My name is Sam Wagnin and the author of Malignan Self-Love and Narcissism Revisited and many other books about personality disorders, finance, economics, philosophy, short fiction, anything that captured my fancy over my very, very, very, very, very, way too long life. I'm also a professor of psychology and a professor of finance in several universities and I'm mentioning that not only because I'm grandiose and vain, which I am, but also because it's relevant to this video, as you will see. Like everything Jewish, this video is divided into two parts. In the first part, there's a personal message from me to you. In this personal message, I will try to clarify the ground rules. Why am I doing what I'm doing and what do I expect from you in return? What will be tolerated and what will not be tolerated and how I'm going to react if you do certain things. The second part of this video deals with a pathology called magical thinking. It's a very critical pathology which underlies narcissism and by implication borderline personality disorder. It even affects psychopaths, histrionics, schizotypo, schizoids and a variety of other mental health disorders. Magical thinking is the foundation of a lot of the phenomena that we see, many cognitive deficits such as grandiosity. It starts in early childhood. So we're going to explore this multifaceted phenomenon in the second half of this video. But first, I would like to start with a personal message that I had promised. And like every good Jewish text, it starts with a guilt feeling. I feel guilty. Mea culpa. I pound my chest in remorse and regret. It's my fault that I did not lay clear ground rules way long ago. It's my fault that I've set you all up for failure. You innocently post comments or react to my videos and suddenly you are trashed, trampled upon. And this is unjust. It's unjust because the ground rules are nowhere to be seen. Well, after this video, that's one excuse you will not be able to use. I am remedying this oversight of mine and admitting culpability, assuming responsibility for my misbehavior, which in itself is breaking news when it comes to a narcissist. Am I rude? Am I abrasive? Am I impatient? You bet. I'm all free. But I do my best to never be gratuitously abusive, abusive without good reason. And I always abuse in order to teach. This is exactly like greater minds such as Jordan Peterson. I believe that punishing, disciplining is an integral part of good education. You see, as far as I'm concerned, you are here to learn. Your students remember the introduction? I'm a professor of psychology. I'm a professor of finance. I taught economics. I taught many topics to countless thousands of students over the decades. I'm a teacher. I'm an educator by grain, by core. So I'm here to teach you and you are here to learn. But like every student everywhere in the world, even in this post-pandemic day and age of remote learning, you should do your homework. You should work hard after each and every video, researching the references, studying the bibliography, doing additional checkups, comparing me to other teachers and other professors to see if I got something wrong, etc. etc. You should work hard. The video is only the beginning, not the end. And don't waste my time. Do not waste my time on questions, the answers to which you can find in multiple videos on my channel. Each and every question you've ever thought about and each and every question you are capable of thinking about is tackled in several of the 600 videos on my channel. Wasting my time is rude. Wasting my time is entitled. Discordious, no courtesy. It's uncivil. It's impolite. I will not waste your time. I'm trying to not waste your time in these videos. I'm trying to elevate you. I'm trying to educate you. I'm trying to better you. I take your time seriously. I take you seriously. I demand the same respect and the same treatment. Wasting my time is grandiose. It's narcissistic. It's entitled. Search my channel before you make a comment demanding my attention. There is no justification to not search my channel. There is no justification to not use Google or Wikipedia or Google Scholar. The only three excuses I accept is if you are amputated or quadriplegic or legally blind. In these three cases, I'd be delighted to help you. In all other cases, take your finger from wherever it is and use it. Put it to good use. Do your homework. Second thing, I weed out and screen out the intellectually challenged. My YouTube channel is a moron-free zone.   Zero tolerance. First strike, you're out.  I received a direct message the other day. I'm quoting, when you say me and when you say I in your text, are you referring to yourself? That's a question I received.  That's the question. Can you believe this? Can you believe such people exist? Doomcoff blocked. And again, do your research. Do your research.  Before you direct message me. I do not spoon feed. I am not your mother, thank God. I am not your father, luckily for me. I am not here to spoon feed you. There is no excuse except raging indolence and intellectual laziness to not first Google and then type. First research, then think.  So don't try me. Don't push your luck. You're here to learn not to show off, not to brag. I am not interested in your bluster. I am not interested in what you think, in what you believe. Your point of view, your beliefs, your thoughts are utterly irrelevant, utterly irrelevant.   Be humble. I know in this age, I know in this period in history, and I know in some countries to be humble is a lost art. Well, I am here to help you to restore it. I am here to help you develop humility. I am not saying that I cannot learn from you. Why do you think I got all my information? Why do you think we, psychologists, get our knowledge from?  Of course, you are the raw material.  So you are very important. I encourage you to share the facts about your life experience, your observation, share information, about your biography, share your resume, your interpersonal relationship, your experiences. You are all welcome, but do not pretend to be an authority, and do not teach me what is narcissism, and do not teach anyone else who is an authority, what is what. That's why there are professors, and you. You are not professors. You are far from professors.  If you want to share information, share information from reliable, peer-reviewed, vetted academic journals, these are the only acceptable sources on this channel. No conspiracy theories, for morons, no inane good, feel good new wave nonsense. This is not the place.  Generally, you would do well to confine yourself to reading my posts, watching my videos. I am not running a community here. I don't do community. You are not now, and you will never be. My pals, my buddies, or my friends. I don't do friends.  I am Professor Vaknin to you. Not Sammy, and not Sam. You want to address me, it's Professor Vaknin. I worked very hard to obtain this title. Don't get too cozy or familiar with me. We are not on a first-name basis.  You need to pay me to care about you.   I at least don't pretend.  Don't bother. You're my follower, so follow me. Follow me respectfully and be very grateful that I'm sharing with you, free of charge, what I had spent decades studying. And if you didn't get this message, if you disagree with it, you know, there's a door. Do both of us a favor. And follow me now. And subscribe now. And don't bother to inform the entire universe that you had unsubscribed, because no one cares if you are subscribed or not subscribed. Unsubscribe, post haste and good riddance to you. I don't need people like you here. I prefer to stay with 2,000 people who respect what I have to say and are keen and enthusiastic learners. They want to learn. They want to improve. They want to educate themselves. Their erudition is their happiness. I don't need opinionated, vain, glorious, I don't know, wannabe, self-styled experts. I hope I made the ground rules very clear and I encourage you to adopt this new frame of mind that you are here with humility to learn. That you will do your homework after each and every video, because I give you in the video pointers and markers. I'm telling you what to look for. I'm directing you. Use these innate bibliographies. Use these directions. You don't have to agree with me, of course. You may end up finding other authorities who disagree with me or disagree with the authorities that I agree with. That's legitimate. This is the scientific discourse. That's how science develops out of disagreement and conflict. Science is conflictual and adversarial, exactly like the court system, the legal system. So I'm not telling you that you should agree with it, but if you disagree with me, show me where? Show me the money. Refer me to an article, a paper, an academic journal with a date, with a page number, and tell me why you disagree with me. I am open to proper academic discourse. I am open to learn humbly from your life experiences. I am not open to be your equal, because I'm not. And if you don't like this, go somewhere else. I abhor malignant egalitarianism and I've been fighting it all my life. Everyone is an expert now. Everyone in his dog is an expert, just because you have a smartphone and you can type the word Wikipedia, probably with two spelling mistakes. I am older than the Internet and I remember a world where authority, expertise, knowledge, education, literature mattered. Where people looked up to people with knowledge and education, where they did not contest authority when they recognized one. So I'm all fashioned. Show me. Let's get to today's topic. Today's topic is a magical thinking. I'll propose the first part. Magical thinking is of course a perfectly healthy stage of development in early childhood. It was indirectly described by the great Jean Piaget, the child psychologist in Geneva in 1929. He described a stage of development, which he called the pre-operational phase, where children are developing the capacity to think logically. And when they develop this capacity, they are trying to find, to discover, to explore the universe and to impose on the universe, on their environment, on their parents, on adults, on peers, on circumstances and situations and events. Trying to impose on all these some heuristically discovered rules, some rules that emanate from and are derived from repeated experience. And he called this the pre-operational phase, because this phase is not characterized by action. It's characterized by thinking. It's an internal phase. He said that during this phase, children are egocentric. We'll come to it a bit later. Another interesting contribution was made by Bruno Bettelheim. Now Bettelheim, later it was discovered, had lied about his career as a psychologist. He was not a child psychologist, as he had claimed to be. But this does not detract or diminish his accomplishments in analyzing enchantment. He analyzed fairy tales and magical tales. And he showed that the role of fairies, magical creatures, the belief in magic, this role in personal development is indispensable. We use magic and magical thinking, said Bettelheim, to interpret the uninterpretable, to make sense of the senseless, to introduce order into ostensible randomness, and definitely to decipher the roles that adults and peers play in our lives and to develop appropriate behavioral responses and emotional correlates. He thought that magic and fairy tales, and so on, are critical developmental phases. And so while Piaget did not directly address the issue of magical thinking, Bettelheim was the next stage, and he did. Now before we proceed, I as usual will refer you to a few scholars whose work I value in this field. The first one would be Rosin, R-O-Z-I-N. He usually works with another scholar whose name is Nemerov, as it sounds, N-E-M-E-R-O-F-F, Nemerov. And then there is the British scholar Eugene Subotsky, S-U-B-B-O-T-S-K-Y. I don't ask me why all scholars have impossible names. It's possible that they had become scholars because they have impossible names, as a compensatory mechanism. I have no idea. But these are the three that if you want to make a start with understanding magical thinking, they are as good as any. I mean, they're the best. They've studied magical thinking at length for very long time. And so what is magical thinking? Magical thinking is when you say as a child or later as an adult if you have a pathology. That's because magical thinking in adulthood is a prime indicator of some kind of pathology, underlying pathological process. So magical thinking simply says, if I think, it means that I act or it means that I prevent something from happening. If I think, it is. If I think, I create reality. If I think, I affect reality. If I just think, I change reality. Reality is an extension and a figment of my thinking. Reality is inside me and therefore I can manipulate it and alter it and reassemble it and disassemble it and deconstruct it and reconstruct it. Anyway, I see fit because it's all inside my head. It's enough to think, to affect changes in the environment and to obtain favorable results. Now, immediately all of you recognize, of course, nonsensical movements and counts like the law of attraction or the secret or the awakening giant inside. Or if you just put your mind to it, everything is possible. You can accomplish anything.  These are all manifestations and forms, pernicious, pernicious and in some cases, psychopathic and malevolent forms of magical thinking. These are people who use magical thinking to take your money. Simple. They encourage your magical thinking. They encourage you to regress to an infantile state where they are telling you what to do. They are telling you who to be. They become your parental figures and they regress you to childhood and then they can convince you of anything. If you just think about becoming a giant, you become a giant. If you just put your mind to it to be rich, you'll be rich. If you really, really want that gorgeous girl, she will be yours. Pick up artists. And if you follow 12 rules or 5 rules or 7 rules, depending which guru, mystic, yogi and con artist you prefer to follow, your life will be so different that you will have become another person. These are all illusory and delusional forms of thinking and in this sense, if magical thinking is carried to adulthood and if it is taken to extreme, it becomes a delusional disorder. But that is more rare. Very few people deteriorate and degenerate into delusional disorder. Majority of people like, for example, narcissists, borderlines, majority of people with mental health disorders, they have just magical thinking but they don't really, really confuse reality with what they think about reality. They just have the illusion, the deeply held conviction that if they just focus their thinking, concentrate the power of their thinking, they can affect reality. And of course among religious people, you have the bizarre outlandish notion that praying together can affect healing or can affect change in the world. Magical thinking is all over and unscrupulous scammers, liars, cheats and psychopaths are taking advantage of that. Because the vast majority of the population would like to regress to a childhood infantile state. It's very comfortable. You don't have to think. You don't have to think. You don't have to be responsible. You have a parent figure. And so ruthless people, callous people, psychopaths are taking advantage of this. Of course, we have a recently developed tool, a test, psychological test. It's called the Illusory Beliefs Inventory or IBI and we use it to measure magical thinking. The results are staggering and frightening by the way. Magical thinking, for example, is very common in obsessive-compulsive disorders and behaviors, in rumination, in depression. And if you look at magical thinking at the core, at the essence, the quiddity of magical thinking, what do we do when we think magically? We say, if I just want it strongly enough, it will happen. I will get it. Or as a child, I hated that and that died so I killed him. Or my parents are divorcing because of me. So it's a confusion of internal and external. Everyone has internal objects. Internal objects, constructs, voices of important people like parents, peers, role models, teachers. Internalized voices, they're called introjects. Other forms of internalized objects. Your narcissist, you remember, takes a snapshot of you. That's an internalization, kind of avatar. So he internalizes you. Everyone has internal objects. But when you confuse your internal objects with external objects, your internal events with external events, your internal processes, for example cognition, thoughts, emotions, moods. If you confuse these with the outside, with reality, with the environment, then you have an impaired reality testing. Then something's wrong with you. I've heard people say, every time I'm sad, every time I'm depressed, it's raining. I'm kidding you're not. Their mood affects the weather, the local weather, the local microclimate. People are serious about this. I've heard people say, I can take away evil and bad just by waving my hand in a specific way. I've heard people say, if we link hands across the planet and we all think the same thought, the energy of the thought will change the world. I've heard people say a lot of unmitigated, trashy nonsense based on magical thinking. I've heard people say, there is a God.  He will make me rich. He will cure my child. He will restore my family. It's also a form of magical thinking. There's nothing wrong with magical thinking before the age of nine. Most children up to the age of nine engage in one level or another of magical thinking. Although starting at age six, children are beginning to doubt magic. They are beginning to get integrated with reality. They realize that magical thinking is not working. It's dysfunctional. It's wrong. They develop better theories, better coping strategies. But after age nine, if you still believe in these things, something is seriously wrong with you. And yes, am I saying that something is seriously wrong with religious people? Yes, I am. Of course I am. Something is seriously wrong with them. And another Jew said it long before me. His name was Zygmunt Freud. He said that religion is a mental illness. And there was another Jew, Marx. He said that religion is opium for the masses. They were all right because Jews are always right. And that also is magical thinking, of course. So the person with magical thinking, he has a defective theory of mind. Now what is a theory of mind? A theory of mind is a theory that we construct about how other people think. What makes other people tick? How other people operate? How their minds are working? So we construct this theory of mind. It is based on empathy, including emotional empathy. But it can be based on cold empathy, reflexive and cognitive component. Psychopaths have wonderful, very, very well-boned and operational theories of mind. That's why psychopaths are very good con artists. They know how your mind works. And they subvert it and they co-opt it in their favor. So you don't need emotional empathy to construct a very, very effective, efficacious theory of mind. Cold empathy is enough. But some kind of empathy. You need some kind of empathy. And you need what is called the intersubjectivity agreement or intersubjectivity contract. It's the belief that what you call pain is the same as what another person calls pain. So just let me see if the volume is okay. Yeah.  What you call love is another person's love. So there's an assumption that because we're all human, human, we all share the same inner experience, the same introspective experience of emotions, moods, effects and so on. That is, of course, no one can prove this. We don't have access to anyone else's mind. So it's a kind of commonly accepted fallacious probably agreement which allows us somehow to survive as a species, as a cooperative species, as a social species. But people with magical thinking, they have a defective theory of mind. And it was Piaget who put his finger on it. He put his finger on many things, by the way. And he said that children go through the pre-operational phase and they have egocentricity. What he meant when he said egocentricity is that children at a dead stage, which is around four years old and so on, children at a dead stage assume that everyone else is exactly like them. They don't recognize differences, distinctions, idiosyncrasies, nuances, subtleties, no way. As far as children in the pre-operational phase of development, everyone is a clone. Every single person on Earth is a clone of one ideal type or some, you know. So it's like they see the world as multiplicity, as a mirror, a gigantic mirror, where every person is reflected in every other person to perfection. They have a defective theory of mind. When you grow up and your theory of mind is functional and healthy, you realize that other people are different to you. They're not the same. You begin to notice the differences and the distinctions and the special quirks and the foibles and the preferences and the wishes and the priorities. In other words, you begin to notice that other people are separate, autonomous agents and entities that they have personal agency, that they're independent of you, that they're not you. But someone with magical thinking would regard other people, external objects as internal. He would regard other people as figments, elements of his own mind. He would remain stuck in Piaget's egocentric phase. He would regard all other people as mirror reflections of himself. He would live in a gigantic, endless effectively hall of mirrors with an infinite regression of images. So someone like that, for example, a narcissist, would not regard other people as capable of self-efficacious, autonomous action. A narcissist is shocked when other people behave in ways that he had not predicted, anticipated and wanted. He resents. He becomes furious when his spouse shows an independent mind, disagrees with him, criticizes him, walks away or cheats on him. It doesn't sit well with this theory of mind where there's a single global, universal, earth-long, hive mind of which he is a part and also the mind. The narcissist, everyone is included in him and he permeates everyone. It's a bit of a mystical, actually the narcissist is a mystic in a way. This is a mystical perception, the multiplication and reflection of everyone in everyone. But it's a defective theory of mind because it's untrue. It's unrealistic. And it encourages magical thinking because if everyone is a part of you, then you can manipulate them inside you and it will have immediate effects in the outside.   You have a snapshot, you have an internalized image or representation of that person as a narcissist in your head and then you manipulate that puppet, that marionette and the real person refuses to comply. This creates conflict, dissonance, diversion and you resent this, you're angry. It causes narcissistic rage, narcissistic injury or even modification. So narcissists are an example of such people with magical thinking, with the defective theory of mind. But people with magical thinking also have a defective theory of the world. For example, they don't understand causation very well, cause and effect. They don't get it.  If you are everything, then there's nothing outside you. Therefore, nothing can affect you and therefore you can affect nothing. There's no causation, no cause and effect. Benedict Spinoza discussed the issue, can God have a will? Can God want anything? And he said, and many others after him, augmented this argument. God cannot want anything because the word want means to miss, you don't have it.  I don't have it inside me, I need to do this and then I'll have some water inside me. I missed the water, I lacked it, it was not inside me. This caused me to act in a magic, in a world of magical thinking. There's no need to act outside, it's enough to act inside, because everything is inside. And of course, it creates a normal confusion regarding cause and effect. For example, effects are very often confused with causes, causes are confused with effects. It's a mess, the very arrow of time is reversed very often. And this leads to phenomena which are misidentified as gaslighting. Very often the narcissist would argue with you as to what came before what, what caused what, what made what happen.  No, he really doesn't get it. In his muddled mind, there's magical thinking. For example, if he thought that you should do something, you had already done it. And he's angry at you that you had done it, or that you hadn't done it. And you hadn't done anything, but in his mind you had. And his mind is what matters. It's the only arbiter of truth and fact. And this form of infantile thinking, infantile misperception, magical thinking, which as I said, can escalate up to delusional disorder. This form of infantile thinking is actually grandiosity. Because if you are everything, if everything includes is in your head, if you control everything, if you can manipulate, if you can make things happen just by thinking about them, then your godlike is this not grandiosity, it's the mother of all grandiosities. That's why I'm dead set, dead set, against all these coaches that tell you that you can do anything.  All you need to do is decide. All you need to do is adopt a set of rules. And that's the end all and be all. That's it. They are leveraging your sickness, your infantile grandiosity. They are making you godlike in your own minds. They are introducing you into a whole of mirrors where you see yourself in an idealized form. And this is irresistible. You fall in love with your godlike rendition. Who doesn't want to be a god? Everyone wants to be god. And here they come and tell you no problem. You want to be a god just by my book? Follow my rules. Buy this DVD. You will be a god. And who can resist this? They are love-bombing you. They are grooming you. They are targeting you. They are idealizing you. And you are the victims of narcissistic abuse. With all these scammers, qualities, psychopaths, alleged coaches and self-styled experts. You are being abused. And this infantile grandiosity goes hand in hand with what we call auto-plastic defenses. Because first of all, what is auto-plastic defense?  When you feel responsible for everything that happens. When everything is in your head. When your thinking creates the world. When the world is an outcome of your word, exactly like God. Because at first there was the word logos. Read your Bible. Only God creates the world with a word. And now you are God-like because you don't even have to say the word. It's enough just to think about it. And the universe will accommodate you. It will change itself to suit your wishes, to realize your dreams. You are bigger than God. Who is God? Nothing. God had to talk. You don't have to talk even. You just have to think and buy of course the relevant book. So this is grandiosity but it's coupled with auto-plastic defenses. Because if you are the world. If thinking is doing. If thinking is being. If thinking is preventing something from happening. If thinking has an effect on the universe, on the outside world. Then you are to blame if anything goes wrong. You are responsible. You are guilty. This is called auto-plastic defenses. And here's the thing. Auto-plastic defenses are the main hallmark. The main feature of neurosis. Magical thinking leads inexorably to neurosis. As the person with magical thinking brushes against reality. As reality keeps frustrating this kind of person. As reality keeps contradicting and challenging his grandiosity. His magical thinking. His magical beliefs. His superstitions. His prejudices. His biases. And his deficits. Cognitive and emotional. And other. As reality intrudes with its countervailing cruel information. This kind of person develops very, very deep guilt and shame. And guilt and shame put together. If they coalesce. And gets ossified and fossilized. They become neurosis. Now magical thinking is comorbid. Appears in a variety of mental health disorders. I mentioned a few of them are cystic personality disorder. All the line I'll discuss that in a minute. It also appears with OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Obsessive compulsive disorder is adopting rituals. Repetitive rituals. In order to reassert control over reality. So if I wash my hands 10 times.  If I walk in a highly specific way. Bad things will not happen to my family. Or I will succeed in the test. If I don't know. If I whistle a certain song. At exactly the same hour every day. Then I'll become rich. So OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Is attempting to use ritual. Ritualized behaviors. To counteract. Suppress. Mitigate. Ameliorate and reduce. Intrusive thoughts. Which have to do with reality. Intrusive thoughts are always about reality. If I don't do this.  If I don't do this. My family will be in bad shape. If I don't do this I remain poor. The recent studies revealed that Magical thinking is not correlated. Not connected. To worry. Or to anxiety. Which is very surprising. When scholars embarked on this effort. To study the issue. They were convinced that Magical thinking will be intimately linked. To worry and to anxiety. But it's not. And if you stop to think about it for a second. You will say yeah right. Of course it's not. Of course it's not because it's magical. Magic gives you infinite power. And if you have infinite power. What do you have to worry about? What do you have to be anxious about? Anxiety and worry are correlated with intolerance of uncertainty. They are correlated with unattainable perfectionism. They are correlated with situations you cannot control. Uncertain situations. Situations of failure and defeat.  With Magical thinking. What is that to worry about? What is it to be anxious about? That is precisely the source of good feeling. That. Adherence of cults. And all these modern coaches. Self-styled philosophers and psychologists. And self-styled experts and public intellectuals. All of them are cult leaders. These are all cults. If you don't believe me. Try to argue with a follower of Sadguru. Or try to argue with a fan of Jordan Peterson. See what you get. These are cults.  See what you get. These are all cults. With varying degrees of intelligence. The adherents of QAnon are at the lower rung of the ladder of intellect. Obviously. And the followers of Jordan Peterson are higher up. But they are all cults. So of course in cults. The main function of a cult is to reduce anxiety. To reduce worry. By introducing rigid rules. Which if you follow you are guaranteed to acquire magical powers. Influence of the world. Now, magical thinking manifests differently in different situations. And I'm going to review four of them. Narcissists, Borderline, Psychopath and the conspiracy theorists. Narcissists believe in action at a distance. They believe they do something or they think something or they want something or they believe something and it will have an impact way way beyond their immediate circle or environment or so they believe in action at a distance. They also believe that they are omnipresent. Their omniscience and omnipotence. The fact that they are all powerful and all knowing makes them Godlike and exactly like God. They are everywhere. And that's why Narcissists pursue celebrity. That's why they pursue fame. Because to be a celebrity or to be famous is to be everywhere via the media. So if you have 15 million followers on Instagram, you are present simultaneously on 15 million screens. That's omnipresence. The Borderline personality disorder. She has I'm saying she because majority are women she has object in constancy. She out of sight, out of mind. She doesn't, she's not with you. You can be the person she loves most in the world. The minute she walks out the door you don't exist. You cease to exist. Many Borderlines would deny this. They would say it's not true. When I love someone, I'm all into him. I can't forget him. If I'm with him, if I'm not with him. Even worse, when I'm not with him I don't love him even much more. But object constancy is not about thinking. It's about the innate all pervasive ubiquitous knowledge body knowledge, body memory of the existence of the other exactly like baby and mother. And Borderlines don't have this. They may remember you on a cognitive level as a kind of fading memory. Sepia photograph is a kind of presence that is present and is not present. And so object in constancy is a form of magic because to make things disappear is as magical as making them appear. Now another magical feature of Borderline is dissociation. To dissociate a memory to forget actively to forget is to undo to rewind the world. If you don't remember something or someone it had never existed. It's a form of rewriting reality reinventing it, undoing it, rewinding it. And the final element in Borderline which has to do with magical thinking is disinhibited lack of impulse control. The Borderline acts as though there are no consequences to her actions. She can do anything and reality in the world will not make her pay for it. There will be more consequences to her actions. It's like living in an eternal present, like eliminating the future. This is of course magical thinking because the future does exist. And every action has reaction in consequences. Similar problems exist with the psychopath and that's why we increasingly begin to reconceive a Borderline which is a form of secondary psychopathy. The psychopath feels omnipotent, feels in control via intimidation and has disinhibited lack of impulse control exactly like the Borderline and all these are forms of magical thinking. For example, the psychopath believes that his reputation is such that it will deter people and this reputation is like a cloud a magical cloud that surrounds him like a cloak of invisibility. Similarly he believes himself to be omnipotent so he will embark on behaviors which are essentially reckless, dangerous, risky because he will feel utterly immune to the consequences of his misdeeds of his daring their due activities and that's of course magical thinking because it's not true. And finally the mind of the conspiracy theories the person who believes in conspiracy theories first of all I want you to know there is such a trait in psychology it's called conspiracism conspiracism look it up Google Conspiracism is the quality of believing in conspiracy theories it's a propensity to believe in unproven and unverified oft-repeated conspiracy theories urban legends myths, fake news and potent falsehoods Conspiracism is predicated on the assumption that there are sinister things afoot but these sinister things these actors with evil intent a cabal out to abuse and manipulate and exploit the unsuspecting masses these illuminates or whatever there's this assumption that these people these these sinister undercurrents you know they are evil so evil is critical to the activation of the trait of conspiracism and it usually involves the belief that groups of people are evil most people are gullible most people believe literally anything and anyone immediately this is a well-documented thoroughly researched phenomenon and it is known as the base rate just google base rate 95% people believe in 95% of what they are told immediately uncritically without verifying without checking anywhere nothing they immediately believe 95% of what they are told this is the base rate that I don't know many times so of course they believe conspiracy theories of course they believe nonsense reptilians 5G I don't know what are the crap they believe in they believe in because believing is the natural normal average reaction and but then they believe in magical thinking kicks in grandiosity kicks in narcissistic defenses geeky they believe in something and that they have to defend their misconceptions and they have to defend it defend them fiercely because if they let go of their misconceptions if they admit to having been mistaken this is narcissistic injury challenges challenges their grandiose self-conception their inflated ego they and they defend their misconceptions by creating cults they align themselves with others they signal uncritical conformity in like-minded tribes silos subject to confirmation bias they reject all information which contradicts or might contradict or challenge their beliefs and they are rabid they are violent they are aggressive they are disempathic in short they become psychopathic narcissists frequently the exposure in these echo chambers to toxic nonsense solidifies the belief in these outlandish and inane narratives and this phenomenon is known as consistency the more you're exposed the more you're exposed to nonsense the more you believe in it ask Hitler and Gebels they they invented this idea and social media leverage this psychological propensity for consistency they leverage it by repeating and repeating and repeating and it is of course an element in classic techniques of brainwashing conspiracy theories brainwash their adherents coaches brainwash their followers public intellectuals who claim to have come up with a system for life brainwash their followers, fans, adherents it's a brainwashing technique sometimes it's done accidentally sometimes it's done intentionally once the money kicks in they realize how much money they can make believe me it's totally intentional and they social media leverage this base rate and consistency the gallability they leverage it as a grist to the perpetual mobility rumor and gossip and fake news conspiracism feeds off other cognitive distortions it is really a very bad psychological traits because it brings into confluence narcissism magical thinking base rate fallacy, consistency fallacy I mean it's to utterly deform to apologize the mind so other cognitive distortions feed into conspiracism consider for example proportionality bias the erroneous conviction that great events are caused by commensurately massive reasons plots dynamic processes sinister cabals it's a fallacy of course very big events can be caused by a virus which is a very small organism big events do not need to have big reasons or plots or processes or cabals actually I doubt very much that cabals exist and this flies in the face of chaos theory and its butterfly effect a lone grandiose gunman in Texas can rock the entire world with a single shot or two we also find patterns where there are no patterns we tend to look at totally random sets of data totally random events totally accidental confluences and conflations and we tend to see patterns there where there are none when you look at clouds you see horses and you see the apocalypse and you see towers but of course there's nothing there there are only clouds but you do see and when you look at stars you create the small bear and the big bear and the archer but they're not there and yet you see them so we see patterns we see structures we see images we see figures where there are none and these phenomena in psychology are known as apophina and pareidolia and they are part of magical thinking that should never be connected should remain discreet we find continuities in the disparate and the unrelated in the incidental and we look at other people's actions and we relate these actions to imputed motivations but these motivations need not be true they're speculative and very very often totally irrational unreasonable and probably wrong but there's no intentionality bias when we tend to ascribe intentions to people and these intentions are simply wrong conspiracism is a personality trait predicated on magical thinking even after a favorite conspiracy is debunked there is a counterfactual residue left continued influence effect it's gone so even when for example in the 16th century in the 18th century there was a conspiracy theory it was called witches there was a conspiracy theory that there are witches the witches affect the world and witches conspire with satan sexually sometimes in order to corrupt young people it was a conspiracy theory and it's gone it's gone it's debunked everyone considers witch hunts to be witch hunts wrong and yet there's a residue there's a residue left and it's called the continued influence effect there are still practicing witches there's a proliferation of literature about witchcraft there's something left conspiracy theories are like COVID-19 they live behind polluted, dirty ugly, stupid degenerative symptoms the more you try to argue with a true believer the more entrenched he becomes in his misinformation and paranoid skepticism and this is known in psychology as the backfire effect conspiracies thrive not only on magical thinking but on ignorance and in order to believe in magical thinking you need to be ignorant for example if you know physics immediately a lot of magical thinking is rendered inoperative you can't believe in magical thinking and no physics you can't believe in the tsunami of nonsense on COVID-19 and no medicine so conspiracies thrive on a combination of malignant over magical thinking and ignorance but ignorance is a precondition for magical thinking we don't know certain things but that we don't know certain things doesn't mean that they have to be only in a specific thing so for example we don't know what causes autism we are still speculating we know that autism spectrum disorders have correlates in the brain biological correlates, genetic correlates we know to foretell if a child will have autism by now but we don't know what causes it but if we don't know what causes autism it doesn't mean the anti-vaxxers are right if we don't know what causes autism it does not mean that vaccines cause autism it means we don't know end of story the people who postulated the vaccine theory as a cause of autism they were taken seriously I can show you any number of studies at the beginning science took them seriously and studied the issue but then it came to the conclusion that it's nonsense no way the anti-vaxxers don't want to hear about it because being an anti-vaxxer has nothing to do with vaccines and nothing to do with autism it has to do with personal identity it means you belong it means you are a cult member it means that you make sense of the world it imbues your life with meaning and direction and goal and quite a lot of people make money out of it there is more than a smidgen of grandiosity involved as people trust their gut instincts and consider themselves superior enlightened in the know all the others are ignorant, they are sheeple but the conspiracy theories has access to knowledge to privilege information arcane information is an adept how a loser the traries of an obscure country no one heard of had come across knowledge that most of the scientists in the world never heard of is an open question and the profile of most conspiracy theories theorists is not complementary these are people who are collapse narcissists losers, uneducated ignorant if they were to subject themselves to an IQ test I don't think they would have liked to see the results so magical thinking has many many pernicious manifestations and outcomes on the societal level not only in the individual level it starts in childhood but as we had developed a civilization when most people refused to grow up men refused to become men so do women we refuse to grow up simply because we refuse to grow up we drag from our childhood all the dysfunctional seek wrong elements magical thinking splitting object inconsistency, narcissism they all are childhood elements our refusal to grow up is going to ruin our civilization and if we are not careful it's going to destroy our species but then children like to destroy they like to quote Jordan Peterson to bite they like to ruin things so when you tell someone this will be the end of the species or this will be the end of civilization he welcomes it these people with magical thinking they welcome this devastation and destruction this creative destruction something new will come out of it something bigger of which of course there will be an inevitable part


Okay, great. Hi, my name is Paige and I'm coming to you from my room, my vacation room. I'm here in Palmetto Bluff at the Montage property. Just look how gorgeous it is here in the low country in South Carolina, just taking in the beautiful coast. Staying at my parents' home and I just wanted to come to you guys to talk about a few things. My background is in fashion. I went to Parsons, the new school for design. This is the most incredible institution that you can go to to do fashion design. So my background and all the history that I know was based in New York City at the best institution. So I'm here to tell you how you can have a luxury wardrobe and get the wardrobe that you have always wanted. So here are my five tips on how you can build that wardrobe of your dreams. Number one, my number one tip is to buy timeless items. This is so important. Fast fashion is not it. The industry is not healthy and we have the choice as consumers to buy products that we believe in. So I'll say that again, buy timeless items.  I love buying black items because honestly, the color will never fail you. So all of our fashion savvy friends and colleagues, they love to wear black and that's because it always looks good. It always looks elegant. So buy timeless items, things that are not gonna go out of style, things that are not trendy per se. You just want those core items in your wardrobe. Number two, know your frame and know your body type and what looks good on your body type. So for me, I am straight up and down. I'm heavier on top and smaller on bottom and I know that about myself but because I have a smaller frame I can wear anything from form fitting to loose fitting. I can wear guys clothes. I can wear girls clothes. It doesn't matter. So know your body type and what you can buy. Because of that, I can wear any different kind of size but that doesn't fit the frame for everyone. So make sure that you are buying based on what looks good on your frame and your body type. Number three, whenever I see an item that I really, really like online is I tend to shop online. What I'll do is I'll put it in my cart and I'll watch it for a little while. Now, if I've noticed that the sales on that item are starting to pick up, then I will immediately go in and I'll make a purchase. But the benefit of leaving that item in your cart and going to bed and sleeping on it and waking up another night or waiting a few weeks or maybe a few months if you can and you're still thinking about that item, that means that you really, really want it. And that is when I encourage you to make the purchase. Don't do it immediately. Don't let it be an impulsive buy. Think about it. Go to sleep and if you're still thinking about it months or weeks later, that's when you know that you really, really want it and that's when I encourage you to make the purchase. Now, sometimes that doesn't always work out because things are selling quickly. But when things are selling quickly, I encourage you to go ahead and make that purchase. Four, number four, I always wait.  Now, this doesn't always happen again if something is selling really quickly and it's a really hot item and maybe it's a short run and it didn't make a lot of those products or that product in particular, please jump on it because you might lose the opportunity of having that item in your wardrobe. But I would say 90% of the time those items are just sitting there and sitting there and eventually because a lot of these retailers are not selling at the volume that they want to, that item is gonna go on sale. And you're gonna kick yourself in the foot if you pay a full price for it. So please know that luxury items go on sale just as much as non-luxury items. So keep that in mind. There are a lot of retailers that are breaking their backs to make sales. So wait and hold it out if you don't necessarily need new season. When you walk on the street, people are not gonna know about that unless they work in the fashion industry. So I wouldn't even stress it.  Don't worry about the season. And if you can purchase it discounted, that is the way to buy luxury and buy it smart. So wait for sales. I always wait for sales. Now when I purchase, 90% of my purchases are from sale items. And my fifth tip, and this is the last one, don't buy excess, please do not buy excess. Only buy the things that you love. Now I've made purchases where I've held and waited and I'm like, okay, I really love this item. I love the way it looks on the model. You know, I think this is gonna be great with this item and my wardrobe or there'd be shoes or my handbag. But I will receive that item and then be like, you know what? I don't like the way that it looks on my body or I'm a little bit on the fence about it. Don't keep that item. In truth, you know you're not gonna wear it. So if you bought something and if you're not absolutely in love with it the moment you put it on, that means it should not be in your wardrobe because ultimately you're not gonna wear it. So these are my tips for how you can build a wardrobe that you want and how to buy luxury items. I only buy luxury items because I care about the earth and that is my way of being responsible and sustainable by having these timeless pieces with high quality in my wardrobe. I encourage you to do the same. You don't have to break your back to make these purchases. Always live within your means. So if something is too expensive, either wait, wait, wait like I encourage you to do or maybe it's something that you should not have but sales. Sales are gonna be your best friends. So hold out for a sale because they do come more often than you'd like to think. That is something that anyone in the industry working on the retail side does not want you to know but I'm here to tell you that because it's really important. And I'm gonna show you a few pieces that I'll be rocking this summer. This dress. So I'm wearing a Jacques-Moulin's dress. This is from La Bamba which is like a season from like, I don't know, ages ago and I love this dress. I bought it on sale. Could not fit it at all to save my life. Lost a few pounds and now I can fit it. So I love this dress. It's giving me like to loom. She's going someplace international and it's just like here to spice up that salsa life. It's super cute and airy. I would say this is like a gauze material. There is a bit of sheerness to this. So I am wearing like my cup bra that is a similar color so that it kind of fades and you don't really see anything too much. And the, what is this called? There's like a little skirt that's a bit of a slip and it's made out of a cotton material. That was the one that I could not fit originally because the size is a bit small but now I can fit it and now I can zip it up. So here we are back in action. And again, I just love this dress because I feel like it's sexy. You know, there's some slits. It's a deep v-neck and it's just giving that energy of, hey, it's a hot girl's summer and she's out here. So again, here it is. Okay, so this next dress is House of CBU. And I just thought that this was so cute and feminine. And I normally don't shop House of CB but this is my first purchase from there and I figured that this dress was just so cute and I could not let it go. I don't know what the bra situation's gonna look like quiet but I still think it's a lovely silhouette. I did see it on an Instagram model influencer whatever you call them. And I was like, you know what? I think I have to have that dress. And I'm happy with the purchase. I am a little bit annoyed that these are not actually functional. So these straps are like just there to be, I don't know, purely decorative. But in my rate, I think it's a lovely dress. There is a little slit which is cute. I'm wearing it with white Sam Edelman's shoes and I'll do a highlight of that soon. But I just love the cinched waist, the off the shoulder silhouette, and how it flows out. Oh my gosh, I'm like winded. So here it is. Here it is and I think it's so cute. All right you guys, I'll see you next time. Again, my name is Paige. I'm here giving you a fashion advice as someone who has built the wardrobe that I absolutely adore. Don't forget to like and subscribe.


Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Today, we're going to continue our series talking about spiritual principles that can help us live happier. And if you remember from the last presentation, spirituality isn't necessarily religion. Spirituality is your sense of awe and wonder with the universe and your sense of connectedness and your sense of direction for where you're going and what gives your life meaning. So we're going to start talking a little bit about different principles that might help you kind of check yourself and figure out if you are living your happiest life. So we're going to start out with greed and gratitude because a lot of times people focus on what they don't have and they focus on worrying about money. They focus on worrying about what other people have. And, you know, it makes them miserable. So thinking back over your life, it's important to figure out what's truly important because sometimes you're worrying about stuff and using a whole bunch of energy worrying about stuff that's really in the big scheme of things not that important to you. So don't worry about what you're going to eat and drink, about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food and a body is more than clothes. It's about having peace in your mind, peace in your heart and a sense of being loved. Now, yeah, you need to eat and drink. That no doubt. But we know that there are programs. I mean, you can get on food stamps. You can get public assistance if you need to. There are food pantries if you need food. There are places you can go to get shelter for the most part. You know, if you have needs, generally either you can meet them on your own or your support system or the community support system can help you meet those needs. Are you going to be meeting them the way you necessarily want to? Well, maybe not. You know, you may want to live in a 5,000 square foot house and have three cars and yada, yada. However, you may not be able to. So one of the things I would encourage you to think about is who and what is truly important in your life so you can figure out where to spend your energy, what's going to fill your heart and what is going to give you peace of mind.  When people love money and that's where their love is, then you're always wanting more and you're comparing yourself to people who have more and you're trying to reach this other level so you have as much as they do. But what does money do for you? I mean, yeah, you can buy food and shelter and stuff, but once you get your basics met, you know, you can have your basics met at one level and then you can exceed it at a different level. It always, you know, I find it a little curious sometimes people, you know, like stars and stuff who have, you know, it's just them and maybe they're significant other and they're living in this $30,000 mansion or 30,000 square square foot mansion that, you know, is worth millions of dollars, but they don't have anybody to fill it. What do you do with all those rooms? You know, how you spend a lot of time cleaning it maybe.  How much money is enough? If you need to have just enough money to do the things that are truly important to you, then that's, you know, a very definable goal. How much money do you actually need to access those people and things that are important in your life? You know, do you have to have a six bedroom house on a hundred acres in the middle of, you know, New York City or something? Obviously, that's not going to happen. But probably not, you know, probably you could meet those needs. And I mean, think about people who are poor. Think about people who are living, you know, in a shack somewhere that still don't have electricity. And there are people living like that. And there are people who are living like that who are happy. They have their family. They have what they perceive is important to them. And they're not worried about taxes. They're not worried about, you know, making car payments on their third car because they have what they need. Can money alone make you happy? You know, and we need to think about this because money is such a big stressor for so many people or what you wear or where you live, which all kind of comes back to money.  And I would ask you to consider, you know, are there people who are poor that are happy? Well, then that shows you that money itself may not make you happy. And are there people who are very, very wealthy, who are miserable? And the answer to that is yes, again, so, you know, money itself, whether you have it or you don't, doesn't necessarily control happiness.  Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. So take an honest inventory of what you have. And I'm not talking about just tangible things. I'm talking about your friends, your family, your ability to look at yourself in the morning, your integrity, all of that stuff.  You know, yeah, we could always have more. We can always want for more. But what do you have and be grateful for what you have and try to focus more on the things that you don't have in your life? That you already have instead of focusing, you know, ignoring those and going, but I want this. Well, you want that. OK, that's fine. That's out there. But what do you have right now that you can be grateful for? Anxiety is caused by a lot of things other than money. But in addition to lack of money or wanting money or greed, can can any of us by worrying add a single hour to our life?  So we don't want to do that. You know, we want to have a happy, healthy life. So you need to figure out how you're going to handle the big triggers for anxiety. Rejection, you know, rejection is a big one for a lot of people, whether they're being rejected by their family, by their friends, by, you know, for a job. How do you handle rejection? And how do you keep it from making you feel unlovable? How do you keep it from making you feel anxious? You know, anxiety when people are rejected, a lot of times they feel like nobody is going to love them. So how can you feel and help yourself remember that you are lovable all the time? How can you deal with failure? We all fail. And when you fail, if you can see it as a learning opportunity, it's less devastating than if you see it as something negative. If you see it as something negative, then you may fear people are going to reject you because you failed. And you may reject yourself because you failed. But if you look at failure as I tried something, didn't work out, that teaches me one way not to do it, then you're going to feel less anxious about trying things because you won't fear failure.  It's a learning opportunity and learning is always good. And the final main trigger for people's anxiety is loss of control. When relationships end, people get nervous, they get anxious, they may get angry because they couldn't control that person or they couldn't control that relationship. There's all kinds of things that make us feel out of control from what people say on Facebook to the government, to the weather. You're not going to be in control over everything. And if you get anxious about it, it doesn't do any good. I'll give you an example. Whenever it gets really windy, I'm always worried that we're going to lose part of our fence again. And that anxiety does no good.  If it's going to blow, it's going to blow. And I have to remind myself of that and distract myself. So instead of listening to the weather or listening to the wind, I turn up the TV a little bit so I don't hear it and I don't think about it as much. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word will cheer it up. And this is kind of one of those principles of dialectical behavior therapy is recognizing that sometimes there are things we can't control. And those things we can't control. Well, great, you know, if it's making you stressed out, if it's making you anxious and you can control it, do something about it. Fabulous. But there are some things you can't control. So how can you accept it? How can you move past sitting there and dwelling in your anxiety? All anxiety does is tell you you need to do something, that there may be a threat. So how do you figure out how to deal with those potential threats that you have no control over? One suggestion is to seek encouragement.  Whatever kind of encouragement you need. Do things for others. You know, if you look around, you may see others that are suffering or others that have needs that you can meet. And by being kind to others, a lot of times we forget the things that we're anxious about. We forget some of those things that are weighing on our mind and it cheers us up. Another technique is to use the opposite emotion when you're anxious.  Maybe not forever, but it will cheer you up for that few minutes and give you respite from the anxiety. Feeling overwhelmed or burdened is another thing that, you know, really devastates a lot of people. And it's easy in this culture to feel overwhelmed. You've got so much to do. It feels like, you know, you're never going to win.  So people can get very upset and feel overwhelmed out of control, hopeless and helpless. And there are a lot of different proverbs and sayings about this. And one of them is that a joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. So when you're, you've got a joyful heart, it helps keep the rest of your body flowing. It helps you sleep better. It helps keep your hormones in whack. It helps your mood. So a joyful heart helps you feel better physically as well as emotionally.  Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith or the testing of you develops perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you can be mature and complete and not lack anything, which is a really long way of saying what can you learn from the trials that you are going through that you can use in the future? What can you learn about yourself? What tools that you can learn? What tools can you learn? You know, you may learn that you've got more courage than you thought. You may learn that you can have faith in other people and you can have faith in yourself to be able to do things. You may learn new skills for dealing with things that, you know, you didn't have before or you didn't know you had. So what can you learn from every hardship and yeah, hardships suck. Don't get me wrong. But if you can at least learn something from it, so the next time something similar comes along, you have more tools to handle it or you feel more equipped to handle it, it will help you feel happier. It's important to recognize that, you know, even when things are going well, there are challenges. And even when things are going poorly, there are challenges. I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. And in every circumstances, I have learned that the secret to facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. So thinking about, you know, what does that mean? I can do all things when I'm brought low. How do I pull myself out with gratitude, being grateful for what you've got going on around you, being grateful for what you do have instead of focusing on the things that you don't have. Because a lot of times we do have things that can, we can be grateful for that helps bring us out of despair. A sense of hope, hope is always important. If you lose hope, you've lost your heart. So having hope, even when things are bad can help things get better. And having faith in yourself, in your fellow man, in your higher power can help you believe that things are going to get better. But what about this abundance thing? You know, well, the same things apply. When you have abundance, being grateful for what you have and recognizing that it could be gone in a blink, being grateful for what you have and for those who have helped you achieve it or help you maintain it. Because if you start taking people for granted, then they may not be there and you may start to lose things. You want to avoid complacency. Again, if you start taking things for granted, then it may start dwindling away and you don't even realize it.  And then they start giving poor customer support. They start putting out inferior products. And people quit using them. They quit going to that store. The store in general became complacent and they just assumed that everybody would always go to them. But nobody is guaranteed a tomorrow. So avoid complacency and keep doing the right things that brought you to where you are. Keep being grateful. Keep having faith in yourself and having hope that you're going, things are going to continue to go well. Yes, there's going to be bumps in the road. But if you have hope that you can hurdle those obstacles, then you will feel happier. Envy and jealousy also get to a lot of people. A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. You know, we kind of heard that one before. When you're at peace, you can use that energy for things that bring you happiness. So if you're always angry, remember, anger and fear are your body's way of saying there might be a threat that you either need to fight or flee from. They are not meant. Anger and fear are not meant to be dwelt on. They're not meant to be nurtured inside your heart and your head. You're not meant to sit there and just perseverate on it. That doesn't do any good. And it just takes away minutes and hours from your life. Do what you can, you know, address the things that you can. When you're at peace, when you're not holding on to and nurturing anger and resentment and all that stuff, all that energy is liberated so you can do things that bring you happiness.  When you're tempted to be angry, be kind. You know, sometimes there are misunderstandings and it can be easy to be angry, but that just, that's a whole rush of energy and emotions and everything else.  And the answer is 99% of the time. No. So instead, be kind. Even if you think of it, be kind to yourself. Instead of getting yourself all riled up, be kind to yourself and go, all right, well, that was unfortunate and move on, because getting upset is often not going to help the problem. When you're tempted to cheat, do the right thing so that you can look at yourself in the mirror. Sometimes when, you know, you want to get ahead, when you want to get more money, when you want to get that promotion, it's easy to think about cutting corners and taking the easy way or cheating. However, and you may get more money or that promotion, but can you look at yourself in the mirror? How do you feel in your heart? You honestly feel like you're doing right and benefiting from right actions. You desire, but do not have. So you kill. You covet, but cannot get what you want. So you quarrel and fight. A proverb. How much more energy would you have and how much more pleasant would life be if you focused on what you have instead of what others have? So you're not quarreling with others because you are jealous of what they have. You can just look at it and go, well, good for them. Look at all I've got. You know, focusing on that. Sometimes the things we want or we think we want, like money and power and, you know, all this kind of stuff, isn't what we really want. A lot of times people want money and power because they think that's going to make them happy. Happiness generally doesn't come from those things. Happiness comes from feeling like you're living a rich and meaningful life. So what is it that you want exactly? Anger, forgiveness and acceptance. Anger we've been talking about can be very toxic. So we need to look at forgiveness and acceptance and forgiveness. Isn't a weak move. It's a power play. It's your willingness to say, you know what? I'm not going to hold on to my anger about this anymore because it's just destroying me. You know, I'm not going to forget, but I'm not going to hold on to my anger anymore. I'm just going to let it go. Acceptance is kind of the same way where sometimes you have to accept that sometimes things just are and getting angry about it isn't going to change anything. Sometimes we need to wait patiently because something happens and we want retribution right then darn it. Well, that's not always the way it happens. And in the big scheme of things in the karma of the universe, generally when bad things happen, what goes around comes around. So eventually people will or things will get punished if, you know, they came from evil. So trying to focus on letting nature, letting the universe take its course instead of feeling like you need to be the one to get revenge, which often just makes you feel angry and then, you know, hateful towards others and it can be very defeating.  And I see this so often on social media and, you know, I was looking at a YouTube video the other day and some of the comments people were making were nothing more than name-calling. There was no substance to it at all. And I could tell they were very angry over what somebody else had said. Somebody else's opinions, you can't control them. So is it worth your energy to get into a posting war? And over something that you're probably not going to have any effect on. When you're slow to anger, you have great understanding. So we want to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. Anger means we feel threatened. So when you're slow to anger, it means you're taking time to listen. You're taking time to hear the whole thing before you get all fired up and you're trying to understand where that other person's coming from and kind of why you might be feeling the way you are before you jump to conclusions or before you start acting on your emotional reaction. Many times, because of miscommunications or differences of opinion that are really not worth getting angry over, people see threats where none was intended. So sometimes if you have a difference of opinion than somebody else, you may think that they're judging you or you may be judging them and you may perceive a threat there instead of realizing that, you know what, it could both be right in our own ways. So when you're slow to speak, you hear what happens or what the person said.  And then if there is a threat, then you can handle the anger and fear from there.  When you respond to anger with anger, what do you think you're going to get? Anger squared.  But if you go in loud and they respond softly, then generally you start to de-escalate a little bit. It doesn't mean you have to be a doormat, but it means embracing the dialectics and saying, I hear you're angry right now. Let's see if we can figure out what this is about or see if I can understand your point of view. It disarms the person because they felt like they were going to have to fight for something. And you're saying, my arms are open. Let's talk about this. So their anger tends to go down. So try when somebody gets angry or when you get angry. Try being kind. Try being soft. Try saying, all right, let me take a breath and let me see if I can better understand. Because of the fact that a lot of us are hard and unforgiving, we store up wrath for ourselves.  It drains your energy. When you hold on to anger, it has nowhere to go, but it festers inside you and drains your energy of and spirit of hope and happiness. Is that really what you want to do? Is this person or is this situation worth taking hours or years off of your life? Just ask yourself that. You know, every once in a while, it may be. It may be one of those people or things that is truly important in your life. But a lot of times, not so much. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. When you do get angry, work to find a resolution right then, because a lot of times, if we don't, we just kind of compartmentalize it and put it back somewhere.  Eventually, the storage closet gets full. And so you have all that stuff that you're trying to, you know, hold on to. It wears you out. So work to find a resolution right then so you don't forget to handle it. You don't box it up and forget about it. And you don't have to box it up and find space for it. Period. Try to deal with it. Sometimes you're just going to have to accept what is because holding on to anger isn't going to improve the situation. So maybe you're in a relationship, for example. And it ends. The other person ends it. And you're really angry about that. Well, you're probably not going to be able to get back into that relationship. So you just have to accept what is. Figure out a way to grieve that loss and work through it. If you let the sun go down on your anger, if you let days pass without dealing with your feelings, then it's going to start being more difficult to deal with and you may start becoming that anger may start becoming more part of you. So we're going to end on a positive note. Love and righteousness, you know, I keep saying, you know, we need to have a rich and meaningful life as we define it. We need to love ourselves and feel like we're loved. A person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. So, you know, you can have faith in other people. You can have faith in yourself, but you need to actually follow through with things in order to you know, demonstrate that your faith was well placed. The body without spirit, the body without hope and faith and love feels kind of dead inside people who who don't have those things feel empty. They feel scared. They may feel angry. So in order to do that, in order to have those things, we need to take action. We need to take action in order to fill ourselves with hope, faith and love. And this starts by being honest with ourselves about what we need, about who we are, about the fact that, you know, we're really lovable people. We may make mistakes, but we're lovable. We need to get honest. We need to be patient with other people as well as ourselves. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody messes up sometimes. Sometimes things don't happen as quickly as you want. Eventually, you know, I believe that everything, you know, what goes around comes around. Everything evens out. And I have to be OK with that because bad things happen in this world. And would I like to get, you know, make those people pay? Sure, I would. However, I don't have the power to do that. Or it's not worth my energy because it takes me away from those things in my life that are truly meaningful. And it's not worth pursuing. We need to be forgiving of other people because a lot of times people don't make mistakes on purpose. They don't hurt you on purpose, but they do. And they do end up making mistakes and hurting you. So we want to be forgiving. But we also need to be forgiving of ourselves. Too often we hold ourselves to this unreasonable standard that we don't hold anybody else to. So we're constantly criticizing ourselves for failures. Forgive yourself. Be kind. How hard is that? Be kind to others. Give food, drink and shelter to those in need. Now, that doesn't mean you have to have somebody move into your spare bedroom. But that does mean, you know, it's might help you feel better if you're sharing with others. You know, sometimes you may have a friend who's having a bad time and you say, you know what, come over, let's have coffee and let's talk. Yes, they're not necessarily homeless and starving, but bringing them in, they're in need. They're in emotional need, bringing them in, giving them food, drink and shelter and saying, you know, you're safe here. We can talk. The same thing is true for those who are actually needing food, drink and shelter. You can volunteer. You can donate to make sure that, you know, all of us humans have access to get our basic needs met.   Spend time with them. Show them hope, faith and goodness. Instruct the ignorant.  Everybody has their own set of really unique, awesome skills. So take those skills and teach people, you know, I have this skill. So let me show you how to do it. Y'all know I don't do woodworking. I am not good at woodworking. My best friend is just amazing at woodworking. So he's taught me a few things. You know, not enough where I feel competent, but, you know, he helps me out periodically. Encourage other people. That's not hard. That's just saying, you know, go get them. You got it. You know, it doesn't take hardly any effort to encourage other people. So try to encourage somebody every day and remember to encourage yourself every day. Look in the mirror and go, I got this. Comfort the sorrowful. People have bad days. People have bad moments. People have bad events happen. So be there to listen and comfort and say, you know what, I'm here for you. I don't know exactly how I can help you right now, but I am here. You tell me what you need. Be grateful and not don't envy other people. You know, when you love what you have, then you won't want for more. When you love what's in front of you, then you're not thinking about, well, I might be happy if I could have this because you're already happy. Be humble. Give credit where credit is due because generally we don't get anything in life all on our own.  You know, even farmers, they go out and they may work by themselves a lot, but without the sunshine, without the rain, without the earthworms, they're not going to have a good crop. So give credit where credit is due and be grateful for the earth that we live in. Be hopeful that things can improve. And yeah, it's not going to improve overnight. So look for incremental improvements and be hopeful that you can change your little tiny sliver of this earth. You may not be able to change your whole community, but you might be able to change your household or even your neighborhood and make it a happier place. Trust. Trust yourself and try to trust others and try to trust and have faith that good things will come your way. Be courageous and persevere. You know, most things don't come easy. So it takes some perseverance, which means you've got to go out there and risk failure. You've got to go out there and potentially risk rejection, which takes a lot of courage. But if you persevere and you do these things, if you put yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit, using courage and you persevere through that anxiety, you'll get come out the other end and be stronger for it. You need to have fortitude, which means or integrity depending on what word you want to use. Do what's right in all situations and then you won't feel guilty. You won't feel shameful and you won't be as angry. Try to be wise and prudent, figuring out what the appropriate thing to do is when and how, you know, there's a time for everything, as they say. When is it the appropriate time to end a relationship? When is it the appropriate time to quit a job or to move houses or to offer help? There are times for that. So thinking about in the big scheme of things with what's important in your life, you know, if your family is important, you know, is offering to do this wise and prudent. I do a lot of animal rescue and every time an animal comes up that may need a foster home, you know, I have to ask myself, is this wise and prudent because, you know, I have my resident animals, you know, my pets that I have. I have my children. I have my job. You know, I have a lot of stuff that I have to pay attention to that requires my time and energy. So every time another animal or person needs my help and attention, I have to ask myself, is it wise and prudent to take on this task at this point in time and can I give it what it deserves? Which takes us to be to being fair and just sometimes you've got to say no or set boundaries in order to be fair, you know, I don't want to take on another foster animal, for example, when it means that I'm not going to be able to spend enough time with my other animals. One of my cats gets really stressed out and his autoimmune stuff flares up when he's under stress. So is it fair to him if I bring another foster in? So I want to think about again, always going back to what is it that is most important? What people and things are most important in my life? And is this action going to help me get closer to it? Or is it going to take away my energy that I could be using to move towards it? All right, thank you for listening today and I will see you next time. Thanks for tuning into happiness isn't brain surgery with Doc Snipes. Our mission is to make practical tools for living the happiest life affordable and accessible to everyone. We record the podcast during a Facebook live broadcast each week. Join us free at Doc Snipes dot com slash Facebook or subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast player. And remember Doc Snipes dot com has even more resources, members only videos, handouts and workbooks to help you apply what you learn. If you like this podcast and want to support the work we are doing for as little as three ninety nine per month, you can become a supporter at Doc Snipes dot com slash join. Again, thank you for joining us and let us know how we can help you.


I'm Premier Christy Clark and on behalf of the Government of British Columbia, I'd like to extend my best wishes to everyone celebrating Nauruse. Each spring, Nauruse reminds us of the importance of family and how holidays like this bring our families and neighborhoods together. As you celebrate, I hope you have the opportunity to join with family and friends around the half-scene. I wish you and your families a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Nauruse Mubarak.