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anxiety or happiness and depression or being a bad husband or being

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money focused or whatever the thing is that you claim to have a problem with.

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I'm going to give you really the only mental framework that has ever worked for me.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more

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customer and how to keep them longer in the many failures and lessons we have learned

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along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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In this video, I'm going to be talking to you about how to fix the character traits and

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deficiencies that you have in your life. So whether that be struggling with anxiety or

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happiness and depression or being a bad husband or being money focused or whatever the thing

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is that you claim to have a problem with, I'm going to give you really the only mental framework

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that has ever worked for me. All right, and so if you're new to the channel, my name's Alex Ramose.

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I'm an acquisition.com to portfolio companies. This is about E5 million dollars a year.

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I make these videos because, candidly, I enjoy sharing some of the things that have helped us

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kind of get through things as we've grown our companies and there are a lot of people who are broken.

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I don't want to be one of them. And so I'm going to probably piss a lot of people off in this video.

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So I'm going to give you a heads up. Second thing is I will be cussing in this video. So if you have

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kids around, I would say muted or listened to it another time. Beyond that, let's dive in.

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So I was talking to a bunch for the other day and they were saying that they were having panic attacks

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and they were struggling with this issue. And what I want to do is walk you through the process

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that I was explaining to them. Now at this point, the reason the panic attacks started for

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this entrepreneur ironically is that they were talking to a therapist and the therapist was like,

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let's look at your past and dug up crap about their past and then they started looking at this

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thing and then they started getting anxiety kind of remembering all these kind of past experiences

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and whatnot. Now here's the thing. Most therapists, and I say this with zero degree,

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but I think most people, most therapists are humans and most humans suck at most things,

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especially things they think they're good at. And so most of them are just normal people who did

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okay in school and now just like talking to people and don't have any fucking clue what they're

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doing. Alright, so here's the deal. Here's the hot take. What most of them will do is they will

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try and pull something up and say something to the extent of what do you make that mean? What

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does that mean to you? Right? And the thought process behind this is, hey, you have this thing.

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It's triggering a feeling because you think that having anxiety makes you a bad person or makes

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you a bad entrepreneur or whatever thing that you say it has meaning, right? What do we make this

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mean? Alright, that's the question. What are you making this mean? Alright, so if you have problems

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and this is especially important with cyclical behavior, alright, reinforcing behavior,

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this is also one of the reasons that I actually do not stand for the whole AA concept of standing

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up in front of people every morning and say, hi, everybody, I am an addict. I fucking hate it.

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It's literally like owning this deficiency and incorporating it and weaving it to your

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construct and your identity and you reinforce every fucking morning. It's insanity to me.

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The way to stop being addicted to something is to stop thinking about it. Like, what does it look

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like to not be addicted? Right? It looks like you just continue to live your life not even thinking

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about it. What does it look like to not have anxiety? It's not you doing your anti-exity routine

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in the morning and saying, I suffer from anxiety or I struggle with anxiety. It's not saying that

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and saying, I have to do these things. I must, I should, I need to in order to not have anxiety

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because then you're thinking about anxiety. You give anxiety power. And so what I'm going to walk

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you through is the way to hold the space and own the power that you have in your own mind outside

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of the thing that you were projecting the power onto. Alright? So the process that these therapists

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that are fucking retards will do is they will lead you through this thing where they try and

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transform meaning. They say instead of saying, it means you're a bad person. What if we just said,

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this is, you know, it's a good thing or it's not a bad thing, right? So we try and transform meaning.

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And I think that's like level one elementary, you know, grade school of cognitive behavioral

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therapy, right? I think that's grade school, right? But the thing is, and this is the problem because

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I've gone through the cycle, which is why I'm speaking about this so passionately. Alright? And

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I'll tell you a quick story before I dive in. So there was a period of time in my life where I was

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very unhappy. Alright? And so I obsessed about happiness. Right? I read all the positive psychology

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journals. I read the books. I read the happiness equation. You know what I mean? I went through all

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of these things. And yet, after spending all of this time trying to obsess about happiness,

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I was no less, no more happy. Right? And so then I thought to myself, well, in one instance,

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I can spend lots of time and effort and be unhappy or I can spend zero time and effort and be

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unhappy. Well, this one cost me less. I might as well start pursuing this. And this is what happened.

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I adopted this mentality and I was shared with you called fuck happiness. Alright? Bear with me.

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And so what ended up happening is that I thought these thoughts and whatever the idea of

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is just making me happy and all of these normal trigger thoughts would be like, I'm not happy.

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This isn't good. I feel sad. I would literally have this trunk card that would just pop in my

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head and be like, fuck happiness. And I keep moving. Right? And so the difference between

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fuck happiness and let's think about how we should be grateful for things is that when you say

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fuck happiness or fuck the thing that you are struggling with, fucking anxiety, fuck whatever,

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is that it no longer has power because we're not trying to transform the meaning of the behavior

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we're eliminating the meaning behind it altogether. We're transforming it into nothing,

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into meaningless. Alright? And so hear me out for a second and I don't know why this is getting

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all all spacey and weird. I've tried to fix this thing 100 times. Anyways, so the reason this

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is so important is that when you enter these vicious reinforcing cycles. So let's say it's like,

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oh god, I'm afraid I'm going to have a panic attack tonight. I don't want to have a panic attack.

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You start thinking about having a panic attack and then of course you have a panic attack. Right?

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Because the fear of the thing is what reinforces the cycle and you can do this with anything.

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Right? It could be it could be a guy with a rectal dysfunction. Like I hope it doesn't happen.

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I hope it doesn't happen. And then it happens. Right? Because you're worried about it happening.

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Not because the happening itself is the thing. Right? And I'm trying to use examples that

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purposefully people derive shame from. Right? Because the thing is that the shame of the occurrence

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is the thing that gives it power. And so if you remove the shame and by the way the way to remove

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shame is to shed light on it. So nothing can give you shame if you admit it openly. Think about.

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If everyone knows the thing and you accept the thing or deem the thing meaningless

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that it no longer has power for or view. So let me give you an example.

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So this entrepreneur that I was talking about earlier they were telling me that they're having

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you know they're having anxiety tax and it was preventing them from sleeping etc. Right? And I was

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like sell and they're like well you know I'm really working on it. I was like why?

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And they're like looked at me cross-eyed and I was like how long have you been working this?

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You know like you know eight months and I was like are you less anxious than you were before?

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They're like well I think a little bit and I was like do you think you would be a little bit

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less anxious if you just did jack shit and waited eight months from when you were bad until now?

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They were like well maybe. I was like time does heal lots of wounds. I was like so you set

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all this time to get this little outcome and you could have just let time happen and probably had

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the same outcome. Right? Right? I was like but let's take it one step further. Why didn't you tell me

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how many bowel movements you had yesterday? I mean I didn't think it was relevant exactly. So why are

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you sharing with me that you have panic attacks? Because you think it's meaningful. You derive meaning.

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Your brain is telling you that this is something that is a problem. So the thing is is that the

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deeming of the thing a problem is the problem and trying to change it or transform the meaning into

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something else is in my opinion just as bad because the way that you created the mess that you are

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in in a vicious cycle of reinforcement is that you found a thing and then you said I will give this

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meaning and then you can spend the rest of your time trying to transform the meaning. When if you want

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to solve the problem the experience of having the problem solved is to not think about the problem

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at all. And so what it is is actually reversing the process that created meaning to begin with which

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is removing meaning altogether. Hey guys love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want

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to have the video version of this which usually has more effects more visuals more graphs you know

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drawn out stuff sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways you can check

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on my YouTube channel it's absolutely free to check that out if that's what you are into and if not

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keep enjoying the show. I'm saying this because I've had so many things that I've struggled with in my

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life that I would consistently obsess about over and over and over and over and I don't want to have

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that happening and I don't want to have that happening again and then it would happen right

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and so in my opinion the only way to overcome these issues is to you can you can slap the

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fuck happiness concept on it but it's to destroy the meaning of the thing itself and let it shrink

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into a relevance. Most of my opinion most of the psychological problems that we deal with

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are better dealt with not by trying to directly combat them but by not giving them the power of

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our attention and there's a big difference here I'm not saying the thought of anxiety comes up

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you say I don't want to think about it because then it's fear. Fear gives it power, shame gives it

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power it's not that it's looking at it and saying why are you bringing this up this is a relevant

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this is a non-issue and so for the same reason that you can have noise in the background and you

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don't think about it is that it's just noise and so what we do is we shrink the thing for being

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a signal that our brain deems meaningful to noise that is in the background that we no longer

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ascribed meaning to altogether and that is how it eventually shrinks into a relevance and then

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we only choose to allocate our attention towards the thing that we find meaningful right and so

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what happened in my little fuck happiness story is that I said this is no longer a productive

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conversation I'd be like I'm unhappy like fuck happiness whatever I'm gonna keep moving and a funny

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thing happened a few years later I looked up and I realized that I was significantly more happy

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than I was before or as I prefer to say I was significantly less unhappy which also gives

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less power to the thing altogether right now a different point that I want to bring up because I

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think it's equally important around this this topic is that a lot of this is a lot of the fear

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and the shame comes from perceived judgment that we have from an anonymous outside society right we

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have a voice or a series of voices that we believe exist that only exist in our mind that are

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judging us based on this behavior that we are suffering from right one of the reasons that I like

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to own the deficiencies publicly is not because of you guys it's for me I own like for example when I

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had you know when we were when we were running and growing our first big business which is the

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licensing business I was always up front I said I'm here to make money and the reason I said that

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was so that I would have no shame in making money because then if people in the future we're going

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to say something like Alex is only here to make money I would then look at them and say and

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so here hear me out listen to this dialogue let's say I was attacked because the attacks that

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I'm saying I'm going to portray is those outside but it's inside of our minds that we attack

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ourselves right so let's say somebody comes up to me a woman and says you're a terrible husband right

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most people say that there are two forms of a of defense against this number one is saying no no

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I'm not a bad bad bad husband right and then giving all the reasons why I'm a good husband right

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the other way to defending into that would be to say well you know being a husband's not necessarily

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such a bad thing right and so one is to dispute the other is to alter right we're altering the meaning

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behind the thing the first is we're combating and we're saying that we're not the thing but still

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allowing the thing to have meaning allowing a bad husband to be a negative connotation that we

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ascribe meaning to I think this is meaningful and I it's negative but meaningful and so I will say

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I am not that thing or version two is this thing is meaningful but I I understand it in

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interpretively right those are the two ways the second way is how most therapies and I also

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think that it's bullshit and so here's door number three is that you look at the thing in the

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face and you say and I think you're a bad husband and you're up and and watch them shrivel

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they will be paralyzed because everything that they have exists to have a counter force but if

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there is no counter force for it to react to the thought process stops and so if you struggle with

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these vicious recurring consistent dialogues and arguments in your head about what's good and why

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should change and why you need to be different and why this shouldn't be this way just look at it

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in the eyes and say and and I'm going to give you a really controversial example of what I think

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should have happened in a public scenario Tiger Woods he was out in you know what I mean or

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asked it or whatever it is you know what I mean he was publicly shamed for the the cheating thing

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right and my this is not making a cheating this is me to illustrate a position of power and this

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is a public demonstration of power but you can take it in terms of how you can internally project

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that power onto the idea that you want to vanquish all right and we don't vanquish it by transforming

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it we vanquish it by eliminating the meaning altogether and letting it shrink into a relevance

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so what Tiger in my opinion should have done in that situation when they said you banned all

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these girls and you were lying and blah blah blah blah you should have said yes I'm a wife and a

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cheater but I'm the best fucking golfer there is next question what do they say when you accept it

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there is no conversation and so try this in the next argument you have with someone A but more

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importantly with yourself is that someone says I think your x y and z and you said you're right

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just give the power just just say sure you're right now what and so your point

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when your brain tells you something that you don't like or that you don't want to look at

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instead of trying to make it into something else

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like in it to an irrelevant observation brain why didn't you bring up that I've browned here

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because it doesn't matter brain why didn't you bring up how many bomb wounds I'd yesterday this

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doesn't matter brain why didn't you say tell me how many how many stairs I went up yesterday

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because it doesn't matter you don't find it meaningful and so why am I now deemed this thing to

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be meaningful it's irrelevant to me it's it it helps the conversation and it stops the cycle

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I say this and I know that I got passionate about this but I say this is someone who struggled with

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this for a very long time and so the only psychotherapy that I was able to do was on myself

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and it was not through talking out all of these things and I know that a lot of people are

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getting triggered a lot of people want to say hey I'm there but they changed my life good for you

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that's awesome keep doing it I don't care what I'm doing is I'm trying to talk to the people who

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have not had that or have done that and it and it did not work for them right and so I'm sharing

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the single most powerful mental model that has worked for me which is purposefully staring at the

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problem and saying so what your move and watch it struggle and then moving on the fuck with your life

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so anyways I love you all mousy nation appreciate you thank you for giving me the attention that you

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did today I make these videos because I just I I hope that some of the lessons that I that have served

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me a conception of the people at least and if you're in a darker place or you're struggling with

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something like anxiety or struggling with shame around some sort of activity that you have done

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I can tell you the only way to struggle to deal with shame is to shed light on it shade shame only

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exists in darkness and the only way something has power is when we fight it because we deem it meaningful

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or worth combating and so I think the only way to truly fight it is to not fight it at all

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and say it is not a fight worth having and then it will evaporate and so anyways my friends

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keeping awesome lots of love I'll see you guys next video bye