PNTV - Why Your Life Sucks by Alan Cohen

You're listening to Optimize with Brian Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got why your life sucks and what you can do about it. Why your life sucks and what you can do about it. Alan Cohen. That's got to be at least tied for best title ever. Alan Cohen is fantastic. I connected with Alan originally. We were both featured in the movie Finding Joe. He kicks it off and he's in it throughout. Extraordinary storyteller and I've since read a bunch of his books. We've profiled a number of them. One of my favorite authors and teachers and just a great human being who embodies the ideas that he shares. So I'm excited to share some of my favorite big ideas from this great book. Philosopher's Note. Bunch of ideas, five of them here. We'll start with the first big idea. Radio no K N O W. See if you remember a few days ago we were talking about Thich Nhat Hanh. In his book Silence he talks about radio nst. Radio nst. Non stop thinking is basically the opposite of Alan's radio. No. Radio no. And Alan says, look, there's a station within your consciousness, within your being that knows your only challenge is to tune into that station. If you want to listen to whatever 102.7 and you're on 98.3, you're not going to be tuned in. If you're on non stop thinking, you will not get the messages. The music that's coming in from from know this is the primary reason, certainly one of the big ones. Alan covers 10 of why your life may suck. What you can do about it is do the little things that keep you plugged in. Quit paper cutting yourself with distractions and allowing yourself to maintain certain addictions. And tune in. Highest goal. Connect to the highest within yourself. Radio. No good way to think about it. Here's another really cool idea. Fish and bonsai. Specifically goldfish and bonsai. Alan tells a great story of the fact that goldfish remain dinky because they're in a tiny bowl. If you put that goldfish in a huge lake, it would grow to a much bigger size. I forget the exact multiple bigger, but it's a ton. Same thing with a bonsai tree. You want to have a little mini diminutive bonsai tree. What do you do? You put it in a tiny little flower pot. Now that same tree, if it was put into nature where it had room to stretch its roots, would grow into a huge Tree. So we need to think about, are we putting ourselves into constraints like the bonsai tree and like the goldfish bowl that limit our potential? Yesterday we talked about Ellen Langer. The first big idea there was false limits. False limits. We have this idea of what's possible, but we have goldfish or bonsai thinking. We need to plant ourselves into a field of possibility for the bonsai tree or a lake of possibility for the goldfish. Think about that. Think about how your mind is getting in your way about what you can do. And are you keeping yourself constrained in unnecessary ways? That's our second big idea. Third big idea, bouncers and attorneys. So I talk about this in my Optimal Living 101 class. Got this from Alan. Two great ways to think about your mind. One of the reasons why your life may suck is you allow thoughts to come into your mind and hang out there that don't belong there. So here's two ways we can think about it. First, imagine you're a bouncer. You're a bouncer at an exclusive party. You've got the velvet robe you're wearing, whatever you're wearing, you got the sweet earpiece, whatever, right? You're the bouncer. Now, your job as the bouncer at the party is make sure people only with invitations on the invite list can get into your party. Imagine having a bouncer in your mind. You have a clear sense of the kind of party you want to have, a happy, fulfilled, awesome life. And you have a clear sense of what thoughts need to be allowed into that party. So when riff raff come in or people, you know, violent thoughts and other things that you don't want to see in your mind, you're a bouncer. Don't let them out. Sorry, don't have an invitation for that. Bring awareness to it. Huge idea. Fun, playful way to conceptualize it. Another one is to imagine you have two attorneys in your mind. So you got the bouncer. Now you have two attorneys. One attorney argues for all of the awesome things that you can achieve in your life. It's all about taking you out of the tiny little bowl and taking you out of the tiny little flower pot and seeing possibilities. The other attorney is arguing for why you should hang out in that tiny little fishbowl and why you should be in that tiny little flower pot. Two attorneys. Alan says one of them is going to win, and the one who's going to win is the one to whom you pay the most money. Interesting. How do you pay the attorneys in your mind? You pay them. Alan teaches Us via your attention. Which one do you feed with your attention? If you're giving all your attention to the negative attorney, he's going to crush this other guy or girl. But if you're giving all of your attention and all of your money to the one thinking about your possibilities, that one's going to win. So think about that. When you get your thoughts right, your mind right, you've got your bouncer and you've got two attorneys. It's a big idea. Fourth big idea moving along is the secret of genius. The secret of genius. So one of the reasons why your life might suck is that you're diffusing all of your energy. You can diffuse your energy in a kind of macro sense and in a micro sense. In a macro sense, you can have 20 things you're pursuing. We've talked a lot about one thing. Like what really fires you up? Well, well, people who do truly extraordinary things, people who master a certain craft, exemplify genius, have focused their energy. Now, maybe not for their entire lives, but when they're focused on this, they're focused on it. That's a hallmark of genius. It's on a macro level. On a micro level, if you were diffusing your awareness, diffusing your focus all day, every day, you're never going to be able to tap into something bigger than yourself and do anything extraordinary. So you can diffuse your effort by trying to do 100 things creatively. And you can also diffuse your effort by getting paper cutted by external stimuli, like we talked about with Thich Nhat. Hanh. Silence. Find the quiet, find the focus, and you'll discover your genius. That's the fourth big idea. Fifth big idea is a good one. Approval. Alan has a really funny line in here. He says you will never ever, never, never, never, never, never, never, ever, never, never, never, ever. And he goes on literally for like three lines. Never, never, never, ever, ever, ever make everyone happy. You won't make everyone happy all the time. And you won't make even one person happy all the time with you. No one's going to agree with you every single moment of every single day. And one great way to unsuck your life is to realize that and to become more independent of the good or bad opinion of others and, and realize we need to start by approving with ourselves, approving of ourselves. First step in the process, but just a simple embrace that you can't make everyone happy all the time. It sounds obvious and it is obvious, but it's also really impactful and really powerful. So think about that. If you're trying to make everybody happy all the time and not making yourself happy in the process, see if you can bring some more awareness to that and realize that you will never ever, ever, never, never, never, never, never, never ever, ever, ever, ever ever make everyone happy. Jesus didn't. Gandhi didn't. MLK Jr didn't fill in the blank. Favorite person didn't. You're not going to be the first person in history to succeed at that. So let's quit trying. There you go. Quick look at this fun book, why your life sucks. Highly recommend the book and I recommend Alan Cohen as well. Check them out. Alan Cohen.com Focus you got your bouncer with the velvet rope. You've got two attorneys. You're paying the right one with your attention. You're jumping out of that fishbowl. You're planting yourself in a field of possibility and you're tuning into radio. No, not radio. NS2. Alright. What was the idea that jumped out at you most? Inspired you? Go make that a bigger part of your practical life. Embody it more starting today. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that Philosopher's Notes TV episode. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. 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