Psychologist Explains How To Tell If You're a Narcissist Feat. Dr. Ramani Durvasula
In this extensive interview, host Joe Polish converses with multiple speakers—including Dr. Ramani Durvasula, Dr. Barbara Hemphill, and addiction specialists—covering a wide range of topics. The dialogue begins with personal anecdotes about psychedelic use (5‑MeO‑DMT and ibogaine) and quickly shifts to the psychology of mindset, emphasizing Carol Dweck’s growth mindset and the vital role of human connection, illustrated by a story about the speaker’s nephew with ALS. The conversation then delves into attention as a scarce, valuable resource for entrepreneurs, introducing practical frameworks: the CDE method (curtail, delegate, eliminate) for prioritizing tasks, a re‑framing of attention‑deficit disorder as a high‑energy trait, and the SEARCH acronym (scare, excite, educate, attack/annoy, reassure, reward, charm, help) for capturing attention. To retain attention, the speaker proposes the SIN principle (structure, interaction, novelty) and warns against “screen sucking.” A comprehensive self‑care system called the Sensational Six (sleep, exercise, nutrition, medication, meditation, cognitive stimulation/connection) is presented, followed by the “sweet spot” model that aligns passion, skill, and market demand, and the “hocus vs. focus” balance between creative flow and disciplined structure. The latter part of the interview shifts to addiction recovery, describing dopamine fasts, self‑binding strategies, and the importance of time‑based barriers. Pharmacological tools such as naltrexone, Wegovy/Ozempic, and the concept of hormesis are discussed as adjuncts. Finally, the speakers argue for community‑level and policy interventions—smartphone bans in schools, age‑gate regulations for porn, and broader legislative guardrails—to mitigate the pervasive, drug‑like pull of digital media and substances. Throughout, the tone remains conversational, motivational, and occasionally cautionary, offering concrete, actionable advice for personal productivity, mental health, and societal change.
Chapters
Why'd you start focusing all your research and study on this particular area of narcissism?
You know, it came down to, can I curse?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, you say whatever you want. It's great.
You know, how many assholes can you encounter before you feel like a responsibility to do something? And what was interesting for me was I was working more in sort of healthcare delivery, and I was an HIV/AIDS researcher, still am, for a long, long time. And what was happening was we had a research site that I operated in South Los Angeles in a neighborhood that had really been destroyed by HIV. And then we ran another program at my university. What was happening was the research assistants would come in tears at how badly they were treated, the reception staff. And then I started paying attention at the clinics and I saw how horrifically frontline medical staff were being treated by difficult patients across the socioeconomic spectrum. I was like, what's going on here? And that led to the research that was funded by the National Institutes of Health. I said, this personality thing, nobody's talking about. We talk about depression, we talk about substance abuse, we talk about anxiety, But nobody talks about the elephant in the room, which is personality. From there on, there in on, I couldn't unsee it. It was happening on airplanes and at hotel check-in desks and at Starbucks. And I thought, oh, we have a problem. At the same time in my private practice, and I had a very small practice at the time, people kept coming in and saying, my spouse doesn't listen. He or she doubts my reality. I feel like I'm not there. They're so deeply entitled. And I'm like, and I kept sending them these really sweet emails, like, from today's session, here's what we talked about. Then I realized I was writing the same damn email over and over again. That's what led to that book, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" But then I realized, wow, this is a problem. And that led, and I was doing that work 10, 15 years ago. It led into a deep dive into narcissism. And I realized the mental health profession isn't touching this. It was the third rail of psychology and psychiatry. And I really put myself on an academic gulag at this point. Like they're saying, nobody does this work. My own mentor said, honey, if you try to do this, no university is going to hire you. Mercifully, I had tenure so I could do what I wanted at that point. But it's really the issue that nobody in mental health wants to talk about. But I tell my students, if you understand men, if you understand narcissism, you understand mental health. I think what I've done that in a way no one else has done has brought this to the awareness of the masses. And I think my frustration is, if any of you know about scientific publishing, The bulk of psychological research sits in psychological journals that are so esoteric, nobody understands what the hell's going on. It's numbers and figures and nothing makes sense. And nobody takes the time to elevate that work to something that anyone in any profession or any walk of life could understand. I think it's tremendously arrogant that billions of dollars are put into research and none of that research was usable by the populace. Everything written about narcissism is like dense and nobody gets it and it's all psychoanalytic, la la la, sit on the couch, 20 years. I said, these people are suffering now. We need to bring something to them. And when you're an old lady who wants to bring an idea to the forefront, what do you do? You work with a millennial.
Yeah.
And they said, doc, this is how people are learning. And I had to have as much faith in them as they did in me. And I have two gals who were once my students. And I said, okay, with no budget whatsoever, let's sit in this tiny room and figure this out. And that's how we started with YouTube. We had zero subscribers as of this time last year. We're at almost 150,000, which isn't bad for an absolute absolutely clueless. My kids are like, "You're too old to be a YouTuber, Mom." And I'm like, "I'm sort of not really a YouTuber." But that's really what it was. It was trying to take psychology and put it in the public interest.
Yeah.
How long did it take you to write?
I mean, this is such a— Actually sitting down and writing, I write very quickly and I love to write. So for me, once I'd start writing, I could go on 12-hour benders and just keep going. I could write 10,000 words a day. It just kept going. So the actual writing, I would like you to write for me. Okay, I love it. I love it. I mean, I guess maybe that's just being a grad student, all that, but 14 months of writing, but frankly it was 5 years of research. So there was a lot of grinding going through the academic work, the theoretical work, and then try— What happened was the election happened in 2016 and politics aren't relevant here, but the word came into the public purview like it had never before. And I had to make a decision I had to make a one-sided decision once the election happened. I had to decide whether I was gonna become political or try to cross both sides. I decided you're gonna sell more books if you could sell them to both sides of the divide. So I said, because there's a whole world of psychologists and psychiatrists that take on, is Trump a narcissist? I mean, my cat knows that Trump's a narcissist. So it's not even that interesting a conversation. But the difference was, if you do, if you're the mental health person that does the Trump is a narcissist piece, You lose a lot of people who are his supporters. And I'll be frank with you, Joe, his supporters are often some of the most brutal, in some of the most brutal narcissistic relationships out there. They needed my content. These are people who are often more low-wage workers who can't get therapy, but will watch a video about why their husband's being mean to them. And I thought, so let's depoliticize this. Now I do mention Trump in here. And the only negative Amazon reviews I got, 'cause my assistants are scrupulous at checking the reviews, The only negative Amazon reviews I got were from Trump supporters and from people who didn't like the fact that I did use some obscenities.
Is there any politician as a president who's not a narcissist?
I can't think of one ever in history of all time. And I'm sure, listen, we like to think, I mean, Obama got to where he got to 'cause he was still very Machiavellian. He was willing to do what he needed to do. Nobody becomes a president without being a narcissist. I just don't see it. I think he probably had a much higher empathy quotient, Obama did than your average bear, but the fact is it's just the nature of the beast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The thing that your book has, and your videos, has made me so aware of is how much of the personal development industry, religious leaders, the people that are dispensing how to live your life advice, follow me, the ones that have the biggest social media followings, the ones that in many cases talk about being honest and transparent, are the biggest gaslighting, bullshit, narcissistic people on the planet. And these are the ones that the world follows and takes advice from. It's a very interesting thing.
It's interesting and it's dangerous. I have a fair number of clients in my practice who are deprogramming from cults. But the reason they chose to work with me was being in a cult is like being in a relationship with a narcissist. It's exactly the same top notes. So as we undo it, that I will take their cult and I'll say, "It did this, this, and this." "How did you know that, doctor?" I'm like, "Well, 'cause this is exactly what a narcissist does." So, and sometimes it is, it's yoga, yoga gurus. The minute you call yourself a guru, and I say this as an Indian woman, you're already in murky waters. Like, no, don't call yourself a guru. Like, you know, so it's a, so it's just even the terming and it's the, I also think that one of the biggest issues we've seen is the forced positivity of the world. You've gotta be optimistic. You need to think positive. I will never forget when a friend of mine who was surrounded by other narcissists got diagnosed with stage 3 cancer, and the prognosis was grim. Indian woman as well. And she pulls me aside. She just had had her radical mastectomy. So she's got no breasts, no hair. I mean, she's terrified. And she said, "If one more of these bitches comes up to me and tells me to be fucking positive about my cancer, I'm gonna hit him." I said, "I'll help you. You're weak. Together we will hit them." You know, and it's that be positive. It's a form of mental control, right? So the guru can, dictate that for others rather than being empathic and literally meeting a person where they're at. Grief takes time. Trauma takes time to process. Hurt needs to be processed on an individual's time. And saying, "Be happy 'cause I'm telling you to be happy," is completely unempathic, but yet here we are.
So let me ask you to define narcissism and let's make some distinctions between sociopaths, psychopaths, 'cause I think that'll help with the foundation here.
So I think the key here, number one, what is narcissism? It's a lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, arrogance, inability to manage any kind of disappointment, and that tends to be manifested as rage, chronic validation seeking, and— but all of this, and envy of other people, but all of this, the core of it, and this is what gets forgotten, is that it's all based on a deep, deep insecurity. Everyone looks at the narcissist, they say they're charming, they're confident, they're successful, they're smart. That doesn't mean if you're those things you're narcissistic. But if it's built on that core insecurity, that's why the person needs to be grandiose and entitled. 'Cause if I was that fragile inside, my temptation would be to protect it. It's like if you broke your arm, what do we do? We put a cast on it. Why? So the arm doesn't get broken again or the bone doesn't get agitated or moved. When you have a broken inside, you're that insecure, you're gonna protect it. How do you protect it? I'm the shit. I'm the best. No one's better than me. Why should I have to wait in this line? I'm the best after all. Everybody move out of my way so I can be the first in line. Why am I not the VIP? All of that's protective. All of that is them putting this carapace around this fragile interior. So anything from the outside that cracks it, marital breakup, somebody else beating them at what they do, getting more sales, having more money, having a bigger yacht, having a better whatever, that is going to piss them off. And that's where you see the rage and the acting out. That's narcissism, okay? There's different kinds of narcissism. There's grandiose narcissism, which is sort of textbook, come to my palace and be palacy with me. And I'm so great and you're so lucky to be my friend and I'm so beautiful. That's what we classically think of narcissism. But then there's the malignant narcissist, and that is somebody who's downright dangerous. They are malevolent, they're exploitative, they're manipulative. They smell like a psychopath, but you're going to learn in a minute why a malignant narcissist isn't a psychopath. They're slightly different creatures. There are the more vexing covert narcissists. These are people who don't look like narcissists. They look like victims. "The world was never fair to me. I never got a fair shake.
You know what?
Maybe he succeeded because he got more money to start with than me. I would I would've been better than him if my dad gave me money up front. You know what? I'm too good to show up to a job. Why should I do that? Like, I got all these ideas. I'm the next Steve Jobs. Like, let the world find me. That's covert narcissism. They look so hangdog and so sad all the time that people often think they're depressed. And they come to a therapist's office who thinks they're depressed and treats them for depression for 3 months and then wonder why they're not getting anywhere. And this person, well, the world is against me. The world is against me. The world is against me. Their grandiosity is, why doesn't the world see how great I am? Versus the grandiose person who says, look how great I am. And then there's even what we call noble narcissists. These are the people who do lots of charitable work and have these big rescue the elephants, rescue the world, rescue everyone kinds of profiles, but they're doing it solely for validation.
That's the same as a communal narcissist?
No, same as a communal, same as a communal or noble narcissist. These are the people who you think like, wow, they're saving the world. They're so charitable. They're so wonderful. But then catch them behind closed doors and they treat their partners, their families, anyone one-to-one, their staffs absolutely horribly. So they only have empathy when they're on stage or they're saving an elephant.
I mean, I see so much of that in the, especially in the stuff that I've done in the nonprofit world. And that is, yeah, it's cosmetic.
It's very cosmetic. Yes. So the work is being done in the name of seeking validation.
Right.
Versus for the meaning and the purpose or the, just the higher purpose, as you will, of doing the actual work. That's narcissism. I'm sure you're wondering what's the difference between that and narcissistic personality disorder? There was a wonderful book by Alan Francis called Twilight of American Sanity. I don't know if you've read it, but it's a fantastic book. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder only entered the world of psychiatry in the 1970s. This is a late entry. Freud wrote about it. Otto Rank was the first person who wrote about it. These were early, early, you know, analysts and obviously theoreticians, but we didn't make it into a diagnosis till the '70s. Frances was one of the people who wrote about it. When Trump got elected, he wrote this book about narcissism, and he's like, Trump doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder. Why not? Because in order for something in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health, mental illness. You have to, in order for it to be diagnosed, it either has to be causing the person subjective distress. Think about a depressed person. They're uncomfortable. They can't get out of bed. They feel sad all the time. They're angry. Or it has to be causing them social and occupational impairment. You look at somebody who's got, seems to the world, a fine marriage, or at least the person thinks it's a fine marriage or relationship. They seem to have perfectly fine kids. At least to the world it looks like that, and the person thinks that, and they're not having any distress. We don't get to diagnose it, which is why the majority of people with narcissistic traits don't get diagnosed, because nobody ever lays eyes on them.
Yeah.
So that's their— that's why the, the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder is about 1 to 5%. I'm spitballing here because we don't have the numbers. The prevalence of narcissism in the American culture is probably closer to 30%. That gap—
so 30% of—
I would guess so, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's, it's 1 in 3. You know, but now when we go to psychopathy, we jump the rails. Narcissist, insecure, okay? When the mask gets pulled off the narcissist, and he and I were talking about his program about, you know, getting people ready to go to prison. One of the things he's gonna run into most, and this has come up when I've taught at jails and prisons about this to the clinicians there, is that they're so insecure. Now the mask is off. Shame, you're a bad guy. Like, I was once supposed to do, I think, an interview with Steve Madden. Madden, I was telling him, for this thing on narcissism. And he was actually willing to subject himself to talking to me. And then at the 11th hour, I think he had something more interesting to do. Surprise, surprise. But he acknowledged it. He said the thing he was most frightened of was going to jail or going to prison. And he did. And so it shatters them. A psychopath is not insecure. They have no fear. They have no anxiety. And they're completely stress resistant, which is why they make, for example, great surgeons. They make great CEOs. They make great anyone who needs to stay completely calm at a time of tremendous danger, right? So they— nothing bothers them. That's just why they make great hired assassins. I mean, anything that requires you to be calm, cool, and collected under conditions that are difficult for people to do that, they're dangerous.
Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video, and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe Polish Free and you can get a copy there. I was watching a show on drug lords and gangsters and mob leaders and stuff, and they were talking about the brain scans of some of these people in fearful situations. For most people, it doesn't even register. It doesn't bother them at all. So is this a genetic thing?
Yeah, so the belief with psychopathy is it's definitely biological, and the imaging studies have shown that very clearly. There's likely— the genetic piece is still being argued because think about it. Far, far more men have been diagnosed with psychopathy than women. So we don't see, there's almost no research on female psychopaths, though we see them. An interesting speculation would be someone like Elizabeth Holmes. Is she a malignant narcissist or is she a psychopath? Like I've watched everything on her I can because you don't see women in these situations much. She's somewhere, I haven't talked to her, so I don't know, right? But it's that, but the key with the psychopath is they feel no remorse. That's the issue, they feel truly no remorse. The narcissist, actually does feel some remorse.
Okay.
For anything from even smaller-time stuff like infidelity to big-ticket stuff, I embezzled $20 million. So a Madoff-type reaction, psychopathy. Okay? That's a great— absolutely didn't register. It's like, this is really inconvenient that you're doing this to me, but no circumspect sense of how this impacted other people.
Do they fake it as if they—
They fake it. They can fake it. They absolutely can fake it. But it really, it's like an aftermarket thing, like about, This was about 10 hours too late. Like, this should have been what you led with. Another one was that guy, Larry— God, what the hell was his— Larry Nassar. He was one of the physicians in the whole gymnastics issue of all the gymnasts who were sexually abused. I dug deep into that case because he felt so psychopathic. All he's— he never ever expressed remorse to the girls and young women he harmed. All he said is basically, this is a pain in the neck. Why are you wasting so much time? You're hearing similar discourse from a guy in a college a psychologist who sexually abused countless scores of girls and women over 20 years at USC. Just no, you're inconveniencing me with all these proceedings. I'm like, oh my God, you've destroyed hundreds of lives. There's no, that doesn't register. A narcissist would show more guilt and shame under those conditions.
So sociopath.
Sociopath. This is a less articulated condition. A lot of people incorrectly interchangeably use the term psychopath psychopath and sociopath. The psychopath is considered to be, again, that calm, cool, callous, calculated, smart person who's just able to barrel through in a remorseless way. And we have much more evidence that that is a central nervous system phenomenon. The sociopath is likely someone who was— and again, criminologists and everyone argue about this— that may be more of something that was created by the environment. Somebody who was beaten up a lot by a father or a caregiver, somebody who grew up on the streets or under conditions of tremendous tremendous deprivation or danger, and that under different conditions, the story could have probably gone a little bit differently. They also tend to be more combative. You'll probably see a lot more sociopaths in prison than you will psychopaths. Sociopath gets into a bar fight. A psychopath would never, you know, diminish themselves in that way. They'll find a way to slowly destroy that person's life or kill them, and no one will ever know the difference, kind of thing. So whereas a sociopath, they'll fight, they'll get into a street fight, they'll get into a bar fight. They're less regulated. They tend to be less successful. The big difference that's been brought up in the literature is a psychopath at some level doesn't understand the function of rules. They're like, "Why is this a rule? Like, why can't— she did me wrong in a drug deal. Like, why can't I kill her? Like, please help me understand this." A sociopath knows he shouldn't kill her and still will.
Interesting.
Yeah, so there's a, there's a not knowing, but that said, even though there's a not knowing in psychopathy, psychopathy cannot be used as part of the insanity defense in the United States. That has been taken off the table.
What— I mean, is there any idea how many people in the United States, as an example, or North America, are sociopaths, psychopaths?
I would guess with psychopathy, merciful, it's probably under 2%. It's a pretty low-frequency phenomenon. It's rare. It's terrifying. And interestingly, some of the professions— like, I was reading some research on the top 10 professions that have psychopaths in them. And amongst those were surgeon, CEO, and clergy. Those are the professions that attract psychopaths.
Wow, wow.
So statistically speaking, if there's anything there, then there's 30% of this audience are narcissists then?
Maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, and this— I mean, again, I don't want to be mean.
Can you point to them, the ones that you described?
Because I love—
this group has been amazing. But what you might find in a group like this, because everyone is so successful, is sort of what I consider just subthreshold. Old narcissism, like just enough cockiness to get you into trouble. And I would love to sit with each and every one of you and find out what your close personal relationships are like, because it may very well be that that's where it's not working as well as it could be. And again, you may have also gotten lucky, Joe, because you're you, and you might have gotten 100% entrepreneurs where there's not a single narcissist in the room. Listen, is a little of it going to make you successful in business? Sure, because if her and I are vying for the same job and I like, "Oh, she's so sweet. I'm gonna give her all the intel. We're in this together." I may not get the job, but if girlfriend's like, "Yeah, she's going." She's like, "I'm not telling her everything." Right. That's, you know, is that narcissism? I think it's probably a heavy-handed use of the word, but that lack of empathy, I mean, that to me is what the whole thing sort of hinges on. And then when we talk about the origins of narcissism, I think people can self-reflect, but I gotta tell you, so far my alarms maybe have gone off 1.5 times today at the most.
How the heck does someone know their purpose in life? You know, I mean, there's— it's much easier to say that or point to goals or things, but there's a tremendous amount of unclarity.
You know, a good key to that— I train productivity consultants. They're called Certified Productive Environment Specialists. These are women who want to make their family their number one priority, but they want to have meaningful work work with substantial income opportunities and flexible hours. And so they come to me to be trained to do what I've learned in these last 35 years, but then to pick a target market for whom they will do it.
Right.
And one of the things that we work on with them is getting them to pick their target market, and that's the hardest. That is the mo— when they come to me, that's the most difficult thing because organizing Productivity applies to everybody and everything, and so whoever's gonna pay me, I'm gonna do it.
No, well, and I— let me throw this in. On I Love Marketing, we have Breakthrough DNA, which is a report that we teach people in the area of marketing. There's 3 stages of a business: the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit. They're all 3 separate stages, and we have 8 profit activators. And the number 1 activator, the first one, is select a single target market, and it is the hardest thing thing for people to do because they want to be all things to all people.
That's right.
And so—
So part of how I help them get there is by saying, tell me what you liked to do when you were 9, 10, and 11 years old. Now, a lot of times they'll say, I don't remember. So I say, go ask your siblings, go ask your mother, go ask your friends, go ask somebody, because that is such a clue to how you were created, how you were made.
Right.
And as I think through my 40 consultants now, every one of them, there's a story related to what they were doing. My own story, I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. My parents were very poor. We lived on the second floor of a tenant farmhouse. The only space that was mine was a small closet. And my daddy bought me a small chest of drawers in there that was mine. And my mother worked at a jewelry store. And she used to bring the boxes home that were slightly bent that they couldn't sell at the store. And what I was doing was taking those boxes and fitting them in that chest. How can I maximize this space that I have to get all of my belongings in?
You were made for this stuff.
I was. And the other thing, which I did not know, because my mother actually heard me give this speech and heard me say something about that, and she said, "And you know what else you used to do?" Do? And I said, "No." Well, my grandmother had a room that we hardly ever went into that was called the parlor. And it was kept really nice. And it was when the preacher called, you went into the parlor. That was kind of the thing. My mother says I used to gather the family into the parlor and preach to them. Well, what am I doing today? I'm preaching organizing.
That is funny. That is really funny. And yes, and you're very— you're a very good preacher of this.
And one of my consultants, when I first reached her, her company was called called Anchors Away. And I said, well, why? She said, well, I love to sail. She lived in Colorado. I'm saying, OK, Anchors Away, Colorado. Well, she said, I married a skier, so now we live— we snow ski. So we were talking about her target market. I said, what about sailors and skiers? Because as it relates to productivity, sailors and skiers have specific needs. There are specific kinds of information There's travel information. There's ways they organize their equipment, ways they eat so that they're healthy, so that they can do what they want to do. And so that becomes your target market. And now what you used to do for fun on the weekends that you paid for is now a tax-deductible expense because it's marketing.
Right.
And she's, "Oh my gosh, I never thought of that." And another one of our consultants, her specialty are business travelers who want to stay healthy. She traveled internationally for 13 years, and she's also a competitive dirt bike rider. So if you're going to travel internationally and you're going to be a competitive dirt bike rider, you've got to stay in shape. That means you have to know, you know, how to pack and what— how to eat on the way and how to travel and how to stay fit and all those things. So I'm sitting at the symphony, sitting next to a woman, and we're just chatting. And I noticed she had a wedding ring on, but she was by herself. And I said, "Oh, where's your husband?" She said, "Oh, he's in London." And I said, "On business?" "Yeah, he travels there a lot." "Oh, that must be difficult." "Yes, it is, especially because he's had a heart attack and he's supposed to stay healthy." And so now I'm saying, "Oh, you need to talk to Marcy because she specializes in business travelers that want to stay healthy," as opposed to saying, "Oh, you just need to get organized." Right, right.
Well, you know what's great about that is so not only do you have a real perspective and understanding about the art, of productivity in organization, but you also think as a marketer because you're helping, you know, it's not just making decisions on stuff. It's literally how do you actually monetize and maximize that, you know, because I always think two of my favorite words are productivity and leverage. You know, productivity, maximum results, least amount of time. Leverage, maximum most customer results, least amount of effort. And when you combine those two, you simply just— you're better. I mean, you, you, you become better.
Let me give you another example I think that kind of ties in with that. Um, one of the things that we teach our clients, both at a personal level and at a business level, and even with big corporations, is what we call the 7 information management questions, which every individual and every business needs to answer, regardless of whether it's a for-profit, a not-for-profit size. So it's what information do we need to keep? In what form? Is it paper or is it electronic? And if it's electronic, what program is it going to be electronic? How long does it need to be kept? That's records retention, which in companies has to do with risk management. Because you can't— now it's very dangerous to keep all kinds of information because if you're sued, All of that is going to be subpoenaed, and you're going to pay for that, and it's going to cost a lot of money. Who's responsible for filing it? That's teamwork. That's job descriptions. In a family, it's in a husband and wife. Who's responsible for filing it? Who needs access to it? That's permissions. If it's a locked file drawer, or if you're in a software program, who has access? Who has the passwords and who— all that? And then how do we find it? That's version control and naming mechanisms. We were talking about there's so much information out there that nobody can find anymore in companies. I mean, I can tell you some stories that are just— oh, they're just pathetic. And then the last one is how do you back it up?
Gotcha.
So here's the interesting thing. When I go into corporations to do training programs for people, employees are not really very interested. You know, their employer has said I just went to do some internal bank audit. Auditors, you know, and it's like the Ed Audit, they're like, "Ugh, got real work to do today besides this." So I say, "How many of you left home this morning with more pieces of paper lying around than you prefer?" Well, 50% will raise their hands, and statistically it's true for 80%. So I say, "Everything you're going to learn today applies at home as well." Well, now they're listening because they are wanting to tell, not what they're going to go home and do, but what they're going to go home and tell their your spouse to do. So all of that, all of the things that we teach around the 7 Information Management, we apply in a personal level, at a personal level, and then people are engaged. So give me an example. We were talking about what I call the art of wastebasketry. I mentioned that 80% of what we keep, we never use, and how difficult it is to throw away. And I asked the audience, how many of you have difficulty throwing things away? You know, a lot of people raised their hands. And I said, how many of you know someone whose life is really hampered by the stuff they keep? You know, like they can't have people come into their house because they don't want them to see the mess, or they can't go places. You know, it's like, I can't go to the movies tonight because I really got to pay the bills. You know, I put it off long enough that I can't do it anymore. Well, most of the people raised— I mean, everybody raised their hand. Everybody knows knows somebody like that? I mean, a lot of them it's them, but they didn't—
Well, and then they're not going to want to admit it.
They're not going to admit it. But I mean, every single hand was raised. How many of you know somebody whose life— who isn't able to accomplish their work or enjoy their lives because of their stuff? And everybody raised their hand, which has happened— I mean, I've done this thousands of times, and it always happens. So we're talking about, OK, how is it so— why is it so difficult to let go? Well, I wrote a book a number of years ago called Love It or Lose It: Living Clutter-Free Forever. And in the research for that book, I discovered a very interesting fact. And that is, if there is someone who has a great deal of difficulty letting go of things to their own detriment, by their own choice, it's not like they choose to keep it because they like it, it's like they're not really comfortable but they just can't let go of it. If I ask enough questions, I will find out that that person at some point in their life had a severe emotional loss. I was doing a book signing at Barnes Noble, and a young man in probably his 20s walked up, and he said, my mother died when I was 6. He said, my apartment is so full of stuff, I haven't had anybody in it for months. He said, I come home from work at night, and I say, OK, tonight's the night. I'm going to clean it. And he said, the only flat surface I have— it's a studio New York apartment— is a bed. And he said, I start kind of sorting on the bed. And he goes, because I become physically paralyzed. He said, are you telling me that I have to deal with the grief of losing my mother before I can deal with this? I said, I can't answer that question. I'm not a mental health professional. But I can tell you what I've seen. That if you will find someone that you trust to come in and work with you to help you put what you have into some kind of order, because what is true is the more organized you get, you have an ability to then to measure whether you're using something and whether it's valuable, and then you can begin to let go. Told that story at a convention one day, and a woman came up and she said, "You just saved my marriage." I said, wow, that's pretty dramatic. Tell me what you meant. And she said, I came to this convention with the intention of going home and telling my husband, to whom I've been married 13 years, that I was leaving. Because he keeps all this stuff. I have allergies. I can't dust the house. He won't let go of it. And then she stopped, and literally the tears started running down her face. And she said, his mother died when he was 7. So I said— she said, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I now realize that it wasn't that he wouldn't get rid of it, but that he couldn't. And I'm willing to go back and give it another try. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I'm willing to try again now that I see, you know, this side of it.
That's interesting. That's cool.
And so I said, may I make a suggestion? She said, sure. I said, go back and say to him, you know, I never understood before how important all this is to you. Let's figure out 'How we can keep it so that I can live with it and you can live with it too.' It changed everything because he felt heard. Always before, and I see this all the time, it's like, 'You don't need this.' 'Yes, I do.' 'You don't need this.' And there's this constant angst. And as soon as he was given permission— now it still took time, but I stayed in touch with them for months afterwards— and she said it was vastly improved. And there were times when he'd even say Oh, I really can get rid of this. Well, I told this story at the bank auditors, and at the break, one of the women came up and said, my husband died 10 years ago, and I have all of the stuff in the house that I just have not been able to get rid of. So we were talking about these sorts of things, and at the end of the seminar, she came up and she said, I just figured out how I can get rid of this stuff. And I said, tell me. She said, "I decided that every time I give away something of his, I will give away something of mine as well." I get goosebumps just telling that story. I said, "One of the reasons that I'm so passionate about what I do after all these years, that's something new. In 35 years, I never heard anybody suggest that." But isn't that an awesome idea?
Yeah, no, totally.
And look at all the people that are being blessed. The people that are on the receiving end of what is being given away, they're now two people being blessed. And the person who's had 10 years of stuff in her house that you know she feels guilty about every single morning and every single night is being freed.
Yeah. So, uh, Dr. Barbara Hemphill, this is a therapy set. That's great. That really is great because that takes things to a whole another level of the impact, and I'm— I love the way you articulated it because we're talking about a subject that really undermines people's ability to function and relate with each other, and even just that level of understanding. I sat and think about, you know, my own behavior when I was interviewing, you know, your dear friend Tracy Parks. You know, I talked about like I have a And she talked about digital organization. And, you know, I sort of have a hoarder sort of behavior about me. And the way that I think about it is I hold on to stuff because I see the marketing and business potential of it. So like I'd mentioned with her, you know, it's not like I collect lint or old socks or I can't throw out clothes. You know, I mean, it's not that sort of stuff. I look at a lot of emails and I see, oh, this could be used as a template, this could be used as a model, but deep down inside there's this psychological thing. And I have a person that works for me named Nate, who actually happens to be sitting in the room right now, but he's been helping me with project management stuff, and one of the conversations we were having a week ago, was just the ability to get rid of stuff, that it's so hard. And he said, you know, in order for me to help you, I want to— and he had thought about this, and he, you know, showed me some questions that he had. And the top one was, what are you afraid of? Like, what is the fear? Is it opportunity loss? Is it you're not— you know, I mean, what is it why you're holding some of this stuff? Which is really important. —to get this?
The last, I mentioned the Art of Waste Basketry, which is a series of questions. Would it be difficult to get again? Does it exist in another place? Is it recent enough to be useful? But the last one is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen if I didn't have this? So when I'm working with someone, that's the question. There are two questions that I'm always asking. One is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen if you got rid of this? Whether it's deleting something, you know, from your digital storage or whether it's throwing away something, and it turns out you were wrong, mm-hmm, what would happen? And is that a price you're willing to pay? And that goes back to what I said earlier, which you can keep everything you want if you're willing to pay the price. I think about a client I had who had a PR firm in Atlanta many years ago. And I set up a filing system for her. We use a numerical filing system where we we tied— this was paper filing back in those days, and it was a paper filing system, but we tied it into an electronic search engine so you could find it. She had 35,000 files, but we could still find anything in 5 seconds because she could do a search. But the price she paid was a whole room, 2 full-time file clerks, and it was a choice she was willing to make. And that's not a moral issue. It is not a moral issue. It's like, this is the lifestyle. It's like some people love to be around books. I mean, it makes— it's like some people love to be around waterfalls or, you know, something else. It's your environment. That's the reason that I call my company Productive Environment. So it's when you keep all of this, is it making you more productive? So the question is, what's the worst possible thing that would happen? And then the second one is, does this help you? Accomplish your work or enjoy your life. Yeah. So one of the things, one of the services that we offer for companies— Tracy mentioned it when we were interviewing— was a Productive Environment Day. And this is an event. If you take any 100 employees and say, if you had the time, are there things you could comfortably throw away? 99 out of 100 would say yes. But nobody goes to work and says, oh, I don't have anything better to do today, I'm going to clean out the files. Or I'm going to— the place I love is in the kitchen under the sink. That's where the cartridges go for the printers that we don't even have anymore, that kind of stuff. Nobody says that. And if somebody does do it, because there's always somebody in the company that really likes to do that, they like doing that. But if they do it, people look at them and say, are you mad? We have this project we're working on. And besides that, in order for me to clean out, I have to ask you, is this the most recent version? Or do we need to get— and it's like, get out of here. I have real work to do. So we go to management and say— I mean, if you look at the price that companies pay for clutter in terms of storage of things— let me give you a scenario of this. When I first started in this business—
I mean, we could just walk around my building.
When I first started in this business, the way decisions were made about paper was every executive had a private secretary. In the early '80s, every manager and every executive had a private secretary. And every private secretary had a file clerk. And every company had a file room. And every file room had Mabel. And when you as an executive were done with a project, which in those days was all files, you would hand your file to your private secretary who purged it, who filed it, who gave it to her file clerk who organized it and filed it within the office for like, say, a year or two. And then at the end of that year or two, she walked it down the hall to Mabel. And Mabel had the records retention program for the whole company. And so Mabel filed it as long as it was supposed to be filed for the company. And then it was either purged or it was shipped offsite to Iron Mountain or wherever. That's the way— that was the decision-making structure about information. Bill Gates put computers on everybody's desk. And we said, oh, we don't need all this before. Now granted, there was too much infrastructure. There were— in New York when I was there, I saw file clerks reading books 'cause they didn't have enough work. So I mean, that was— it was— but it's a classic case of the pendulum swinging too far. We went from having way too much support to suddenly having none. And now an executive who's never done any kind of admin stuff like that at all is supposed to figure it out, and they don't have time to. Right. So what happened is they started just stuffing things in file drawers. And then the file drawers get full, and nobody wants to clean them out. Nobody wants to make a decision. So we move them out in the hallway. Hallway. And then nobody wants to clean out the files in the hallway, so we move those down into a storage room. And then nobody wants to clean out the storage room, so we move them to offsite storage. All right, I have a client right now that has 6 buildings, and they are downsizing to 2, because the economy has hit them hard, and they cannot afford private offices, file clerks, I mean file rooms, file cabinets, all of this. They estimate that they have 50 million paper documents that they have to decide what to do about before they relocate. Wow. Because there was nobody making decisions. Now here's the scary part. I think as a country, we are headed toward the biggest information management disaster in in history if we do not teach employees, give them permission, and empower them to make decisions about digital information. Because if you have 1,000 pieces of paper and you have to find it for some reason, you can hire temporaries who know nothing about anything and say, I'm looking for pieces of paper with these words on it. And they can flip through the papers and they'll find them. If you have 1,000 digital documents, and they are filed who knows where. You and Tracy talked about all the places they can be filed. Right. First of all, you may not know where they're filed, or you may find them, but they're now created by a program that you don't even have access to anymore. So although the screen says that document is there, or that video is there, but the program that was used to create it doesn't exist. And so we're just piling up stuff and piling it up and piling it up. So go back to the productive environment days. The way productive environment days are done, we turn them into games, we get management on board. Management has to participate. This is not something that management says to employees you're going to do. So either management does their office first so that their office has already been done, or they participate on that day. We start the day with bagels and coffee or whatever, because when employees are eating, they're always happier, right? Right. And while they're eating, I do a seminar.
I start with Steve I like to eat some spinach and stuff. I don't know if you know that.
Okay, well, whatever. Me too, that's good. We start with a seminar called Sometimes It Takes an Expert to Take Out the Trash, in which we talk about the art of wastebasketry and clutter's postponed decisions, and there's only 3 decisions you can make: file, act, toss, and all of those things. And we set up shredding bins, we bring in shredding companies, recycling bins, we set up a trash to treasure table. So like, you know, here's this mug that I got and I don't like it anymore, and I'll put it on the table. And the rule is that any employee can come in all day long and take anything they want as long as they take it home. And we give out prizes, you know, prizes for the funniest thing and the oldest thing and the most unlikely thing, the most unusual thing, and stuff like that. So then we— and we send them back and everybody starts cleaning. As my mother used to say, many hands make light work. When we're all doing it together, then we can communicate about things and the camaraderie begin. You can see it happen at the beginning. People are like, you know, and then it begins to pick up, you know, and then people get really excited, you know. It's like, great. Well, then we come and eat lunch together because we want them to tell stories about what they're finding and what they're doing, right? Then in the afternoon, while they're doing their lunch, I do a seminar on digital cleanup, or Tracy does a seminar on digital cleanup, and then we go back and have them clean up their computer and do the same thing. Well, let me give you one example. A company, 400 employees, they were getting ready to move. A classic client for us is either someone who's trying to move to what I call almost paperless, because I don't think paperless is viable. But I think almost paperless is desirable. So when somebody's moving to less paper—
That even rhymed. I just liked how that— yeah.
Or they're relocating. Because when you're relocating is the one time you have to consider all those things and are you going to pay to move it? Yeah. So they were getting ready to move. And I was fairly new at doing these. And this was a— I had worked with this gentleman that owned the company as a— at a bank before. And so he said, I'm getting ready to move, you know, I thought maybe you could help me. What do we want to do? And I said, give me your most cluttered department. I said, give me one day. And so he said, okay, client services. So we went into client services, like 25 people, we did that day. At the end of the day, he said, "Okay, 11 more days." So we did 12 days in the 12 different departments. At the end of the 12 days, we had shredded alone 33,000 pounds of paper. Wow. And we deleted almost one half of the files off their server. Wow. So you're empowering people to do it. Now, the question you asked me before we started interviewing was how do you maintain maintain it. That is, you do an annual day like that. That becomes part of the company culture. And people, when they know it's going to happen, then it doesn't get so bad. I have one client that does it on St. Patrick's Day and on Halloween every year. That's their company culture, that they do half a day on physical and half a day on digital.
Wow, I love it. That's such a great idea.
And then what happens is employees are saying, I'm going home. I mean, every time we do this, I'm going home and cleaning out the attic. I'm going home and cleaning out the garage. So we have some companies that will actually contract with Goodwill or somebody like that to bring a tractor trailer on site so that employees can bring the stuff when they come. Because a lot of times, employees have the stuff at home that they want to get rid of, but they just don't have time, or they don't whatever. So they know then that's a way they can do it. I love it.
I think there is a lot to be said about distractibility. And there are times where grief or situations, betrayal, whatever, are so difficult that they're— I guess the way I think about it, does it expand you or does it contract you?
I mean, yes. Very good point. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's just like something that that I thought a lot about, and I've seen that in myself and others, right? And any crisis, like, you know, one of the two outcomes usually happens as we kind of go into this suffering. One of two things can happen: we either contract more and we become more defensive, and we're like, this will not happen, you know, I know what happened and this will never happen again. And we just like, you know, contract around our pain and we become more rigid, more defensive. It or we fall apart, you know. And we fall apart, it's a very fucking difficult process, right? And, uh, happened to me recently as this breakup that I went through, it really triggered deep abandonment trauma that was still sitting deep in me. And I was just like doing so much crying and screaming and waiting. And, uh, thanks to medicines, I was able to do that with abandon. Um, and, you know, falling apart was so beautiful because at the bottom of this there is so much peace happens, right? Because you experience what you're scared of. End of the day, every difficult situation— why is it difficult? Because it triggers an emotion that for some reason human being, this particular human being, is having a hard time with, whatever that emotion is, right? Let's say grief and sadness and loneliness, whatever it is. And once we experience that, magic happens. The brain kind of looks at that like, yeah, that's sad, but you know what, you know what, not a big fucking deal. We're okay, we're here, right? And it's no longer that scared of that emotion. It stops being this thing. It's like that we constantly protecting, like, you know, no, no, no, don't do that, they should not say that, the government should blah blah blah. Like all of those should and should not, right? They're really us trying to manage the emotions, trying to protect that, right? And once we experience that emotion deeply, when that happens, something magical can happen, right? So that's exactly what you said. It's about like we either expand and there is freedom or relaxation, or there is more determination and contraction and, you know, which is very powerful in itself, right? Sometimes that's what we do. Like sometimes we use that mechanism, we persevere through some very difficult stuff, you know, and In war, and it's extreme, right? But building businesses and dealing with kids and dealing with loss, with all kinds of stuff. But powerful mechanism, and they have their place and they have different consequences.
Well, I want to emphasize this, what you're talking about, because the way I interpret that is if someone's spending time listening to us right now or they're watching us, all humans are going through pain. I think a magic moment is when someone talks about going into a place that everyone deals with. Like, to go back to trauma, let me say this. I like that there's so much conversation about trauma. The downside to it, though, is you have a lot of people now that are— and I have to be careful of this myself— is that live in woundology, where they use their story, their pain to manipulate or to make themselves feel like I can tell horrendous shit about my childhood and I can get people to empathize with me. I mean, people be like, and if I identify with that too deeply, it becomes like, well, everyone's had shit. Every human being has pain. And so when you just talked about like you were wailing and you were crying and you were unraveled and how peaceful it became, that is like, there's that Joseph Campbell line I love, which is that the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek. And there are a lot of caves that are just scary as fuck to go into. And admitting that you have an addiction problem, you know, trying to hold yourself together when you have your heart broken and you've been betrayed. I mean, that is really difficult. I can't even fathom, you know, I will often think about some of the shit I went through. And one of the things that comes out of the addiction recovery work is, as weird as it sounds, I will talk to people on a regular basis weekly basis that I hear stories where I'm like, I cannot even imagine this person went through this. And a lot of these people have— they're grappling with it. Some of their lives are out of control, but other people have transcended it. I mean, they have done the work, whatever the work is, right? And I'm long past like there's a right or wrong way to do stuff. People have to go through— I mean, I have ideas of things that are helpful for others, and that's why I like hearing other people's stories. I like hearing how did you you— how did you go through this? What did you learn? What did you discover? And, and so for me, it's really encouraging when people have gone through enormous pain and they have come out, you know, on the other side, and they have become better humans. It's fascinating. So with, um, it's almost like for anyone that's listening that is going through something that they think, I, I don't even know how to deal with this and I'm hiding it from everyone. I have this shame. I have this pain. I have some loss and I can't seem to get my life into a place that even feels good because— but you kind of went there. So did you actively seek out this or how, like, how did, how do you, when you're, when you're in a situation like that, how did you get to that medicine journey? What, what, what, what what needed to happen for you.
We do what we can. We do what we, you know, what we have learned and we keep trying different things. We're also creative and we keep trying new things. And it's interesting, like, you know, and you talk to humans, right? That's a very powerful way of dealing with different things. And yeah, it reminded me, I'm blessed that I have a lot of amazing humans around me with a very deep, authentic connections, right, where we can share stuff. And, uh, and it's not about advice, it's not about telling people what to do, but it's about just sharing. It's like, I know what this is, fucking, this fucking sucks. Oh yeah, I've been there, right? It's just like being human, crying together, all of this, right? And I had some friends who are like, um, end of the day, as we talk to another human being and they express something difficult, right? Some difficult emotion. Sometimes it's hard for us to feel that emotion and we start giving them advice. Well, you should not feel that way. And a few of people in my, you know, I talk to them like, you should, oh, you have so much to live for. Look at the bright stuff. Like, you know, there's, I'm like, thank you. I know that, right? But it's, who cares?
Yeah, it's not what I want right now.
Yeah. Like, you know, right now I'm in pain.
This is the reality. That's it, right? That's very simple. And it reminded me like some of the people I talk to, sometimes some of my friends and connections, people who are suicidal, right? And again, when you talk to a person who is suicidal, I see the reaction in many people, oh, you should not be talking about this. You should not be thinking this way. Like, you know, why? Because they are scared themselves. Like, oh, what if they do die? Like, you know, what does it mean for them, for me? Well, you know what? When I talk to somebody who is suicidal, I just appreciate that they're sharing this with me, right? And I can like, I felt somewhat suicidal. I felt deep pain in my life and I just like, I can empathize with them. I can be just with them without trying to invalidate what they feel, without telling them that this is wrong. And you know what? We're humans, end of the day, we're just complex monkeys, right? Yeah. And when another human can see they're in deep pain and their brain is like, I'm in deep pain and like, am I dying? Like, is this normal? This is bad. When they can sense from another human, this is normal. They can sense the peaceful presence, right? It's normal. It's absolutely fucking normal to sometimes want to kill yourself. Yes. Is it absolutely normal to sometimes feel deep pain? Yes. Right. And when they can sense that, not in like intellectual level, but they can sense. So yeah. 'Yeah, this human being is not freaking out. They are with us. They sensing our pain. They still here. They seem to be okay. Hmm. Maybe I'm okay too.' You know, we kind of like learning that, right? So that deep empathy that we get from a peaceful presence of another human being, that's so powerful, right? So, I mean, the question you asked is about how do you go there? And there's no answer to that, right? Because sometimes you will go there, sometimes you will not be able to go there, right? In my life in the last 10 years, I discovered the very powerful tool of psychedelic medicines and they've been awesome. They've been sometimes extremely fucking difficult and challenging, but they also been very powerful. Like, they help this organism to fully experience some of the emotions that it was not able to experience from extremely deep sadness and despair and helplessness or even anger. Like most of my life, anger was a very difficult emotion for me. It was very hard for me to sense it in people around me and also pretty much impossible for me to experience myself. I could not raise voice at people, right? I could not scream. I remember I was at some conference and they're like, "Hey, we're doing this." So that was maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago or more. "Let's do this fun exercise." we will scream. And people are screaming, I'm like, oh, I cannot scream. Well, right, just, just for fun, right? And then eventually I did some medicines, 5-MeO, DMT, if you're familiar with 5-MeO. I did a lot of screaming, and that was, uh, that was fun.
How many times have you done 5-MeO?
Um, I did it with a particular guide, a really awesome human being, so I did it maybe 7, 8 times over the course 6 years. Wow. And, and now, like, they're not illegal in Toronto. You can buy 5mg vape pens in mushroom shops all over Toronto. Oh, I, I didn't even know that. So you can get that. And I have a vape pen, and sometimes now I kind of use a light dose on my own. So, wow. So yeah, so all in all, maybe, I don't know, 12, 15 times, however you count the small doses.
Well, I, I, just as an aside, uh, in, in 2015, I went to, um, Mexico, and I, I'm the first person in the world to have before and after brain scans of doing ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT. Nice. Yeah, and it was, uh, we took a film crew there, we filmed. I've never put that footage out publicly. At some point it might end up in a documentary or something, but it's, uh, yeah. So you do— so the point is though is you have been willing to travel into places to open up this very fucking scary Oh God, yeah, it's so—
It's like this is where your illusion of control, you kind of like at some point it's overwhelming that it just like disappears, right? It's like, yeah, this is it. Maybe I'm dying, maybe whatever it is, but this is it, right? And that's the magic of this, right? When that happens and then your brain, your organism is like, oh wow, something new can be born in this. And like in this total pain, total despair, total helplessness.
Yeah. The notion of mindset, you know, is extremely well documented. Carol Dweck spent her career proving that what she calls a growth mindset becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The growth mindset says no matter what skills I need, I can get to achieve my dreams. And the fixed mindset says I'm limited by my IQ, income, station in life, what have you. And it's like, you know, that old line, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. You know, so just start thinking you can, and very hard evidence proves you'll do it. And the question is, how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, let me give you my answer before I get into talking about attention. You do it through connection. And that's why coming together here is so wonderful. Tell you a quick story, because, you know, it's okay to hope for the best when things are going well, but when they're not going well, that's when you need a method, when you need a recipe. And my nephew, one of the bravest people I know, is 37 years old. He went to medical school. Fulfilled his dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, married the most beautiful woman, also a doctor, had the most adorable child, and got a dream job in Santa Barbara, and was, you know, windsurfing every day and doing total hips and just on top of the world when he got diagnosed with ALS. And I just visited him a couple of weeks ago. He's now in a wheelchair. He will die before Christmas. He'll go to a hospice and they'll give him some extra morphine and he'll go to heaven unless we come up with a miracle before then. But what's amazing about him is how positive he feels. He says, and he can't talk much because of the ALS, "Uncle Ned, don't worry about me. I've achieved all my dreams. How could I complain?" And he means it. He means it. And I think, you know, you keep that in mind, you keep in mind someone like that, who's dying a terrible, slow death. And every day he's talking about how great life is. And it's because of the force of connection. Because he had all his friends, like 30 friends from Yale, come visit him a few weeks ago, and they're all talking him up, and his beautiful baby. And every day, you know, he's, celebrating being alive. And I think you want to keep that in mind, that it is the power of touching each other that brings out our best. You know, it is in connection that we find pretty much everything that we need, and in isolation that we wither. And the beauty of technology today, as Peter so brilliantly pointed out, is that it allows us to connect so much more powerfully than ever before in history. This really is the greatest time ever to be alive. It is not to say that bad things can't happen, my nephew Jake being just one example, but that as we work together, We will be able to solve problem after problem after problem, achieve victory after victory after victory, and we're only limited by our capacity to dream big. And, you know, I just, I couldn't agree with what Peter said more, and you all, you all are specialists in doing that. You all, the entrepreneurs, the dreamers, You know, I know some of you so well, and others I wish I knew better. You know, someone like Dan Sullivan is just a dream maker. You know, and all of you sort of have embodied the power to take whatever notion you have and turn it into something real that changes the world. How cool is that? And you keep doing that over and over again until you can't anymore. And what does it all mean? I don't know. But I know it's positive. And I know what drives the good is really, at its most distilled, the power of love. That's what we all need and rely on. Well, with that as sort of an introduction and a frame, let me now talk about attention. Because it fits so well into what Peter was saying. The resource that is diminishing in this world, the most precious resource in many ways that any of us has, is attention. Every day you have to decide where to focus your mind. And when you have minds like you guys do— by the way, I gave you a handout, The Mind of the Entrepreneur, and it's short because you like short. It's just bullet points and you can see, don't read it now, please. I know you guys. But exactly. When you have the idea-euphoric minds that you all do, The big decision you have to make every minute, every day is where to focus your mind. And if you're not careful, what I think of is a tin can surrounded by 1,000 magnets. And your brain is like the tin can, and you wake up in the morning and 1,000 magnets come on, and what does the tin can do? It just spins. 1,000 magnets, it's attracted to every single one of them simultaneously. And you can spend a day, a week, a career spinning if you're not careful. So the, the skill now that we need to learn, that really technology has brought us this opportunity. The great thing about modern life is you can do so much. The curse of modern life is you can do so much. So, so what you have to do is get really tough with yourself and prioritize. Decide, where do I want to focus? What do I want to put my precious mental energy into? And I'm not here to tell you where you should focus, but I am here to tell you it's one of the most important decisions you can ever make. And, you know, you say, okay, I'll focus on my business. Well, what part of your business? And where do you want to put your energy? And what do you need to delegate? The magical letters CDE: curtail, delegate, eliminate. What can I curtail? What can I delegate? What can I eliminate so that I will have sufficient focus to achieve my goals? You see, it's not infinite. Every day it gets depleted, really in cycles throughout the day. You cannot maintain a single level of focus throughout the day. And so, so one of the great skills for all of you to learn, for all of us to learn, is how to, first of all, choose what to focus on, and next, maintain focus, regulate focus, manage focus. And I'm basically a focus doctor. I've sort of invented a specialty. When I got out of medical school in 1978, I'd never heard anything about focus in medical school. And then I learned about this condition so misleadingly named attention deficit disorder, It's a terrible term. It's not a deficit, it's not a disorder, it's a trait that many of you have. And it's associated with having lots of ideas, lots of energy, thinking outside the box, being an inventor, a pioneer. It's really ADD people who colonized this country. If you think of it, who in the world would come over here in 1600 in a boat? You had to be some wacko kind of risk-taking visionary dreamer pioneer. That's our gene pool. And that's a lot of you. And the doctors, you know, the medical establishment that likes order, decided to call it a disease. So it gets called attention deficit disorder. But quite the contrary, it's a tremendous asset if you manage it right. If you don't manage it right, it's the prison population. But if you do manage it right, and the way I explain it, it's like having a Ferrari engine for a brain. You've got this incredibly powerful engine. You're a champion in the making. Ferrari engine for a brain. But with bicycle brakes. So you gotta learn how to control the power of your mind. Sounds simple. It's not simple. You need to learn to control the power of your mind. And that Ferrari engine, in order for you to win races, you need to learn how to strengthen your controls. Not to make you a normal corporate citizen. I quite agree with Joe there. The life is sucked out of them. But to make you like Shakespeare and Mozart, Shakespeare and Mozart wrote within extremely confining structures. Extremely. Iambic pentameter Shakespeare, Mozart very tight musical forms. And because of that structure, because of those breaks, those boundaries, they were able to create infinite variety. So make friends with the structure. Make friends with the controls. It will potentiate your creativity. It will take your business 10 times higher, as Dan is helping people do every day. Well, let me talk about two functions. One, how to get someone's attention and hold it. And number two, how to manage yours. Now, getting attention, I summarize with the acronym SEARCH. You can get attention in these 6 ways. Peter already mentioned the S, scare. This is what the media loves to do. You scare people, you get their attention. You go straight to the primitive brain and, oh boy, we are so wired to feel fear more than any other emotion. E, excite. We do that through sensory stimulation, speed. If you present something fast, it doesn't matter, it can be vapid. You can read the telephone book fast, someone will pay attention. Brrr, we pay attention. We love speed. We crave speed. Speed is our drug of choice. So, speed, sex, you all know about that, sex sells. And anything that is highly sensorily stimulating, excites us, gets your attention. And another E word, educate, if you're interested. So if you're a stockbroker, you want to hear how's the market doing. So if it's information you care about, you will pay attention. So E is for excite or educate. A, got 4 A's: attack, If you attack someone, they'll pay attention. Annoy. Remember the Anacin commercial? You're too young for that maybe, but years ago, this guy got rich in advertising because he really annoyed people showing what it was like to have a headache. So attack, annoy, it will gain your attention, but also amaze. Amaze. And think of how Peter amazed you. In his presentation. That's riveting. And that's what a lot of the great books these days from Malcolm Gladwell, from Peter, from many of the folks who are bringing us insights from the brain sciences are amazing. And that is riveting. So good news, amaze also works. The third one, the fourth one, R, reassure. And we're actually at a place now, I think we're so saturated with bad news, that actually reassurance is focusing. I love the company Life is Good, you know, and we are so starved for good news that when you hear reassurance like Peter gave, like others are giving, it's really wonderful because it's startling, it's amazing, and it's reassuring. So as you reassure, you can also grab someone's attention. And the other R is reward. Offer someone $1,000, they'll pay attention. Offer them an X Prize, they'll pay attention. But as Peter said, it's really not about the money, it's about the reward, it's about the goal. When you have a goal, you tend to respond to it if it's something you think is worthwhile. C, charm. Charm. Charm someone. Joe Polish is a master of charm. Don Rickles, insulting is charming. You know, I mean, you can be charming without being cute and coquettish, or you can be cute and coquettish, but charming is also a wonderful way. And then H, help. When you offer someone help, that they need, they'll pay attention. You may have to frame it in such a way that you grab their attention, but we all need help, and if it's packaged in such a way— okay, so that's how you grab the attention. Now, how do you hold their attention? Well, you have to sin. You have to sin. Structure, Interaction, novelty. This is critical. You need the structure and you need the novelty. Too much structure, the presentation is boring. Too much novelty, the presentation is confusing. And if there's no interaction, people will tune out. That's why I'm not going to talk very long, because we're not interacting enough. If I were doing this for a long time, I'd be asking you questions, I'd be polling the audience, I'd be doing stuff to make us interact. You go to Dan's workshops, it's all interaction. You've got— best example, you don't have to be with other people. A crossword puzzle is interactive. That's why it holds your attention. You're interacting with the puzzle, the new clue, and it's very structured and it's full of novelty. Video games also, a lot of structure, a lot of novelty, it's interactive. The interactive screen is unbelievably focusing. And that's its both great power and its great danger. That's why people become addicted to it. The dopamine circuitry gets involved. I call it screen sucking, when you can't log off. You go on and you just say, "I'm just gonna check my email," and an hour later you're still there sucking on this screen. It's a big time waste. Beware of screen sucking. But at the same time, it can be a tremendous advantage because it's a way of really engaging the future of education. I want to submit for this X Prize because The future of education depends upon using interaction, depends upon the force of discovery, depends upon getting kids from the stupid memorize-and-forget curriculum into the discover-and-produce curriculum, and all project-based. And this is how to do it: structure, novelty, interaction. You sustain attention until you need to take what my friend John Ratey calls a brain break. You can't do it indefinitely. So every hour or so you need to stand up and move around. Then you can go back and begin sinning again. Okay, now, how do you manage your own? 3 variables: emotion, energy, and structure. Okay, this is how you manage your own attention. Ready, aim, fire. Ready, aim, fire. Ready is energy, aim is emotion, fire is structure. Energy, you see, a lot of managing your own attention has to do with prep work. It's not field work, it's not managing crises when you're spazzing out, it's getting ready for the project. So what goes into preparing your energy so you'll be maximally focused, what I call the Sensational Six. And these really work. It's just that most people don't pay attention to them. Number 1, sleep. Your brain needs to sleep. We don't know why, but we know it needs to. We don't know really what sleep does, but we know if you don't get enough sleep, you're irritable, you're distracted, and if you do it for a long time, It increases risk of obesity, depresses immune function, increases risk of cancer, high blood pressure, all bad stuff just due to lack of sleep. So you want to get enough sleep. How much sleep do you need? That varies. A good way to tell is you need as much sleep as it takes for you to wake up without an alarm clock. And that varies from person to person. Sleep. Exercise. Exercise is huge. My friend John Ratey's book, "Spark," The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Exercise is the greatest tonic in the world for cognitive function. It's not only an antidepressant, an anti-anxiety agent, a focuser, but it generates all kind of chemicals and peptides and hormones and oxygen that just make your brain blossom. It grows new nerve cells. John calls it Miracle-Gro for the brain. So work out as much as you possibly can. And how do you do that? How do you make it happen? Make it fun. Make it fun. I have a squash game that I've been playing with the same men for 30 years. Make it fun so you don't dread it. If you dread it, it's only a matter of time before you'll give it up. But make it fun, incorporate it into your life, and just think, this is so good for my brain. Sleep, exercise, nutrition. Nutrition is the whole new world. I mean, talk about— Google nutrition and you'll get more recipes than you know what to do with. And I keep trying all of them on me, and at one point I said, if nothing else, I have the most expensive urine in Boston, you know. But there's a lot to it, and I'm sure when Ray Kurzweil gets here, he'll tell you about his supplements. And there's a lot to it. There's real science behind it. It's just we don't quite know yet what the perfect recipe is. But take nutrition seriously, and certainly try to eat a whole foods diet, and And then there is a role for medication. If you happen to have attention deficit trait, as I like to think of it, medication can be a godsend. These other things often make medication unnecessary, but don't be afraid of stimulant medication. Used properly, it's way safer than aspirin. So nutrition, then meditation. Meditation and/or prayer. So much evidence now that meditation is just a brain freshener, a brain enhancer. A brain booster. If you do the meditation every day, you will definitely increase your powers of concentration and focus. The fifth one is cognitive stimulation. Stretch your brain. Talk to people who know more than you do. Talk to people who disagree with you. Teach someone something that you find interesting. I'll never forget, I was at a party once in New York, one of these fancy parties, and sitting next to someone, he said he'd just written a book about de Kooning. And I said, "Who's de Kooning?" Well, he looked at me like I was a poop on the floor, you know, he said, "What? You don't know who de Kooning is? You call yourself an educated man?" And I'd had enough wine where I said, "You know, you're the kind of guy who gives intellectuals a bad name. If you think de Kooning is so cool, you should be thrilled I don't know who he is." So you can share with me your great knowledge. Instead, you try to humiliate me and make me feel small. And he apologized. It was a great moment of victory. So, you know, so, and by the way, de Kooning was an artist, you know, contemporary of Jackson Pollock. And, but anyway, teach other people what you know. That's also stimulating. In medical school, the rule was see one, do one, teach one. And when you're able to teach something, it's really, it's an act of mastering it yourself. So cognitive stimulation is really good for your brain. Staves off Alzheimer's, keeps you young, keeps you excited, keeps you alive. And then finally, the sixth one is the one that I push that nobody else talks about: positive human contact. Connection. Friends are really good for you. People, particularly men, fear it. It's the greatest drug in the world. It's free, it's infinite in supply, and psychiatrists are writing millions of prescriptions for Prozac and not prescribing connection. Lead a connected life, have friends, spend time with people you love, spend time with people, groups you care about, get involved in causes you care about. That gives you the daily dose of what I call the other vitamin C, vitamin connect. It is hugely important for your mental health and your physical health. Do you know that social isolation is as dangerous a risk factor for early death as cigarette smoking? Most people don't know that. For some reason, we don't advertise it. For some reason, connection makes people nervous. Well, get over it! You know, reach out, let yourself be a little vulnerable. You know, it's really good for you. It's not good for you to walk around through life being appropriate. One of my most one of my most unfavorite words. Be inappropriate. You know, let loose. You know, what's you gonna lose? You know, you're just gonna have some fun and give permission to other people to have some fun. And you will connect and you will remember the moment. Don't go through life being appropriate. On your deathbed, you'll say, "Why didn't I miss the chance to live?" It's the most powerful drug we've got. It's free and it's infinite in supply. So those, those 6 for energy. Then emotion. You want to work in what I call your sweet spot. Your sweet spot, I'll just give me 2 minutes and I'll finish up. Your sweet spot is where 3 circles overlap. What you love to do, what you're really good at, what Dan calls your unique ability, and what advances your mission or someone will pay you to do. Where those three overlap, you should work there, 'cause that's where your emotion will be highest, and that's where that'll drive you to success. And then finally, fire is structure. Create boundaries. Create boundaries. Have a target. Don't do the stuff that brings you down. Don't be with the people who bring you down. Don't be with the naysayers and the skeptics and all that. Be with people who, who are rooting for you and you rooting for them. Have structure. And then, and then microstructure, have a timetable, have a break time, have the kind of structures that maybe aren't easy for you to set up, so get a coach to set them up for you, an assistant to set them up for you. Ready, aim, fire. You can manage your attention. You can manage your focus if you use these basic principles. Beware of getting carried away by the seductions, the interruptions, the heady feeling of being very busy, it's not good for you. You wanna do what matters most to you every day. And in order to do that, you need to have a plan that allows for both focus and hocus. Hocus is my word for the state of mind when new ideas come swimming in, when you get surprised by new ideas. You're all good at that. So you don't want to be so rigid in your focus that you exclude those, but you don't want to be so loose that you don't have the structure. And you combine the two, hocus and focus, and in a rhythm through your day, allowing for downtime, brain breaks, and rest time, you can positively be far more productive with the brainpower you've got than if you let it diffuse as too many people do these days. The message is extremely positive. The message is take back control of your mind, your brain power, so that you can use it to best advantage. The principles I've given you this morning truly work and allow you to be bold, as Peter was saying, in achieving your biggest dreams and even beyond.
Those first 10 to 14 days are really, really bad. The gremlins are not off the pain side of the balance. And we warn people that that will be the case. And this is the most important thing that we say to people, because if we don't say it, people feel like the pain that they experience in early withdrawal is the pain that they're going to be left with the rest of their lives. And since that is so intolerable, they go back to using their drug of choice. People with a severe addiction, when they come in, they see only 2 possibilities: I use drugs and I'm miserable, I don't use drugs and I'm miserable. What we have to teach them is there is a third way in which you don't use drugs or you use in extreme moderation and you're not miserable. The way to get there is to abstain for long enough to reset reward pathways, return to homeostasis, and then decide what your next steps are. So we recommend 4 weeks, and we warn people they're going to feel worse before they feel better. We recommend self-binding strategies. So what is self-binding strategies? That's an acknowledgment that willpower is a limited resource, and that if we're relying alone on willpower, we will not be successful. Therefore, we have to create literal and metacognitive barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice so that we can leverage our willpower and meet our goal of abstention for 4 weeks. A general category— these are just some general categories, you can make any up, any categories, But space is a category. So this is both literal barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice. Get the sugar out of the house. Get the alcohol out of the house. Throw your bong away. Run water over your cigarettes and put them in a garbage can far away so you can't go fishing them out again. Delete the app. Unsubscribe yourself from that sports betting website. These are the literal kinds of— you just create that little pause, right? That little pause that allows us to kind of take a breath and say, "Okay, I don't want to do this." And if there's a little bit of a break, maybe I'll be more successful. Time is a really interesting kind of self-binding strategy. So the dopamine fast itself is really a form of using time as a self-binding strategy. But also later, after the dopamine fast, we talk about, well, what do you want to do now? Do you want to continue to abstain, or do you want to go back to using in moderation? The vast majority of our patients want to go back to using in moderation. And even if I think they're not a good candidate for that, they often have to learn that for themselves. This is like a PhD, their own little PhD in neuroscience. So what we say is, "Okay, that's your goal. What is moderation going to look like?" And here we really drill down on details: when are you going to use, how much, how often, who are you going to use with, what are going to be your red flags for when you're using more than you said you were going to use or in a way you didn't want to. So part of that could be scheduling specific times for scrolling. Meaning. So this is really, I think, very helpful, looking at sort of what are— what's the larger meaning behind my wanting to abstain? When people report feeling better, which most of them do after the dopamine fast, we have them do a pros and cons list. What was better about not using and what was bad about not using? When people talk about what was better, they'll talk about things like, "I was more present in my life, less anxious, less depressed, better able to sleep, able to pay attention." The top of the list of what was bad about not using: "Couldn't hang out with my friends, 'cause all my friends use," whatever that drug may be, right? Number 2 was, "Bored, really bored. Had a whole bunch of time that I didn't know what to do with." Boredom is a really powerful and scary emotion. And we really, in the modern world, don't have to deal with it very much, and we don't really know what to do with it. Because boredom brings up all kinds of existential issues, like, "Wow, if I don't know what I'm doing with myself right now, what am I supposed to be doing?" I'm betting that many people in this room don't deal with a lot of boredom because you guys are way too busy, but I bet also that boredom would be pretty scary to deal with. And people is a great way to engage in self-binding. So, you know, doing the dopamine fast with somebody else, doing it together as a family, engaging in a 12-step community or other mutual help community. When we co-regulate our behaviors with other people, we are much more likely to be successful. Whereas if we live alone and we have to manage these consumptive behaviors alone, super hard. And then finally, there are a lot of interesting medications— not a lot, but I would say there are more coming down the pike. So for example, we have a medication called Naltrexone, Naltrexone, which is an opioid receptor blocker that we use to help people quit using opioids. The mechanism there is obvious: if you're blocking the opioid receptor, the opioid that you're ingesting cannot bind and stimulate that receptor. But we also use naltrexone to treat alcohol use disorder, and not just for people who want to stop drinking, also for people who want to reduce their use, because it turns out that the chemical cascade for alcohol, it works on the GABA, or inhibitory neurotransmitter system, but it also works on our endogenous opioid system. So when we're blocking the opioid receptor with naltrexone, basically what my patients tell me is, "When I'm on naltrexone and I drink a beer, I really don't want another one. I'm kind of good with one, whereas normally I would want to drink the whole six-pack." Also interestingly, remember that reminder mechanism, how when we're reminded of our drug of choice, we get a little boost in dopamine. Naltrexone actually helps decrease craving because probably when people are reminded or triggered, they don't get that same dopamine boost because the chemical cascade is blocked by the naltrexone. So they don't get triggered in the same way too. We have other medicines. Wegovy or Ozempic is being used now to treat binge eating and obesity. And we're also finding that it's helpful for alcohol use disorder. Alcohol, because it's caloric, works on the same appetitive mechanisms as food. This is a really old but very powerful study. This was a cohort of adult males who met criteria for major depressive episode and also alcohol use disorder or alcohol addiction. They were put into a psych unit where they received no treatment for their depression. But they also did not have any access to alcohol for 4 weeks. At the end of those 4 weeks, 80% of those individuals no longer met criteria for major depression. So what's very powerful there is, again, just by intervening around the consumptive addictive behaviors, symptoms of depression and anxiety get better. Finally, this pleasure-pain balance works both ways. Those gremlins are agnostic. Stick to whatever the initial stimulus is. If we press on the pleasure side of the balance, they hop on the pain side of the balance. If we press on the pain side of the balance, they will actually hop over onto the pleasure side of the balance, and we will get dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front. The classic and evidence-based examples of this are exercise, ice-cold water baths, fasting, meditation, and prayer. I put on here— you wouldn't necessarily think of meditation and prayer as doing what's painful, but for most people it's effortful, and anything that requires a kind of sustained and effortful engagement tends to be difficult. And when we do that— and we know that all of these things increase dopamine, but the way that they do it is different from the way that intoxicants do it. So you remember intoxicants, you get that burst of dopamine followed by dopamine freefall. Here you get something very different. You get the initiation of the activity with a slow increase in dopamine over the latter half of that activity, And then that dotted line represents when the activity stops, and you see here dopamine levels remain elevated for hours afterwards before going back down to the baseline position. You never go into that dopamine deficit state that drives the craving. So this is a wonderful way to get your dopamine. However, it's not without its own pitfalls. So anything that gives us dopamine has the potential to be addictive. Most personality types types will not be drawn to the kinds of addiction to pain, but I'm guessing that a disproportionate number of people in this room probably have the personality type that could get addicted to pain. And you see that, you know, with workaholism, exercise addiction, and the intervention really is the same, where we ask for people to take a break from that activity or the exercise or whatever it might be for a period of time to reset reward pathways, and then a plan for re-engagement. I also forgot to say that when we think about addictions that it's not possible to completely eliminate, like a food addiction—you can't just stop eating for 4 weeks—or a workaholism addiction—you know, you can't just stop running your business for 4 weeks—what we ask people to do is think of a bullseye and to really drill down what is the What is the specific activity that's problematic? What is the specific food that's problematic? And put that in the center of their bullseye and have that represent their drug of choice, the thing that they're going to abstain from. So for work, it might be a certain way of engaging with digital media after hours. Or I don't know, you guys could probably tell me better. For food, it's something like sugar, right? Giving up sugar. Then that second ring of the bullseye represents the trigger behaviors. So these are things that are not the drug itself, but the thing that trigger us to use our drugs. So it might be something like going by a bakery where there's a lot of sweets. And then that outer circle is the things that are healthy sources of dopamine, things we want to do more of, kind of approach behaviors. These are— oh, sorry. Hormesis is a branch of science. That is interested in looking at the ways that exposing ourselves to mild to moderate doses of toxic stimuli actually makes us more resilient. Hormesis is Greek for "to set in motion," and basically what's happening is when we expose our bodies to mild to moderate doses of noxious stimuli, our body senses injury and then essentially upregulates feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin, norepinephrine. These are examples of activities that might my patients have told me are hormetic for them. You'll see many of them are quite ordinary activities, but they're doing them unplugged. We are living in a time when we're constantly stimulated, so simply sitting quietly and not being stimulated for a period of time gives our brains time to rest and recover. I've talked a little bit about dealing with boredom and other painful emotions, and also slightly mentioned getting addicted to pain. Believe it or not, We used to think that rats on a running wheel just simply measured locomotion or physical activity, but then it became apparent that certain strains of rats will actually get addicted to running wheels, and they will run on ever smaller running wheels until their little rats— their little tails are curved up in the shape of a running wheel. Some of those rats will, in fact, run to death. And then I love this experiment that was done in the Netherlands. They took running wheels and they put them in nature, And they said, "Surely in, you know, God's great wonderful nature, nothing's gonna go into a running wheel." Not true. Rats, slugs, squirrels, all kinds of animals were intrigued by moving through three-dimensional space against gravity in a novel way, which maybe explains roller coasters and Ferris wheels and things like that. Finally, this is my last slide. I've really emphasized sort of what we can do in an individual way. Level to cope with our drugified, addictogenic ecosystem. But it's obviously not just an individual problem. This is also a problem that needs to be solved at both the community level, the level of governments. This is a meme somebody sent me: "Are you 18?" Because otherwise you can't go into this porn site, and as you can see, it's pretty easy to access. So— and we're now seeing legislation regulation that's happening in certain states that makes it, for example, harder for people under the age of 21 or under the age of 18 to access certain sites. I think this is really important. We need to have these guardrails. When I think about community, I really think about schools. You know, we were really led to believe that one child, one laptop would solve all of our education problems. Now what we have is one child, one inattentive child who's not learning. So I think that smartphones should essentially be banned banned from the top down during school hours. There are schools that are doing this now, and there are different ways to accomplish it. For example, there are these pouches that you— kids put their phone in the pouch, they lock the pouch, it can't transmit or receive, and then they unlock it at the end of the day. That way the school doesn't have to deal with holding on to the phones. Whatever it takes, let's get the smartphones out of the schools so teachers can teach and kids can learn. Yeah. Especially like K through 12. I mean, it's just so obvious that we need to do that. And then in terms of governance, I mean, so we're seeing, you know, the Facebook/Meta lawsuit. We'll see if that goes anywhere. There's legislation all over the country. In China, the government actually said that kids can't play video games except for 2 days a week, 2 hours a day, and that the corporations that make the video games are responsible for creating the facial recognition software to police it. And I know that that could never happen in the United States, but boy, parents in China were jumping for joy when they, when they came up with that. And I really do think that we need some kind of government legislation and guardrails to protect our kids.
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