It's not complicated

You know when you're walking down the street and you see a dude, and he's muscular, and you think to yourself, "That guy looks pretty good. He's nice and jacked. He takes care of himself." A stupid question is wondering how he got that way, 'cause everybody kind of knows. You kind of know that he probably goes to the gym. In fact, he definitely goes to the gym. That guy shows up to the gym regularly and has probably been doing that for a long time, and he looks that way.

What doesn't matter is how he got to the gym. What doesn't matter is his reasons for going to the gym. Maybe he's super angry at some ex; you know, he's like Revenge lifting. Or maybe he has a very healthy outlook on life. He loves himself so much as he tucks himself in at night, and he thinks about how lovely it is to go to the gym, and he just can't wait to go there. Or maybe it takes him all day to summon up the motivation to go to the gym, and he finally guilts himself out of self-loathing to walk in the door.

But ultimately none of that matters. It doesn't matter how much or how little mental resistance was in the way for him to go to the gym because all we see is the result of him making a binary decision to end up going to the gym more often than not over a long period of time. Almost everything in life is like this. More often than not, life is exactly as simple as we need it to be, and it's us that brings the complication into life. We completely over-complicate things. We like to paint this very emotional picture.

We like to have strange incentive structures, maybe some guilt, maybe some excitement motivation. We add some weird things to things that probably don't need to be so weird. If we want certain outcomes in life, it'll almost certainly come down to either doing or not doing things that we already know need doing or not doing. And anytime this becomes clouded, it's almost always because we clouded it. The things aren't clouded.

So here's kind of a weird example. So I have two, well, I have three sisters, but I have two sisters in university, and they're always writing essays, always writing papers. And I sometimes have to help them out with it. Sister number one generally has very little roadblocks in the way of just writing a paper. You know, 99% of papers you have to write at school aren't actually papers; they're kind of just like reflections and sort of polished train of thought. It's like, what do you think about this article? Sister number one just writes it. It's probably pretty good, and she gets decent grades.

Sister number two will procrastinate and really try to think about the best possible way to write this and whether it's good enough. Or maybe do I sound stupid, or maybe it sounds like I haven't even done the readings? And it's so emotionally and psychologically taxing for her to do these reflections. It's almost hilarious to watch. But unsurprisingly, she always ends up doing it. They both always end up doing it. And the funny thing is they get pretty similar grades, right? It's kind of a wash.

And that really got me thinking. It's like, sister number two, just do it. You're not going to think your way into becoming all of a sudden like a 600% better writer. Here's another example: if you are a single male, and you lie awake at night wondering why you're not married with children yet, and you're also somebody who doesn't ask girls out ever — you don't go on dates, you don't do any of that stuff — then you might as well not bother feeling bad about yourself because you already know what the solution to your problem is. If you want to find a wife, you probably have to ask a girl out.

So the next girl that you come across that you want to ask out, just know that you can either ask her out or not ask her out. And if you choose not to, her life will go on and your life will go on, and everything will probably work out okay. But you're not going to be married. So if you want that outcome, you have to behave a certain way. You have to ask girls out if you want to eventually get married.

If you just almost look at things like a robot, it might help you. We might need a little bit more robot energy in our lives where we kind of just take the overcomplication of the human psyche out of it and just perform optimally when it comes to tasks and just getting things done. You don't need emotion, right? You can bring emotion into things that actually require it: art, relationships, wait. But I just said you got to not think about asking a girl out. So maybe not relationships. Maybe asking her out is like not a big deal and you should just do it, and then on the date, bring your personality with you.

Hopefully, you understand the point I'm trying to make, and I'm not just sounding like a complete idiot in front of you. And one of the best ways to not sound like a complete idiot all the time is to educate yourself more often by listening to quality audiobooks using today's video sponsor, Audible. So the audiobook that I've been listening to recently is "Outlive" by Peter Attia. "Outlive" is all about longevity and health, and it really gets you thinking. There are things that you can do in your life objectively that will maximize your lifespan and your health span, which are two different things.

Anyways, I'm not quite done the audiobook yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far, so I highly recommend it. And for those of you who don't know, Audible is the leading provider of audio entertainment and audiobooks all in one place. Every single month, they send you one credit, which you can spend on any audiobook of your choice, regardless of cost, and you get to keep that audiobook forever.

Audible members also get instant access to a rapidly expanding catalog of Audible Originals, podcasts, and exclusive series. Also, make sure that you check out my personal curated listening list using my link below, and also check out Audible’s best of 2023 list because there are some really cool titles on there as well. And if you use my link in the description below or text "better ideas" to 500500, you'll get a 30-day free trial.

Once again, visit my link below or text "better ideas" to 500500 to get a 30-day free trial, and thanks again to Audible for sponsoring this video.

Okay, so how do we apply all of this? Well, I think the bottom line is we all have to just slow ourselves down. We have to take a deep breath and just think about the few most important things that we have to do. Think about them as objectively as possible. Call them by name. Maybe it's something like do my taxes or submit my firearms application license to the RCMP; you know, for instance, clean my toilet. Whatever those things are, just try to look at them as if they are text, and then pick one and do it unthinkingly, right? Just perform the action.

And on your own time, when you're soaking in the bathtub or pampering yourself or watching "Succession," you can think to yourself, "What's my life all about? You know, where do I want to be in life? What are my hopes and dreams?" You can think about bigger picture stuff, but at the end of the day, to get there, you just have to do certain unemotional things that are either done or not done. So you just kind of have to do them, right? Not a big deal. Just do them.