5 Harmful Psychological Tricks Your Mind Plays On You

Our minds are littered with booby traps, and if we're not careful, we fall into one of those traps, and all of a sudden it becomes harder to feel happy and to develop yourself further. And that's why in this video, I want to give you five tricks that your mind is playing on you all the time and what you can do to escape those today. So the first one is the free trap. The free trap is when you think that because something has no monetary cost, it therefore has no costs of any kind. And you've seen this before. This is the people who line up for two hours outside of a new restaurant that's giving out $10 worth of food, and they're doing it because the food is free. Now, unfortunately, what has happened is because they hear that word free and they go crazy all of a sudden, they think their time is worthless. Now, it's likely that you do this, too. I know I do. You sign up for a free email newsletter not thinking about the space in your inbox and how it's going to slow you down in the future or even really if you're interested in reading it. Your friend is throwing something out. They say, do you want this? You say, sure. And all of a sudden it gets put in your closet just to clutter up your space. Or somebody has tickets to a sporting event that you don't care about, a concert for the band that you don't really like, and you take them, you're super excited, and then you're waiting in traffic for an hour to go to an event that you're not that interested in, you didn't have fun at, but you do it all over again the next time you get the free tickets. The way out of this free trap to stop wasting your time and mental space on things that don't make you happy but you're just compelled towards, is the $1 solution. It's very simple. Anytime something feels free, you're signing up for that newsletter. Ask yourself, would I pay just $1 for this? Would I pay $1 for this email newsletter? If it's yes, sign up. But if not, it's probably not worth the dollar, and therefore, it's not worth the time. Your time is so much more valuable than that $1. So going to the $1 solution will save you a lot of trouble. It'll keep you mentally clear and quite frankly, make it easier to be happy spending time doing the things that you love. The second thing much harder to catch in ourselves is projection. Now, projection, you've seen this on television. It's the person who is screaming about homosexual behavior, how it needs to be curb stopped. They have conversion camps and then in the news three months later, it comes out that they're engaging in all of these same behaviors that they have screamed out against. Projection is when we have something inside of ourselves that we can't deal with internally. And in order to cope, we have to externalize the problem. We say, the problem isn't coming from inside of me, it's it's out in the world and therefore I can fix it. Out in the world. Now, this is tough to catch in yourself. It's very easy to see other people who have a problem and think, oh, everyone else is angry, everyone else is a jerk. But with yourself, the way you can start digging into this is to ask yourself what your most common judgments are about the world and people at large. So if you think that the world is really sad, news is so sad all the time. Or if you think that people are idiots, God, they're always doing dumb stuff, it's likely that you haven't integrated those aspects of yourself. So you're seeing them in something as big as the world because Quite frankly, there's 8 billion people. They're not all stupid. You could focus on any aspect of it. The aspect that you choose to focus on in the world which is full of beauty, or in people which are completely varied, is the aspect that is coloring your lenses of viewing that world. So when you dig in, you go, wow, I think that the world is sad all the time, or whatever it is. It's likely that you haven't integrated your own sadness if you think that people are stupid. And it's likely that you're having a trouble integrating the fact that you can be boneheaded some of the time. Now, this is tough to do. But if you ask yourself this question, when judgments arise, number one, self righteous anger goes out the window. It can deflate you very quickly. But two, you start to grow in the ways that are most important to you. These are your biggest blind spots. And projection can actually be a great tool for catching them. Now, the third one is social proof. Social proof is a great thing. You hear that all your friends are eating at some restaurant. It's really good. You go, try it. You like it? Social proof worked? Excellent. The problem is when we begin to put social proof and authority in front of our own experience when it comes to determining what we do. So this is an example I talked about on the podcast. If you haven't seen it, we have a podcast on another channel on YouTube and I was telling the story of a family in my neighborhood where I grew up and they're having a wedding for their daughter. And the day after the wedding they're having this big event with bocce ball. It's going to be in a big expensive thing in sort of a Hamptons esque area and they're going to play bocce ball. And I thought that was interesting because bocce ball, if you haven't seen it, you throw one little ball and you got to get a bigger ball close to it. We've all played it in my neighborhood growing up once and everybody played it once because nobody really likes bocce ball. It's not that fun. It's kind of like horseshoes with balls. And quite frankly, people have better things to do, but they're going to spend probably strong five figures in order to have this at their wedding event because it is socially cool. It's going to make for a good Instagram photo. And they've seen that the well to do have done this at their weddings before. This is a strong example of social proof and authority coloring what we would like to do. Because these people I happen to know would probably never have picked bocce ball as the event that they would do on any other day of their life. And they're not going to enjoy it or on that day. So pay attention particularly to what you're consuming in social media. Because what social media tells you will make you happy is pretty looking meals or walking on the beach in some foreign country. And especially if you're looking behind at a disembodied person whose hand you're holding while you smile. If you've ever seen those people out traveling, they are not having a good time while they focus on their photos. And if you focus on your own experience like me, what you'll probably see is it's the day to day things that contribute to your happiness and those are what you want to aim for. It's my walks in the afternoon that I would never take a photo of that most fill me up. So don't find yourself waiting at clubs to be in VIP tables where no one's happy because you think that's the case. Refer to your own experience and you will make choices that make you happier in the long run. Now the fourth thing, this one is very counterintuitive because we all want to live in integrity. The problem comes when our identities become so strong that we choose integrity over honesty. I give you an example from my own Life. When I see people in relationships that aren't good for them, it's very easy being on the outside for me to say, oh wow, they should just break up. You know, I know it's scary, but that's what you should do. And I said this many times about many different people and I believe that that was the right advice. Well, what happened in my life is that I got into a relationship and then it turned not so good. And all of the advice that I had given the other people was starting to apply to me. So what did I do here? Did I take my advice and leave? Well, no, I couldn't. Did I admit that it was more difficult? No. What I said was that no, my relationship is not like the other ones that I was commenting on for XYZ BS reasons. And this is what we all do. We struggle so hard to remain consistent with the things that we've said, that we sacrifice honesty, we put integrity. So we have to match what we said before with what we're living. And we just give up on the fact that we're not even collecting the right data Now. Now the way out of this is going to sound crazy and it's to allow yourself to be hypocritical. A lot of people think that hypocrisy is a sign of being less developed. And quite frankly, recognizing your hypocrisy is a huge step to becoming a more thoughtful, self aware person. We are all hypocritical in our own ways. And it comes down to admitting it and allowing yourself, in my case, to say, look, everything that I said about those other couples, I believe is true. I believe it applies to me. And I'm not going to follow my own advice because it's too scary and it would hurt too much to do so. And I'm going to pay the price at some point, but here I am. That step is massive, massive, massive. So allow yourself to give up being perfectly integrous with your principles and the values and all of the things that you want to live up to, and instead start from the bedrock of honesty. Where are you today? In what ways are you failing those values and principles and, and actually that puts you on a path to, over the long run, starting to achieve them in a meaningful way. Now, the fifth thing we often try because we lack imagination and we don't recognize how abundant the world can be. When we lose something, when we lose love, when we lose money, we try to recapture it in the same way that we lost it. This is the guy at the casino who lost 100 bucks and is trying to win it back at the casino rather than going to something that might work. But for instance, I have in the past, there's been gyms, for instance, that have over billed me for a month. Say I lost 50 bucks at this gym and I'll want to get that $50 back and I'll know that they're going to make it a headache. So I'll argue with them on the phone, I'll go in, I'll talk to the manager, and before you know it, I've spent 3, 4 hours trying to recover $50 when a much easier thought might have been, okay, I'm bummed I lost 50 bucks. Do I have anything that I've been meaning to donate or sell that I could put on Craigslist? So to recover that $50 and be made whole without having to track down these crazy managers who do not want to give me my money back, I'm not saying that you should never fight for money. I'm saying that you should ask yourself, in any situation, are there alternative routes to get to what I want to make myself feel whole again? When I had the breakup, eventually, after that relationship that I mentioned, I started trying to date again. I wanted to date that particular woman, and then I wanted to date other people. And one of the things that worked best and made me feel the best after this relationship was buying a new video game to play with my brother, who happens to be sitting here right now. That video game was divinity. It was amazing and it made me feel connected. I had a great time with it. So the question is, whenever you feel like you've lost something, a friend, money, a job, whatever, is not how do I get that particular thing back? It's what else could I do that might be more interesting and fun to make myself feel horrible whole again? And oftentimes you get better solutions than the thing that you lost. Charlie from the future Cutting in here, I forgot to mention that you should check out our new podcast. So if you haven't seen it, it's called the Charlie and Ben Podcast. It's a chance for me and my co founder Ben to go deeper into topics that we cover here on the channel, as well as a lot of stuff that we can't always cover here. So philosophy, deeper things about psychology, sometimes politics. So if you'd like to check that out either here on YouTube or on Apple, Spotify, wherever they have podcasts, you can do so by searching the Charlie in Ben podcast or just click on somewhere around the screen right now and I'll send you to a clip so you can see if it's up your alley. I hope that you decide to do that because I'm having a ton of fun with it either way. Hope that you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next one. My dog is going crazy.