§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
No music bed. No host monologue. No graphics. Doug Bopst opens cold with the question the whole episode hinges on — how do you bounce back from failure without becoming the failure — and behavior-influence researcher Chase Hughes spends the next 110 minutes answering it through about a dozen named, paper-and-pen-able frameworks. The thesis lands fast: perspective and priority. That is it.
Who's talking.
00:00hostDoug Bopst
00:00guestChase Hughes
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 05:05
01 · Bounce back without becoming the failure
Chase opens with his core thesis — perspective and priority. Introduces 'the narrator' that runs in your head and the case for 'delusional self-forgiveness' as step one. Sub-thread: dissect limiting beliefs by making them extreme and printing them as your desktop wallpaper.
05:05 – 10:14
02 · Symptoms vs causes goal-setting
Most people set symptoms (millionaire by 25, yacht at 23) and call them goals. The actual goals are the daily causes that produce those symptoms. Bridges into a definition of grounded progress.
10:14 – 16:20
03 · The dopamine map + pleasure is not happiness
Chase walks Doug through the paper exercise: draw a basketball-court line, list every dopamine source with a point value out of 100, then list where good dopamine should come from. Pleasure fades on contact; oxytocin/serotonin linger. Tells the psychopath-conversation diagnostic.
16:20 – 20:00
04 · Grand Canyon as anti-dopamine
Mindfulness as the practiced act of dragging the mammal brain into the present. Doug's helicopter trip to the Grand Canyon as the worked example: thrill + serenity + scale-of-self all in one experience.
20:00 – 24:04
05 · The childhood development triangle
At age 8 you developed three coping patterns: how to earn friends, how to feel safe, how to earn rewards. For 99% of adults those same patterns now drive conflict, fear of stepping out, and fear of loss. Drag the file out of the cabinet.
24:04 – 27:52
06 · What actually rewires the brain
Hypnosis, CBT, psychedelics, coaching ranked by speed-of-result. Chase's claim: psilocybin delivers in 4 hours what 6-9 years of conventional therapy does. Worth flagging as his claim, not consensus.
27:52 – 33:00
07 · F.A.T.E. — leading the mammalian brain
Focus, Authority, Tribe, Emotion. The four levers Cesar Millan-style for steering your own mammal brain. Vision boards, calendar X's, tribe choice — all of it has to land on the mammal, not the human.
33:00 – 38:20
08 · Discipline is finite — everything else is routine
The big reframe: that gym-every-day person isn't disciplined, they're routined. Discipline was spent once, at habit-start. So start ONE habit at a time. Chase's framework for getting out of the procrastination loop.
38:20 – 44:00
09 · Radical honesty as self-knowledge entry point
Naming the awkward thing out loud in conversation. Saying you're nervous when you're nervous. Locating yourself on the childhood triangle is the fastest unlock for the rest of the self-knowledge stack.
44:00 – 49:00
10 · Motivation is mostly neurochemistry
The vitamin D / zinc / norepinephrine reframe: most 'mindset' problems are physiological problems people are trying to think their way out of. Order the bloodwork before you order the journal.
49:00 – 55:40
11 · Why Chase quit drinking 39 days ago
Education, not resistance. His sister Holly's line: 'It's not about resistance. It's about education.' Flooding the brain with enough truth about alcohol until the decision becomes a byproduct of awareness.
55:40 – 62:00
12 · Hand-to-mouth addictions + psychedelics + ketamine
~90% of addictions are hand-to-mouth gestures. Replace the gesture before fighting the substance. Microdose ketamine trochees getting more prescriber-friendly. Psilocybin as anti-addictive.
62:00 – 68:20
13 · Neurogenic tremors (TRE) — Dr. David Berceli
Mammals shake off trauma physically. Humans suppress it because shaking looks like a seizure. Berceli's tremor work as a no-drug nervous-system reset.
68:20 – 76:40
14 · The simulation — modern life as engineered stuckness
Reframe: it's not you, it's the environment. Social media, instant gratification, pacify-distract-sedate as a deliberate psyop pattern. The escape is making the unconscious conscious.
76:40 – 85:00
15 · Identifying victim mindset
How to spot it in yourself, why people use their past to justify present behavior, the commodity of the sob story, and the perspective shift that breaks it.
85:00 – 95:00
16 · Future-self relationship
The 95-year-old selfie. Print it. Put it on the fridge. The mammal brain doesn't speak in affirmations — it speaks in images. Two versions: who you want to become AND who you don't want to become (toothless, obese, 90).
95:00 – 103:20
17 · Making the unconscious conscious
The poster-board exercise. Sharpie your screen-time on a wall every day. Force the unconscious behavior into conscious awareness. The fastest path to behavior change Chase has ever found.
103:20 – 110:37
18 · The psyop pattern + how it ends
If Chase were running a psyop against a population, step one is pacify-distract-sedate so all the negative behavior happens unconsciously. Step two is normalize it by showing lots of people doing it. The exit is the inverse: make it conscious, see clearly that 99% of people aren't aware they're in it.
Lines you could clip.
00:46
"All these problems are perspective and priority. That's it."
02:07
"We need to be delusionally self-forgiving."
06:59
"Most people are setting symptoms instead of goals. What we want to set are the causes."
11:00
"Confusing pleasure and happiness is the number one way to ruin your life."
31:00
"That guy who goes to the gym every day, none of that is discipline. It's routine. The discipline was there when the habit was started only."
35:20
"Discipline is a finite resource. So let's start one habit at a time."
44:00
"We tend to assume a lot of psychological symptoms are psychologically rooted, when in fact it's a physiological deficit causing the psychological symptom."
46:20
"It's not about resistance. It's about education."
50:00
"About 90% of addictions are hand-to-mouth addictions."
84:10
"Most people don't prioritize our future selves because we have no ability to visualize them."
107:30
"If I'm running a psyop against a country of any size, the first thing I want you to do is pacify, distract, sedate."
01:40
"People have very complex issues in their life, but that doesn't mean the solution has to be complex."
Things they pointed at.
21:35toolThe Childhood Development Triangle quiz
34:10toolChase Hughes' free 6-7hr class on reading people
52:40toolDr. David Berceli — TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises)
24:40toolPsilocybin / psychedelic-assisted therapy research
50:50productMicrodose ketamine trochees (prescription)
33:10channelCesar Millan (as analogy for leading the mammalian brain)
09:00bookOprah's autobiography (as proof-of-overcoming reference)
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch metaphor analogy
00:06HOOKso that they don't fall into that trap that so many of us do and that you create this identity that you're act that you are a failure? Yeah. This is great. Uh, so the the first thing is we have to realize that we
00:21all have a . The second thing is we choose what that narrator highlights and focuses on. So that narrator is gonna dictate what we think and how we view our life and all of that. But it it a lot of this narrator is also about perspective. So, like, all these problems that we've talked about so far are perspective and priority.
00:46That's it. Perspective and priority. And it it sucks to to have this problem throughout our life and then, like, oh, this this one little shift can change this thing I've been dealing with. So we we have some mental resistance to that. Like, why would something so simple solve this big complex thing? And I realized that people have very complex issues in their life, but this that doesn't mean the solution has to be complex.
01:12So number one, the narrator is there. And number two, you can remind yourself or anybody going through this, remind yourself that going off of these details,
01:25saying that I am a failure, and then I know that this won't happen in the future for me, uh, that's you're we're starting to border on narcissism because we're saying I pick to the right perspective.
01:39I know how I know every detail of the story, and I know what to focus on, and I can predict the future. Uh, so we're starting to get into this little narcissistic self referential bubble of I know what the future holds. So
01:55number one, change the narrator. And number two, anything that's happened in your past, um, unless you're some weird psychopath or something, We people need to be delusionally
02:09delusionally self forgiving. And and that is the biggest step one to start changing the narrator. Narrator. It's tough, man. And it's tough because, I mean, I just speak from my own personal experience of,
02:23like, the with with the the toughest part about it is the cognitive dissonance that exists where you are trying to change the narrative.
02:33And because you you're so far back in life or you think you're so far back in life, like, what's in front of you just doesn't match the narrative you're trying to change. And then the idea of creating like, the the positive momentum you are creating doesn't feel good enough because, you know, you're paying attention to social media or you're, like, addicted to you were addicted to substances which create this false sense of dopamine.
02:58Like, how can people, you know, start to feel good again and make life kind of exciting for where they're at even though they still have a lot to learn and a long way to go on their journey? Yeah. I think just dissecting
03:14some of those beliefs is the biggest way to do that. And dissecting it meaning, like, is this objective or subjective? Am I really buried in this? And then, uh, one of the things I've I've done with a lot of my clients is take one of those beliefs. So let's say we've got somebody that says, I am a failure.
03:34So that means I'm not I can't be successful or I can't do this thing. I can't have this stuff in my life. Then we'll make a giant meme, like, with beautiful mountains on it, and we'll put the text on the screen, like, uh,
03:49you have to be perfect in order to be successful, which is ridiculous, stupid. But we see the stupid idea on a regular basis, and we bring it into conscious awareness so we realize how stupid some of this internal dialogue is.
04:05So we made it like this his desktop wallpaper, this big photo of mountains, and then we put on there, uh, I think this guy that I'm referring to right now, he had some, uh, money psychology stuff.
04:19But his limiting belief was like, I can't make money or I feel guilty if I make money, and then I can't make a lot of money because that means I'm a bad person because I'm not donating it. So we made we took his limiting belief and made it extreme. So we wanna exaggerate that. So we took his limiting belief, and I think, uh, what he put on his desktop wallpaper was my kids don't deserve money.
04:45Because I I told him, at the end of the day, that's really what you're saying. And and if somebody thinks they're a failure, it's my kids and the people that I lead don't deserve, uh, me at my best.
04:58They need me to think that I'm a failure. Or I might put on the wallpaper, if I think I'm a failure, that means I'm a good person. Just to kinda bring that into conscious awareness as fast as we can and and show ourselves how absurd and ridiculous some of this stuff is. And I think at the end of the day, you watch somebody go through a psychedelic journey, some spiritual revelation happens in their life, they lose their loved one, and everything in their life changes.
05:24The first big thing that happens is all the that I thought was a really big deal is not a big deal anymore. Everything that I thought was a huge deal is no longer a big deal. And this is no matter what kind of huge awakening someone has, that's step one to all of these awakenings is everything I thought was a big deal ain't a big deal.
05:46Shifting gears a little bit, but kind of building off of the the failure conversation is I think people I think it helps for people to have goals in life. And, like, we talked about this forward thinking approach. I also think, again, this quote, unquote simulation that people live in, it's easy to get sucked into these insanely unrealistic
06:07goals. Like, I wanna be a millionaire by the time I'm 25. Is it possible? Sure. But is it likely? No. Like, all these insanely unrealistic goals that either, a, defeat people in their tracks because they're like, how the hell am I gonna get there? B,
06:24they end up doing, like, horrific things to get there because they want they're they care more about the goal than the journey, and, c, they end up falling flat on their face, like, midway through because they've realized, like, oh, like,
06:40life doesn't work this way. How do you how do you think about goal setting, and how can people effectively do so? Yeah. Or they get the million and they're still depressed, and they're like, wait. That too. That there's the oh, yeah. Exactly. I'm logging in. I'm looking at my bank account, and I still feel like so any of those goals, I would I would say for everybody,
07:00and I've studied human motivation for a while. I don't think I'm a goal setting expert, but I would definitely say that making being a million what what was the goal? Having a million dollar for a town of 25.
07:15That is a that is a thing. Right? So that is a symptom of something. Owning a yacht when I'm 23 is a symptom of having done something with my life. So
07:28when people are setting goals, what they're typically setting are symptoms. These are the symptoms that I wanna have, but what they're not setting are the cause of those symptoms. So, like, being a millionaire by the time you're 45,
07:44to do that, for that to be a byproduct, what would I have to do with my life? So for all of our goals, we have to go back and say, how do I make my goal, this little shallow goal that I have on the top here, how do I make that a byproduct of how I live my life? So that's how we have to set goals. So most people are setting symptoms instead of goals. What we wanna set are the causes.
08:07How can I cause that million dollars to be in my bank account? So that means I have to wake up at a certain time. That means I have to do this and this and this. Those should be the goals. The byproduct should be the million dollars by by the time you're 25. How do people stay grounded, like, in the process when,
08:25um, when they're when things aren't happening immediately for them, like, and when they're doing all the right things and yet success isn't right in front of them? Like, how can people kind of course correct their mind? I think that the reason that we're we're like, oh, I'm not getting
08:41success that I want is that we're we're seeking and I I'm just gonna go back to this. We're seeking we're we're defining success as symptoms Right.
08:52Instead of causes. So if I work on these causes hard enough, that that my lack of success is a lack of me kind of working and getting to the place I need to be. 100, the world's not fair, Never will be. We just gotta get over that. It and that sucks. But, like, if you read the autobiography of, like, Oprah and, like, read how Oprah was born in her early years,
09:17most people's life doesn't even compare to that level of horror and nasty upbringing and unfairness.
09:26So that should delete all of your excuses. Like, there are for everything that anybody would say that they've been through, there are a 100 successful people who've been through way worse, uh, than than you have. So it's definitely out there. But my my vision of success should not be a symptom. It should be a con. So am I am I following all these things? Then, yes, then that's that I'm achieving my goals.
09:53So my actual goals are just these behaviors and habits that I need in order for that million dollars to be there. I know we talked in our last conversation about dopamine and how people get have an unhealthy relationship with dopamine. I'd like to kinda revisit that because I don't think, you know, I don't think things have gotten better with that for people, and maybe there's people who didn't listen to our first conversation.
10:15Like, why do you think or how can people have a better relationship with dopamine so that they can, you know, maintain this real sense of joy and fulfillment about life? Yeah. So
10:27the first is to figure out where where we're getting dopamine from. And the way to do this is you take a, like, a regular sheet of printer paper. I was looking around to see if I have something here. But you draw a line down the middle, a little circle on that line, so you kinda make it look like a . And on the left side of the page, you write down
10:52everything that you're getting dopamine from in your life, everything that you're getting pleasure from. And confusing pleasure and happiness is the number one way to ruin your life. Pleasure and happiness are not the same. They're not even they don't even touch each other at all. So where am I getting deriving this dopamine
11:11pleasure seeking behavior from? Maybe it's chocolate or cheesecake. Maybe it's, uh, watching porn, or maybe it's, uh, doing drugs or alcohol or, you know, fill in the blank. All these things that I'm getting it from. And that's the time, to be honest, that I'm also getting it from
11:28Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. I'm getting dopamine hits all right there. So I'm I'm gonna draw out a map of where all that dopamine is, and then I'm gonna assign a point value. Let's say I'm limited to a 100 points, and I'm gonna assign a point value to each one of those. And then on the right side, where is all the places I'm getting good dopamine from?
11:50And the our number one source of dopamine should be x and y and z. So it's different for everybody. It should be us. Right? It should be me. It should be if I'm really setting myself up for success and I wake up, I wanna wake up at 4AM, the moment that I wake up, I feel fantastic
12:09because the nighttime version of me took the multivitamin, took the magnesium, uh, went to bed on time, drank a full glass of water, fill in the blank, all of these things to make me present day feel fantastic. But if I if I have all these negative things down this one side of the sheet and I go over here and I'm writing stuff like doing my course assignments in college or spending time with my kids or doing all the things that that I want to get dopamine from.
12:37And let's say I gave my kids are getting eight points, and Twitter is getting 39. You're starting to see this imbalance. So we're it's again, we're taking something unconscious and putting it into conscious awareness. So
12:52the way to know whether or not you're getting dopamine out of something is if it feels good or captures all of your attention during that moment, and then it you it doesn't feel good later. So I I taught a force once on how to tell if you're in a conversation with a psychopath. We and, of course, you can't I mean, this it's hard, but we went through this big checklist. But one of the big ones on there
13:17was if you feel fantastic during the conversation. Everything feels great, and then you you stop the conversation, and all of it just drops off.
13:27That is a person who's trained for or mentally trained themselves to trigger all of your dopamine hit points. And so you didn't a conversation that feels good afterwards is more rooted in oxytocin and and serotonin. So if I'm doing something in my life and it the great feeling of it doesn't kind of fade off gently over time, probably dopamine, which is what we do with social media and all that. So really identify the sources of dopamine, and I'm willing to bet that most people drew out a map
13:58of where it's coming from, and here's all the good things that I get dopamine from. Where it's coming from is probably not going to be the right amount, and we wanna change we we don't wanna tip those scales for sure. Yeah. I think once people can understand what dopamine is, I think their life will dramatically change. I mean, it really shifted for me,
14:20um, understanding more about, like, addiction, you know, and how certain substances just completely hijacked the brain. And I think I've talked about this on the show before, but, you know, one of the greatest,
14:33um, descriptions of, like, how your reward system is hijacked was when I was I was sitting in a therapist's office who I think I believe he was, like, an addiction therapist or psychiatrist, but in any event, he he said to me, he said,
14:48you know, when you're not an addict, like, thinking about something like the the Grand Canyon is, like, a 10 out of 10 pleasurable experience. And he's like, what happens is you start to do some coke,
15:01and then you get this influx of artificial dopamine. Now the coke starts to go from, like, a one to a two to a three, and then the Grand Canyon goes from, like, a 10 to an eight. And then you've, like, reversed it to where now, like, a few months down the road, your reward system has been completely hijacked, and the thought of going to a grand the Grand Canyon is so boring to you because you're so used to getting all this artificial dopamine from a substance like Coke. And it really shifted things for me because I remember, like, being that person that, like, I couldn't go to the aquarium. I couldn't go to a football game of baseball. I couldn't do anything without being under the influence of a substance when I was younger.
15:36And it it totally made sense for me. And I think that it part of getting out of the simulation and what we're talking about now, I just think is acceptance of normalcy in that, you know, your brain your the way your brain is responding is kind of normal based on how you're treating it. Right? And if you're not changing the way you're treating your brain, it's gonna continue to do the same.
15:58And and that's why it's I think these conversations are are paramount. And, like, how how do you think
16:07like, what what how can people, like, survive in this in this world where, again, you know, we're talking about dopamine
16:17recalibrating and stuff? Yet, like, mean, there's just dopamine, like, everywhere. And like you said, you can't, like, live in a hut and, like, turn off everything, but you gotta stay, like, kind of tuned in to, you know, what's really going on around you. And I think it it sounds so ridiculous, but I think you can look at all the researches, peer reviewed research, that
16:38just mindfulness practices on their own. And you don't have to, like, sit in a room with incense and, like, spa music playing and all that kind of stuff. You can do this while you're
16:51remulching your yard, uh, if you want to. But having a practice of mindfulness and being mindful, not just while you're doing the app or while you have the little mindful audio thing in, But doing that throughout your day while you're in a meeting, while you're in traffic, while you're cooking,
17:11while you're stressing out about having to change a diaper or fix a mess or your roof starts leaking, can you do the mindfulness in there? So getting good at being present is so powerful because you talk about the Grand Canyon, your face lit up because you have memories. You have real core memories of being present in that moment. You talk about the dopamine from Coke, your face didn't light up because we don't have the core memories from that. So the Grand Canyon is not just a bunch of dopamine.
17:40It's three d experience and being so immersed in a moment. That's why if we have people that really study mindfulness and there's some really neuroscientists
17:53and and psychologists that are studying the effects of mindfulness, but, I mean, this has been studied for five thousand years, but but they just called it meditation or they called it zen or they called it some other word. But it's just forcing it's like . You're like, you're taking your little animal brain, and you're becoming the dog whisperer, and you're forcing that mofo
18:14into the present moment as much as you possibly can. Like, every time there's a little shift in awareness, you're bringing it back to the moment bring it back to the moment. And then there's a way to find, like, this almost a pleasure in everyday things, just enjoying your life as it is. And it's not like you're popping confetti cannons every day, but you're just quietly enjoying what's going on in the present moment. My face lit up because, you know, one of the
18:41most memorable experiences of my life is I was in Vegas by myself for a fitness conference, and I had some time to to kill. And I was staying at the hotels at the Wynn, and there was, like, a
18:53a flyer for, like, helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon. And it was, like, the most thing I've ever done was, you know, getting in this helicopter and leaving from Vegas, and you fly, like, into the canyon. It was so cool. I highly recommend people try that. I mean, it's just I had never been to the Grand Canyon, but it was a hell of a way to see it. And I'm like, I don't think I ever need to go back because I saw it in, like, the most complete way possible.
19:16And it got, like, thrill, you know, the thrill seeker in me lit up. It got the serenity part of me. Like, all the things were just engaged during that time. And, you know, one of the things that that the Grand Canyon does that's similar to psychedelic therapy is it shows you how small you are and how insignificant we are in in the most beautiful way possible. And I just did that that exact same helicopter ride
19:40probably a month in, maybe two months ago. Oh, really? For the first time ever. Yeah. And we landed down there in the canyon. It was me and my son. It was so much fun. Yeah. It's cool. Right? And you're there for, like, thirty minutes, forty five minutes. And did you go through Maverick? Was that the company? Yeah. Yeah. That's what we did. That's what I did too. That's really cool. And we'd landed a little picnic area. They give you some snacks and stuff. Man, it was
20:07it it was profound for me to see I'd never seen the Great Canyon until just a few months ago, unless it's, looking out of a airplane window or something on the way to LA. But I think there's a there's a profound perspective shift. When you go to giant things like that, the Grand Canyon shows you
20:25how tiny you are and how big the world is and how beautiful nature is and how powerful it is and how not powerful we are and not special we are. And there's a lot a lot that goes on in our life that we get stressed out about is us trying to convince ourselves that we're super, super special,
20:45and we we can't be socially injured. Nobody can make fun of us. We can't get any kind of social injury because we're really, really special. What have you found to be, like, the common thread of what typically holds people back from, you know, feeling confident, having authority, etcetera? It's gonna be a deep answer. It's not like, oh, it's putting a forgetting a Post it note on your window or something. But
21:10it will falls back to three things, and all three of those things are patterns that we develop in childhood. And if we can identify what those patterns are and how they're how we kind of unconsciously put stuff them in this and then carry them into adulthood without us really acknowledging it, without our awareness, then we have so much more control over our life. And those three things, if you imagine a triangle
21:36and we call this the childhood development triangle. And I can send it to you if you wanna, like, overlay it right now or put it down so people can grab it. It's what did I do around the age of eight to earn and keep friends, to feel safe, and to earn rewards from somebody.
21:53And the rewards are different. Some for some kids, it was like food because they had a rough life. And for other kids, it may have been praised for playing the violin really well. But what did I do for friends, safety, and rewards? And how did I avoid things to feel safe, to get friends, to get rewards? What did I avoid?
22:13And whatever those responses are, for ninety nine percent of people, those are the ways that we handle conflict as an adult. Those become the kind of fear of stepping out that we have as an adult because it's a fear of loss. I'm gonna lose friends. I'm gonna lose safety. I'm gonna lose rewards. Those three things. And they start when we're, like, eight or nine years old. And just kind of going back, and this quiz is gonna help everybody that's listening right now with this.
22:40I can start seeing this pattern. Like, I'm a 44 year old man now. I could take this quiz right now and be like, oh, shit. This started in middle school. I'm still doing this one little thing from middle school.
22:54And just kind of and putting it out in the open gives me a lot more control over it because I'm conscious of these patterns. So now they become a choice of, like, do I wanna continue this or not? Before, we don't have a choice because we never opened that closet and never looked inside and pulled those files out. I've heard you give your thoughts on, like, cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, have you found that any other therapies to be, like, effective at, like, kinda
23:21revamping the mind? Uh, I'm not a, like, a therapy expert. But as far as I understand now, the average therapy session for
23:32extreme anxiety, stress, PTSD, all of those kind of things to kind of get through that is, like, six to nine years. And
23:41it's the same thing that's accomplished in four hours of of psilocybin mushrooms. The same results, like nine years of therapy in in a short little package.
23:54There are some therapies. Hypnosis has been proven to work with a lot of people, and it kinda has, like, about a seventy to eighty percent success rate. Cognitive behavioral therapy has a high success rate over time. So if you keep at it and and keep doing it for several years, it will work. Psychedelics work
24:12higher than ninety percent, and that's in, like, four hours. It's in one one session. So that's the fastest route to do it. Working with a coach, if you can like, if you have a coach that's really digging through and and walking you through a lot of this stuff and unpacking your your your own bullshit to yourself is is the biggest thing. Because if if you're just
24:35sitting there filling out a little workbook along with a book that you got on Amazon or something like that, it's gonna be full of BS because we were very deceptive to ourselves. I mean, I'm an expert in this stuff. I saw a therapist probably six years ago, and I was I was full of it until I really unpacked a lot of this stuff. So I'm not immune to any of this.
24:56But that's the fastest way to do it is to get a coach, hypnosis, psychedelics, and cognitive behavioral therapy are really powerful for that. What have you found to be the relationship between, like, dopamine
25:09and motivation? Because I think a lot of this comes down to people just don't feel motivated to change their life. Yeah. And I think that goes back to the dopamine map. It's like where the where the dopamine's coming from is a big deal. And they may not be setting the right goals, and the motivation might not be there. And here's the thing that nobody's gonna say. You're gonna see all these mindset coaches, therapists.
25:32You're gonna see people saying you need to think differently. You need to set different goals. You need to wake up earlier in the morning, brush your teeth with your opposite hand, all of these little pieces of advice. And people try this for eleven, twelve, fifteen years,
25:46and they're not really getting better. And finally, they go see somebody levels, that tests their neurotransmitter levels, and they discover, oh, I've just had a vitamin d deficiency this whole freaking time. They were trying to, like, think their way out of a vitamin deficiency or a neurotransmitter
26:03problem, and they had a physiological problem, not a psychological problem. So that is a big powerful thing. A doctor can order those tests. And, man, vitamin b, vitamin d deficiencies can severely
26:16impact your life. And then you're gonna every everybody you see is gonna say, oh, well, you need to think more positive. You need to think differently. You might have a hormonal neurotransmitter or vitamin imbalance that's just ruining your life. The good news, if that's true, is it's a very,
26:32very easy solution ninety nine percent of the time. Well and I and I but I I think, like, from the action perspective and behavior perspective, I think there
26:44there needs to be a a strong focus, in my opinion, on, like, small wins for people when they're looking to to change their life. Because what happens is we live in this world of instant gratification where we wanna achieve these big things in, you know, an hour when, really, it's just a it's just compounding small wins to achieve that big thing. I would love to hear your perspective on it as far as behavior.
27:08Like, what is the importance of just doing the right thing every day having that lead up to something major. Yeah. And they I think all the old coaches back in the day would call this right action. Am I am I doing the right action? And that's the same with so many people now get upset, and they kind of get
27:28into a a little emotional rut because they're so used to things being quick. They they're kind of thinking, I want the Ozempic version of of discipline. I want the give me the Ozempic so I can do x. And
27:44not everything has that, and some things just take time. And those small wins are so critically important. But what's more important is my human brain is not fully in charge of all of this. It's that mammal. So always think of how could I dis how would
28:03handle this shit? So if I have a problem with a dog's motivation, I need four things to lead a mammalian brain, whether it's a human mammalian brain, a dolphin, or a dog. It's focus. Where is all my focus going? What are the sources of authority?
28:20And then tribe and emotion. Focus, authority, tribe, emotion. Spells out fate, and it is your fate for sure.
28:29So just figuring that stuff out. So how can I change the mammalian focus? So if I have affirmations on my wall or I have a a calendar that has x's on it every time I work out or every time I get into ketosis or or whatever somebody's trying to do, and your dog doesn't understand that. That's the big piece that everybody seems to be missing. A dog can't see that. Your mammalian brain isn't excited about a black and white thing on the wall with a bunch of x's on it unless you have this tremendous emotional attachment to it.
29:02So that's where, like, these vision boards come in, who we're hanging out with, who we're spending time with, where that why that tribe is so critically important. And all of these elements of our life, like, how could I show my goals to my dog? How would I make my dog happy that they're doing the right thing? And do those things for yourself. I'm gonna go on a run, and then I'm gonna celebrate with something. If I'm setting goals, I'm gonna put thousands
29:28of pictures associated with each goal so that there I can see images so that the mammalian brain starts to understand the direction. So it's not human going this direction, and mammalian brain doesn't know the human wants to go this direction. So getting that mammalian brain on board is so critically important.
29:47So say I I hired you and I said, you know what? Like, Chase, like, I have been struggling with discipline, procrastination for years, and I just can't seem to figure it out. I got my dopamine chart here, and it's like I'm doing all the wrong habits. What how can I quickly, like, start to unlearn some of these bad habits
30:08and then be able to build discipline and stay consistent even when I don't feel like it? So one of the biggest
30:18mistakes that I see clients making so if you're my client here and I'm I'm talking to you and this is our our thing here, there was a mistake in your language that I hear from so many people, if you don't mind me calling you out. Of course. You said discipline to do all of these things that I don't wanna do.
30:37A lot of people see people eating healthy and going to the gym, maybe eating a keto diet or or something like that. And they're doing these things all the time. Maybe they're writing a book, and they're they're disciplined about writing the book. But the our mind says, I wish I had that level of discipline. Or or we internally think they're so disciplined about that.
31:00Nothing of what you're seeing is discipline. That guy who goes to the gym every day, none of that is discipline. It's routine. The discipline was there when the habit was started only.
31:13So it's very important that we understand discipline's a finite resource. So let's let's start one habit at a time. So we're setting habits instead of goals. And the discipline is only we only need, like, a little shot glass full of discipline to kick off a habit. And most people have these 19 goals. Like, they're sitting there eating hot dogs every day, and they're surfing social media for eighteen hours a day. They have this really horrible lifestyle, and they're like, you know what? In six weeks, I'm gonna be muscular, fit, thin,
31:45successful, rich, good looking, and have extremely white teeth. So you need one try to do one discipline habit formation at a time. And the fastest discipline
31:58thing that kind of sprouts to rewards in every other area of life is I'm gonna use this little shot glass of discipline to start forming a habit of taking care of my future self. If I can do that, if that becomes a habit, everything
32:13benefits. Every single aspect of my life starts changing because I'm getting I'm using my discipline to force this one thing into a habit for, like I think it's sixty four days. It takes to set a habit and whatever number somebody says is wrong. Some of them are are useful, but it's probably around around that time. I'm gonna use that little shot glass of discipline to do that.
32:37So now if I have a habit of prioritizing my future self, every other habit that I wanna form starts getting easier because I have an emotional relationship with that future version of me. And if how do I get the mammalian brain involved? You download that app on your phone that's like make me look old or I think it's called face app, and it makes you, like, 95 years old. You can take a selfie with it, and it makes you super old. Print those out on a nice color printer and put it on your fridge.
33:06Put it next to your bed. Put it in your office where you're gonna see it. So we don't really prioritize our future self because we never met them. We have no relationship to our future self. So this helps that mammalian brain start prioritizing and connecting with that longer vision, that older version of ourself. We've talked quite a bit about self awareness
33:30and understanding some of the things in our life that might be limiting us, whether whether it be, like, you know, how we show up in situations, our environment, our relationship with dopamine, etcetera.
33:41CTAAnd you talked about, like you kinda called me out and said the number one mistake that, know, you see people make is that they think that, you know, you said to get people to do things they don't necessarily want to do. In that same conversation, is there anything that you see, like, right off the bat common thread
33:58CTAthat you help people kinda stop the bleeding? Where you're like, alright. Generally speaking, there's, like, three or four or five things that you see most people do time and time again that's destroying their focus and their inability to reach their goals. Yes. So we'll go through kind of an I have a separate little inventory I walk each of my clients through. And
34:18CTAI wanna identify where you're feeling discomfort in your life. So it's social settings and all this other stuff. And then I'm gonna identify where you seek comfort,
34:28CTAlike Instagram, TikTok, alcohol, all of these things in your life. And we're gonna pull cup we're gonna start making it more uncomfortable in those areas and increasing the comfort in the other areas.
34:42CTASo so much of this stuff comes down to being comfortable. So I'm seeking comfort. Like, most people are seeking comfort in video games, TV, Netflix, binging, TikTok, or whatever, and that's more acting as an anesthetic. So I wanna find out where all of these little situations we have this long questionnaire we go through. But,
35:03essentially, what are all these little scenarios where I experience some kind of discomfort? Maybe when I go to the bank, when I when I log in to check my account, when I have to speak on stage, when I have to do a pitch, all of these other things. And then where am I seeking comfort? And then so this is kind of like a dopamine map, except it's stress
35:21versus anesthetic is really what we're we're finding out here. So I'm gonna pull out of the anesthetic and start pulling some of that onto the stress side. And you'd be wildly surprised in how fast those things can kind of reverse. So where are we seeking comfort? And I can start pull pulling away from that, and it gives more energy, more discipline, more willpower to all of these other things and and start
35:49it's such a rapid change. I've seen people change in as little as, like, a week and a half, two weeks just from mapping this out and getting super raw and real on a lot of this stuff. And hypnosis is is a fast way to do that and a fast way to really make that change that you're asking about. You know, a lot of your work talks about, like, controlling the mind, understanding people's body language,
36:13under understanding how to read people. You know? And I think sometimes people are like, well, how does that apply to me? Like, when am I ever gonna really need to, quote, unquote, do that? Like, the people I'm around, I already trust. You know, when I go into certain situations, like, no one's gonna be deceitful. Like, give the elevator pitch as to why people should care
36:33about that area of your work even though they're not, like, in a in the in intelligence agency. So I think when people hear behavior profiling or body language
36:44expert, they assume that it's about lie detection. And the truth is it's it's more about stress detection. I really wanna spot these little stress signals, and I wanna spot what makes somebody really comfortable, what somebody's interested in. And everything that I teach in my company goes down to three things.
37:02And if you look at what determines success in life, we can we can look at communication skills, like, I communicate, persuade, influence very effectively?
37:12Can I master myself? So communication, self mastery,
37:18and observation. So our failures can be traced back to I failed to communicate. I wasn't really in charge of myself. I was sending all the wrong signals, or I didn't observe the room. I failed to read the room.
37:33So this goes back to understanding what people are really feeling and understanding from a behavior profiling perspective. They use these three sentences. So I know one of their hidden insecurities insecurities is this. So there's hidden information in language that's not just, oh, this guy scratched his nose and he's lying because there's so much of that bullshit on the Internet already,
37:54which is not true. That's one of the biggest myths. But we can also develop a little profile of everybody that we know, not as some intelligence asset, but I'm truly as a leader, the better I am at understanding people,
38:08understanding that person's needs, their the values that they're not even talking about. We can find these things hidden inside of people's language, and this is in everyday conversations. One of my books is called six minute x-ray.
38:22And within six minutes, you can find out a person's insecurities, their fears, their secret desires, how they make decisions, what decision type they are, and all kinds. You would be stunned at how much information you can see in, like, six minutes just getting good at some of that stuff. How can people apply that stuff to better themselves and to improve their life, like, once they know information like that?
38:44Well, I think it allows you to communicate with everybody a lot differently. I think it makes you a better leader because you're understanding the people that are working for you, the the people that you know. But you're also when you're going through this inevitably, when somebody goes through this this training with me, especially the six minute X-ray stuff,
39:03it's a huge lens into ourself as well because we're learning about how we use language and what our language reveals about us, these tiny little pauses and these seemingly insignificant words that people say. So we're learning not just to be a better communicator, but we're we're getting better at knowing ourself. And one of the you ask about the most common problem. I think the most common problem I've ever seen is that that people don't really know who they are. They don't know themselves.
39:34It's tough. Right? Because it's like you have to be comfortable with all those parts of you. Right? And I think so is there anything else that people can do to get good at knowing themselves other than what we've talked about? Yeah. I mean, there's there's all kinds of workbooks and therapy and stuff like that, but this just getting to a point of radical honesty.
39:52So you get to a point of if if I'm in a conversation and I'm feeling that there was an awkward pause, I'll just say that out loud. And if I'm feeling, like, nervous about something, I'll say that I'm nervous out loud. And starting to get to a point where I used to would have never revealed this little thing because I feared judgment and start getting yourself used to making those little revelations
40:16in conversation. And I guess the end result of all of this, the most important thing that I could ever tell you about, like, getting to know yourself is that
40:28if once we start like, the starting point for all of this is, am I able to locate me on that childhood triangle? The friends, safety, and rewards. And this is the one thing that starts untying all of the other stuff. That is definitely the from what I've seen, the fastest entry point into a lot of that self knowledge. Yeah. I mean, radical honesty is is so important. And I think, you know, people's ability
40:52to do that, I think, is just so transformational, like, once they get to that point. You know, you you touched on, like, some of the reading people and talking about how to communicate with other people and the mind control stuff. Like, which one of those skills do you think is the most like, if somebody were to to take a deeper dive into your work in that side of things, like, which skill do you think they should they should focus on for first?
41:16I think going into learning how to read people automatically makes you start reading yourself and seeing it in yourself unless you're, a psychopath and you have no no self awareness whatsoever. And there's I have a free class. It's like, I don't know, six, seven hours that kind of walks you through this fundamental shift on how you view the world
41:36and how we view other people. And I think that is definitely the best place to start because if I can learn how to see what's going on around me and learn about myself at the exact same time, that becomes a little pathway to self mastery.
41:52What are your thoughts on on motivation? Do you think it actually works? Like, can somebody, like, you know, read something and or look at themselves in the mirror and be like, hey. You know, I wanna make this change. Like, can that carry them, or do you think it's BS? I think a lot of motivation is gonna be based in neurochemistry. So some people say, had this big epiphany, and it it may not have been the idea that they had. They they might have traveled,
42:17and they might have taken a supplement, or they might have balanced something inside their heads. I think a lot of motivation is is neurochemically based, and
42:26there are so many cases where we see people that are going to see a coach. They're working one on one with a coach that's working on their mindset and walking them through these questions, exercises, and all this other stuff. Meanwhile, ten years later, they discover that they've got a vitamin d deficiency. Or later on down the road, they're deficient in zinc or their epinephrine,
42:48norepinephrine brain chemistry is out of whack, and they just need to add something to their lifestyle or their diet to get that back in. So I think we tend to assume that a lot of psychological problems, symptoms
43:03are psychologically rooted when in fact it's a physiological deficit of some sort that's causing the psychological symptom. And there's I mean, there's cases where, uh, somebody goes to a therapist's office or goes to see a therapist, they're like, well, my I every time when I'm walking to work, my hands get numb and tingly. I feel really nervous. My heart's racing. I have this weird thing where I stop from walking and just feel kinda paralyzed as I'm I'm doing these things. And they're like, oh, we have social anxiety. Let's work on that. And then they discover a few years later, the person got a brain tumor
43:37that was causing a lot of these symptoms. So we tend as a as a culture, we tend to ignore in anything that's happening in our mind, we tend to ignore physiological issues that might be causing
43:50the symptoms. Is there anything, like, more recently, like any kind of habits or shifts you've made in your own life that you've made that have that have led to some self improvement? Yeah. Thirty nine
44:04yeah. Thirty nine days ago, I quit drinking because so many of my friends had stopped drinking.
44:15And it just I was lying to myself, uh, that it's not harmful, and I have a brain disease. And alcohol
44:22ex with the exception of maybe red wine, uh, alcohol is a neurotoxin. It's a neurotoxic substance. And I
44:31was hurting myself, and, uh, that was the one of the biggest shifts I've ever made. And the shift wasn't being, like, trying to quit and getting through the process of quitting alcohol and going through withdrawals and all that stuff. It's shifting your world view to where you know so much truth about that alcohol that all the reasons
44:54that you might come up with for drinking are false. So you're flooding your brain with a maximum amount of truth and data to the point where the decision becomes becomes a byproduct of your knowledge,
45:06and your awareness creates the byproduct of sobriety. Was there anything in your life that was kind of going on in the moment, or were you just like, hey. You know, I got this brain condition. My friends are doing this. Like because, I mean, a lot of times with addiction, I'm sure as you well know, like, something happens where
45:23it's like, crap. I'm at this crossroads. I either fix my life or things are about to get much worse. I don't think I had a big crossroads. I think we, uh, our company started growing a lot, and I hired my sister as as my CEO. So I had her quit her old job, and she came on, and she my sister, Holly, is is running our company now.
45:47And she quit drinking, like, seven years ago. And what I noticed, we were at, a family Thanksgiving thing. People were kinda pouring out wine, and and everybody was having a cocktail, scotch, and all that kind of stuff. And she didn't drink in it. And I asked her, like, if how do how do you resist it?
46:06That was my question. The the so that conversation with Holly was my big turning point. I said, how do you resist the alcohol? She said, there's not a it's not about resistance. It's about education. So, like, if if you know enough about it, then you just won't there will be no desire left in your entire body. Uh, and that that conversation with Holly was was a big catalyst for that. What did that experience, like, teach you
46:32about behavior change? Like, going through something like that? I mean, quitting alcohol is, like, for many, it's like nobody people don't do it because it's so tough. And for a lot of people, it's like this challenge that takes months or years. Like, what did that experience teach you? I think that we very often lie to ourselves about the reasons that we do destructive things, whether it's being
46:55in a relationship or drinking too much or getting pissed off in traffic when we when we really shouldn't be. We are lying to ourselves, and we typically,
47:06the right amount of truth will get us out of a lot of these negative behaviors like it does alcohol or anything else. I'm just missing pieces of truth, which goes back to what we talked about, this massive shift in perspective that psychedelics you create is why that helps people stop addictions and stuff because it gives you such a it, like, zooms you out so far,
47:29uh, on everything that, like, you're you're you realize, like, I'm I'm spending a whole lifetime thinking that, a, I'm special, b, I'm separate from everybody else, and c, uh, all of my little
47:43reasons that I have in my head for doing a lot of weird that I do are completely false. I think addiction is a simulation for a lot of people where they're just caught in the cycle of it, and they can't get out. They don't know what to do. And I think these from what I know, the first few months of recovery for people are very crucial because it's the time I think when when cravings are really high. It's like you're recalibrating your mental well-being if you were somebody who numbed with substances. Again, I'm not saying you did this. I'm just saying this is generally speaking.
48:13And I think it comes down to habits, right, and what you're doing on a day to day basis to keep yourself busy and, again, towards this future version of yourself. Like, what what types of things do do you do, like, regularly now to keep yourself, like, away from potentially going back and drinking?
48:33I mean, I have a I have a full bar in my living room. And this is for when people come over, somebody wants to make themselves a cocktail or something, or maybe we have a party here at the house. I
48:48think just the enjoyment of after you break the physical and the physiological addictions,
48:55the enjoyment of not needing that thing feels a lot like freedom to me. I'll speak for myself. But I think the that people focus a little too much on the chemical addiction to alcohol. I'm gonna go through these withdrawals. I'm gonna have I'm I'm worrying about, uh, DTs, which is delirium tremens like this, micro seizures that can happen when somebody's withdrawing.
49:19But we forget that about ninety percent of addictions are hand to mouth addictions. So I'm overeating food. I'm smoking cigarettes, streaking alcohol, or I'm I'm taking drugs or I'm smoking too much weed or whatever it is. A lot of these addictions are hand to mouth. So when we try to get off, we miss out this this hand to mouth gesture that that we're so fond of and that we're so used to.
49:45So replacing that during the process of getting off of addiction, um, or getting off of a substance is is really important to have something there to help you wean off of the physical movement pattern as well as the the chemical itself.
50:01And so what what can be helpful for for people to do that? Well, on the light side, kind of the caffeine free diet advice part of this would be, like, just having something there. So if I'm quitting drinking, I'm gonna set up a scenario where I'm gonna have something there that I can I'm sipping on throughout the evening or if I drink at night or or whatever it is.
50:25And on the the heavier side of this, and this is not advice, uh, for anybody, but, um, you need to talk to your doctor. But psychedelics are one of the fastest ways that you can do this, and this is through
50:39a psilocybin journey. And and now ketamine prescriptions are are getting more commonplace.
50:47Doctors are feeling less anxiety insecurity about writing the prescription for microdose ketamine, like, to be used throughout the day. And this is like a twenty five milligram, uh, trochee that you can dissolve under your tongue, and it can help with addiction and coming off of things and anxiety and depression and PTSD and so much of these other things. Even though it's a man made,
51:10uh, substance, it's it's proven to be so incredibly helpful, and its its likelihood for abuse is so low. And, like, if you look at mushrooms, they're anti addictive.
51:24Nobody's addicting getting addicted to, like, psychedelic mushrooms or anything like that. So I think that that's a huge revolution that I think people should be taking more advantage of. I mean, our ancestors used this stuff for millennia, and we kind of uh, it's good to see that we're going through this psychedelic revolution right now where there's so much of this stuff is starting to come out, and I think people are waking up to it.
51:51So is there a way to mimic that without psychedelics? Because, obviously, like, there's cost involved with that, and you wanna make sure you're doing it under medical care. And then maybe there's people that
52:03you know, a a lot of people who struggle have struggled with addiction are, like, completely sober, and that's, like, against their moral compass, especially if they're in, like, 12 step to do anything like that. So have you found, um, like, any practices that can, you know, over time, get you deeply connected to your subconscious so that you can kind of move forward with the pain and trauma in your life?
52:24There is one the the most effective thing I've ever seen that doesn't involve any I hate to use the word drug. Uh, it's such a stupid word, and it it's not appropriate to talk about psychedelics at all. But the thing that uses just our body is this thing called neurogenic
52:45tremors. And if you look at a mammal, the average mammal
52:51is programmed all mammals are programmed to go through this tremoring process. So when a squirrel or a fox or a impala
53:01or a tiger or polar bear goes through some kind of traumatic experience, let's say they're drinking water at some watering hole. Crocodile bites them in the neck, and they survive. They don't go back to their little tribe area or their den and, like, curl up under a tree
53:20for weeks at a time. And why don't why don't we have that? Why don't we have psychogenic trauma in animals? And one thing that this guy who did the research on this, his name is doctor David Bercelli,
53:33brilliant, brilliant guy. He was a trauma surgeon. But he noticed that after these animals had this trauma experience,
53:43they go into this state that looks like the body's vibrating or shaking, almost like it looks kinda like a seizure. And you can even ask if you know a police officer, you can ask a cop. They roll up on a car accident, and there's an infant in the back seat in a in a stroller or or a not stroller, like a car seat, and they survived, their body goes into the shaking response.
54:06But think about this for a second. Throughout your life, like if you get into something that's super heavy, traumatic, or stressful, and your hands are shaking, like, let's say you're trying to maybe dial 911, and what's the first thing people say when their hands are shaking? They say, I can't stop
54:24shaking because we develop this instinct to suppress these tremors. And we're the we we all have the instinct to to go into these tremors, but we have this instinct, like, if I if I lay on the ground and shiver and shake around, that is gonna make me look sick. It's gonna look like a seizure.
54:43Because what are people gonna do if you're going into this tremor state? They're gonna try to stop you as soon as possible. They will lay you down, tell you to stop, tell you everything's okay. So it's socially weird for us to do that, so we suppress this. Uh, but the cool thing is you're you're not gonna see a fox or a monkey or a squirrel with depression.
55:03You're not gonna see it. Uh, and the one thing that that we really suppress that they don't is this tremor response.
55:11And doctor Bercelli's work is is he had he has named these tremors himself, uh, but his system is called trauma release exercises, and it's free. You can watch it on YouTube. You can learn about it. And the cool thing is it's not like you have to learn how to do it. It's built into your nervous system to handle this trauma response.
55:34The one thing the thing that takes time to learn is how to stop suppressing it, how to kind of take your finger off of that kill switch and let that stuff start coming out. And the the really fascinating thing about it is that it's mostly just brain stem and spinal cord. You can have a full conversation while your body's going into this stuff. You look this up on YouTube separately, but you can watch TV. You can read a book. You can listen to an audiobook. You do not need to be consciously involved in the process.
56:01So the body really knows how to fix itself. Uh, and I've seen this. This is it's so popular and so effective that it was mandatory for us to go through some of this training coming back from a deployments overseas. And it changed my life. The first time I ever did it, it was life changing.
56:20And it takes you maybe thirty or forty five minutes to to find your way into this tremor state. But once you do it, once you do it one time, you can come back to those tremors very easily within, like, five seconds for the rest of your life. That's fascinating. That's wild.
56:37It's cool. And when you walk somebody through it, the first phase that that we go through is is called the ego phase because I'm I'm starting to do these tremors. I might be laying down. We'll put somebody in a stress position for a minute to kind of induce the muscle
56:55tremors so that you're you're saying, yes. I want this. I want this. So you're teaching the brain stem that okay. You're kinda giving the brain stem permission to do what it's been not allowed to do for a very long time. And but the ego phase is what prevents us from really doing it, and and that's what takes the time, is going through that ego phase of it's okay for me to do this, and I'm I want this to happen. I've heard you say that, like, one of the biggest things that people struggle with to consume your content is
57:25they feel like they're lacking control in their life. What do you think they're lacking control of? Well, this has multiple levels. I think our we are in a pandemic of loneliness, and that is the top part of Maslow. Like, the social belonging, confidence, and all of that leads to an increase in the next level, which is our self confidence, our personal discipline, which leads to a failure in the top part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is like this self actualization.
57:55Can I, like, can I accomplish the crap that I wanna accomplish this year? And what do you think people can do if they're feeling lonely,
58:06out of control, they don't know what their future's gonna hold? Like, what's the first step, you know, that somebody can take to kinda get themselves out of that rut? One of the first is realizing that all of this social media and stuff is a placebo
58:22of relationships, and it doesn't actually fulfill your your primal need for belonging and connection with people. And the second part is develop just an you know, we we have you heard of locus of control? I haven't. So a person with an internal locus of control says,
58:42I decide what happens in my life. I'm in charge of the outcomes. It's my fault if something goes wrong. And an external locus of control is kind of like the world happens to me. So, like, my control center is all out there. So, obviously, people who are successful have that internal locus of control, and they're in charge. But there's also an internal locus of self esteem.
59:05So where does my self esteem come from? Does it come from in here or comments on social media or something like that? And I see your YouTube plaque back there. I've got a a bunch of those here. And, like, if I allow those those really positive comments and that that's my source of esteem,
59:26that's the same exact window that opens to for the negative comments to come in and just make me feel like so that means I have an external locus of self esteem. If your self esteem is internally derived, then there's nothing external that can really happen.
59:43So that would be number one is I'm gonna start doing everything I can to not allow this positive things out here to influence how I feel about me, and all the negative things can influence me either. So that is an internal self esteem locus. So step two is developing that sense of personal discipline,
60:04and we can dig into that if you want to do that. And there are some proven ways to absolutely do that and that ways that nobody's talking about. Yeah. I would love to get into, like, how you can kinda hack your brain to become more disciplined. But first, like, following up on what you just said, I think it it's so true. However, I think it's much easier said than done because I do think that in many ways, like, external validation
60:27and praise can be a great metric for how you're doing in life. Like, you know, I I see the views and subscribers and stuff on YouTube, and it's like, okay. I'm on the right track. However, you know, if I let that be the basis of how I feel about myself, it can be a very slippery slope. So how can people get how can people
60:46develop a better relationship with external validation and and not be
60:53how can people develop a better relationship with the external and feel good about themselves without focusing on that? Yeah. So the it starts with one thing, and that is when I see positive or negative information, does that help me act or feel? So it should be acting. So it I should act a different way because I'm using these YouTube comments or YouTube metrics.
61:16Is it influencing how I feel about me? Is it changing my self worth? And if I receive love if I need sorry. If I need love from strangers, that means my door is open to hate as well.
61:30And these are absolute strangers who should never dictate a single ounce of your self esteem or how you feel about yourself. So feeling great about it and you can feel good, but it dictating your self worth is absolutely toxic. And it's pretty easy
61:46to start just kind of getting that into your mind on a regular basis. When I'm reading the comments, I'm reading, I don't know, messages on social media. If I allow that to change my self esteem, something is wrong.
61:58But it should be, I don't know this person. I I wouldn't invite them into my house at this point. They they also shouldn't be invited into my head. So if if you wouldn't allow them in your in your around your kids, hanging around your house, they don't belong in your head either. Well and I think the the thing that takes over is this dopamine trap. Right? I know you talk a lot about dopamine
62:22and how the most successful people in the world, they, like, know how to harness their dopamine, not let it get out of control. Like, talk more about what you mean by that, and what are some things people can do to have a really healthy relationship with dopamine?
62:36Your source of dopamine your number one source of dopamine should be you, not your kids, not your wife, not your family. It should be you and your actions. And we'll get into that in in the discipline part. But what most people don't do, like, you just get, like, a simple
62:53journal. So, like, if you just get, like, a blank page in your journal and you kind of draw out it looks like a basketball court. So I'm gonna do a circle in the middle here, and then I'm gonna write down all the places in my life I get dopamines. And and I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna put Instagram comments, alcohol
63:11or drugs or pornography or, you know, all these places that people are getting dopamine from. I'm gonna write that down. And then what I do with all of my clients is on a one to a 100 or you have a 100 points, and you have to spend all 100 points. You have to put a point value on where you're getting your dopamine from. So and that's typically the first time
63:33ever in somebody's life where they've actually mapped out where their pleasure is coming from. Not happiness. Dopamine is not happiness. Dopamine is pleasure. And most people confuse the difference between those two. So if I have a score of 10
63:50for throwing the ball for my dogs or playing with my kids or things that I that should be higher and the score for alcohol is, 65, you've once people see that metric, it is very, very hard to ignore.
64:06So the step two is, like, where where should the dopamine be? So here's where it is now. I'm gonna draw a little map. And on the next sheet of paper, we're gonna draw a new map and start, you know, drawing an arrow from the negative to the positive. Like, where I'm gonna borrow dopamine from this location. Maybe you don't have to quit all the way. I'm just gonna borrow some points
64:26so at least these two are equal. And that's that's the next step. I'm gonna get this from a 12 on this, and this one's like a 50. I'm gonna find out the midpoint of that and borrow dopamine from the high dopamine area. Does that make sense? Totally. And what do what have you found to be the most, like, effective
64:45things for having a healthy dopamine score? Like, what are the things that people can do for themselves that keep their dopamine at the most healthy level? Well, that that goes straight into the discipline thing if you're ready to talk about it. Yep. So
65:01when I said that, like, your number one source of dopamine needs to be yourself, there are a few things you can do. The number one thing, when we talk about discipline, the definition of discipline is that no one talks about your ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own, and that's all it is. Can I prioritize future me
65:22above my present self? So over time, I'm gonna try to do things on a repetitive basis as often as possible to where future me is getting some kind of reward. I might set up the coffee maker the night before. I might put clothes out for myself. I might just put a thing on my phone that reminds me in certain times. And this is short term. Right? So these are small little things. It's springtime right now as you and I are recording this or spring has just started.
65:52And I might go into my winter jackets that we're about to take out of this closet and kinda put it down in the basement for a while and put a $100 bill in one of those and write maybe write a note to myself on there. So the more actions I can take to set up my future self for success,
66:10the more once that success comes, I'm looking backwards to my past tense self, not with regret, but with gratitude. That's the most important shift to make. And I'm gonna continuously do this. I'm essentially acting like a butler, except I'm doing it for myself. I am the butler of my future self.
66:29And this isn't just like folding clothes and and setting up coffee. This is how we spend money. The food that we're eating, the the stuff we're buying at a grocery store is all gonna dictate, am I prioritizing me now or me later? And a lot of people never really have this conversation of where are my priorities. And they're typically when people are not really getting the results they want out of life, their priorities are now, here and now, and and maybe a little bit in the future, but they're not really prioritizing
66:59all the things that are happening in the line. So what happens is my daily interactions are a I'm looking backwards or I'm anticipating stuff that my past tense self has set up for me. So I've got dopamine coming in anticipation
67:16and drive to start setting my future self up, and I'm getting dopamine to get stuff from my past tense self. So I'm getting dopamine from both directions of versions of me. And that is the the most powerful way that we can start doing that. And just the way to do this, there's not like, here's 17, you know, super cool tricks to do this or some formula.
67:39You just do it as much as you can, and you rate yourself every single day. How did I do? Where were my priorities today? And it takes ten seconds to put it in a notebook or journal, calendar, whatever. And you put it down. And just the act of rating yourself and bringing it into your conscious awareness is the fastest way to get that process into your life. Because it's the same thing, like, when you buy a new car and you start seeing it all over the place.
68:04I'm just repetitively exposing myself to that level of awareness. And you don't need to change anything. Your mammalian part of your brain's gonna do that for you. And what have you found to be the most, like, common thing is that people need to, like, reprioritize
68:17in their lives as far as, like, working on their future self? The most common is probably time management and environment management. Like, if you're thinking that you're gonna be a multimillionaire or you wanna run a company or something like that and you can't organize your office or your desk or and you can't keep your area clean. Like, you can't even pick up after yourself. Every time that you go out and
68:44you want to look like a CEO, you wanna look like a leader, you're gonna know there's a part of your brain dedicated to knowing that you're faking it. And that's where we have incongruent behavior. And that's how we we make these gut feelings in other people. We have this conversation. Everything looks great. We follow that LinkedIn article that we read of 14 ways to look more confident and command respect like a leader.
69:09And that person kinda gets a gut feeling. And the gut feeling is like something's not right. Something's not adding up. So no matter what we do, we're sending off these small signals. So environment, time, appearance, And appearance is like my hygiene,
69:26all of that stuff that might signal that I'm an authority to other people. So environment, time, appearance, social skills. And social is one of the ways that we should be getting dopamine, and we're not. We're getting it from social media instead of my closer circle of friends, my next door neighbors that live next to my house, the people that live across the street, the people in three d are where most of your social dopamine should come from three d human beings and not two d human beings, people that you know. And financial is the last one. So I was somebody that was incarcerated on felony drug charges. I share that because one of the hardest things I had to do
70:03was completely change my identity and transform into this new version of myself. And I think it's so challenging for people because, you know, for me, I was so used to being a failure. My brain was convinced that I was gonna fail at life because before I was in jail, I failed at everything. And so how can people, like,
70:24quickly or efficiently kinda trick their brain into becoming that new version of themselves when the old version themselves has been beaten down over and over and over again? There's a couple of things. It's and that always comes down to confidence.
70:41If I have a lot of self doubt, that's gonna be a big one. But even bigger than self doubt is shame and self judgment. And, you know, most judgment is us kind of casting that off onto other people. So the the fastest way and there's no hack for this, but the fastest way to do this is to become so self forgiving that people would think that you're crazy. Like, you're bat crazy because you're so forgiving of yourself. Because
71:11shame and the fear of shame is what holds people back from really doing that stuff. And when it comes to confidence, that there's two main elements of confidence, and that number one is radical, radical self forgiveness. Like, who gives a crap what happened in the past? Just radical
71:30to the point where it's insane. Because if you're feeling down, you're in the dumps, like you're a little you're doubting yourself all the time, that's already delusional. You're already delusional. So just pick delusions in the other direction and be more delusionally self forgiving. The part two of that confidence is a generalized it does not need to be specific, but a very generalized
71:54expectation that things are gonna be okay. And just those two things, you will
72:01drastically just shed so much weight that you notice, like, so many people carry this stuff around, like, about some thing that happened, like, when they were 20 or when they were in in high school. If you get to the point of radical forgiveness
72:16for other people and for yourself, you get to a point of, I have confidence. But I would say the third part is stop waiting for permission
72:28because a lot of people are waiting for some signal. Once my bank account reaches this much, once people respect me and I can prove that to myself, they'll they'll just wait on these little milestones. And those milestones act as little permission slips for us to feel confident. And they're they're completely artificial. They're absolutely placebos.
72:48They don't do anything to make you more confident. It's just a placebo. So there is no one coming to give you permission. You've just gotta give it to yourself. And speaking of being radical and confident, you know, I think one of the tough things and, again, this is just speaking from my own experience and people I've talked to is, like, when when you're kind of on the come up and your life isn't where it wants to be, you have this kind of cognitive dissonance going on that's like, well, my finances aren't where they are. My relationships aren't.
73:18My health isn't, but I'm on the journey up. And it's like, how do I become confident even though my circumstances are crap? Like, how can people become,
73:28like, delusionally confident when they're out trying to make it, introducing themselves to other people even though their life at home isn't where it wants to be. Yeah. And that that goes back to do I manage my environment,
73:42my time, appearance, social, financial? And if those things are on the up, like you you're actually taking care of yourself, you're living life how you really wanna live it, but you're it doesn't matter what the metrics are. If you're doing the right things and you're living off camera so not not not your results, but your behavior when you're off camera will dictate how people feel about you.
74:07So if you try to act confident and you're feeling insecure about all of this stuff because you haven't made your bed, you didn't get up early, you don't have a lot of discipline, but you're trying to give this appearance of confidence or discipline out in public. You've got to start living that way off camera. So that's it's just a natural thing. And most people view confidence as something that you do. Like, it's a thing that I do.
74:31And all it is is removal of things. It's not adding in anything. So the biggest lesson I ever learned in my lifetime training operatives and stuff
74:42is that confidence is not additive. Like, I don't need to add things to you to to to get you to be confident. I need you to remove this fear of social judgment. This is why public speaking is the number one fear.
74:56And second, I really need you to remove this self shame and all this crap that you carry for no reason. It doesn't make you a better person at all. It doesn't make you a better person to feel ashamed of stuff. It makes you a worse person. It makes you less effective, and it makes you more judgmental of other people. And the the final element of this is composure.
75:19And when most people go out and try to be confident, they're either in posturing mode or collapse mode. So in posturing mode, someone's, like, puff their chest out. They speak louder than they they normally would, and they try to overdo confidence. And then the collapse mode is I'm gonna shrink so other people feel more comfortable around me. But I think the middle of that is just composure is the word I would have for that. So just make composure
75:46like this daily practice. And composure is is the fastest route when it comes to practicing things. Composure is the fastest route to confidence. Yeah. The puffing the chest out, it's kinda like the invisible lat syndrome. Are familiar with that? Where people guys will, like, walk around like this just to give the impression that they're they're bigger than they actually are as far as their upper body. You talked about composure, which I think it it gets into, like, how can you be more comfortable in difficult situations?
76:14You know, what have you found to be, like, a hack or something that you've worked on yourself or with the people that you've trained to help people practice becoming more composed, you know, during difficult situations?
76:26So there's a few things. And we the first, we have to understand, like, the neuroscience of this and why that works. And we we have this mammalian part of our brain, this limbic system that kind of governs 99%
76:42of our life. So we think that we're in charge and this this animal brain is actually in charge. And most people need to realize that that part of our brain doesn't speak English. It can't read affirmations at all. Like, there's no language ability in that part of our brain. So when it comes to coming into life and trying to get
77:01more composure in conversations and having that that level of discipline where you're kind of a lot more in charge. You're not in charge of the room. You're in charge of yourself. Mistake number one that destroys ninety percent of people. The the biggest mistake, and I've never heard anybody else say this, is thinking in terms of hierarchy and status.
77:22So am I above or below this other person? And the the first step to that is, am I willing to agree to treat everyone equally? This means that if I meet Jeff Bezos tomorrow, I'm gonna treat him the exact same way as I treat a Starbucks barista.
77:40Everybody gets the same. There's no hierarchy. I'm gonna I'm gonna be the same to every person that I talk to. And that level of consistency sets the stage for that level of composure.
77:51So to going going into that mammalian part of this, it's a practice. So composure is a a lifelong practice, but you get good at it by making your body get involved first. So our brains are hardwired to kind of compare with other animals and stuff. So with other other humans.
78:12And the moment you get in a conversation, the way that you should permanently change the way you compare yourself is slowness and movement.
78:24And am I willing to be the slowest person in the room, and am I willing to be more relaxed than the other person? That's it. Those are those are the only things. Doesn't matter if it's this multimillion dollar potential client on a sales call or the barista at Starbucks. They're gonna be identical. I'm gonna be slower than the other person, more relaxed, treat everybody the same.
78:45And that is the fastest way to do that. And then kind of rating yourself at the end of the day. How did I do on a one to 10 on composure? Was I more in collapse? Was did I lean into the posturing side? And definitely, absolutely,
79:01rating yourself every day is gonna bring more and more awareness. And, of course, it's kitschy, and it it's something that's all over the Internet, but mindfulness, this practice of mindfulness throughout the day, just because it's all over the damn place, there's a reason for that. It doesn't mean we should dismiss it. It's absolutely
79:21powerful, especially when it comes to composure and and leadership and authority. What have you found to be the the number one thing that people struggle with as far as being uncomfortable? You mean in in social settings?
79:35Yeah. Like, what's the the biggest thing that you find people to be uncomfortable with? I I think it is a fear of future judgment. So it's imagining some kind of social judgment, and we're we're tribal animals. And if a a large number of people in our tribe a million years ago started judging us and and making fun of us, we can be outcast. We're not gonna have sex. We're not gonna have babies, and then our genes die. And this is one of the reasons public speaking is the number one fear. We're not afraid of speaking in public. We're afraid of the potential for judgment, and that's a two part thing. So the moment I am thinking about the potential for judgment, my brain automatically defaults
80:15to saying, if there's a potential for judgment, that also means that I need to manage how I am perceived. So this leads to
80:25there's a potential fear of judgment. I'm gonna change how I'm acting to to where everything's good. I'm gonna manage everything a lot more, which makes us less us, which which sends off a little vibe to people that's like, something's not right. There's something not really fully adding up. And then we see more skeptical facial expressions or more doubting. So it changes who we are. It makes us more self managing and more self managing. So
80:50we get out of that that need, like, judgment's not gonna hurt me. Your brain is wired to equate the fear of judgment with the same as being attacked by a saber tooth tiger. So the fastest way to get your brain to understand this is the phrase, there are no tigers. And it's gonna remind you that this is a mammalian response system that is outdated,
81:13and a lot of our society has outdate kind of outpaced our brain's ability to adapt to it. So just kind of that reminder, there are no tigers. And the second is start, like, a daily practice of
81:27worrying less and less about perception management because people are looking a lot less than you think. Everybody's thinking how what are they seeing? How are they judging me? They're they probably don't care. And it's not gonna matter. It will never matter at the end of the day. Do you think there are things that people can do
81:46that, like, force them, like, naturally to embrace discomfort? I mean, I know one of the things that's helped me is, like, the cold plunge sauna, like, doing, like, intense workouts. Like, there's a big trend for that now, and they're linking it to getting better at managing stress and being better in social settings. Like, have you found anything like that to be instrumental?
82:06Yeah. Those are are proven to work. I mean, the first study on it on it managing mental health stress was, like, 1951. They were studying dudes in, like, Norway and Sweden where there's, like, saunas everywhere and why they were so emotionally resilient to stress. And this was in they were measuring it in combat and soldiers returning from combat and how the saunas and and cold water helped manage stress.
82:31And those are fantastic. Another one to add on to that is just getting into a practice of yoga, which a lot of people don't associate with that. But if you have a good yoga instructor, they're gonna walk you through this little yoga session, and they're gonna remind you, like, when you're feeling a little bit uncomfortable, they're gonna tell you to smile. They're gonna tell you to breathe slower
82:52and and smile through that whole process. And it is fantastic at helping somebody manage this mind I'm mindful. I'm in the moment. I'm continuing to breathe through discomfort, and your brain starts learning these habits. So that is definitely Doug, you hit it on the head right there. I think that one of the the things that people are really
83:16I think one of the things that people really struggle with is fear. And fear, like, really, like, can trap them from making a decision. Fear can trap them from going out and changing their life, and it can just be completely overwhelming. I know we've kinda touched on, you know, some of this stuff already.
83:34But, like, if somebody came to you and they're like, hey. Like, Chase, like, I want to I want the the bulletproof way to crush fear so that it it doesn't let me so it doesn't, like, overpower me and prevent me from, like, living my best life. Like, what can they do? Well, the the first way is to start identifying all of those fears. Because every fear is like, I don't wanna go out in public. I'm scared of going in public. Well, why? I have a fear of judgment. And then we go, why is that? And why is that? And you kinda get back to, like, well, in middle school,
84:08I got made fun of. Or in high school, this thing happened. And starting to get aware, the awareness is the fastest way to start getting some of these things unwired. And living in a way where you know that this is kind of a a simulation, and you're kind of gamifying your own life by taking these notes every day. We're living in a way that I'm kind of in a video game, and I want I wanna level up my character.
84:33I'm gonna live in a way that is as fearless as possible. So to get out of those fears, the fastest way to do that is to really, really dig down on each one of those and figure out what it was. I have a system. Actually, if if you do PDFs or show notes, I'll just send you the PDF and you can stick it in the description below the video that all of our intelligence
84:56operators go through to assess their level of authority and what's what's really holding them back in their life, and it's free. It's it's called the authority assessment inventory. And that's one of the fastest ways. And if you if you think even if you're not religious, if there's any belief in your mind that says all of these ancient texts might contain some stuff that's really powerful and some really good wisdom, whether it's the the teachings of Judaism or Christianity
85:27or reading Hindu texts like the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads, and I mispronounced that. I have no no doubt I mispronounced that. But all of these texts have these things in common.
85:39And just zooming in on one of those, the the Bible, the most common phrase in the entire Bible is do not fear. It's the most recurring phrase in the entire Bible. It's 365 times
85:53reminding you not to be afraid of anything. It's not a big deal. Nothing is a big deal. And it's every single ancient text that seems to reflect that there's some truth with a lowercase t in all of these. And there may may not be one absolute truth, but I think that even Plato, before Christianity
86:13was even around, Plato wrote about this and wrote about the folly and and waking up from kind of the simulation and realizing that it kind of is a game with the Plato's allegory of the cave, wrote about this
86:28a long time ago, way before Christianity was around. But no matter what book you look at, if it's an ancient text and this ancient wisdom, every single thing that you see is telling us that we're all kind of like one thing. Don't be scared of anything in your life and just kind of go forward and and don't be a douchebag. We're all one thing and don't be scared. That's kind of the main theme of all these books. And I think just living your starting to live your life that way is such a powerful move.
86:59And how can I be less fearful? Is the system rigged to keep people in their twenties and thirties stuck in their head, stuck in life forever? I think the this is a we're going deep pretty fast. So
87:14I think the system is not necessarily rigged as if there's one puppet master, one guy holding the the strings and all this stuff. I think it's many, many things, and maybe two thirds of it is just the algorithms that are pushing profit.
87:31But when it comes down to you wanna get anyone stuck, there's three steps that you need to do to get people stuck, and that's p d s. That is pacify, distract, and sedate. Pacify,
87:43so we're, like, pacify you as much as possible, distract you as much as we can, and then sedate you. And if you look at the rise of things that people are doing in life that are anesthetic
87:56quality, not just like drugs, but, um, people looking at porn and video games are up, VR is is through the roof, and that becomes kind of an anesthetic for our life. But if we look at modern tactics
88:11of the psyop that is happening to keep people stuck, it starts with one thing called flooding. So we wanna drown out the real signals that are, uh, with overwhelming noise. This is memes and drama and fake news and riots. So I wanna I wanna drown out as much as I can, just overwhelm.
88:31And then it's repetition. So I wanna repeat a message enough, and it becomes an internalized truth for people.
88:39And then the next step is mimicry. So the way that it's working now and when I say psyops, I'm not talking about the US army. I'm talking about a psychological operation. I just wanna put that out there. But they now imitate everyday content.
88:55And this is TikTok, the Instagram posts, influence, and and stuff like that. And then we have gamification. So the next step of this, the the final two steps are are the biggest. The gamification is where we make ideology
89:10feel like a lifestyle or a team sport, uh, and that's big. And then just to seal it in, we use false consensus. So we use a bunch of bots or fake accounts
89:23to simulate popular opinion. And once that's happening, we get people who can't really grow up. And I think the biggest layer this is a super nuanced answer, but the biggest layer is if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it's this little triangle where you have, like, survival and then safety and then love and belonging, and then we have, like, self esteem and all the other stuff.
89:49But the love and belonging, that's our social need and what we have on social media now. We have this TikTok, Facebook, you know, whatever you wanna say. Our brains are not capable, 100% not capable of managing a social network that large.
90:05And the social media serves as a placebo of fulfilling that social need. So what happens is our brains are thinking that we're getting that social fulfillment, but we can never go past it, which means we never get to esteem. We never get an actual fulfillment of that. We get these dopamine hits that feel like social connection, but they're not. It's not satisfying that ancestor part of our brain.
90:29So it is stuck in that place. And massively, what happens as a result of that is I can't have empathy for every bad thing that goes on around the world. It's not possible for anybody. Uh, so we see people then outrage about one or two things, but there there's a guy that maybe got murdered two blocks away from their house. They don't have time to deal with that because they're worried about Ukraine or they're worried about something else going on.
90:57So now that we have so much overload of social connection and negative news, we have apathy. And and I I do believe that this is an engineered apathy, and that's the that's the real cause of all this. So do you think there's a way out? I do. I make videos about this on my channel, uh, all the time. And I think the way out is not just, like, go live in a cave and, like, become Amish. It's, like, throw your your iPad in the trash.
91:27I think the way out is starting to realize what is simulated and what's not in your life. And where are we looking at a label of something and thinking that that's the thing? The word is the thing. Where am I looking at social connection on Facebook and and tricking myself into thinking it's real? Because what this has made us do is pretend.
91:49And all of us just fallen into this trap of I need to fake something. I need to pretend like I've got all my together. Like, we see all of these videos online, these content creators, like, everything looks good in the background, but you go to their normal life, their off camera life. It's absolutely falsified. The way that we do this is we realize what's fake in our life and where we are pretending.
92:14And the biggest thing that's been engineered over the last few years is this fear of social injury, and that is weaponized. If you look at, like, the the biggest fear of people is public speaking, but it's actually judgment. So the the fear of judgment has been weaponized, and we've talked about this, like, with your first question.
92:35Stop being a victim to the fear of judgment is the biggest thing. And even even if you're just starting small, just be okay with receiving a a social injury once or twice, and be okay with being nonperfect. And
92:51if you're watching the news on a regular basis, I would say that is a that's worse than in my opinion, I would say that's worse than, like, smoking a few packs of cigarettes for your health and for your mental well-being. I would say, like, if you're watching the news, that would be step one. It's like,
93:11I haven't watched the news in probably nine years, eight or nine years, and it's amazing. But if something's gonna happen here, my neighbor's gonna text me. My family's gonna say, hey. Did you see this thing that happened? Maybe I'll see some events that are important, but our brains are not wired to handle a world full of news. Our brains are wired to handle a 100 people max, maybe a 150.
93:35And that little tribe is what we're supposed to handle. And we're tricking ourselves because our brains have not evolved in two hundred thousand years. And how can people have, like, a nuanced relationship,
93:48or is that possible? Like, meaning, like, I heard you say that social media creates this false sense of connection, and yet I think people wanna still figure out how can I stay informed, how can I stay connected to people online that I may or may not be friends with? And then the same thing with the news, where they're like, hey, like, probably shouldn't be watching the news every night before I go to bed, and I also want to stay informed
94:09with what's going on. Like, is there a way to have a healthy balance with these things so that it doesn't wreck people's lives? I I don't think I'm the expert. I'm I'm the guy that studies how it damages us and how and and I'm not even studying it for health reasons. I'm studying it because I teach interrogation. I teach people how to make people do things that are not in their best interest. And this is getting someone to confess to a crime. This is,
94:33uh, or if they think it's not in their best interest. So if somebody has a severe, uh, depression and they go see a psychologist, they think getting rid of that, which is a part of themselves, is not in their best interest. So this is this is what I really studied. But I think the balance comes down to awareness,
94:52a deep, deep awareness because papa Carl, as as we call him in all of my trainings online, Carl Jung famously said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life, and you will call it fate.
95:08And most of what we think is our fate is just a bunch of running in in the background, a bunch of unconscious stuff going on that we're not aware of. So getting hyperaware of your screen time, getting hyperaware of where I feel this need to pretend, and why do we still need to pretend? Social media has hijacked this thing, so we fear social injury.
95:29So getting hyperaware is step one. There's not like you need to wake up at five and take a cold shower and take zinc and magnesium and all this, like, perfect morning routine. Just make the in your life that's unconscious, bring it as much as you can to the surface, and do it on a regular basis. And keep in mind that the mammalian brain that makes all of our decisions and that governs our whole life doesn't speak English.
95:55You will never affirmation your way out of this stuff. Like, that's using language is not the right way to do it. Using awareness is. So we have this part of our brain called the the reticular formation. People online commonly refer to it as a reticular activating system.
96:13So in in your brain, if if Doug is searching for white 2025 white Toyota four Runner TRD Pro, then you've got all these specifics and stuff. And then you finally go and buy one. The day you start driving it, you're gonna see it everywhere. You're gonna be like, woah. Everybody's got the same car as me. And that's not because you told your brain using language to do that.
96:39The biggest changes in our life when we fall in love, we watch our kid get born. Um, all of these big things that happen in our life and these big shifts in our unconscious are never rooted in the use of language. So how can I get the awareness up there so much that I'm telling that reticular formation of the brain that this is very important so that the mammalian side of our brain starts searching for it? What do think is a good first step for someone who is in this simulation and on autopilot,
97:08and they're just used to doing the same stuff over and over again? They're scrolling social media. They're not taking care of their health. Like, what's the first thing they can do to develop start to develop this hyper self awareness? So the number one thing is disruption. Anytime you wanna start deprogramming someone or even brainwashing someone, either way, back or or backwards or forwards,
97:32you want to start with destabilization and some kind of agitation with lifestyle. So if I expect something, I need to disrupt the expectation.
97:44I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna brush my teeth maybe with my left hand. I'm gonna repaint my bedroom. I'm gonna move my furniture around. I'm gonna routinely do things that disrupt the scripts that I'm following through my life. So if the script if one of my scripts is scrolling on Instagram for an hour, maybe a couple hours a day, I'm gonna set a time limit. There's like, if you look at the new iPhone,
98:08you can set app time limits and stuff on your on yourself. And I don't mean that I can't reopen the app, but I'm just gonna disrupt the script when that time limit thing pops up. I'm gonna do everything I can to start disrupting those routine scripts in my everyday life. One of the things I've had my clients do is
98:29this is stuff that physiotherapists use called KT tape. Have you ever heard of that stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like stretchy stuff. It's got two sticky ends on it, and it's kinda like to pull the fascia away from muscles. I'm probably making that up. I'm not an expert. But just putting that on your body, uh, no matter where you put it, is going to refocus
98:53your energy throughout the entire day. So just having like, pulling your chest apart or having it to where, like, if you slouch, it it's gonna, like, tighten up. That's gonna tell your brain over and over without English, without any words. It's gonna tell your brain over and over something is different, something is new. You need to pay attention. So the the fastest way to break out of the scripts is to start disrupting them on a regular basis.
99:17And I think that sometimes people, when they hear what we're talking about or they have this gut feeling that the world is, quote, unquote, against them or they've they're wired to fail or whatever, they fall into, like, the victim mindset.
99:32Like, how would you how do you how would you, like, interrogate yourself? Or what questions would you ask to be able to snap yourself out of a rut like that and escape the victim mindset? That is so, so tough, especially when it's a behavioral pattern.
99:46I would say the fastest way to do it is listen to the expert on a regular basis, and I would say that's like Jocko Willink. It can snap you up faster than Chase Hughes ever could. But if you wanna snap out of any kind of rut like that and you see yourself kind of going into this victim mindset, that is amazing, and you should celebrate that because 99%
100:08of people aren't even aware that they're in it. So if you've got to that point where you realize that I might be, you know, victimizing myself, You need to get out of that mindset, but the fastest way is I need to start disrupting scripts.
100:24Because even if you watch Jocko all day, every day, you read all of Jocko's books, you're running on scripts. So we're running on autopilot 10 times more than we think we are. Throughout our entire day, we're running these autopilot script from our behavioral patterns. So no matter what we read, remember, that's language,
100:42we have to disrupt patterns so that the brain pays attention. So we have to do things differently where the brain has no more ability to predict the future. I think when sometimes people are trying to get momentum, like journaling or even, like, putting their thoughts out there, setting goals can help. You know, what what do you think are some of the most important,
101:04like, questions someone should ask themselves or, uh, important maybe, like, journaling prompts. Like, if you were trying to, you know, get someone to snap out of that behavior change and be consistent with how they're moving forward in life. Some of the most important questions to raise are, what are the things I do automatically
101:24every day? Like, what are the things I'm doing automatically, and how can I start breaking out of that? But second is, what are the things that make me emotional?
101:33What are the things that I get upset about? And that's where we're gonna find those little identity fragments. And Carl Jung talks about this so much that I have my office is just, like, full of of Carl Jung's books. What I really wanna do is on a repetitive basis, what am I doing not just on autopilot, but how am I judging other people? And that number one is gonna help you start identifying those unconscious patterns of, like, I have I'm carrying some kind of secret concealed
102:05shame that I don't want anybody to know about. Um, and when people are concealing shame and guilt, the the biggest thing is they think that they're the only one.
102:16Uh, but I can tell you, it it this is a 100% of people are doing this. And whether or not you feel bad about it is is the measure. So where am I judging other people, and where am I carrying some kind of hidden shame? And the the hard part about the the hidden shame part is that some people will carry this hidden shame,
102:38and they will feel like me feeling bad about this one thing that happened in middle school or this thing that happened a couple of years ago. If I feel bad about it, that makes me a good person. That's the biggest load of that that you could ever hold inside of your brain. Feeling bad about something does does not make you a good person. Yeah. And it's tough, because I think that a lot of times, like, going back to this victim mindset,
103:04I think people will use their past as a way to justify current behavior. They'll say,
103:13well, I was picked on in school. My parents got divorced. I mean, I did all of this, I wound up in jail. And they people end up using these excuses as a way to justify how they act now, and it's tough because their brain has now convinced them that it's okay to behave that way because they're used to getting people
103:32patting them on the back and telling them it's okay. And then the sob story is there's commodity in that. There there really is. And I think if you look at it from a different angle, that's the first big thing that we all need to do is I need to take my little GoPro
103:49that's normally stuck way behind my head and put it out in front of my eyes and start changing my perspective. This is why, like, just a shift in perspective can solve depression, and it can it can help people with PTSD and all kinds of other things. This is why that we're starting to see that psychedelic therapy is, like, one of the most effective things ever tested.
104:13Well, and I think it's tough because people, for decades, like, they they are just used to seeing, like, one perspective, having one view of the world, and they've essentially kind of manipulated their own perception of of reality.
104:27And it just takes so much work to to snap out of it. And it and it's tough. Like, how how do you think people can be consistent with it when they have been inconsistent for years and they're just somebody that has had the same, like, type of worldview for a period of time, and they're trying to, like, make that shift to be consistent with behavior change.
104:49If they're trying to change themselves, the the number one thing that we can do is is form a a visual relationship with your future self. And this sounds maybe we talked about it on the last podcast. I'm I don't remember. But you you get you download an app that makes you look like a 95 year old,
105:09and you you do that thing. You take the selfie. You look looking at it, and it makes, like, AI warps your face or I don't know how it works. But you print that sucker out, and you put it on your fridge. You put it on everywhere you want it to. You wanna be reminded. And so most people don't prioritize our future selves because we have no ability to visualize them. They're hard to think about. But what we're doing is not using language. We're not using affirmations.
105:35We're showing the mammal part of our brain what we want to focus on and where we wanna place priority. So if I wanna be consistent, the only reason I fail to be consistent is because I'm prioritizing myself right now. What do I want? What does present tense me want right now? And we're .
105:58So shift number one to make to to make so many changes in your life is, can I teach my mammalian brain to start forming a prioritized relationship with future me?
106:11How could you could you do that with, like, situations? Like, you know, I imagine if somebody is, like, in a relationship and they're acting disrespectfully
106:21to their partner, like, would there be a way to, like, look at, a future version of that relationship? Someone who's addicted to drugs and they're like, hey. What's my life gonna be like in ten years? Like, can that app do something similar, or would you, like, have to almost, like, draw a completely different picture? I think that our brain is is wired to go against things a lot more than it is towards something positive. It's it's made to go away from something negative.
106:46If you look at at our ancestors,
106:50they were way more likely to confuse a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick. So we're our brains default to negative to keep us safe. So if if you're trying to avoid something,
107:05maybe printing two versions of that picture out, one where you're missing some teeth, maybe somebody's on drugs or something, or one where you're morbidly obese and 85 or 90 years old.
107:19Uh, a lot of those can help the mammalian brain say, I don't want that because our brain people are saying, like, you're programming your brain all the time. But if your brain doesn't like something, it's going to be repulsed by that. And I know that you're not if you're putting negative stuff into your brain on a very regular basis,
107:41it's very hard to just want that negative thing. You're not gonna drive toward it automatically. So keep in mind, our brains are wired to move away from negative stimuli. So we just create that negative stimuli to help us form that relationship with the future self. So from a on a day to day basis, like, we're kind of bringing this together.
108:02Like, we've got companies and things that that have created this simulation for people to feel like they're stuck or even more stuck than they actually are in their life. And then you have these people that are trying to change, they're watching your content. Maybe they're listening to this episode, they're like, hey. You know, I realized my relationship with social media is unhealthy.
108:23I probably should change my friends. I probably should put the substances down. I should probably work out, like, all the things. And yet they're up against this battle that exists that's way more powerful than they are. Right? How can people navigate
108:38that on, like, a day to day basis? Like, what would that framework look like so that they are working towards self improvement and yet but yet they're not letting this, you know, sigh up
108:50kind of affect them while they're on their way? I think that from a day to day basis, the the main thing that a person can do to start getting out of this rut is a, developing that future self relationship where our mammalian brain sees it. That is number one.
109:07But number two is just making the unconscious conscious. So let's go back to that for just a second with with this new question. If I am if I know that I need a new friend network,
109:21there's part of me that I'm not really aware of that I need to make more aware in my brain. So I need to, like, write all this stuff out. Maybe I need to build a spreadsheet. Maybe it's some visual thing that I need to do. I need to make these problems as crystal clear to my conscious brain as I possibly can. So if I'm on social media today, maybe I'll go to Michaels or Walmart, and I'm gonna get a big poster. I'll draw a little grid on there, and with a big Sharpie, I'm gonna go up there every day. I'm gonna I'm gonna write how many hours because your phone tracks it all. I'm gonna write my screen time on this big board. The stuff that we used to just unconsciously pursue
109:59is now getting forced closer and closer and closer to conscious awareness. That is the the fastest way you can do it. Because if I wanna manipulate you, if I'm running a psyop against a country of any size, the first thing I want you to do is pacify, distract, sedate those things so all of the negative behaviors, all the things that I want you to be doing are happening unconsciously.
110:26And the fastest way to do that is just to get someone to do something on a regular basis, and second, get you to believe that lots of people are doing it so I can normalize the behavior.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
Steal the single-question podcast cold open.
Killing Excuses long-form playbook
No intro music, no monologue, no graphics. One question that IS the headline thesis, then 110 minutes of named, paper-and-pen-able frameworks at five-minute intervals.
- Open with the question the title promises to answer. Doug's first words ARE the hook. No 'welcome back to the show.'
- Make the host be the audience surrogate — confess, summarize, ask the next question. Don't co-create the framework.
- Stack named frameworks every 4-6 minutes. 'The dopamine map.' 'The childhood triangle.' 'F.A.T.E.' Naming makes them ownable, screenshot-able, repeatable.
- Give each framework a paper-and-pen exercise. Tactile + concrete = the thing that gets clipped and shared.
- End with the inverse-of-the-villain frame. Chase's 'if I were running a psyop' move at the end is the emotional close — it indicts the environment, not the listener.
- For Killing Excuses: Joe Lee asks; Joe Lavery (or Chef Joe, Sales Joe) answers with a named framework and a tactile exercise. The two-character podcast variant of this template.
§ 05 · For You
Five things to do this week.
If you came here to actually change something
Forget the meta-analysis. If the title hooked you and you want to break a pattern this week, do these in this order.
- Draw the dopamine map tonight. One sheet of paper, line down the middle. Left: every cheap-dopamine source with a point value out of 100. Right: where the good dopamine should come from. The point is making the imbalance impossible to deny.
- Print the 95-year-old selfie. Download an aging app, take the photo, stick it on the fridge. You don't prioritize your future self because you can't see them — fix that.
- Set causes, not symptoms. 'Millionaire by 30' isn't a goal. The daily behaviors that would produce it are. Write down the causes; the symptom is the byproduct.
- Pick ONE habit to start. Discipline is finite — spend it once, then let routine carry the rest. Most people fail because they start five at once.
- If trauma is a factor, look up TRE (Berceli's neurogenic tremors). It's a physical nervous-system reset most people have never heard of and it works without drugs.
- Bonus: try Chase's sister Holly's line on whatever you want to quit — 'it's not about resistance, it's about education.' Read everything about the thing. Resistance ends when knowledge is heavier than craving.
