SOLO | Make Money Without Falling for Self-Help Myths, part 1

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What's going everybody welcome back to the show today?

It's just me you and the mic we're talking a little bit about some of the things that I've learned over the years and I thought it would be kind of fun today

to

debunk a few

self-help tropes that are often

heard and

regurgitated and then never studied or fact checked and then just continued to be regurgitated over and over again

this is sort of where the self-help industry can fall short and

though I am a big proponent of self-improvement and trying to become the best version of yourself if

You are only always in pursuit of the best version of yourself then you can sort of reinforce the

negativity loop of I am not currently enough and if you don't believe that you're ever enough

then that's probably going to have a long-term impact on overall

fulfillment and life happiness even if you've achieved a lot even if you become a much better version of yourself even if you

Have attained this higher level or higher awareness or whatever you want to call it even if you've gotten there

You still have this inner belief that you're just not enough because there's always you know

There's always the next step. There's always this version of myself that I'm chasing and in some ways that can be healthy

In other ways it can be unhealthy

So today I want to go over some of the ways that it can be unhealthy

some of the ways that it is actually

Probably hurting you

For to follow some of this advice. So the first one that we're going to talk about is

Manifestation or the law of attraction that you can manifest anything with just the law of attraction

The claim is that if you think visualize or vibe

Correctly the universe will deliver to you whatever you want on a silver platter and the evidence as you can imagine if you think about it a little bit more

Just doesn't say that at all. There's a lot of attractions popularized in new thought and books like the secret

I think there's also a documentary or like show or something about the secret

But it has no demonstrable scientific basis and is widely regarded

as pseudoscience

This is where we get into the prosperity gospel type stuff like if you and to be to be clear a lot of these things can actually work

If you believe that they work hard enough meaning that the placebo effect

Is actually very very powerful

So you might you might if you internalize them is basically sort of like any sort of religious dogma any any religious dogma that you have

It's like you can internalize this belief and then you can find as much evidence as you want to support that belief and

The same thing goes for things like the law of attraction

Reviews aimed at the general public and health professionals explicitly note that there is no concrete evidence that a metaphysical

Like attracts like law

exists or

That thoughts alone change

External reality some studies suggest that people who buy into strong manifestation beliefs may take more financial risks and show

Higher susceptibility to bankruptcy because they overestimate positive outcomes and underestimate real world

Constraints that that last piece is actually one that sort of surprised me a little bit because in my mind

It was I sort of looked at the lodge a law of attraction for a long time is just as a bit essentially pseudoscience something that was just like a prosperity gospel

Esk

But in my mind it was like, but there's no harm

You know, I mean like if you want to believe it believe it as it doesn't doesn't affect me at all

If it's useful to you and it doesn't harm others then sure go for it

But there's actually some studies now that are suggesting that this is actually not useful to you and in in fact it is harmful to you

to engage in things like the secret or the law of attraction

That you're taking these big financial risks without doing the proper vetting of

The opportunity or the risk at hand

And you guys know I am a big proponent of taking big risks and I have historically taken really big risks

Some of which may have been dumb some of which didn't make sense on paper some of which didn't end up working out for me

But some of them ended up actually working out for me very well

So I'm a I'm a big fan of taking risks, but not at the

Not for

The purpose of just taking the risk

Like you can't look at somebody and go like well, hey, they they're taking big risks. That means I got to take big risks

It's like okay, sure, but not just for the sake of taking the risk you have to you have to measure the risk against the reward

You have to look at the potential possible outcomes and say hey, what is the best case scenario here

And then go to the opposite direction and say what is the worst case scenario here?

What is going to happen if the worst case scenario actually unfold?

What am I going to am I going to be okay with that?

Am I going to be

Financially steady? Am I going to be able to put food on the table for my children if this risk doesn't pan out

Like what is the actual worst case scenario here? What's the best case scenario?

And is this where is that best case scenario worth

Potentially having to deal with this worst case scenario and sometimes it's going to be yes

Sometimes it's going to be a no

But just having this sense of like positivity that it's just going to like like it's it's it's gonna work

It's going to work and and let me just sit on it and manifest it into my life and

Thorough up a vision board about it like that's not going to be the thing that makes it work

So it actually could be somewhat detrimental to you to believe in some of these things now what's partly true

Positive expectations can change your behavior. You may notice opportunities more take more action persist longer

Which can improve outcomes? This is psychology. It's not magic

So what's partly true about this is if you do change this sort of what I was talking about early about the placebo effect

Is that if you can change your expectations then that can positively affect the behavior around

Your desire to do this thing

So there's a lot of successful people that I've talked to on the show people that I haven't talked to on the show

But I've heard on other podcasts or other books or whatever talk about

They're their delusional amount of self-belief when they they even look back on themselves as a young kid

Trying to figure this thing out and they go I don't I honestly have no idea where that belief came from

I just believed that it was going to happen

However

It did not ever stop with that belief. I never met one person who's wildly successful

Who is just like I had this delusional amount of self-belief as a child or as a as a teenager or as a young adult

And then all I did was believe it hard enough and then I woke up and all my dreams came true

No, it's that they believed it hard enough that that belief actually affected their

Their own action it affected the way that they thought about structuring their day

It affected the way that they worked on the thing that they were doing that it was followed up with a massive amount of

of action and then

In continued persistence maintained consistency over a long period of time the desire to learn more about the field that they're in

All of those things actually do help improve outcomes and all of those things can be obviously affected

By the positive belief that everything's going to go the way that you want it to go when you when you start on this journey

So positive expectations can change your behavior

But ultimately the behavior is what creates the outcome. It's not the belief in the outcome

So yeah, it's not you know, this is not the this is not the universe's version of Amazon Prime

You know what I mean, that's not just like let me think about this hard enough and then two days shipping

It's going to show up on my front door and I'll have everything I ever wanted. That's not how it works. You have to actually

Like the book the benefit of the delusional belief is that that delusional belief will have the ability potentially to influence your decisions to

Have have effects on your on your action that you're taking on a daily basis

And then that will have the ability to change the outcome

So sorry for those you listening that love the secret

To read you what the science says what the evidence says. So don't get mad at me. Get mad at the science

Or get mad at the people who are preaching manifestation rather when they know it's a lot more to do

With the work that they did once they actually believed in the positive outcome

Number two, this is sort of along the same lines about positive thinking

Just think positive everything will work out positive thinking alone solves problems and negativity is always bad

So high quality health system sources like the male clinic summarized that positive thinking and optimism are correlated with better health outcomes

longer lifespan lower depression

less distress and pain better cardiovascular outcomes and better coping under stress

Reviews of psychological intervention in interventions show that training optimism or positive effect can improve some health markers

in specific clinical populations, but

These benefits come from real cognitive and once again behavioral changes

Not from pretending that everything is fine

So this can sort of be one of those almost self fulfilling prophecies like

It it works better if you are already winning

It doesn't necessarily turn you into a winner when your actions predict that you're going to lose

Meaning that if you if you are somebody

Who is chronically overweight who is sort of depressed who is

By all by all metrics by all external markers not successful

Even when it comes to happiness or health the relationships or any of these things if you're in this

negative

Sort of mill you in your day-to-day life then just thinking positively will not do much for you

Because there's no evidence that you're actually doing anything to change the outcome itself

So it it cannot you can almost be a negative effect because

There's such a stark contrast

Between what you're telling yourself about yourself and how you know yourself to actually be if that makes sense

So if you are constantly believing that you're going to have this positive health outcome

But you're actively choosing to not exercise to not go for walks to not go to the gym to not eat healthy

Then it can have a negative effect on your mental state because you're telling yourself this version of an internal identity

That your external actions do not match at all and the gap between that becomes too big for your brain

To build a bridge for and that will actually make your situation much worse

So the real benefit comes from the actual cognitive and behavioral changes reframing coping skills

Abbuilding healthier behaviors

Not just from pretending everything is fine to just be like I'm gonna think positive about it

You know, it's like okay think positive

But you also have to take the action of somebody who's achieving these outcomes

So so this toxic positivity where you just suppress all negative emotions

It's quote-unquote negative emotions things that you've been told are bad emotions

And then refusing to acknowledge the problems in your life because you're just gonna be positive about it

It's widely criticized in clinical and popular writing because it blocks

Realistic problem solving any emotional processing if you are refusing to admit that there's a problem

Then you can't process that problem emotionally correctly

And then you cannot build a solution to the problem like we are as human beings

We are problem solvers the only way that anybody has ever made money on the face of this planet is through solving problems whether you're employee

You're not pretty or you're an investor

Your job is to solve problems and you will get paid

proportionally to the size of the problems that you know how to solve

So if you never if you're if you're so in this mindset of this toxic positivity

Then that that you refuse to recognize the problem to begin with then you by definition will not even think through any solution

For the problem and the problem will just become more pervasive. So is it helpful?

Yes, it can be helpful

But typically only to the degree that only to the degree that will actually bring real cognitive and behavioral changes in your life

And self-help culture often encourages skipping the feeling and the processing step and jumping straight to just

You know writing some positive affirmations which can end up backfiring for for people dealing with like real

Stress or serious trauma or real actual problems in their life

So try to distinguish you know realistic optimism

Which is which is you know acknowledging reality then focusing on what you can influence what you can control

And then changing your behavior to solve those problems

So distinguish the realistic optimism from just utter denial and toxic

Positivity so the science says optimism is healthy when it helps you face hard things and take better action

Not when it tricks you into pretending that nothing is wrong

Hey guys Travis here just letting you know that sometimes on the show I go a little bit longer

I try to keep these things these solo shows pretty short like 10 to 15 minutes

But sometimes when I get going I just can't stop if you know what I mean

So this if you're listening to this message that means that this episode is being put into two parts

And the first part is now coming to a close so be sure to tune into the next solo show to hear part two of this episode

Thanks for tuning in catch you next time