Mental fitness skills are for navigating uncertainties in life rather than addressing irrational thoughts; they involve recognizing that algorithms and our brains both exploit fears and cravings to drive compulsive reactions, and learning to proactively give our time and energy to valued actions instead of reactively responding to fears, cravings, or intrusive thoughts. This approach treats mental health as a fitness journey where we build skills to experience uncertainty without being controlled by it, rather than trying to eliminate unwanted thoughts or feelings.
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Brain Tech Support Live - May 10th, 2026Added:
scared of Ebola hentto virus and all of the things happening in the world.
Let's talk about fears to start things off because uh this was inspired by a science communicator that I follow who I I saw do a post the other day sharing their disappointment at how as soon as you know news began to break about the the the hunter virus outbreak that's happening on or happened on on the cruise ship recently. They just saw creators and the algorithm churning up so much misinformation and fear because it would drive engagement.
And it is really disappointing and I think also speaks to a surprising lack of media literacy and algorithm literacy that despite everybody being on technology all of the time and and interacting with it constantly. We haven't learned quite often how to see through the stuff that comes up. But maybe that's not surprising because the algorithms function just like our brains. They're just throwing up fears and cravings trying to get a reaction, get a compulsion. So, I wanted to emphasize to everybody as we get started that when we explore mental fitness skills, they are not for irrational weird stuff in our heads. Mental fitness skills are for navigating uncertainties in the world. Some of them inside of our heads, many of them outside of our heads. We are learning how to interact with a fear or a craving.
And instead of engaging in compulsions reactively to those, we're going to proactively give our time and energy to things we want to create and build. That is so important in the real world where we are. When there's so much uncertainty around us, when there are so many complex systems trying to pull you in many different directions, many of which will not be beneficial to you, it is so important that we set a direction. We set a direction of valued actions through that storm of uncertainty so that we're creating the things we want to see in the world.
Many different types of people and algorithms are going to try to play you just like the brain, right? Throwing up a fear or uh like offering you something, playing on your cravings to get you to react.
Even your phones are going to do the same thing. Going to throw up something based on whatever you react to to get you reacting more, doing more compulsions. that is if you see yourself spending a lot of time online, how you're getting sucked into that. It is the exact same thing the brain does, right? So, it's kind of not surprising that we see people struggle with media literacy and technology literacy because we also struggle, you could say, with brain literacy. We struggle to notice the stuff inside of our heads and instead of reacting to it, choosing a more useful direction. This is such an important skill.
It is so important that we can have whatever the brain is throwing up that we can also have whatever an algorithm is throwing up, whatever the news is throwing up, whatever somebody's trying to whether a salesperson is trying to sell you something, a politician is trying to play on your fears and cravings to manipulate you into making a bad decision for you. It's so important wherever we're going in life that we're learning how to have experiences, not get sucked in by fear and craving, but instead make a decision that's, you know, positive for ourselves and for our communities over the long term. And we'll probably come back to this again uh during the live stream today that we are talking about real things. These skills we explore are how to navigate life and how to build amazing things rather than reactively trying to control fears or reactively chasing after like a momentary good feeling.
So, welcome to everybody that's uh dropping in and joining us.
English easy. You were waiting for the live stream. Thank you for waiting. I appreciate you being here. Ariel, Ariel, he said, "Are you overseas?"
Uh, I don't I don't over which sea? I'm over I'm I'm usually overseas.
Uh, are you asking what's the what's the beginning point from which you're determining overseas?
Andrea, thank you for wishing me an easy weekend. I hope you're having an easy weekend, too. I would say I've I've had a a good easy weekend. I was doing a bunch of planning around kind of videos and and courses to make coming up because also I notice uh you know a lot of people are running into or I would say we as a planet in all sorts of ways are running into a lot of economic uncertainty. And so I I really want to emphasize in my work giving more time to creating tools that people can easily access and affordably access to explore mental health and fitness skills because yeah, we're just going to see people uh struggling more and more to access, you know, like therapy, coaching or whatever. Uh it can be uh difficult and even as people just have less and less time. Uh, so yeah, I was planning out a bunch of courses and things like that. So hopefully those can and also just like the practicality of needing to meet one person uh when we can get all of these tools online in a way that really supports people just learning them and running with them independently. Yeah, it just makes it more accessible and you know functions at a scale that meeting a person one-on-one cannot. And the great thing is the research really backs up doing what's often referred to as like supported internet uh they'll often describe it as internet CBT but that gets confusing with inferencebased CBT because they both give them the acronym ICBT but online skills well backed up in research like doing an online course is just as effective as as working with somebody one-on-one. So it's important we make these things accessible. So, I was planning a bunch of that today in a really nice cafe with some cats. The cat, if you've been uh on the mental fitness Discord server recently, you may have seen me sharing this this one cat at a really nice cafe that I en enjoy going to. It's it's in a garden. It's totally outdoors.
Today, I happy to report everyone, the cat sniffed my hand.
That's that's a big step because the cat the cat doesn't interact with the guests at the cafe. it is always active and doing stuff with another cat, but they they have their own little cat world going on. And so they'll run around and navigate through all the guests, but they really ignore the people. But today, I held out my hand as the cat was walking by and it it did stop to uh sniff my hand. So basically, we're we're best friends now.
Young Jedi, it's good to see you.
Y this is a this is a a good topic to explore now and like always feel free to talk about this and share about this whether yeah it's here if you want to share about it on the mental uh fitness discord server as well feel free to yeah so young shared how do we accept death when you know the end of your life is near the fear of turning into nothingness. I think one of the things I always emphasize, this actually something that that came up in in several conversations this week with community members and clients, is that accepting something doesn't mean we're saying it's good. It doesn't mean we're saying we're not going to have scary feelings about it.
And I would for everybody when we look under our fears, you know, we look at the fear consequence, we look at what we're afraid of losing, you're you're usually going to end up with something like death and nothingness, loss.
And yeah, there going to be some variations of it, right? Like I often bring up relationships, but even then when we look at what we fear losing with relationships, we'll often be like, well, yeah, like I fear that it'll become nothing or we're going to die.
On this journey of exploring mental health and fitness skills, I would say we do not Yeah, we do not go on this journey of exploring mental health and fitness skills without exploring a new relationship with death.
But that doesn't mean we're going to see it as like good. That doesn't mean accepting it means we don't feel things.
I think a more helpful approach that I find to interacting with these experiences is to actually recognize the feelings I have about them. Is to feel them.
uh it like we can feel loss and in that we can also feel love and care.
We can recognize why like something like nothing scares us.
And in this moment then we get to say okay well then I'm not going to spend my time and energy on the nothing right now. I'd rather give my time and energy to the something.
But absolutely that uncertainty right so many of these skills that we explore about how do we interact with uncertainty in life that uncertainty is going to be there and we can recognize that we don't like it we can recognize that it scares us we can respect that uncertainty by that I I mean if we try to control it we try to do something with that we're only going to frustrate ourselves and again we're going to take away time and energy from the things that we actually want to do.
So that that might be yeah just one support I guess I'd call it that I'd start with is that acceptance doesn't mean it's going to feel good. So we don't have to, you know, put put tons of effort on, oh well, I'm not accepting it correctly because it still feels scary or I've got to work harder on acceptance because I I still don't like loss. No, we we won't like it. We do not like loss. So I'll often talk about touching loss. Touching loss doesn't have to mean we're I don't know. I'm trying to think of something that we would really like. I don't know, grabbing a bag of candy. I think that's a Yeah, you hold a big bag of candy and you're like, "This is amazing." That's not what we're trying to do with acceptance.
We're not We're not trying to change the reality of it. We're interacting with the reality of it. And and we see that we don't like loss. And we see why it hurts.
And then also we see those things that we really care about.
And so let's give our time and energy to those things that we care about for everybody because none of us get to hold on to them.
When we try to hold on to them very tightly, uh it's very uh difficult for us.
But I'll often bring up the the idea that a space whale could swallow the world tomorrow.
It's very much a thing that could happen for any of us very soon.
So, it's really important that we grow the things we care about and give our all to them right now because we don't know how long we get to keep them with us.
>> Yeah.
It's nice too sometimes to not rush on right away from a topic like this.
Yeah, young Jedi. Yeah, as you're exploring this, as I said, always feel free to share about it.
Yeah, share about the topic or whatever you'd like to celebrate and give some time and energy to celebrating. Um, it's totally okay to uh connect with the community around things you'd like to celebrate, too.
Andrea Andrea asks, "I was wondering how did you discover that we also need to cut out normal compulsions? It helps a lot to cut them out. I'm curious how you made that discovery." Yeah. So, I was really lucky I say around this in that I did not have any insight or minimal insight. uh and insight if anybody's not familiar with that in a mental health or psychology context. It's just kind of an awareness of like do you know what you're doing is not helpful? Do you know what you're doing or compulsions? Do you see that you're like reacting to stuff that's delusional? I had none of that.
So, and well, the reason I say that's useful then is because I saw the compulsions as normal.
So it was it was really clear to me that they were like I was just doing like this made sense just like there were so many other things that I was doing to control fears. So even even when yeah then it was helpful to kind of go oh okay I get it now this these things I'm doing are that we would see as compulsions go to an extreme but there were all sorts of other things and even it was useful in therapy when I was bringing up some of the other things that in therapy and particularly because I I think also because I was doing therapy through a research program there. There were very they very clear there were clear kind of guidelines or directions around the types of compulsions we were going to cut out and then the ones that were considered not part of OCD and that didn't make sense to me. So yeah, right from the start I felt it was weird that there was this like what I saw is very odd rigid box around what counted as OCD compulsions.
Uh and or mental illness compulsions uh and then there was all this other stuff that I was like well all this other stuff is the exact same pattern.
So why can't we like I'm going to now have to go and cut it all out. So why isn't that part of the same bucket? It didn't make sense to me. So in that way because yeah, it's super useful and and I think in psychology we really have screwed up a bunch by going after what we'll call abnormal psychology or psychiatry. Uh because it created this idea that the abnormal is off on its own. And I'd say this is probably part of taking a medical model approach to psychology.
There's then an assumption that everything else is normal and there's basically this like virus that shows up which are the clinical compulsions and so we're just going to clean away the virus and then everything is fine. If we take a fitness approach to it then yeah we would recognize okay sure there's an injury here and we have to treat the injury but the injury didn't just fall from the sky. So if we get rid of the injury and we don't change how we cause the injury, then we're going to eventually just be back to having the injury again. Uh and so that's yeah, I'd say one of the reasons I find a fitness approach is way more effective for mental health than a medical model approach.
English easy said my entire life I was driven by the mind and not the heart that fixing and controlling was the motivation and kind of that provided me a path for life. I never saw that as a problem. In fact I thought I was very motivated and dedicated for life. Can you please elaborate in details please? What could be a better way so that I live like that? Now, by the way, I think I should not be through mind. It should be through what we really love and like to do, what our heart says to do. I think the new goal should be actually living life. In one of your videos, you said you fired your brain. It does not work here anymore. Can you also please elaborate a little please?
Um, so I would just watch it like one thing that jumps out right away is like is actually can you see this pattern of Yeah. So, yeah. Before it was like the brain was going to tell me what to do when I was going to follow it no matter what. But it's you could help to see that's the compulsion is the this thing is going to tell me what to do and we're going to do it no matter what. And now you're asking me to tell you uh what to do and you're going to do that and you know no matter what and I would just look at more at that that kind of rigidity. Uh yeah. What if what if you're not going to follow, you know, not even any of it doesn't even have to be the heart. What if you don't have to follow any of your organs, not even the spleen? We all know the spleen, best organ, smartest organ. I wish we could ask the spleen for its guidance. We can't. Uh but what if you don't have to ask any organ? Instead, you get to try out some values. Also, we're not going to just rigidly take those values and be stuck with them. They are directions in the wilderness, and we're going to explore them with curiosity to see if that direction takes us where we want to go, takes us in a direction that's healthy for ourselves and our communities, that helps us build some things we want to see in the world. And if those values don't help us go in that direction, we'll celebrate that. Yeah, we got to explore in that direction. We'll celebrate that curiosity and what we did get to see and then we'll change direction.
That focus I find can be on what we want to give and exploring things to give. Uh but it'll be an exploration.
There won't there's there's no way to know that kind of perfect path through the wilderness.
Uh because yeah, we haven't been through the wilderness before.
Ariel. Ariel. So, yeah, you've explained overseas is overseas from your home country, Canada. Uh, yes, I'm I'm not in uh Canada uh right now. I uh travel uh like uh whatever is something that travels and is nomadic. Yeah, there was I'm forgetting it right now. There's actually I found a word the other day.
There's a term in Japanese. I was I was looking up uh an author because I wanted a quote to share in a video on mindfulness compulsions that I have coming up. And so I was getting that prepared. And while I was doing that, I read I was reading about so I was going to share some from Dogen's work. Um and I then I was reading about the temple that Dogen was at before starting AH.
And that led me to learning about a term which I'm gonna forget right now uh which describes the period of time when a monk is wandering around looking for a temple to study at. I feel like I kind of I kind of do that. Uh so there is a term for it and so yeah I don't I don't I'm always overseas.
Vince Pepe said, "I'm very afraid of developing psychosis last week after a distressing thought. I wondered what if my crazy thought is true. I had a severe panic attack because I don't want to believe those thoughts and I'm afraid that one day I might end up believing them." We like to be in control of our lives. We like to be in charge of our lives and we like being ourselves. So quite often we're afraid of things that could take away that control and that chance to be ourselves.
It's one of the reasons it's so useful to look at the actions we practice in this moment. We get to practice being ourselves and giving our time and energy to things we value. Being ourselves is not about checking thoughts.
Like what you're describing there is suggesting or and this is something I I'll often point out to people around this. It's suggesting that there are probably some unhelpful beliefs about the importance of thoughts and the that you're attaching a lot of meaning to thoughts. I find it way more useful to see that thoughts are like weather. Like they are things we experience.
Worrying that we'll lose control because a thought came up is like worrying that we'll lose control of ourselves because there'll be some clouds in the sky or anything else we could experience where we're going, "Oo, but if I hear a car honk its horn three times, I'll lose control."
So, one, it's helpful to recognize those are experiences.
But two, I'd be curious about how much time and energy you currently give right now in your life to reacting around thoughts and other brain stuff.
Because what happens is we start spending more time and energy on stuff up here, in which case we are actually spending our lives on the brain stuff, which means the brain stuff is taking charge of our lives. And then we get even more afraid of it because we're actually spending our life on it.
So part of the practice of starting to take back that ownership and to practice living our lives is to drop the compulsions to like check and get certainty and get reassurance about brain stuff. Cuz yeah, if we're afraid of losing control of our lives to brain stuff, yeah, don't give up control of your life to brain stuff. What do you want to create and build in life? And then it's about practicing that while having any thought or feeling. Yeah.
Whatever the brain throws up is fine.
And we can give our time and energy to what we want to be doing.
Yeah. Ariel. Ariel. So also a great example here in terms of what do we put in charge of our life. Ariel. Ariel said, "I have nagging thoughts about ending my relationship. How do I know when to follow it or not?" But like why would you base a decision on your relationship just around like thoughts? They could be nagging thoughts. They could be good thoughts. Likewise, like people mess up relationships all the time around thoughts they like, right? They see something they want and they go and, you know, they they cheat on their partner or whatever. They chase after something and they're like, "Oh, but that was a good thought." Yeah, it it's not going to be useful. uh as you may have noticed in so many areas to base long-term life decisions on thoughts, what criteria, what objective criteria can you use to determine what you want to grow in a relationship and who you want to grow that with? Uh cuz yeah, likewise, if the brain didn't have nagging thoughts, it might also not be a good relationship. But if you're like, well, everything is a red flag and terrible, but I I don't have nagging thoughts, so I'll stay here. Uh, right, that also wouldn't be useful. Uh, so yeah, the presence or absence of thoughts.
Ah, not a useful measure of stuff cuz I'm I'm well. Thank you for being a member on the the membership channel here on YouTube. Lately on the the membership channel, we've been exploring kind of I've been doing a series on contamination. So, kind of going through the whole journey uh with cutting out contamination compulsions, but linking it to all of these other types of obsessions that are just versions of contamination compulsions like uh obsessions we can have around thoughts.
Like if we're I've got to clean away this thought, it ends up being the same kind of structure when we're working on skills as classic contamination fears.
Uh, and so we're coming up to the end of the the contamination series.
Philip, also thanks for being a member on the the YouTube's member channel.
Philip said, I wonder if most of the things we do are dependent on thoughts.
Example, talking, learning, how should we approach cognitive diffusion while being dependent on this? Oh, but I would I' I'd be really curious about that.
He said, I wonder if most of the things we do are dependent on thoughts.
This is maybe a great way to explore kind of the differences that we're talking about between uh reacting to random stuff coming up in the head versus using the brain as a tool. And I'd go after learning there because when you say learning is dependent on thoughts.
I would challenge that because you don't know what you're learning. You 1,000% literally cannot think of it if it is a new thing you are learning. Like for example, if I wanted to learn how to So I'm in Vietnam right now. Amazing food in Vietnam. I went to a coffee workshop last Sunday to learn how to make Vietnamese coffees. I don't know if everybody knows this, but in the world we have kind of like three, I would say probably three main types of coffee beans. Two of which are the the biggest, but even then the the biggest is Arabica beans by far like 80% of coffee production in the world is like Arabica.
Then the second largest is Robusta beans. Uh Robusta is very popular in Vietnam. Vietnam grows for in Vietnam.
The figures are basically flipped. Like 80% of production is robusta and that's most of what you'll drink. I love robusta. Robusta has suffered from a lot of bad marketing from actually probably it's not robusta's bad marketing. It's probably marketing from other types of beans that have given it this image that's not as good. Uh no robust is amazing especially fresh robusta right from the hills here in Vietnam. And as well in Vietnam, they've developed a a cafe culture and styles of coffee that really fit with the different flavor profiles and high caffeine of Robusta.
Robusta has around two times as much caffeine as your typical Arabica. So if you've ever had coffee that was, you know, just your normal coffee, which is probably Arabica, and thought, "Wow, there's so much caffeine here." Double that when you're drinking Robusta. And so last week, because I love coffee culture, coffee in Vietnam, uh I went to a workshop on how to make Vietnamese coffees because there's all sorts of uh really cool preparations that work, I would say, better with the robust bean because of it has a kind of a strong flavor and high caffeine and so on. And so I went to learn that, but I could never have figured that out by thinking about it. I had to have other people show me the actions to do and then I had to practice the actions and learn about them. And I would say that situation of using the brain to observe reality is very different from talking to the brain about stuff we already know or even trying to time travel in the brain. It's a very very key difference there. I'd say yeah, we're going to use our brains to learn stuff, but that's not going to come from kind of like asking the brain, hey, like tell me about some fears or or something like that. Um, and then just engaging with them. And in fact, I say if somebody was going to sit down and say, well, I don't need somebody to teach me how to make Vietnamese coffees.
I'll just go figure it out on my own.
Yeah, you could do that, but I'd be really suspicious, especially if you struggled with a lot of compulsions and things like that. I'd be suspicious that that's just the brain's way to get you to like spend a lot of time spinning your wheels on it. This is something I'll see community members and clients struggling with a lot and I dealt with a lot too that I would take the hardest route and the most challenging route and everything. I would make myself really busy. I would do take on what I thought were good ideas that just led to like lots of stressful hard work. When we rely on our brains, we often just end up struggling and suffering. Instead, we're going to use it as a tool, but we're going to engage with things in reality outside of it to learn stuff. And I' I'd argue that's a far more effective way to learn uh by bringing the brain along as a tool that we're going to use. But we're going to be present with what we're learning from somebody else rather than spending the whole time like judging and talking in our heads. Yeah.
Does that make sense, Phil?
Yeah. Young Jedi.
So young Jedi Shir, I do see the lies of the brain and the fear of loss. Now I feel like I can let the brain go and actually live. Yeah, you don't have to spend time on whatever the brain's throwing up. But there can you can have a lot of compassion, right? Like our brain is so I'm trying to kind of describe a brain right now. Uh like it's afraid, right? It wants to grab on to things. It it wants to avoid things. Uh and so having a lot of compassion for that right now like giving it a hug but then yeah directing it as you see like these things that we love cuz it's fear really does come from that place of love. So being able to take it there. Yeah. And that that can be uncomfortable. Um but yeah, giving that time and energy to the things that we love. Uh yeah, really is is the practice and that's never like this is probably this is going to come up because I know some other people asked about it uh on YouTube videos earlier this week. Um because I know Young, yeah, you made the the a comment above that too where the the topic of regrets and like what we spend time and energy on. Yeah. There there's always if we look at, you know, stuff we've done or are doing even in this moment, we can often notice where we might be spending time and energy on something that we don't need to. And we can just have a lot of compassion for that, right? We can have that awareness.
Oh, I see why I did that. Because of, you know, I was trying to get this or I was trying to to grab onto and hold that. And we can celebrate that awareness.
Yeah. We don't have to like the the fact that we can see that is so amazing.
And yeah, we just live right now. And so we can always thank thank the brain like, "Yep, you're right. There are things I really care about. And so I'm not going to spend time arguing with my brain about like something that's not here right now, but thank you brain for reminding me what I care about. And so I'm going to go and be with that and give to that right now because that's what I want to do. And I think the the great thing about that is that then we can bring that practice to so many simple things.
Uh yeah, like even one of the exercises I'll often share with people is around like just doing you know chores or or activities or anything like that. And yeah, what's it like to approach them as this is like the first time and last time we ever get to do that activity.
It can be a really wondrous amazing activity to just be there doing that thing uh as a human right now.
Fitness is love. He said, "I'm currently working with a mentor. He helps me make decisions. Do you recommend taking decisions by yourself or having a mentor who helps in decision-m?" Oh, fitness is love. What are the decisions about?
Absolutely. like borrowing values from somewhere else. Something I I talk about frequently I'll compare it to using a recipe. If there's something we're doing like we want to make bake really delicious cookies. I mean we're probably going to ask somebody who already bakes really delicious cookies like how do you bake really delicious cookies? Uh but then there are other situations where uh it's going to be useful to explore that like asking somebody else for the to make the decision for us is going to interfere uh with us actually learning. Like one of the areas where I'm seeing that happen a lot to people right now is is with chat bots and LLMs.
People are kind of missing a key piece of learning. It's something I'm worried about is seeing people very quick uh lose the ability to learn. Like it's been shocking that it's almost like in a matter of months, maybe it's been a bit longer, maybe this has been like building up over the past year, but I'm really noticing it recently, uh, that if I reply to a question that somebody asks by explaining that it's well, it's a thing you need to figure out, oh, like that that just causes meltdowns. And that that's like in in the way that I would expect if I was explaining to a toddler and you just saw the toddler like I can't tie my shoes or something and they just got very upset or they were doing a puzzle and they just threw the puzzle.
A lot of adults seem to be having a similar experience now and that they're not figuring things out. Like learning how to learn is a very necessary skill.
Do not outsource your like figuring outness skills. I don't know what we call that your like reasoning skills. Yeah. Uh to an to something external from you like you need to be smarter than a toddler.
Everybody here please be smarter than toddlers.
And that's a thing. That's not a thing we have. That's a process. I think that's the key here. People are mistaking knowledge for intelligence. Uh intelligence is the process of figuring things out. And so if you start to just take answers from a vending machine, boom, your intelligence just goes off a cliff.
Andrea said, "I really like the idea of cutting out normal compulsions. It helped me a lot to see where I'm maintaining the pattern of coping, controlling, and checking. I only came across this in your work. So, I really appreciate this perspective shift. Thank you. Oh, Andrea, I'm really glad. Yeah, you're finding it useful. I I think it's so important and yeah, especially I think for everybody if you're uh running into relapsing repeatedly, for instance, I think cutting out the normal compulsions is the big key with that. I really credit cutting out the normal compulsions with maintaining recovery now for whatever it is like 15 plus whatever years because they're just there just things that would seem normal that I just I just won't do them. So it there's no chance to go back to the old way of doing things. But also that then there's no chance like the brain's not then churning up all sorts of stuff because of that. Um because the normal compulsions fuel so much of the obsessions too because the brain's smart. Brain's very logical. It's like, "Hey, you control all this stuff. You're going to love control controlling this."
And then it throws up something really nasty, but it's just doing it because we've been practicing that.
A bed mud as well. Thank you for joining us from the pit. I hope you're having an an easier weekend, too.
Phillip said, "How can we explore a value like being kind without letting it become an excuse for people pleasing?"
Oh, it's a fine line for me. Yeah, being kind. So, yeah, maybe and maybe it's just starting there, like being kind is not people pleasing.
And even so, maybe if you removed that, then what else could it be? Uh and so one area to even begin with kindness is just with yourself.
There's a video actually I shared if you go on YouTube into the shorts, it's in the public shorts, but I think it's the most recent public short.
It's about the exercise to write out kind of like how would you how would you, you know, treat a colleague that you really respect and admire and trust and then how would you treat a colleague that you like do not trust, do not respect and really worry about giving them any tasks. And then to look at those actions uh even just in how you look at them, talk to them, interact with them, the first set of actions about how do you treat somebody that you really respect and admire and trust. Those are the actions we need to start practicing to ourselves. And that's a great way to understand kindness.
When we see how we're going to approach kindness to ourselves, then it can be much easier to see how we might do that with other people. Uh quite often we're not very kind to ourselves. And so then also we end up doing a lot of people pleasing because we need other people to like us cuz we're huge to ourselves. And so if you're a huge to yourself, the brain is like, "Ah, I don't want to be left alone with this person." We got to get other people to like us. And then we end up in a lot of compulsions around other people because we're such jerks to ourselves, like real to ourselves. When we are not to ourselves, it can be much easier to explore healthier interactions with other people because we're not desperate for validation or respect or trust.
We're already giving those to ourselves.
So then we can, you know, have an interaction as well that's not transactional, not about trying to get something.
I bet exactly. Everyone is always overseas. When you think about it, we're all overseas. There's probably like one really beautiful amazing island in the world that we would all love to visit and we can just think of ourselves as always being overseas from that that perfect island.
Fitness is love said. So you often recommend exploring different paths for values finding but it takes a lot of time to learn through this way. What do you think of asking actions from experts instead of exploring paths? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and so yeah, you may have posted that before I mentioned the cookies. Yeah, if there's a specific direction that we know about. So I I always recommend this with business with different professions. You're going to open a cookie shop. Yeah, you don't have to figure that out. We know how to run successful cookie shops. We know how to run successful doughnut shops.
Like that is not a thing you have to like spend like and this goes back to the learning thing again. Yeah. You don't have to spend time trying to figure that out. Hey, I don't have to spend hours at home trying to figure out how to make Vietnamese coffees. I just go to a coffee roaster and coffee shop and they teach me. And so, yeah, when there's like a very specific thing, oh, do like I even there what I practice now is not figuring it out because I know my brain would love that. It would love to just add to the number of things to do and always be like, "Oh, you got to figure this out. How are we going to do it? No, if it's something somebody's already doing well, go find out how they do it. Totally really useful.
Hope said, "How do I trust myself with cutting out compulsions? I plan and I have reminders and sticky notes, but I'm still unable to focus on what's important in life."
There's always uh a component to build on. I did a video on this recently on the the members channel here on YouTube.
Yeah, we can have all of the supports in place. There is no getting around like doing the exercise and that'll feel uncomfortable.
And I think sometimes what we're looking for when we're, you know, you know, asking people for uh a structure to cutting out compulsions or we're doing some kind of course or we're looking at therapy, whatever, we're sometimes looking for a way not to have that uncomfortable feeling, but we will have the uncomfortable feeling. And while having it, we've got to choose that new direction. So we look at supports to create the situations where we can practice that. But we still have to do it. So it is like a physical fitness exercise. We can have all the supports in place imaginable. We can have the great fuel to, you know, energize us in the workout. We can have the best spandex workout outfits, greatest shoes, whatever. But we still have to do it.
And so there you asked about trusting yourself with cutting out compulsions.
But trusting yourself is doing it. We trust is not certainty.
If we're looking for certainty before cutting out the compulsion, that is not trust, right? Because if we trust somebody, we don't know what'll happen.
If we know what'll happen, then we're not trusting like we wouldn't need to trust them because we already know what'll happen. Trust is giving ourselves that support, that respect. I'll often describe it as being a fan of ourselves. We're going to be an unreasonable fan of ourselves. I don't know how it's going to work out, but I trust that person in the mirror to take care of it. I look forward to seeing what they do, but I don't know what they do. What they'll do. I don't know what they'll do.
I trust them to take it on. So, you're going to trust yourself to step into uncertainty and do something different.
And it's going to feel uncomfortable.
Just going to scroll a little bit quickly here and then I'm going to pop back up. I'm gonna move. Maybe we'll move. We'll see.
Maybe move a bit quicker. We'll see if I can do that.
Andrea said, "How should we approach replying to messages in a way to sustain mental fitness? My phone is buzzing a lot. I want to maintain communication with the people I care about, but I'm not sure how to approach this. I have some people that I'd like to reply to faster and than others.
example, replying faster to my mom, but not to my friends that sent me 100 memes.
I thought at first just as I was reading it because when you put example, I read that as like X like I thought you were saying like I I want to reply faster to my ex. Uh I was like don't don't do that. Uh no, but it was example my mother. That's great. And of course it is Mother's Day in many parts of the world. So shout out uh to the moms out there and people with moms.
We'll express gratitude to our mothers today.
One thing that I find really important with messages is the being proactive part. And this goes back to what I was talking about the beginning. How we interact with technology is a great way to explore this. It seems to really help when we're proactive with things rather than being reactive.
So, I don't have any notifications turned on uh when I use technology and I wait I use technology like all of my work is on is through technology and social media and things like that.
I just set up times when I'll proactively do things. So, I do have a calendar. Uh oh, yeah. So, I guess I would describe it this way. So, there is a calendar that will send me uh emails that tell me when things are happening and that'll also pop up as a notification. It's just there's no sounds or vibrations. Uh, and so that what that enables me to do then when I pick up my phone, I can just look through the notifications of what's happening. And those notifications though are only for my calendar. So also if there's a notification there, it's telling me something I need to go and do.
I will put in my calendar times to answer messages and and even I'll I'll write like when I know there's like specific messages and things like that I I need to respond to and people I want to reach out to, I'll put it there.
But there's something about this switch from when we're reactive like something could pop up um and then versus being proactive. However, yeah, if if there's messages from somebody that you want to you want to get that buzz and there's a bunch of people you don't want to get it, just seeing cuz often apps now will sometimes have the ability to do that.
uh where you can set sometimes it's that you set it as silent but there's particular numbers uh with something like uh phone numbers that you set as o I can't remember the term for it but like they're o they'll always go through so even if it's set to not vibrate those will always vibrate.
Uh, so yeah, just finding those ways to turn off the notifications you don't you don't need to react to English. Easy said, I've realized that's very difficult to identify what are wrong psychological practices I've adopted. Any tips for that? Yeah. So, I always rather than looking at what's wrong because that that could be everything. uh or there could be so much, right? For for instance, a wrong psychological practice is hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan, but also a wrong psychological practice is hitting yourself in the face with a lamp. Well, also hitting yourself in the face with a saucepan. A a wrong psychological practice would be hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan, a saucepan, a small saucepan, and a large saucepan, which I guess is more like a soup uh pot. Yeah. So, a soup pot, that's bad. um right like we would just have to go through so much that's wrong that's not going to be useful to us. So what I always suggest is that we build around what we want to create and grow. I describe it as making delicious cookies. If you're making delicious cookies, you don't need to do compulsions around every single bad thing you don't want in the cookies.
Instead, what are the good things you want in the cookies?
what are the good practices of making delicious cookies and we're going to do those?
By doing those, we will address all of the other stuff that's not unhelpful because it just won't be part of it.
So, if we look at where we want to go and what we want to build, we'll take care of dropping the compulsions because the compulsions won't be part of it.
Enjoy making delicious cookies.
Scott, good to see you. Scott, thanks for dropping by. Scott shared that thoughts are just weather bit was such a huge realization in recovery. Yeah, it makes such a difference to understand these are experiences. I think in some cultures the awareness of thoughts and feelings is presented as one of the senses and I think just in right it's one of those ways too you can see how arbitrary some things are like it's very normal at least in where I grew up that we would talk about five senses and thoughts and feelings were not one of the senses uh it's way more helpful to see it as just another thing we experience So it's just one of the things we sense just like we hear stuff, we see stuff.
Everything we hear and see is processed in our brain. Thoughts and feelings are also things that we register and process in our brains.
Mr. Joe, thanks for being part of the membership channel.
Mr. Joe said, "I just finished last week's tech support stream because I'd missed it." Oh, Joe, thanks for checking it out.
Mr. Mitchellund, he said, "This isn't really a question, but I just wanted to say that I've always struggled with the idea of focusing on values because I cannot find value in certain things. I mentioned a job I hate last time. Unfortunately, I have to work the job due to life circumstances. Something that has helped, however, has been to think, what would I do if I was not mentally ill? To act in accordance with that, not only act, but also think. So, would a mentally fit person be thinking about how this twinge in my arm could mean I'm having a heart attack? Would a mentally fit person be wasting time googling various symptoms? No. A mental fit guy would be like, "Huh, that's annoying."
and go about his day. This shift in thinking has been helpful. So I wanted to share. Oh, Mr. Mitchell, thanks for sharing.
It is so important that we find those things that work well for us. Again, that's why I find fitness is a great model. Yeah. Like you're Yeah. There's all sorts of different types of workouts and ways of doing things. And there's all sorts of skills. You don't have to explore all the skills that somebody else is exploring.
If you want to, you can. And there's going to be changes and practices that are going to help develop those skills and capacities, but you're going to find other ways to do the things you need to do and want to do in life. And it's all about putting together that unique toolkit of skills and understandings that are going to work well for where you want to go on the adventure.
Mr. Joe. Yeah. Oh, feel free to just uh yeah, post your questions in the comments or the chat there.
Young Jedi, you are posting a question there asking for reassurance and we don't have to spend time on that.
But what would you like to celebrate?
Sada actor. Yeah. He said, "Have you recovered from harm types of thought, please?" Yes, absolutely. I had all sorts of compulsions around harm thoughts. Like I when I went to get help, I wasn't using knives because I would like if I even thought if I was just walking to the grocery store and I thought about a food I would have to cut, I would then see an image of me cutting my fingers off and I would feel it. So I would be like walking to the grocery store doing this to make sure I still had my fingers. And then I wouldn't buy those foods. I was at that point just eating lots of like frozen food and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, I wasn't there was a period of time where I just I didn't use knives and that was only part of it. I had all sorts of harm. I wasn't walking by certain places because I might see people there and I would see them getting harmed and yeah, it's a totally normal uh there is a video there's actually a couple videos but yeah, if you go on my YouTube channel and look up like harm recovery from like harm thoughts and stuff like that, there's a bunch of videos on it that involves the type of exercises we do to cut out those compulsions.
yellow. Yeah. You said, "I saw your reply to my comments." This was a comment on a YouTube video. Uh, and you said, "I really appreciate that, but I kind of didn't understand the thought, even if I thought it was really, really bad and could make me a terrible person.
So, since you said it was a really really bad uh thought you used really twice, I'll just point out it's only a really terrible horrible meaningful thought if you use really three times. So, two really is not so bad.
You shared again. So, I'll explain for everybody what I was sharing about that.
This is this is key to see because often this is also one of the reasons I I emphasize to people to be careful and not use them when they're talking to chat bots because the question we often ask about mental health is often part of the compulsions. And so, but if you ask that to a chatbot, the chatbot's going to engage in the compulsion even though you think you're asking a question that's useful. Um, the question itself, you kind of need to get push back on it.
So, uh, what yellow is sharing about here, uh, is a similar thing. illustrate a question asking about uh ignoring a particular thought but the reason for ignoring the particular thought was a whole bunch of compulsions and part of it shared right there yellow where you said I could make it could make me a terrible person so that that belief that and so in in the comment was about if I thought the thought in the past that meant I'm a terrible person and And that fuels that's a very common compulsion that fuels a lot of compulsions to check for reassurance.
Did I did I really think the thought or did I experience the thought and so on?
But that whole framework, that idea that if I think a thought, it means something about me. That's completely false, made up, not a real thing. That does not exist. That and the example I showed there is that's like me saying, well, if I accidentally hear my neighbor fart, then I'm a good person. But if I wanted to hear my neighbor fart, oh no, then I'm then I'm a bad person. And then you're checking like, did I accidentally hear it or did I want to hear it? Like that like that's all compulsions. That's all made up. Also, there's no meaning other than a meaning we invent and give to something like that. Uh but then it's all a bunch of compulsions to like be checking that.
Yeah. So you don't being a good person has absolutely nothing to do with um yeah what you're checking on around thoughts there. So there there's no there's not I'm not going to have an answer to the question about the particular thought because any amount of uh checking around it is just going to be more of the compulsions.
Yep. We uh we experience thoughts uh just like any kind of other experience.
So, like seeing something like if we walk down the street, this is another great example. If I'm walking down the street and there's a bag of garbage and I look at it, if I'm then interrogating, did I mean to look at the garbage or did I accidentally look at the garbage?
What's that mean about me? Cuz maybe I'm saying that if I look at garbage, then I am a bad person. I am garbage. Uh, no, like it doesn't mean anything. Likewise, another area where people struggle with this a lot. I've shared some posts on social media about this recently is with uh their staring OCD. You'll sometimes see it referred to because people will latch on to did I intend to look there or did I accidentally look there? And the reality is our eyes are doing all sorts of things all of the time. Uh and but again, it's that belief that it means something. Um but that is 100% us inventing that and uh yeah it's not useful. So these madeup things that we do compulsions around yeah we don't have to do them.
Oh and Mr. Madam Dylan thank you so much for taking care of the chat. I just saw uh you sharing some uh useful suggestions with people in the chat.
Thank you for being here and uh taking care of the chat with us today. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, Mr. Mitchell 100 Vietnamese coffee. So delicious. Just I could drink buckets of it. Ignasio, thank you for being a member on the members channel and thank you for wishing everybody a good Sunday. I hope you're having a good Sunday as well.
Jada actor asked, "What can I do when I have some uneasy thought?" We don't have to do anything. Isn't that wonderful?
All this unpaid overtime work we've been doing for the brain when it throws out its garbage and we've been like, "I've got to clean it up. I've got to do something." We don't have to we don't have to work for it anymore.
The uneasy thoughts can be there. Just like any other thing we pass on the street.
Just Fenzo said, "Mark, uh, you've often said you haven't had any relapses with OCD since years, but what about the so-called setbacks?
Has that ever happened to you? Should we expect them long term?" Hm. What are what does Yeah. When you say so-called setbacks, what what does that who is the calling them? And yeah, what what would a setback mean to you?
Erk's motion said, should we analyze our thoughts to figure something out from them or should we ignore them and will they come back if we do that? Um, so it's not as simple as that, I'd say.
uh yet we don't have to in general it's going to be useful to start not attaching so much meaning to thoughts at the same time we can have a lot of compassion for why particular topics might come up for instance if somebody has a goal an unhelpful goal of being liked by everybody and that's a thing they want to get it's very natural that their brain would then throw throw up intrusive thoughts about them doing horrible things people would judge them for.
So if they notice the brain throwing up horrible thoughts of like harming people, doing terrible things, it will be useful to notice, oh yeah, the brain's doing this because I'm afraid of being judged by people. Oh yeah. And I spend tons of my time and energy every day like posting on social media hoping to get, you know, likes from people, hoping to get validation.
I'm always thinking in the mornings, how what are people going to think about how I look today?
So, it is useful in that sense that in whatever the brain is throwing up, we can typically see some unhelpful goals that we're chasing and we're giving to it. So, if I'm telling the brain, hey, you got to make sure everybody likes me.
Then I can't complain when the brain thinks up, well, what if you did this and what if you said this terrible thing and what if this thing went wrong and what if this? The brain is doing its job. I told it, I want to make sure I don't do anything that people could hate me for. So, now the brain is going to think through all of the things that people could hate me for.
So yeah, we we ignore it in the sense that we need to start to recognize, oh yeah, it's just doing this thing based on an unhelpful goal I set. So I don't need to engage with that. I need to change the goals that I'm setting and the actions that I'm doing.
So there is that element, but also we can understand uh where the brain got the idea to throw up that stuff and that can be useful for making those changes.
Mr. Joe. Oh, I see. Mr. Joe, you signed up for two months on the the membership channel. Welcome, Mr. Joe. I'll just let you know you're signed up to the brain level. So, everybody uh for joining the membership channel. So, the there's brain and the brain level has access to the text post.
So, if you go to the post section uh on YouTube, there'll be a whole bunch of members text posts. There are like articles going into different, you know, approaches to making changes and and you know, mental fitness skills and things like that.
Next up is the donut level. Donut level has access to the videos. So there I make a bunch like that's where I've posted that series of videos on the contamination compulsions as a template or a model for cutting out so many other uh obsessions that we can get caught up in. And then there's also the alpaca level. And alpaca is where I'll make you custom videos on whatever you want to like whatever topic you want to have them on.
Mr. Joe, here's your question. You said, "I need your help with current real event OCD that my brain starving to latch on to it and dragging me in deep shame and selfhate."
One of the things I find key uh with real event is especially just to recognize that the compulsions are happening in the present. So there's no different there's no difference with real event OCD and any other OCD. The compulsions are only happening right now. So watch out for getting caught up and going, "Yeah, but this is real."
Sure. Like any any OCD is real, right?
Right? And that you're really having a fear and then trying to do compulsions around it right now. But the changes are going to happen in the present. And so rather than doing those compulsions in the present, what would you like to be doing Phillip?
He said related to the first question, how can we give enjoyment and learn how to enjoy things we value with any brain stuff, thoughts, feelings, etc. Right now, many things feel contaminated with brain stuff. Ah so yeah this is exactly this is exactly why I was exploring that series on contamination compulsions in the members channel because we'll often see thoughts uh feelings memories of real events to as a contamination and then we don't want to like take it into things and so even Philip yeah maybe check out if you see there's a template I shared recently uh for organizing kind of the superficial topic and then the like a human goal and skills practice and all of that kind of stuff. There's a template I shared there to capture all of the different things we organize when we're working on these changes and these skills. Maybe check out one of those posts in the members channel and then if you want to fill it out, we can talk there if you want to ask comments or send me a message on Instagram or your email.
We can talk there about the exercises to practice having the contaminated feeling while doing something we value because that's how we practice it with this. We bring up whatever the wrong thought is and there's many different ways we can kind of trigger that or bring it up and then we do that while going to do something that we value. So we practice having the contaminated thought while doing something important quite often something that we wouldn't want the thought to be involved with.
Excuse me. That's how we really build up that skill.
I'm scrolling on down. Blooper 785, welcome and I am going through some conversations happening in the chat.
And Andrea, oh, you're welcome.
Yeah, Andrea, you're getting started on becoming a psychologist. Have a lot of fun with that.
Oh, and you said, uh, so Andrea said here, great advice as always. In like 10 years when I'll be a psychologist, keep an eye out on your emails for me to organize a mental fitness workshop in Romania. Andrea, that would be amazing.
I look forward to We have a bunch of community members in Romania. Uh so yeah, absolutely. We could totally do a meetup in Romania. Maybe even before 10 years from now.
He said, "I've started intense ERP. It's only been a couple days, but seems like it's working. With that said, I wake up in the morning feeling awful, dizzy, and depressed mostly. Is that normal?" Let's talk about what it means for ERP to be working.
ERP uh when we say that it's working, it can really help to define that by us doing the actions we want to be doing rather than spending time and energy checking for reassurance on unwanted experiences.
It's so important to recognize the brain never cared about the topic.
So if you're doing ERP around just like a superficial topic, the brain is just going to move to some other unwanted experience to get you to go and check for reassurance on it. Right? Cuz you're still just doing the same compulsions.
So when I mention that, do you see what you just did?
So yeah, you start to cut out compulsions very naturally when we make any change there's going to be a rise in unwanted experiences. Some could be physical, very common that uh you'll notice it move from the stuff in the head to something in the body. So you mentioned you're waking up feeling awful and you've gone online to check for reassurance about it. Uh so that is an example of the compulsions as you're exploring ERP. So yeah, this is like it's important to recognize that the brain doesn't care about the topic. It cares about throwing up an unwanted experience and getting you to try and cope with it, check on it, control it. So, you see now how that works and that it's not about the topic. So, as you're working on ERP, something I found really helpful was to picture it like there was a hole in my head. uh so like the space that by me cutting out the compulsions I had removed the I don't know the the compulsions filled the hole in the space let's put it that way and so then I cut out the compulsions and then there was this big hole there and then it helped me to recognize the brain's going to try to fill it by throwing up more unwanted experiences and it's up to us when we cut out the compulsions with ERP to recognize it was never about a topic so it doesn't matter if the unwanted experience topic changes cuz it's going to change. I'm not going to react to it with the old coping and checking and controlling. And by doing that, we start to shrink this hole in our heads, this cavern, uh so that it demands fewer compulsions. And if we keep cutting out the compulsions, no matter what it moves to, that cavern will shrink to a tiny tiny tiny little gap and then disappear.
But we've got to not jump in there with more checking and controlling because that's just going to fill the gap.
Mr. Joe, thank you so much uh for donation, too. Oh, I appreciate your kind words. Yeah, thank you for being here today and sharing with everybody.
You're welcome.
Ah, yeah. Someone mentioned here your template for cutting out the compulsions in the subscriber channel was very helpful. Yeah, I was trying to get at a way we could capture in a phonesized kind of image or worksheet all of the things that we're going to keep track of when we're say planning a month of of making changes around one of the obsessions or a set of compulsions.
So, I think it'll still be a work in progress, but I think it's good that we can get it into that kind of format.
Mr. Mitchell has has offered everyone to come to Germany to uh to uh work on your staring OCD.
So what do you do if you are in the wrong life because you never understood your own needs or they weren't accepted by society and now it's like crisis time. So it's not the time for making changes.
We Oh, no. You can't like be in a wrong life.
Like we are just in the life that that we are in. Uh and cuz I I think if if if we start saying there's like a right life and a wrong life or and it like I don't even know how we would go about defining uh those but inevitably with the brains that we have uh our special unique version of brains which are you know hoping to move up to number 17 on the the top 50 organ list and they're not going to make that they're they would just tell us it's all wrong. So yeah, even just just even in like laying out those different things, I would say that's probably spending way too much time and energy in the head.
Like this idea that oh well, I'm in the wrong life because of this and this and this like that all of the time spent on that one was guaranteed to only produce like wrong things. Uh but yeah, is just is not going to be beneficial in any way.
What if we are where we are right now?
And in this context, we get to look at what's around us and we get to make a choice based on what we value giving our time and energy to. And that's all any of us ever have. There's no like right or wrong life.
Scott said, "Uh, your work really resonates in my peer support group." Oh, and it was crucial for me to get better and have hope again. Funny how this is the less we do, the better we get. Uh, keep carrying the fire. Oh, thanks a lot, Scott. Yeah, it is absolutely true. like the we drop the uh and by tree I mean the dropping the unpaid overtime work for the brain uh is so much more beneficial than all of these side quests it has us running on. Uh yeah, Scott, thanks a lot for sharing it with your peer support group. I really appreciate that.
It's uh yeah, it's a huge honor to to know that that people want to share these tools with others. And I think it's it's great everybody too that you're finding ways to support other people on their journeys cuz yeah, it's it is so beneficial to learn how we can change our interaction with the stuff in our heads, how we can cut out these compulsions that have been in our lives forever. It's so much more enjoyable without them, but it's for whatever reason just not a thing as a society that we've talked a lot about that's been as accessible as some other things. It is so enjoyable to not have to spend all of our time and energy trying to chase our brains around trying to control and avoid feelings.
So, thank you everybody for yeah sharing that support with others.
Ah, just went so sharing about the setbacks. So he said I'm good for two or three weeks then not so good for about a week. Yeah. So I wouldn't call that a setback. I would just look at that as you're seeing. So do you know when I share the uncertainty curve the uncertainty curve you can expand to all sorts of time frames.
And we're learning a lot there about how we change. So, if you notice that you're good for two weeks and then you go back to some compulsions, what you're what I would say you're learning about there is you're getting close to the top of something, but then whatever the brain's doing to push back, so like we were talking earlier about how it's it's going to come up with whatever unwanted experience will get us to do more compulsions to fill the gap.
You're seeing it there. So after two weeks, what's it doing to convince you to go back to the compulsions?
And to explore that, you can just start to be curious about it. So what are the changes you want to make? Uh if there are particular compulsions you want to cut out and go and do it on that kind of, you know, with the aim to do it permanently, identifying those actions that you just want to keep in your life, the compulsions you don't have to do anymore. But be really curious this time about what happens before you start to go back to the old habit that is preventable.
Quite often uh maybe as you heard me exploring with uh Andrea earlier quite often that's about the normal compulsions.
There's usually a bunch of things that we start doing that we see as normal and necessary and they take us back into the like actual clinical stuff. Cutting out those normal compulsions will typically be the way to prevent that kind of setback. But that'll feel very weird cuz you'll be dropping some stuff you've probably been doing your whole life.
Uh George from the previous live you said I I have to say the anxiety and depersonalization is mostly gone but I still have the thoughts without a lot of anxiety. How do I proceed to the last step of recovery? Uh so I approach great mental health and fitness as having any thought or feeling. Uh, and I would say that trying to clean away thoughts and feelings is an example of the compulsions. That's all anybody is doing when they're any kind of classic version of the contamination compulsion, whether it's on our hands or in our heads saying, I don't like this experience and I want to get rid of it. That is the fuel for struggling with our mental health. So if you are describing the last step of recovery as getting rid of thoughts, I would see that as the first step of struggling with mental health. So I wouldn't describe it as the last step of recovery. That doesn't sound like a helpful approach to me. I'd be more curious about what you want to start giving time and energy to in life. Uh yeah, just because if the anxiety is not in the way, why aren't you spending time and energy on the things you want to grow in life? Why are you checking online to clean away thoughts? I bet there are way more useful things you could give that time and energy to.
Emil said, "Thank you for everything you do and love watching your coffee workshop adventure pictures." Oh, thank you for checking them out. It was delicious. It was amazing. if everybody gets a chance.
My favorite kind of Vietnamese coffee is salt coffee like cafe mo and it's not a thing I have a lot because it's uh especially uh if my uh my mother is watching hi mom uh my mom looked up once uh the nutrition info in a salt coffee it's incredible uh the story that I was told at the workshop is that fishermen invented the salt coffee so that they could because you get like a a day's worth of energy from a salt coffee. So, you drink a salt coffee early in the morning and then you head out to the ocean. The the cl the story that they told us at the coffee roasters was that the reason the salt coffee got invented though is cuz the fishermen were making the coffee in their boats well at sea.
And as the salt would get into the coffee, they realized that oh, we should put we should put salt in the coffee. I don't think I've been in the ocean before. you don't get that much salt in your if you're just drinking something.
Uh but that's the story. But the that it was invented by fishermen to have in the morning before heading out to sea, I 100% believe cuz if you have a salt coffee in the morning, you just you don't even like you're just you're just on rocket fuel until the afternoon.
Tegan Samuel Dean, you said, "What about mental compulsions?" Yeah. Is there anything in particular uh you're curious about with mental compulsions? One thing I would emphasize to everybody is mental compulsions are no different than physical compulsions.
And and by that I mean if you're if you recognize that you have a compulsion to look up something for reassurance online, you're like, "That's a physical compulsion. I'm gonna cut it or you recognize you have a physical compulsion to ask for reassurance from somebody and you're like, I'm going to cut that out.
That that is the same pattern as a mental compulsion. So, if in your head you're like, I'm going to sit down and think back through that experience to make sure I didn't do something bad, that is the same as looking it up online. That's the same if you're going to have the conversation in your head trying to reassure yourself you didn't do some bad thing that is the same as asking somebody outside of your head whether or not you did some bad thing.
Uh so just to understand mental compulsions just consider the thing I'm doing in my head right now. If I did it outside of my head again and again for hours would I recognize that's a compulsion?
If it is uh yeah, you don't have to do it.
Sajid actor, I see you said please answer my question how you handled harm related and intrusive thoughts and when they are allowed what to do. Actually, uh so I'm not sure if you asked that again. Maybe I had already answered that. Uh but the uh you can find a video that's going to go into much more detail on my channel that like breaks down. So I mentioned earlier the for example the not using knives. So I explain an example of what it was like to start to for example use knives again or go to places that I had avoided because of the harm thoughts. Uh so yeah I would check that out that because that video is goes into much more detail than I can right now. But yeah, it involves like all of the things we explore, identifying something we value, doing the valued action while having those thoughts come up and they're welcome to come along with it. And so that's also to your question of what to do when they're allowed. Uh yeah, they're they like we want them to be allowed like I want to learn how to cut vegetables while having the brain scream. It's that kind of approach rather than going, "Oh no, it's loud. I can't do the thing I want to do right now because of that. Right? That is how the brain is, you know, creating the compulsions or the like the environment for the compulsions and then we do the compulsions as a reaction to that. Uh so yeah, really keep an eye out for that. We want to learn how to do things with the loudest noises, the biggest thoughts, the wildest feelings.
Like that is the skill we're practicing.
Young Jedi, you're asking about manifesting and law of attraction.
This is part of the reassurance and I think you know that.
What would you like to share about Mr. Joe said, "My question about last week live, how is how the rewarding system for values-based actions inside of brain stuff is not a good practice?" Actually, Mr. Joe, can you ask that question? I don't quite understand it. Is a rewarding system for values based inside of brain stuff?
Yeah, actually, Mr. Joe, can you maybe rephrase that question? I I don't understand what you mean there.
Blooper 725 said, "I'm too afraid of letting the mind be because if I do, I might get a scary thought. So, I keep forcing myself to think about specific things to block out the scary thoughts.
It's become a reflex." reflex.
But blooper then you said, "Is meditation a good compulsion cutting practice?" I don't like are you asking that in reference to the compulsion you shared about above that question?
I mean you wouldn't you wouldn't only have to explore that with meditation if you're currently saying oh I don't want to have um thoughts uh there's probably going to be lots of different areas to explore cutting out that compulsion.
Yeah, meditation can be a great way like in many ways we are when we sit to meditate practicing being and having any experience and so meditation is like I really enjoy it as a practice of that u and yeah suggested to people you know for that reason uh but then it's still something we have to take take everywhere in life.
Everybody, salt coffee is amazing. I will go and have a salt coffee too soon and share uh I'll share it on Instagram.
I'll maybe I'll share it on here on uh YouTube then as well in the posts. We'll do a public post. I'll just make a note of that. Uh share salt coffee followup.
It's It's funny. I haven't had a salt coffee here yet. Uh because salt coffee is famously from Huay and I like Huay.
I've been I visited Huay many times. If you uh go to Tiknathhan's root temple uh so for everybody who's not familiar like master Tiknahan is a a very well-known hugely impactful Zen master in the world. Uh his root temple is ne is just outside of Hu kind of outside of the center of the city. Um and so I visited there a couple times and Hu is also where we get salt coffee from. So the coffee shops in Hu are really amazing and they're very enjoyable. there. I would drink a salt coffee a day. I haven't had one uh in the city where I'm at yet, but I I will have one and share it with you all.
I'll just make a note. Share salt coffee with uh everybody.
It's great. Once you see salt coffee, your life will be changed.
And yeah, Mr. Mitchell 100. Is it salty?
Yeah. Like it's I I can't remember the exact amount.
We're talking your like your daily intake of sodium is in a salt coffee 100%.
Yes. And what a salt coffee is a better maybe a better way to think of it. But it's also so delicious like it also because it you make it with what uh like cafe sua in Vietnam is like the the brown coffee which is the mix of condensed milk and coffee. So you have this very strong coffee cut with condensed milk and then a layer of like cream, like whipping cream with salt all through it. And sometimes you get like cocoa sprinkled on top and just Vincenzo.
Welcome to uh the donut membership level.
Enjoy the videos. Yeah, if you have any questions there, feel free to ask.
Okay, Mr. Mr. Mitchell, you said, "I'm very capable of doing stuff despite feeling intense panic and disassociation, but I can't help but wish I could do these things without these feelings. It makes me sad, distressed. Do you have any suggestions as how to approach the desire to feel good while doing the things I value?
Like I said, I can do them. I'm just suffering greatly while doing them, and it would be nice if I didn't suffer the whole time." So, yeah. So, part of it, there's there's always two things to look at with this. Uh the example I'll often use and I'm making the motion of hitting myself in the face with a frying pan is if we hit ourselves in the face with a frying pan.
Sure, we can accept the pain and maybe we didn't hit ourselves in the face with a frying pan. Maybe somebody threw the frying pan at us or a pile of bricks fell on us. Absolutely. So, one, we we do want to learn how to have these feelings and do things we value. But, yeah, what you're describing there immediately, like if a client brought that up, I would have a lot of questions. So, I'm not going to be able to get into all the questions. Now, I would just say there, yeah, there's there's a stuff going on before those feelings are coming up. whether you're the one swinging the frying pan or somebody's swinging the frying pan at you, there's things to dig into there.
But yeah, it is very possible to do things without those feelings.
However, if you're just approaching that while still continuing to hate on the feelings, that'll that'll keep it going too. So, it's it is always both. We we are learning how to practice acceptance with uncomfortable feelings. Also, we're going to cut out the stuff that's fueling the uncomfortable feelings, but it's going to be both.
So, we're accepting this bad thing.
We're like, fine, this thing can be here. Also, I'm going to change this other stuff that's fueling it. And that's even on a like a systems level.
We're both going to accept when things are really terrible in the world. We're not going to spend our time just like doom scrolling and hating on it. Also, we are going to change those systems. So these bad things are not happening anymore. It's always got to be both. Cuz if we just go after hating on the feeling and wanting to get rid of it, then we fuel that compulsion cycle.
I see I just see you just said after joining the membership channel then or joining the donut level then sharing yay I'm a donut. Thank you for being a donut as well. Uh but congratulations also on becoming a donor. It's a wonderful thing.
Young Jedi, he said, "I would like to share that I'm currently drawing without expectations and I love it. Sorry about all the reassurance he gave. I'm just very scared." Yeah, it's okay. Drawing sounds uh wonderful.
Drawing is an amazing practice that we can just enjoy creating something and yet we can have a lot of compassion for why the we notice the brain wanting to like throwing up in uncertainty. We can have a lot of compassion for why we then try to check for reassurance.
Yeah. But we can give it a hug and then do some things we'll enjoy more.
Pom pom kitty, I'm doing great. I hope you're doing great as well.
Oh, and Mr. Joe, you even shared you shared a donation so I can get salt coffee. I appreciate it. I will go and use that on salt coffee and then share I'll share on Instagram and in the YouTube posts. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you for the support.
And thank you. I extend thanks from the uh cafe that will serve the salt coffee.
George. Yes. So, mental health struggles start with how we handle everyday compulsion. I think that's way too simplistic.
Uh, and also the focus of what we're doing is not on mental health struggles.
The focus of what we're doing is on growing the things we care about. And so from that perspective of we want to give time and energy to things we want to grow in life. I would say that starts with our everyday activities.
Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to like make some big special change and that also then leads to us procrastinating because we're like, "Oh, today I can't make the big special change, so I'm just going to do a bunch of compulsions or I'm just going to do the stuff I've done in the past."
Because we're waiting for this moment when we can make the big special change.
But actually, it's in our everyday actions. It's in our interactions with everybody else. It's in how we do what we do. It's in how we talk to ourselves about ourselves. It's in the stories we believe in ourselves. It's how we spend our time and energy each day. It's about how we give in any moment. That is the foundation of doing great amazing things. That is the foundation of just enjoying whatever we're doing. And so that begins with our everyday activities for sure.
Mr. Mitchell, I don't know if I'd like salt and pepper candles.
Connor said, "I have a lot of health anxiety and I'm experiencing skin rashes, acid reflux, and muscle spasms after months of European act.
Unsure at what point to speak to a doctor. What are your thoughts?" Ah, yeah. So, Carter, thanks for being part of the members channel. What I find really helpful with health anxiety, I did this too. I recommend this to people a lot, is to actually set uh like a framework for how you'll interact with doctors. So you you just there's no there's no way to know. You you just decide uh whether it's going to be, you know, if because if there are particular types of health issues that you uh have that you already knew you had, then you might say, "Okay, here's when I'm going to go to the doctor. here's when I get tested and so on. And so just planning that in for other things you might set criteria. So what I found useful is just setting some criteria around I when this happens I'm not going to Google it. I'm not going to look it up. I'm actually going to go straight to a doctor and ask them. So also you can use this to cut out a bunch of compulsions as well. When we're cutting out compulsions, this is something longtime attendees will will have probably heard me talk about this before. Something weird happens with uh the stuff going into our bodies.
And so there's all sorts of physical compulsions. I think it was even last time or the time before I mentioned I wasn't going to explain some of the physical things that happened just because then people start checking. Uh, and so by last time I mean on the previous live stream. Uh, so there's a bunch of physical things that do seem to happen when people cut out compulsions.
There's not a lot of research on this stuff that you do see some research on it. Uh, because people will share about it enough in communities, but it seems to vary. I think what I've shared before on live streams is that the reason the research always ends up inconclusive is because different people will have different physical reactions. What is common is that a lot of people when they cut out compulsions have weird physical things happen but it varies from person to person. Just the consistent thing is yeah it's like the body really goes what you've got to do compulsions around something I'm going to give you a real physical issue.
So that's the other thing quite often they are real physical issues. Uh and so if you're going to go to the doctor for instance, uh just having a lot of compassion with that, uh a lot of understanding. There was there was a time uh when I ran into some physical stuff and so yeah, I ended up in the like going to the doctor and they were like or it was a hospital like cuz it was just going to like the whatever urgent care or whatever, but then they were like, "Yeah, we can't find anything."
Uh, and then there are other times where there were very real physical things happened and I didn't need to go to a doctor but there was no denying um like I think even did you mention um skin rashes. Yeah. So yeah there were a bunch of skin things that happened and so I'd be like I can clearly see it is here. It is real but there was nothing else to do about it. Uh so yeah so you may go to the doctor they may find something they may find nothing when we're going through this phase what I emphasize just not doing the extra compulsions being open to learning you may learn about some things your body does when you cut out compulsions and you may just say okay that's a thing that happens now I know for the future at the same time yeah there might be something else that comes up you go to the doctor and then it's just about setting the structure for how you'll take care of that issue so you're not doing the extra compulsions. Uh so yeah, right now a lot of compassion and kindness as you're navigating that and yeah, figuring out what's going to be useful to you.
Mr. Master Farm said, "I've been doing so many valued actions lately, more than ever, I think. I've built up to a great schedule routine, but I'm also still exploring and trying to add in new activities. It's been so enjoyable and fulfilling. That's fantastic. Enjoy it.
One of the things that's so useful when we see right, we can just start to do these valued actions uh is the what would be a good name for it? The sustaining of it or the cultivating and care for it. Yeah. seeing like we can just do a bunch of things that we really like care about and just do them and that's uh enough.
Uh so yeah, Mr. Mass, enjoy that. Thanks for sharing about that. It is so useful.
Yeah, if you're sharing about any of the things you're doing. I've been thinking about this lately in relation to uh we've seen members on the the mental fitness discord server share about some of the things they do in the world as they're just enjoying uh right we had you know one of our our moderators was just sharing about they were leading a a meditation retreat uh also they had created a library uh recently outside of their home there's another member who has a plant library uh they've shared about I think it's really neat to see these things that people end up exploring and doing. And I've been thinking about how we can start to capture some of these so that other members when they're thinking about Yeah. Because right it's so easy to find information on compulsions even just people sharing about compulsions whereas it is it is less common to find information online and just in communities about people saying well yeah like I here's how I organized and led a meditation retreat or here's how how I put up a a little free library outside of my home that there's like a a barrier to that uh that and that we just aren't familiar with it. Um so yeah if you're exploring anything uh Mr. Maston far in your adventures with values uh yeah please do share because I'm sure other people would be interested in exploring similar things as well.
Chris slays the math dragon. Great to see you said I'm a chronic people pleaser and it is exhausting and stressful. What are some exercises I can do to help with this?
Uh first of all, there's always the great meme of meme.
If you're if you're a people pleaser, produce one person who is pleased with you. Um and uh that can help us see that we're Yeah, maybe we're not uh maybe we don't need to spend so much time people pleasing.
One of the things that I would look at there is in the people pleasing, what are you afraid of losing and what are you trying to get?
I'd look at the what are you trying to get because there might be things there that you're trying to get that are going to be useful to start giving to yourself.
If you look at what you're afraid of losing, that can typically point us in the direction of some other areas where we can practice uh because that's where we'll see those normal compulsions we might do quite often. That's teaching the brain we have to get people to like us. We have to avoid conflict and so on.
So where is the brain learning that?
Those other areas are typically where we can play around with exercises. And so it would be doing things different. Like for example, uh if you find you reread messages repeatedly when you've written a message because you want to make sure you don't say the wrong thing and that people will be upset. A super fun exercise that I did like I shared about it in my book is to write the message once and hit send. And you do not reread it. you do not check it again. Uh and so yeah, be looking at are there things like that. Uh where else in life are you kind of practicing the logic of the people pleasing? And that's a fun area to make changes.
Oh, Mr. Mandre candies. Salt and pepper candies. Maybe salt and pepper candies could totally work. Yeah, have fun. uh digging into yeah where those feelings you mentioned uh begin.
Gisha welcome Puk Garte said I've been doing ERP for two months now I keep relapsing and doing the compulsions and it leaves me very discouraged when it happens.
the the one really normal and there's a couple things. So, it's if if you find yourself relapsing, I don't know if you caught this. We were we were talking about it earlier, it's really useful to start looking at what happens just before you relapse because there's a couple things to look at there. So, that right that is the compulsion. So if we're doing ERP, then that is the thing we're cutting out. If we keep relapsing and we're not cutting out the compulsion, why is that?
Is there some other compulsion that actually we didn't notice was the compulsion but happens earlier?
Uh so by the time we get to the compulsion we're trying to cut out, we're actually creating a really difficult challenge for ourselves because we're fueling the pressure to do the compulsion and then trying to cut it out.
Uh so an an example of that if somebody has their social media account like they started it just to get validation from people and they post things they spend a lot of like a lot of time trying to like get things right and even they're not like be they're like you know trying to I don't know like do all the poses or manipulate posts in a particular way and to give a particular vibe to people. So do you see that's already a compulsion? So they're already telling the brain the important thing of why we're spending this time and energy is to control what other people think.
If they then develop another compulsion to constantly check back to social media every night to make sure they haven't like typed out some terrible phrase or shared something wrong like shared like a a nude photo to their uh public social media account or something and they they notice that's a compulsion and they try to cut that out but then they keep relapsing going back to check.
I would say that makes sense because their whole reason for using social media is a compulsion.
So if they keep using social media and fueling this idea of like I've got to control what other people think about me, then of course they're going to keep relapsing because they're telling the brain we should we should control what other people think about us. So then the brain's going okay well what if we did this bad thing and then people what would people think about us then? It's very difficult to cut that out because the brain's argument to do the compulsion sounds valid based on the whole reason we're doing it at all. So, we've got to we've got to change a whole lot of things there, not just that compulsion kind of at the end of the line. There's a whole lot that happened before it.
Oh, and Mr. Master, thank you. Thank you for encouraging everybody to shape things as questions. It is useful.
It is also something that makes me It makes me It reminds me of chat bots.
I've noticed I think one of the things that chat bots are doing is uh making people not not directly communicate because the chatbot will do all of the work for us, right? If you just say something, it'll ask you, hey, what like if you just type donuts, it'll be like, what would you like to know about donuts? Would you like a recipe? Would you like me to tell you how wonderful donuts are? Like cuz it's just going to try to keep you engaged.
Uh, but I think it's I think it's affecting people's communication skills and style. I hope I hope somebody's doing research on it.
Everybody, we're coming up to the end and yeah, we're almost at two hours, so we'll wrap up shortly. Thank you everybody uh for being here. We got a couple more questions, but thank you everybody uh for uh the support. We had a bunch of people join the membership channel and Mr. Joe, thank you for the donations to uh the Salt Coffee Fund. I really appreciate uh the donations that help make the live streams happen.
King Khan said, "Do we need a routine to stay focused on our values?" No, I think a benefit of values is that we don't need a routine because we have values. And so I think values are particularly useful. One of the reasons I find them so useful is because so much is changing in my life constantly, right? Because I move around all the time. I'm in different time zones and also I meet like coaching clients at different hours of the day and all the time people will ask me, hey, can you know we meet at this time or something like that. So also my kind of like office hours are changing constantly.
So I I do not have a routine. Even my meditation times change all the time. I don't meditate and again partly moving around but also then as I move places other things shift in my schedule. Uh so I find values really helpful because I'm going to enter into the day having a routine of values which are just a set of values that I I know are important to me and I know I want to explore today.
Then I look at the context for the day and it's really about saying okay given this context and where I am in the world and what I have available to me how can I do these things that are important to me today and then I'm going to give time and energy to that um and those things I want to do. But there's not a specific magic benefit to a routine if we're getting caught up in that. I think that can make us really vulnerable because then if you're saying the routine is what makes sure I don't relapse, well then anything that disrupts the routine then like that shouldn't be a reason to relapse.
So when we can adapt to any situation and see what's important and give our time and energy to that, that's really useful. Uh and now sure making things easy is also I would say a really important support and so if if you're in a situation where having a consistent routine is going to make it really easy and you don't have to spend as much time thinking about stuff and you get to get out of your head and get into life.
Yeah, then a routine is phenomenal. But there we're exploring the routine as a support, not as this thing I must have or else I will relapse. Uh yeah, the routine might just be a really great thing to have in our lives. Uh but we can also adapt to whatever comes up because a lot of stuff happens in a very uncertain world.
Poston Gamer, welcome to the donut level. Thank you for being a donut member.
Boasting Gamer. He said, "Uh, I know about recovery since years, but I feel like I've made zero progress and can't start making sustainable mental fitness routines like meditation, etc. Just repeating recovery thoughts in the brain.
>> Recovery is not about knowing stuff.
I always find and even the most recent video I know if you saw there's a video the most recent long video on my YouTube channel is about three reasons people often relapse. The third reason in that video is on that that I'd say a key reason people will often relapse as they approach recovery and mental health as things to know about.
They are things we do. And so you see it right there. Yeah. If we're repeating recovery thoughts in our head, we'll often feel like, oh, well, like I know a thing, like it feels reassuring, but it's irrelevant and a compulsion, right?
We're just spending more time and energy in our heads.
Great mental health is about actions and so it's about doing stuff.
So, if you want to incorporate a routine like meditation, like at first approaching it not as like I've got to have this recovery like routine, uh, but just approaching it as getting good at change. That's a sport. I'd recommend that to everybody, especially anybody's watching this, you're getting started on a recovery, mental health, and fitness journey. A a helpful way to approach it is just say, I want to get good at change, right? I want to make changes.
Well, having experiences like thoughts and feelings, and that's what I'm going to explore. So, it might be meditation, but it could be anything else. Is there something this coming week you'd find useful to practice in your life? And just being curious about it. So, it's not about like I've got to do this and then I'm recovering or if I fail at this, I'm a failure and I'm relapsing.
None of that. Just I want to learn how to make this change. and sustain this change.
And so it could be anything. It could be as simple as doing something different like going for a walk in the morning instead of what you would typically do.
Just saying I want to learn how to introduce a new thing in my life like going for a walk every morning and just stick with it. And I want to learn what makes it difficult, what supports me in doing it. What's it like in two weeks, in three weeks if I just sustain a change? All of this stuff we explore around mental health is just about doing things differently and sustaining it. So any place we can learn and practice that skill is then really useful and then we just build up the types of things we make changes around.
Chris slays the math dragon said, "How can I tell if an action is actually a valued action or something that I'm doing as a compulsion or to get a feeling? The line can be very blurry."
Ah, so not so I don't know if you caught it earlier. We were talking about cookies rather than trying to figure out ah like how do I know if this is a bad thing or not? Identify the thing you want to do. So I want to make chocolate chip cookies and then what are the ways to make delicious chocolate chip cookies?
and then not worrying about, oh no, am I only making chocolate chip cookies because it's a compulsion.
It's seeing in the long term, does that take you somewhere that you wanted to go? Uh, and if it doesn't, then you'll see, okay, and again, I don't have to get caught up in like that's a compulsion or not. I just see, oh, making chocolate chip cookies every day did not help me open a doughnut shop. I've always wanted to open a doughnut shop, so why am I making chocolate chip cookies every day? Okay, I'm gonna do something different then, such as making donuts every day.
Young Jedi, thank you for stopping by. I will see you at the the meetup in the Netherlands. Uh thank you for joining us today and sharing.
Oh yeah, Mr. Mass on shared a really good point on meditation too. Uh the group meditation on the mental fitness discord server uh has helped me with meditating regularly and here's the link if you're not a member. Uh so yeah everybody Mr. Master Farm just shared the link to the discord server right there.
Yeah.
You said one of my problems is trying to make the routine or actions in act perfect. Yeah, it's important to remember some days you'll be bored and out of ideas and not have much going on and that's okay too. As Mr. Masson Farm said in re in a response to that, yes, just being ourselves and taking care of ourselves can be very enjoyable. Yep.
The simple actions are the way to go. It doesn't have to be big special stuff.
Just being right. My mental health practice is making breakfast. There is not some big complicated thing we need to be doing.
Yeah. Chris is a math dragon. He said, "I found that most of the things I value in quotation marks are just more things I'm doing just to get people to like me.
How can I learn to do things just for myself?" Yeah. But that's a great question actually to ask yourself. So if you look at the week ahead, what are some things you're going to practice doing just to you, for you, to support you that are expressions of things you care about?
All right, everybody. That brings us right to the end and we're right at two hours. Uh thank you so much uh everybody for being here and sharing. Uh thank you everybody for the donations, joining the members channel. Uh Mr. Master Farm, uh thank you so much for taking care of the chat and helping get things set up today. Everybody will see you on the the mental fitness discord server. Also, we're looking for uh an image right now, an avatar image for the bellbot and the gratitude bot. They're the same, the the bell gratitude bot that we're reviving right now. Uh, so we're we're blending the the what used to be multiple bots, we're turning them into a single bot.
And we need a new image, a human created image. So there's a thread in general.
If you have, actually, I'm not going to say if everybody you have drawing skills, especially for an avatar. Uh, so please share your drawings. Then we're just going to pick randomly uh to get the new avatar for the bell gratitude bot. So please take part in that.
And oh, Chris is a math dragon again.
Uh, I appreciate it. Oh, thank you for stopping by on a a Sunday morning, everybody. It's great to see you all.
Remember what I mentioned at the start.
We are exploring mental health and fitness skills. Uh, not for irrational weird stuff in our heads.
These are skills for the real uncertainties in life and in the world.
We're learning how to experience uncertainty. fear, craving, urges, whatever, wherever, whether it's inside our heads or it's coming at us from a politician, something on the news, something somebody's trying to sell to us, the social media algorithm, we are ex going to notice that, catch it, and we're going to give our time and energy to creating and building things proactively that we want to see in the world.
Stay smart out there.
Thank you everybody.
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