well, sorry,

what

I got up. Well, it's it's it's

it rained today you bastard you know yeah i get it

And these are factors that are out of control, out of our control. Like

Absolutely.

I never, I realized a few years ago, probably about six or seven years ago after trying for a long time is that. I'm never going to be able to dunk a basketball I'm only five

Took you that long, huh?

well let me explain why I'm

Why only on

five

earth?

foot ten and and so I was like doing a lot of workout a lot of plyometric stuff and and I got to the point where you know I wanted to build up was like man I wonder if I could touch rim and I could did it one time I touched a rim and I was like holy crap it's within reach mind you I can't palm a basketball I can't and so I'm like I'm gonna do this my goal is that I'm gonna be able to take you'll take a little ball and like dunk it in a hoop well then i started realizing like wait a minute to actually be able to get up to that height and jump that high your hand has to come up and over the rim and i'm like that's never going to happen

Exactly.

to me so so i i can't there's there's certain barriers to entry into different parts of society that you just

So your

don't

little Dr.

get yeah

of Island Moreau or Island of Dr. Moreau, they wouldn't be grabbing you,

no

you know what I'm trying to say, to steal you. feel your genes for the NBA no but that's a and listen there's another example we use storytelling we try to make stuff sticky by

Yeah.

by bringing up movies or film or those things that's the best way to learn this stuff because if you go in in a clinical sense and just go back and and like you know some of your patrons who are looking up zygote what happens it gets uh boring real quick and and then you start reading things and you go wow I don't truly understand why tyrosine is is you know uh responsible for making this net yeah don't

yeah yeah

settle down get the basic fundamental knowledge here and understand that it's going to drive you listen how do you think we do the best interviews with people how do you think that we watch and make uh predictions that are better than other people we go all the way back to that slinstonian and then we work forward because as you've said a thousand times uh uh what's the best predictor of future behavior

Yep.

your past behavior right so so i i love your bringing nature and nurture into this because again why does it have to be an argument nature and nurture are opposite sides of the same coin

Same coin.

and the same coin is what you got to put into the slot to get the candy or the soda you get what i

mean No,

you can't you can't put half a coin in you know

right.

so

So,

you're coming

so

out with the whole coin yeah

Okay, so that's sort of a good, I think, start to then maybe the first part of the question. So we kind of cover a little bit. that i mean and all of this stuff folks you can i mean obviously you can get a phd in 10 of the things we just talked about so

Yep,

you

absolutely.

could go like you said you go into it as far as you want um but there's there's certain rules that apply that you cannot change you can try but but it's or you you could influence it um but if you try too hard mother nature always wins mother mother gaia is is the is is the one whatever you want to call it Right. Right. God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, mother nature,

It's

whatever it

coming is, for you.

they always are going to win. And so but this goes to sort of that first sort of question is what drives human behavior and decision making. So we covered it sort of in a sense from there's there's nature and nurture, there's genetics, there's hereditary traits that influence this. So so what else drives our behavior and then sort of specifically our decision making?

Yeah, so if we want to go back and forth, maybe the best way to keep our op tempo, I'll go back and give just the clinical side of it and then we can discuss it.

Okay.

Because like on this one, it's a pretty big setup because

Yeah.

what drives human behavior and decision making?

Yeah, yeah, those are two.

Everything after the end,

I

it's

know,

like,

I

oh, you know. loaded

I

bastard.

know. Yeah, well,

So

decision making of its own is like, again, each one of these things are concepts we could give you an entire podcast on. So let's just try to see how we can loop it all together if we can. Okay.

And we'll drill down just the most basic chunk and then you and I can extrapolate. So emotion plus motivation create affect, which is effect, AFF instead of EFF. And people get bent out of shape about it. It's a clinical term.

Yeah.

Go look it up.

Well,

Put

the psychological

it on your

term

yellow pad.

affect,

Try to use it.

yeah. meaning basically kind of how your emotions influence. So real quick. So like kind of like psychology generally around talks about affect cognition behavior. which

Right.

is what you're basically what you're feeling what you're thinking what you're doing right so

Exactly.

so that that's kind of what you mean but affect also as in the verb how it affects something

Exactly.

so yeah

Because it'll have influence. So let's do emotion first. So emotion is the mood, the feeling, the emotional response that you have to something. So it's not reason or logic or knowledge based. You don't really know why. but you know that you feel better

feels up

because it's happening so that feel okay uh uh we could break down into the chemical side but if we don't if we just classify it by i feel warm when i'm around you i feel comfortable and less anxious that's an emotion okay

yeah or being a kid when i feel good when we climb the ropes in gym class

no no no yeah that's that's another one uh we chalk that up to your your father and his drinking All right. So I love your dad, by the way. John, don't hold it against me. So motivation. Motivation, again, clinically, psychologically, sociologically, how it works in science means the conscious or unconscious incentive that drives our direction, that foments our behavior. And then now we need the effect, which is the influence. So if we have the mood. plus we have the incentive, then what? Do those things drive us towards that becomes your affect. So we put them together,

Okay.

emotion plus motivation, psychologically, physiologically, that's going to guide our behavior and our behavior. Therefore, we guide our decision making just that that's the lowest level. So now we've got a good stable base to go from.

Okay. And I know you defined this actually on a podcast a long time ago. It was probably one of our first ones. But when you talk about. about human behavior so what's different than human behavior because human behavior um when you say human behavior there there's there's sort of intent behind that right or what

Yes.

what's what what's the difference between what do we mean when we say human behavior because it's separate and distinct from from an animal let's say you know i mean

Right.

human behavior there's some sort of intent behind it uh meaning it's behavior driven is driven by all of the things that we've so we've been talking about so far specifically what you just said does that kind of make sense or

No, it makes absolute sense. And this is why we get hung up about Maslow. Meslow. Meslow isn't wrong, but Meslow is the lowest level of potential simplification of a vast... Meslow

Of college kids

is like

in saying a college class.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

A small control group. But more importantly, Maslow is like somebody saying, you know, again, I know that we're retreading a tire here. But look, I saw it again where a person's having a class on Boyd's OODA loop or where somebody answered somebody on LinkedIn that came up with this really, really good idea. And a guy said, oh, it's just Boyd's OODA loop. You don't know what the F you're saying. Stay in your seat. You get what I'm trying to say. Eat your lunch. Because what you can't do is you can't oversimplify human behavior by just saying we have the need to breathe. Yes, of course, it's an imperative.

Yeah.

We have the need to breathe. Yes, of course, it's an imperative. So we have all these onboard systems that are there. But human behavior is so intrinsic and unique, like a thumbprint or a snowflake

Yes.

or a fingerprint, because your incentives, Brian, and your intent. is vastly different from mine so we have these basic

We

things

have the

we all understand

basic ones are all the same,

right

right?

identical

And then, yes,

and even

yes.

across culture even in in you know a thousand miles or six thousand miles away but those things that make you get up in the morning and value uh your hair or your uh uh uncontrollable uh public masturbation or or your you know uh lunch for hamburgers

Hey,

Understood.

I did my time and I paid my dues to society.

You did. And you look good with a tether program. But the idea, though, listen, every single one of us, what defines us, what makes us us, that's human behavior, right? And so when we say we can predict it, we can pattern analyze your behavior, we're not saying that you're simple. We're saying that there's certain things that you love. of that you will choose even when faced with alternatives. Now, what changes that? cops chasing me i'm a criminal i have blonde hair i got to change to black hair or

Yeah.

i'm in a white car and i got to change to a black car you get it those are the simple things right but the central focus of who you are how you live the things you like what gets you off what you enjoy eating those become your human behavior they become your personality profile right and and your behavior is uh repeated You

It

were deep

has to behaviors. be.

It has to be because scientifically, your brain will always choose the lowest caloric intervention to solve a problem. You know, if you could shit in your bed and not have to worry about, you know, Homer, that thing breathes for me. Wait a minute that, you know, those type of conclusions you would eventually make and people go, why? Because I'm a slovenly, you know, unshaved ape. No, it's because your brain doesn't want to waste calories because it. Because it continues to think that there's an emergency. Nye, there's

And

an emergency right outside my door that I have to be ready for and I don't want to waste any superfluous

so

calories.

that's the, again, it goes back to that's the sort of the underlying framework of all, you know, of all human behavior. And then like you just said, what makes me unique is what I've learned throughout my life and I've learned that through people either mimicking others or not doing what I've seen someone else do or learning. I think

Yeah.

it's the hard way and what I value. So like I want to get up and move like I have to I've trained myself to get up because and move my body. So I got up this morning. I did a couple minutes on the assault bike to warm up and I stretched to get myself ready for the day because I've learned I'm physically, mentally and emotionally better when I do that versus what. So even though I'm still tired and I'm groggy and I don't want to do it. it like i have forced myself because i know the outcome of that but then because i've done do things like that over time it gets easier to do it i don't think about not doing it now i'm just waking up and i'm two minutes into that assault bike i'm like oh where am i you know what i mean oh that's right i'm already in my warm-up for the day right so so those things are make me unique versus what someone else's morning routine is to where it's you know what i'm gonna sleep until the absolute last second i have And I have to run out of the house to get to work. There are some people that do that, and that's unique to them. And that's what makes our behavior different. But those underlying causes or those underlying framework, the underlying literally neuroscience behind it, we get to influence that. But that DNA that's sort of going in the background, that operating system is the same.

Exactly. So let me add a little bit of complexity because you were spot on with every one of your comments. And folks, folks don't just think that things that you do repeatedly form a habit it's much deeper

Yeah,

than that

it's way right deeper

okay

than that.

so i want you to think about growing up brian back in chicago and having your little brother standing next to you and both of you got caught for the same thing and here's john maron on one knee okay uh ready to give you a pair of irish sunglasses right and you were the bad guy in this and your brother with his hands behind his back Yeah. and his head down got away with it that was two brothers with the same genetic code with a father with the same genetic code in the family but you had two vastly different outcomes so your life from that moment on from that nanosecond on changed

That's

And your relationship with your brother changed forever.

a great example because so one, my brother's eight years younger than me, right? So that's a big gap, right?

Right.

So and obviously his personality is very, very, very different than mine.

Exactly.

And we still even though he's like twice my size. size he's like the same but we're we also are very good at the same things like there are certain things in the gym or something that we do that we're both like naturally like oh i could always do this and like oh yeah so could i there's all and then there's random little things we'll find like that we both have very very similar things yet

Right.

have if you met us we've been at i i was hanging out with him years ago when he was still in the military too down in pacific beach and we had to prove to people there were people like you guys aren't brothers like and they did people literally thought we're thought

Right.

we were making this up and lying we're like are you kidding me like and and so that's that's a that's a great uh a point because it's like twins too it's like the story i tell about my my buddies back in chicago mike and pat same thing they're they're they're twins right

Right.

and and they're two vastly different people but in some aspects they're they're exactly the same and i think that that goes into kind of explain what you're talking about and how we

Exactly.

get

But I would go to to those people that have been listening since the beginning. Thanks for sticking with us. When you talk about hereditary and genetic similarities, I can't use recombinant DNA. I could use that to link you and your brother together and find out that your sister or your father were involved in a homicide, right?

Right.

But I only have a bit of genetic code. I can put it in a blender and go backwards or forwards in time and figure out who my likely profile suspect is. the emotional okay and the motivational that create just Brian Marin are vastly different in that family and and for each time you have one of those experiences that rich tapestry of life changes you

Yeah.

and so when you're talking about your decision making that uh getting caught with your little brother doing that thing but you being blamed for it and then coming back and saying you're the older brother you know You know better

You

than all the

know better.

litany things that go with it change how you will process similar instances in the future. No two things are going to be the same, but a situation is going to come up and it's going to hit that mental file folder and you're going to go close enough. These things are starting to happen. How did I handle it before? So how you handle situations before and the outcome of those situations are largely going to drive what your decision making is going forward. And what do I mean by that? If you leave your door open and run from your car, you're not coming back to the car. You left the car running. You're

yeah

not coming back

yeah

for

or

the car.

you're either coming right back in the next few seconds or you're never coming back right

You ran a short distance and then went to ground. Not going to continue to do that. You're going to get caught somewhere by the dog that's going to catch you under the porch or by the jacuzzi. Your behavior is limited in scope, and you're saying, yes, but we have free will. Yeah, but you don't have a bunch of file folders. You only have a limited number of file folders that you can draw.

And the more... I guess the more that that more of a survival situation you're in, the less options you have and you go primitive, right? So those examples you just gave, like I can't I'm not going to come up, I can't solve calculus on the fly when there's a police officer chasing me, but I can think about my survival and I can base it on. So this is goes goes right into the second part of that question about decision making. So it was

Yes.

what drives human behavior and decision making. It's kind of a shitty question. I'm sorry for posing it that way.

Oh,

Yeah,

it is, though.

but our

It is. We've got to acknowledge that.

behavior and our environment and everything we've talked about so far for the last 30 minutes or whatever it is. It informs and influences our decision making, does

Yep.

it not? So what is – I guess we could start with like what is decision making because there literally is decision science you

Yeah.

could study and go in

and And yeah,

ad nauseum.

take your time and do your homework. We're not going to go there. We're going to give you a basic street level definition that makes you smarter and stronger and harder to kill. So I'll give you one. Okay. It's three degrees. I had to go out and walk the dog so the dog takes a poop and goes to the bathroom. So dog much likes fur and inside and warm and happy. Okay. So first of all, getting to the threshold and the dog having to decide it's three degrees, then the dog going outside, then the dog finding the location. So I'm looking at what I'm wearing and I've got a hat on. I've got a pair of gloves on. I've got a jacket on. I've got my boots on. I've got boots that are in the other room that I got right by the door to go on. Why? I took the time knowing it was three degrees and I planned. to go outside with the dog not knowing how long it would take then I think of myself back in Detroit Brian when I was 12 years old and I was waiting for the bus and I was headed to Grant Jr. High School or East Detroit

Yeah.

High School and it was cold as shit in Michigan but I wasn't wearing a jacket you know why because I wanted to show off my ripped chest with my polo

Yeah.

shirt to all the little girls and boys that were there right and even though I was cold and I was shivering I had my hook bag jammed with my jacket my act

Yeah.

why so so my decision as a child was based on me showing that i was resilient and viable and i was a breedable male even though i was 12 and i didn't know why i was doing it brian okay and friction was giving me the erection i didn't understand all that but my decision was based on those factors in that environment at that time and at that place mine this morning to take the dog out were based on my view of the world at this time in this place in this environment. Sorry, decision making is driven by those, if you're a thinking human, because there are certain people that in our society, and many of them are in prison, that go on, I want immediate gratification. So that's not a decision.

Okay.

You see, it's a poor decision,

right? Well, okay. So, so that, that, no, no, no, that, that, that's a. That's a good example when we're talking about decision making in general. We always tie decisions sort of some in some way can get tied to, like you said, survival or basic human needs within

Yep.

a given context. So when we're looking at decision making, you have to look at it. In what context are we talking about? So you were growing as a kid. Maybe I'm a CEO of a company trying to make a decision based on new incoming information, a commander on the battlefield, you as an individual going,

Okay.

how should I approach this? So you sort of have to define the context to really dive deep into it. But what you brought up a great point is sort of the lower level of education, emotional development. and training and life experience I have, the less informed decision I will make. So you go back to like a lot of people in especially prison population or mental health issues. It's like, what do I need? Right? fucking now there's

Exactly.

never a thought past that there's never a thought past what do i need right now because i'm tying everything to survival and so that's how i'm going to make these decisions oh you know what uh they saw me now i gotta kill them because i can't go to jail you know i mean these are very very very very primitive decisions there's not a lot of thought put

And

into

I'm

that right

already going to jail, so I might as well carjack that next vehicle. And I'm already going to jail, so I'm going to kidnap and delay it. So I can smoke

And someone

the bong, you know, whatever.

in those moments,

Yeah.

and this is why, so that moment right there, it's mostly going to be, the decision is going to be made based on the immediate survival needs of that individual versus I'm sitting here reading through a bunch of stuff, Greg, and we're going to approach a problem and I'm reading through and I'm thinking about it and I'm taking notes and maybe I'm going to. I'm going to I'm going to call you and ask you for your opinion on this. That's a much more informed decision because, one, I have the time clearly in that example to make it and I have some distance from the problem so I can make a more informed decision

Yes,

versus I'm right here. It's up in front of me. This guy just got up and slapped me and said, what are you going to do about it, bitch? OK, I'm not you

it may

know, you

be parallel,

can't really but do anything.

it's going to be different.

So now everything that we talked about with our. hereditary traits our environment how we grew up is still going to inform what decisions I make and how quickly I can sense making

People's

problem-solving

core, just like a Christmas tree, stable stalk or core or center, and then these limbs, these branches that go out. So this core will largely stay the same, but your branches are going to grow and reach for the sun or hang down to the ground. based on the environment, nature, nurture, and experiences. So you're If in your family you don't have a lot of mentors around you in

Yeah,

the house,

yeah.

you have to get them in society, school, church, somewhere else, or you won't be as diverse. So when we talk about diversity, the more diverse you are, the more different friends you have, the more different foods you eat, the more different experiences that you garner. You're going to be vastly. better at decision making than a person that doesn't have the same amount of file folders now there are canny people that only have three file folders

Right.

right and go up to you with your 52 but guess what they were brought up by their bootstraps hard on the street and had a fight for everything and they're so remarkable that we make movies about them we write books about them and that's definitely not a good life having to fight for absolutely every you know inch of you know moving forward that you have to get are your food so what are we saying we're saying that if you want to make better decisions you need to be more diverse because the more diversity means the more file folders means the more decision points that i've seen right

And more perspective.

and i can yeah and now i can now i can say time is less important than precision Because some decisions cost us our lives or our friendships or our jobs. So we have to be more precise. And what do we learn? The gift of time and distance means if I'm more diverse and I have more options and I can go through more file folders in the same amount of time, get it? The same amount of relative time,

And

then

there's

I'm going to be smarter.

not only, obviously, an entire field of decision science, but then there's, you know, every. self-help guru or

Yep.

book or thing or whatever fad or trend that people aren't and i'm i'm bashing them in a joking manner because they're basically all the same and just someone's come up with something that they're like okay great you cracked open a few textbooks or a few books that were written a long time ago and you found something that's applicable today that's what we're talking about right but but the the idea is you know what they're trying to do is sort of make your it's trying to get you to make a more informed decision so if i look at Look at we make this. I don't know. I don't know how many decisions a human being makes in a day, but it's probably in the thousands, tens of thousands from small to big to whatever constantly. And we don't ever put a lot of thought into how we came to that decision or why we did certain things. And so there's all of this complexity behind

Right.

it. And based on the situation and who you are is how you're going to recall maybe something from your past or. or, you know, have some sort of heuristic that you've built over time to allow you to make a quick decision. But all of this goes into it. So it can be incredibly complex until

Yes.

you sort of put the squeeze on someone and you put them in a sort of a survival situation, then it can come pretty, pretty simple sometimes. Does that make sense?

No,

Or maybe,

absolutely. So so you go to a party and you're holding it together and you're not drinking too much and you're not smoking. smoking the reefer and you're not doing whatever now it's legal i guess you can go do it and then all of a sudden you're saying hey i'm doing pretty good this is part of my new year's resolution then you go down to the basement where the bathroom is and coming out of the basement you see your best friend's girlfriend and she's giving you the eye And you immediately abandon all of those file folders for rational decision-making and everything else. Why? Because certain things in your environment scream to you and they are decisions, even though you don't think of the long-term ramifications because of the immediate gratification. So it separates us. is what we have to do is stop and go, this decision is weighted more heavily than other decisions that I made tonight. I'm not going to drink and drive. That's a heavily weighted decision. I'm not going to bang my best friend's girlfriend like a Salvation Army drum. I'm not going to do these things that have long-term repercussions. And Brian, that's what separates us. That's where you get the human behavior because a dog or

Yeah.

a deer aren't going to make those choices. It's

no

just a different

that's

kind of taste?

the the animal comparison is always great because

It

it's

is.

like it's like my wife i love her to death but i have to tell her like hey you gotta stop feeding the dog other you know like you stop giving it food it's like well i sometimes i'm not sure like because she always comes up and begs and like is she hungry did she get enough food i was like the dog will i if i dumped out the entire bag of dog food it would eat the it would try to eat the whole thing to the point where it would throw up like it's never going to stop

then wanting scan the barcode to eat yeah and steal your credit card to order more food. Do you remember Uncle Buck? How many times a day does a dog like that eat, yeah you know? okay okay That's line spot. okay so uh no but that that's a great example of the you know we you know doing the the animal versus human stuff is is great because we're sort of that animal in a primitive sense yet we have a prefrontal cortex we Yep. have a developed brain to where we can we can do a little bit higher level thinking and understand intellect where they rely on instinct but everything we sort of just just kind of talked about actually leads in and again this is why each one of these sort of questions are interwoven basically but how do our past experiences you know shape 101. or affect or impact our current behavior so that's everything everything that we're talking about because those experiences add to we always call them sort of those file folders but Yes. if you think of you know your brain creating a neural network of of you know storing information and then recall that for use later and it's got this little network in the wiring well like you just said the more experiences i have the more more uh more experiences i can draw from uh the more uh You know, the more I practice something like this, recalling different things or the more times I try, I take the time to understand something complicated, right, the more things I can rely on and say, hey, Yep you know what, that's not.

This isn't the same situation, but this reminds me of a time when I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the guy said this and that led to this. And now, even though it's 10 years and 10,000 miles apart, I can use that. So I

And

could pay

frame

that.

that forward.

Yeah,

And Brian,

every.

you just hit on why memory blows.

Yes.

Memory blows because memory is designed to create a panacea, a panorama rather, of file folders that you can choose from. And memory... memory changes to put you as the lead player, to put you as a more important person. And you go, why would it do that?

Oh,

Because you

you

have

are.

an egocentric view of the rest of the world. And the less you worry about other people, the more you can focus on you. You're the most important part of your universe. So when you think about decision making, it's rare. And that's why we make movies and write about it for somebody to land on a grenade. To save the rest of the troops or to go into a house over and over to save a kids

Yeah.

from a burning fire. That's rare, Brian.

But

OK,

that's

that that is.

done through training. You override the natural need for your survival in order to do something. But that's typically done, those examples especially too, like the fireman running in a burning building, someone running into a house where people are getting shot. Though you're overriding something because you've trained to that standard.

But it does happen rarely

Yeah.

and occasionally, okay,

Yes.

in society where somebody

Oh,

without thinking

yeah, yeah, does yeah. Yep,

it.

yep.

So that shows that we have the capacity for that,

Yes.

which also shows that we have the capacity for self-harm or suicide.

Yep. That's

You

my next

get what I'm trying to say?

point

So there's

now. Yeah.

your decision tree, let's call it, right?

Yeah.

And you look at that and you go, well, why would somebody? Well, listen, why wouldn't they? Based on the amount of information that they had taken in at a certain time. That's why the best. way to spot somebody that is thinking about it is what they're giving away. They're stopping their social intercourse. They're giving away things that were very important to them. Why? Because there's no future plan. You see what I'm trying to say? So when we're thinking about our survival, our survival is to protect us because we have a future. Even if the future is sitting on the couch. watching TV with my loved one. You get what I'm

Yeah.

trying to say, vacillating and getting old and fat and not caring. That's a future. That's what we have to be on the lookout for. So any anomalous behavior in the arch that you created from past experience to current behavior, future behavior and decision making, we have to encounter that as well. What factors in that person's life led them to think that suicide was a better option than, you know, going and getting mentored or counseled or,

Yes.

you know. You know, coming up and saying, hey, I think I'm going to blow my brains up.

And so, you know. Everything we've experienced in life affects our current behavior, every Absolutely. single thing that we've had. And we don't always weigh our experiences in a logical manner. Well,

Exactly.

we never really do it in a logical manner. We do it, you know, based on how it affected us electrochemically, meaning what was the emotional response I got during something will inform and affect my behavior in the future. or in the future given a similar situation especially if i don't you know and it ties back to survival it's like people who have you know bad post-traumatic stress or survivor's guilt or anything like it's like okay well then i'm going to start to avoid these large areas with a lot of people gathering because that starts to affect me and i don't like so so my brain's trying to say hey that's kind of close to what happened that last time something really bad happened so we're going to want to stay away from that you're going to

Yep.

want to protect it's trying to protect you but in protecting you it can be it it's it's simple it's a simple way to protect you but it's not a good way in terms of living your life right or in terms of of having a fulfilling life it can negatively affect your emotions and your negative emotions will then affect your behavior and that cycle will continue that that becomes a feedback loop that builds on each other so all of those things from our past whether it was good whether it was whether it was bad, whether it was funny, whether it was sad, it literally affect everything that we do on a daily basis in our current behavior. So it's all of the genetic traits and the hereditary traits and our environment and our experiences, all of that can inform, which is both, it's a double-edged sword, right? It sucks because if I've had a series of negative experiences and that's the way I view the world, it's going to be hard to get out of that loop because that's what I know. No, and my brain sticks with familiarity. But what it also shows is you can change behavior.

You

You can can change the way you things think,

think,

act,

yes,

and feel.

yes.

And rapidly and throughout your life, even at an old age, neuroplasticity can happen, right? You can rewire yourself, your brain, those connections in a way to think, act, and behave differently than you did before. Is that it? I mean,

That's

yeah.

spot on. And that's why you got to get rid of this gosh damn New Year's resolution mindset. Memory is biased. Memory is biased. So you have to resort to the use of HBPRNA. and let that guide you. Let that be your template or prototype so it becomes a heuristic for how you see and how you make your way through the dissonance that you're going to be experiencing with memory and emotion triggers in your environment every day. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that you can read the environment. Compare that to the positive or negative feedback loop that you've created over your years, and this is why we have to teach kids how to do that. Like, meditation is great. But it doesn't go far enough, okay? We've developed these beliefs out of necessity, so we have to drive a response metric. This is the response metric. When I see a template match on this, I can't immediately think that this is always going to be the answer. I have to compare it. I have to compare the known unknown against the baseline of what I'm watching. I also can't come in and be so willy-nilly, your favorite term, that when I see something in my environment, that I assume it's a prototypical match and force it to go into an ice cube tray. It, life moves, it's particles, it's waves, it's constantly evolving and time is shifting. Time isn't a constant. We create a constant

Yeah.

with time. If we then look at the lens of our past experience and a best case model of a... a subject matter expert model we're going to make better decisions and we're going to rise like cream to the top all boats rise with the perfect tide or whatever that is blah blah you look guys you know uh but you get where i'm going so so you're talking about behavior modification why behavior modification is not uh brainwashing but it is brainwashing

Yeah,

because

it is.

what you have to do is you have to choose your mental model and make sure that the mental model uh is one in line with your beliefs and two in line with your needs and that's

yes

where Maslow didn't go far enough you

no that's

get what I'm trying to say exactly

a that's a great example of what you mean when we when we sort of bash Maslow in a way it's it's it's not it's like hey this would have been a great discussion I don't think it should be something that turned into a theory and taught to people like you mean it's or this

it was the Roy G. Biv what Maslow did is go hey I've noticed that there's a consistency to color and so And somebody comes and goes, yeah, that's Reggie Bibb. And he goes, holy shit. And that became his entire life. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. But wait a minute. But there's there's infrared. There's ultraviolet. There's there's there's there's all And if this other I spectrum put, you here. know, yellow and blue make green. Yeah. Right. So so the idea is that, you know, what we don't like is people stating the painfully obvious and like that. That's why, you know, folks, I don't know if you know, I'm going to ask because I sent a thousand messages to Brian a day. And I suspect that Brian reads them and has my reaction to everything. So my worst is platitude. So some soothsayer on LinkedIn will write that, you know, more people affect your outcomes. And that's the same bullshit as it takes a village to raise a child. Yeah. So what they do is they take it, they rewire it, right? You know what I'm saying? Be the change that you want to see. Yeah, And then they put their name at the bottom. and and i'm sitting there going okay if you're a self-help guru and you're not writing your own shit and i'm not quoting you then Yeah. we have a problem that's what i'm talking about here because what happens is we want to go for that low-hanging fruit we want to go for that uh you know how uh spinners uh to catch trout and fish were invented. An Irish or Scottish guy, depending, they're still fighting about that, was in the boat, hand in lunch, dropped his spoon in the water, and noticed as his spoon twirled down, fish were striking at it and goes, oh my gosh, now I got a new thing. Brian, that's genius. So build off of that, and you'll always have a business, daredevil lures, all that other stuff. But if you're building off of this ethereal thought of somebody had in the past,

Right.

you're not going to be able to behavior modify. Because guess what? At the end of the day, it's hollow. It's a big box of Montana air.

You

So you got

have to

to have

it's it's

structure.

it's habits of thought habits of action right i mean you if you if you don't you you can read all the books you can say all the mantras you do all that stuff but if it's not you're not changing your behavior you're not going to see that change or you're not going to uh really you're not going to really benefit from all that right i mean

Yep.

it has to be both and they can influence each other that's the thing about behavior your behavior is obviously influenced by your thoughts and then your thoughts are then influenced by your behavior so that's a feedback loop so it can be a negative feedback loop or it can be a positive feedback loop it can

So negative is good, though. Negative

yeah

is good because I used a negative feedback loop to quit smoking. Positive feedback loop can also be bad because we talked about it yesterday. yesterday with one of the finest scientists i know two doctors on the call that we were talking with and we talked about the gym equipment in the basement and

Yeah.

and if it's used to hang your laundry okay then you had a positive feedback loop i know that i want to go down and work out and be stronger and be healthier and do all that other stuff but it's hard so instead it's by the washing machine that's where i'm going to hang my linens you get what i'm trying to say to dry so you can have the best intentions brian You can have the absolute best intentions, but if it's not coupled with action with that decision and

Right.

with that motivation and emotion, then you're never going to get anywhere. You're just going to. Yeah. What do they call that? A silly heart. Another Uncle Buck reference.

so

I'm on Uncle Buck today.

yeah

I ate a

yeah

giant candy

sometimes

sandwich it's for lunch.

a hat maybe

It's

it's a

the hat.

so

What's your name?

so

Buck? So.

so that kind of so so on that then then i guess the third one we we did want to discuss is how do the social influences shape impact or affect our behavior so sociologically and and i'll start just in general

Yep.

It's fucking huge like meaning the people around us you could be in your own head in your own mind alone in your house an amazing wonderful human being who thinks great thoughts and

Yes.

wants to do great in the world and even trust in the situations depending on the context you'll do things that you you if five minutes ago i'd ask you hey would you ever do this you're likely going to say no and can never picture yourself doing it but those those especially the younger you are those social cues the environmental things and sociologically and what everyone's thinking and doing around you found you is is a massive impact on on the decisions you make on your behavior how you react to things and you you could see all the different studies that i know the big ones people like oh the bystander affect this and they kind of get it wrong when they explain it they get it wrong when they explain it like it just or i think they get it wrong they say oh because it's it's the it goes back to the remember the the woman in new york who was brutally murdered and supposedly everyone in the apartment saw which if you actually dig into the story none of that's fucking true and and it really didn't happen that way and someone did call the police and it did but but it creates a story and then we have this whole you know body of work behind it and i i think it sort of misses the point and and what i'm saying is that you know it's like if you're in a crowd of people and someone starts acting a certain way or oh remember we were talking to the one woman another doctor brilliant person that that school that we're at and she said yeah like we're standing here and this guy's just it's just berating this woman and looks like he's about to physically

Yep.

assault her and everyone's standing around looking and no one's doing anything okay sort of that bystander fact everyone's looking around taking their social cues and then what did she do so i

One thing.

i jumped out of my car i said hey stop what do you you know and i yelled something and then what did the crowd do well all of a sudden they got in and now they're helping her out fix the situation so so when we talk about that that so i just think it's a good anecdote to explain How

Yeah.

strongly we are affected

But

by

look

those things.

at social influence now and look at fast food restaurants. It's absolutely okay to take a swing at the counter person, to jump over the counter, to throw your food, to act that way.

I've seen it before.

It's

I'm mimicking not, it,

but now

but I've

I'm,

seen it,

right.

yeah.

So in a closed environment, Maslow, in your class with just your students, you can have social influences that are a detriment to the rest of society. That small experiment in that McDonald's or at that drive-thru is going to race across the country, Brian. Why? Because we model bad behavior, but we also can model good behavior.

Good behavior,

We right. determine our needs, therefore adjust our thinking, and then develop our individual personality traits to achieve whatever desired outcome. The virtual outcome, the desired outcome we have to build towards. So how do we do it? we go today I'm tired of my job so I want to get a better job so

Yeah.

I'm going to dress for success well there's a great thing but I'm also going to rewrite my resume well there's a great thing and I'm going to do what we want is we want those things to change by just thinking about them and we see success stories of other people that write books or have movies or something And

Right.

we think those things came easily to them. And what did we read yesterday, the win Wednesday? Gosh darn, Brian Willis wrote, you know what we don't do? We don't see how many times the orchestra practiced before they played

No,

that one

we don't.

that was recorded. We don't see how many cut, reset that

Yeah.

went into that last movie that you want. That's life, Brian. Life is that we have to adjust. what we do if we expect a different outcome and if we just allow social influences to to take a lead then what we're going to do is we're going to constantly be chasing something we're going to get blue hair and say i got blue hair because i want to be an individual and there's a thousand people with

Yeah.

blue hair i'm going to get a mullet because i want to i'm going to get a tattoo you see what i'm trying to say and all those things are fine people i'm not making fun of you or forgetting but what i'm trying to say is who are you what you want to become is what you have to work on every fucking day

But the reason social influence is so powerful, it's because humans learn through mimicry. we that's

Right.

how we learned growing

Just

up i

like

mimic yep

Jane Goodall's monkeys with the mirror and with the stick, with the ants.

i

Exactly.

i mimic what my parents did i mimic what my siblings do i mimic what my friends do because i have to learn how to navigate the world so

And

when

now

i'm

you're

especially

spending more time where? Are you spending more time with your family and talking to the kids at the kitchen table? Or are you spending more time on social media, right? which

That's

you're going to be you're going to look at it and say it's my mentor hey tv raised me as a kid because my mom and my aunt went shopping on saturday morning my dad was at work on service calls so i sat in front and watched sir graves ghastly and old black and white horror films and that shaped my destiny it shaped how i see the world this is why i use movie references constantly you know i love old film and i love horror film okay something happened to create that now i can either nurture that and and and help that make me successful or i can just be a vegetable and look at that and go i'm never going to go any further my

Right.

life blows i can't get out of it come on

Well,

no but you're right the influence becomes from the societal uh pressure yes

no, it is. And this is why a lot of people can can make those decisions. They get caught up in the moment, you know, and it's like, OK, like I suddenly went to a protest exercising my First Amendment right, which everyone in the United States. they just allowed to do and it was peaceful at first and then things got heated then yeah i ended up punching someone or throwing or it's like okay like you're you're

We

taking that

rolled

from

over

zero

a cop car.

yeah

How the hell did that happen? Right,

yeah

right.

exactly where'd you get a grenade from you know i mean like you know you killed

Killed

the guy

a guy.

so so

That escalated quickly.

no and

No,

and

no, no, right on.

and you because they're so so powerful because like everything you even talked about the beginning sociologically we have to fit in with with a group we have to be there

It's

is no

an imperative.

there is no self-made people like i hate that term it's like oh this guy is self-made no he learned from everyone who showed him what right looks like and everyone who showed him what wrong

Every

looks like and

punch he threw and

and

every punch he took.

and and then and then the choices that person made so everything that we're talking about makes up a lot of how humans behave now

Absolutely.

it still comes down to choices that's

Yep.

the beauty of all this you can either do really well or really poorly based on those choices and those are decisions that you make it goes back to the decision making but everything sociologically especially this is why you constantly see you know you gave the the fast food example i see this on social media media people going crazy at mcdonald's i go holy crap that's ridiculous these people out of their minds all these you know you can explain in a number of different ways other people see that and go now i have a file folder now i

Yes.

have an idea the next time someone messes up my order at mcdonald's i'm going to do that i now have a choice that i didn't have before and

So watch

so yeah

the trend with news media, Brian. News

they

media

already people constantly

used

mimic each

to other be, here's the thing. They used to be, I want to do an interview. Yes. How are you? Even Bill Maher, who I've grown to love, has manipulated his environment. And yeah, sometimes they're aggressive or they disagree. But now what it is, is the talking heads on the news channels go after a person. They ambush that person. They're disagreeing. Well, that's not right. Well, you're a liar. OK, why? Because that got a bump in the ratings. And because it got a bump in the ratings, which means money, now everybody's going to do it. And they're all going to flood to that. And it's going to increase the bad behavior because now you're going to think that you can argue with your teacher. Now you think you can

Right.

tell that bus driver off. That's not how society works. So societal influences can create again what Brian said, the positive or the negative feedback loop. And you don't want to be at the epicenter when somebody goes timeout, that ain't right, and pulls a gun, right, or rams a car. That's where anxiety manifests. anger which manifests sometimes into rage no of

and then you see that you see that behavior this is why like i have my and i'm sure people have studied i actually should look into it because i'm sure people have studied it and written about it and everything but like but why i think like these reality shows are far worse for society than anything else because well

course they are right

but that also goes into your brain all right when you're watching like you're the movies you watch when you grew up or tv shows or something you'll get into it and you may you may see some similarities between you and the characters you may want to be that or see some similar you you some similarity in what's going on and and your life but but at the end of that your brain knows it's a show it's a movie that's why scary movies work right because at the end

That's

we know the lights are going to come back on well

And

with those

I'm

you're

going to

kind

walk out of the theater and go home.

right Exactly. but with the reality shows which is also now following people and seeing stuff on social media Your brain goes, well, wait, it's a reality. This is real life. At the end of the day, it doesn't understand that this is not how humans actually behave. So you use that to mimic that stuff. But you'll see that mimicry is so strong. Recently, right before the holidays, unfortunate, there was a Chicago police officer that killed themselves. What

Right.

immediately happened after that?

A

Two

couple.

more killed themselves. Do you think that's a coincidence? No. I look at that and go, well, if they can't take it and they're the same as me and that's what they did and they're not able to get out of the situation that they're in, well, how the hell am I going to be able to get out of it and now

Exactly

becomes

what's

a viable

happened in

option.

the society right now, the two things that are most prolific right now are hatchet attacks and machete attacks, two homicides with machetes, two different parts of the country in two days. a hatchet attacks during from Christmas till New Year's. I can't count how many there were. Somebody's going to go, well, why? What was the motive? Stop for a minute. Understand it's a trend. And once you see the trend, human behavior is like a fuse.

well

It has to play

what

out

before happens

it's going to

after

be safe.

every school shooting there's an immediate increase in them or there's people that now get caught bringing guns yeah that's always happens immediately following that then someone goes all right hey let's let's actually do that now or let's Some sort of threat happens. It's going to. This is why those things occur.

Exactly.

It's how, you know, we how primitive humans really are at

Exactly.

a base level.

We learn by what?

Very

We learn

primitive.

by testing our environment. We test our boundaries. We push, we feel, we learn. So obviously when we have something so powerful that can have a direct effect on our attitudes or decisions like social media, we have to. be in fear of it you know what i'm saying

Yeah.

but be in fear of the weather we understand the weather but

Yeah,

there's

but

still

we're,

people

yeah.

that die be in fear of the water floods kill people people still haven't learned how to swim what are we thinking so so uh it's it's fear is healthy

feel Yes.

fear is one of the smartest healthiest triggers environmentally that you have because if you're trained uh and you get fear you should say It's not whatever is giving me fear must be some pretty

Must

badass stuff.

be important.

If

Yeah

it I'm pretty trained, I better focus on it. If you're untrained, fear is to guide you to get back to the cave so you can, you know, build a wall or build your strength or, you know, enlist the aid of friends. So that's all we're talking about. We're talking about life is pretty simple when we break it down that way. And specifically here, when we understand that there's certain rules, what you did today, Brian, and I applaud you for it is you gave us certain rules. To live by these things influence our outcomes and our decisions,

Right.

but therefore if we affect them early

Yes.

enough, we can make a change, right?

No,

It

and that's the key to sort of all of this, and that's why literally our company motto is training changes behavior. Training

is every

is not something that has to be formalized and written in a lesson plan like you're training yourself every day. You're

day.

training yourself to. to think a certain way to act a certain way to respond a certain way to feel a certain way you

Yep.

can change all of that but or however you know or and and it would well you can change all that it it if done correctly you can become more informed you can get better

Small

at sense

subtle

making changes well

over time works

you can get better at

every

sense sense

time.

making and problem solving you get Yes. better at learning new things and understanding your environment which will inform your decisions better and and you because it's very easy to get stuck in that trap of what we've been doing all the time or the way of thinking or or your perspective because it you you you it you can't not do that there are certain rules you can can influence the game but there

Yes.

there are set defined rules in that game and sometimes you're not going to be the one that they're going to you're going to you can't be the one to dunk the basketball you better get good at taking those outside shots you know what i'm saying so

Or

that that's

wiping

the whole up point the yeah

sweat on the field and watching the game.

you

It's

can't okay you can't

sometimes

have any

just

role

to be watching.

yeah you can't have any role in there

I totally agree.

and and so that that's kind of the one of the points of all about human behavior of how fascinating it is it can be the both incredibly complex and very very very simple at the same

Absolutely.

time i mean

Absolutely.

you can you can that

That's

can be

why how

true yeah

many episodes we've done 190 episodes. And Brian, we still love absolutely every minute that we get to talk to somebody about this because it is the most amazing thing that we'll ever do in our life. That's why we want to create a legacy of people thinking about advanced critical thinking because thinking about thinking, okay,

yeah

is what we do.

metacognition

That's exactly what we do.

that's it yeah you gotta You got to take a step back. So I

You got it.

think we definitely hit all three of the topics, the three questions in this past sort of hour.

But we got more.

So we do have more, but I would, you know, kind of a similar thing. I've got a few more questions I'd like to answer in a similar manner, but I would love to get some feedback from anyone listening right now with questions, comments, concerns, always. is there a left of greg at gmail.com we'd love to answer it and then there's even more on the patreon side we kind of go into detail of some of these or give some personal examples or something we don't want to talk about openly on the air we do that behind just a very small paywall for that reason because it's it's just a gating mechanism you can you

Yep.

know you go on there and there's there's there's definitely more value than on there than what you're paying so i've been told by by everyone on there but

And

um

there's some nude selfies of me.

they're

I mean, why wouldn't you?

so i don't know how to tell you this greg you keep sending me those asking me to put them on that site and

Posting

i i

them, right?

no no i have no i want a different website

That's four years of shame.

i'm different website i have an entire only fans website for you set up and uh it's a very select niche audience we'll

Yeah,

say so

it is. Gotta

it's

be.

for

Why are you an

a

secret

clank

nude

a

group your of audience?

individuals yeah

you Be the need.

need In any shot of the audience. Hey,

everyone. No, no, no. It's a good one. A shout out to Tila Castle. Tila Castle from Gunnison. We were talking over Christmas, and Tila has watched every single episode and actually has favorite episodes and could quote things from episodes. Brian, it doesn't happen often when you meet a no crap fan that's as bright and intellectual and wonderful as Tila. So thanks, Tila. See you. Try to get your husband, Kevin, back on to listen to the podcast, but appreciate it.

All right. Well, I think that's a pretty good, you know, point or pretty good place to wrap for the for the day, Greg, unless we have any other final words for folks other than please keep the questions coming.

Exhausted.

Yeah, that was time to eat or something, you

Got to

know.

get some pants.

All right. Thanks again for tuning in. We very much appreciate it. And don't forget that training changes behavior. That's all for today, folks. But if you'd like even more content, you can head over to our Patreon page. The link can be found in the episode details. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, follow us on social media, and please tell your friends about the show. Thanks for tuning in and thank you for your support.