The Truth Is, You're Not a Self-Improvement Project

What if I told you that you're an addict and you don't even know it? Don't worry, you're not alone. We all are, or most of us at least.

And here's a little experiment to prove it: once this video ends, turn off your phone and leave it in a drawer for the next 24 hours. Do you think you can survive without it? If you're willing to give it a try, you're already among the few people courageous enough to do so. That, sadly, doesn't mean it'll be easy.

In the first few hours, you might experience a feeling of emptiness or anxiety. You might feel your phone vibrating in your empty pocket. You might involuntarily reach for it while you're waiting on the bus or for an elevator. As your day progresses, though, a sense of freedom should wash over you. You'll all of a sudden be witnessing the world through new lenses, so to speak.

You'll start noticing things you haven't in a while, and your brain will be more active than it ever can be while mindlessly scrolling through social media. When the 24 hours are over, you would have gained a new perspective on your relationship with your phone, and you might even become more aware of how much time you spend using it.

But if we're being completely honest, chances are you'll be back to your old habits before you know it, because like I said, you're an addict. We all are. But our phones aren't the problem; our brains are.

There's a thin line between pleasure and pain, and you've probably heard this before. But even if you haven't, your brain knows this very well. At our core, we're hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, which makes the two linked. So much so that the part of the brain that controls these two very contrasting emotions is one and the same.

In our early days as a species, differentiating between the two was often the difference between life and death. With scarce resources, our survival depended on being able to distinguish between the pleasure of having a full stomach and warm shelter from the pain of starvation and the elements.

Fortunately, times have drastically changed since then. We're now living in an era of overabundance. Instead of scarcity, ideally speaking, this should make us happier, right? Sadly, the data shows that we're actually less and less happy. Depression levels have spiked in the last 30 years, and people in high-income countries have become less satisfied with their lives in the past decade. Even though we're arguably living in humanity's Golden Age, it turns out that the reason we're unhappy is because of this very overabundance.

We've become addicted to the feel-good drug that our brain naturally releases. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released in our brain whenever we're anticipating a reward. You can say it's arguably the most important neurotransmitter because it's responsible for our experience of motivation, pleasure, and reward.

Going back to the thin line between pleasure and pain that we talked about earlier, the truth is it's more of a seesaw and not a line. Your brain is constantly working to remain in a state of equilibrium called homeostasis—the balance between pleasure and pain.

So let's say you're scrolling through social media and you experience something pleasurable, like a cute cat video on your FYP. Your brain will immediately recognize that as a pleasurable experience and release dopamine, which will tilt the seesaw towards the pleasure side. Then the balancing act begins, and your brain immediately tilts the seesaw back in equal and opposite amounts to the pain side in order to restore homeostasis.

This is when you start feeling restless, anxious, and unhappy. Instead of sitting with this emotion until that balance is restored, you decide to indulge in more cat videos to get another dose of dopamine. This is where dopamine can become a double-edged sword. Because just like any drug, the more your brain releases it, the less its effect, and the more you're craving.

This is why it's recommended that we limit our time on social media and instead use our devices for something that will give us incredible long-term benefits. Today, we have endless ways of getting that quick fix of pleasure. Almost every second of our day offers an opportunity to be stimulated, whether it's sugar, junk food, social media, or porn.

The response in our brain is the same: a dopamine hit that brings about pleasure, only to be quickly followed by a balancing dose of pain. This is when our brain, in its constant effort to maintain our chemical balance, counters the massive surge of dopamine with massive drops that can lead to a lack of motivation, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and even depression.

Just like drug addiction, when we're repeatedly exposed to pleasure-producing stimuli, our brains develop tolerance, and then we need more and more of the drug just to tip the seesaw back and feel normal again. So we spend more and more time on our phones or indulging in junk food just to end the craving, even though it's not bringing us the same amount of pleasure anymore.

The truth is our brains aren't equipped to deal with this overload of dopamine that is so easily accessible today. Our brains really haven't evolved much through the centuries, but our access to pleasurable experiences has skyrocketed, which has caused us to build somewhat of an obsession with instant gratification.

According to Dr. Anna Lembke, the chief of Stanford University's dual diagnosis addiction clinic, the problem is that we're losing our ability to delay gratification, solve problems, and deal with frustration. Our obsession with receiving constant pleasurable stimuli means we now have less tolerance to pain stimuli, like anxiety, stress, and restlessness.

Our brains are literally becoming less equipped to deal with negative emotions. This is why, when you can't reach for your phone, you feel anxious, or why going for a walk feels like a waste of time when you could be playing video games on the couch. Instead of processing our negative emotions and dealing with them in a healthy way, we've resorted to simply taking another hit of our naturally released feel-good drug.

But as dark as this may seem, there is a silver lining. Natural dopamine release in our brains is about 10 times less than the surge of dopamine triggered by the use of most hard drugs. Having sex, for example, releases about 200 units of dopamine, while meth can release more than six times that amount.

This is why a natural dopamine addiction is much easier to fix than an addiction to alcohol or drugs, even though the process is fairly similar. So how do you cure your dopamine addiction? Well, the first thing you should do is stop. Stop scrolling through social media or watching porn or eating junk food or seeking any form of instant gratification.

Set a target for yourself, like a 30-day break from your crutch. Don't worry! Unlike with any drug addiction, you won't be abstaining forever, but this initial period is essential to rewire your brain and balance your pleasure-pain seesaw. This is what they call a dopamine detox, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that was developed by Dr. Cameron Sepah.

Its name could be misleading because you can't actually stop your brain from releasing dopamine, but abstaining from the constant blast of pleasure stimuli can help you identify unhealthy patterns and replace them with healthy ones. Once you achieve this, you may then introduce those activities back into your life, but this time in moderation.

A warning though: during your time of abstinence, you might feel anxious, irritable, or even empty. But you should embrace it! The idea is to delay gratification for as long as possible and get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

As paradoxical as it may seem, you may actually seek out pain instead of pleasure. It's a stoic approach meant to make us appreciate all that we are blessed with in life. So go for a long run, take a cold shower, or maybe even read about stoic philosophy and how challenging yourself can lead to a more disciplined and satisfied life.

When we do challenging things, it has the opposite effect that instant gratification has on our brains. Instead of getting a dopamine boost beforehand, our brain releases it after we've successfully completed our challenge, and this earned high is sweeter, more satisfying, and more long-lasting than instant gratification.

This may seem like a lot of hard work that requires a lot of conscious effort, but that's the whole point: conscious effort. A big reason for our dopamine addiction is that we unconsciously seek out pleasure-seeking stimuli because they're so easily available.

How many times have you grabbed your phone without even realizing it and found yourself scrolling through social media? How many hours have you spent scouring through Netflix late at night when all you really wanted to do was just go to bed?

If we're going to reset our brain's dopamine levels, we have to actively work to make that happen. At the end of the day, it's only natural to pursue enjoyment, but the kind of world we're living in today has created an expectation that we can always be happy. But the truth is that we can't, and that should be fine.

Seeking out pleasurable stimuli is good; it's the obsessive and elusive pursuit of happiness that is the real problem. So let's go back to our phone experiment from the beginning. Whether you've decided to do it or not, its purpose wasn't really to show you that you're a dopamine addict, but to help you gain some perspective on how your phone is affecting your life.

This little device is a gateway to countless amounts of fun that you could enjoy with just a swipe or two, and it almost feels silly not to. But as with all things in life, there are consequences. We've forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts, how to concentrate on the flow of our lives without any interruptions, and how to focus on what's really important.

The truth is this overabundant world we live in today means that almost all of us are addicted to something. So whatever dopamine addiction you think you have, do you think you can cut it off for long periods of time, like a day or even a month? Can you deny your natural programming, delay gratification, and seek pain instead of pleasure?

You can find out the answer to this question in a couple seconds when this video ends, and you're left with a simple choice: watch another video, eat another cookie, or play another video game. Give in to the dopamine craving that you know no longer satisfies you, or you can fight the urge and go for a walk, take a cold shower, or maybe even just be for a minute or two without any sort of stimulation.

You now know that it's crucial for your mental seesaw, your peace of mind, and ultimately your happiness. 11 seconds—it doesn't seem like a lot of time, does it? In fact, you've already been watching this video for about 11 seconds.

If you were running, and I asked you to run 11 seconds faster per mile, could you do it? Probably. Because 11 seconds isn't that much. But if you were running a marathon, and you managed to run 11 seconds faster every mile, how much time would you cut off your race? It's almost 5 minutes, and that's the difference between coming in first and coming in 100th in the world athletics marathon race.

11 seconds per mile might seem like a relatively small change, and it is, but by the end of a marathon, the difference is enormous. That's the power of small, consistent changes. They seem inconsequential, easy, or not even noticeable at first, but they lead to big changes in our lives.

These are atomic habits: small changes that lead to big results. We tend to not notice small changes in our lives because they have a negligible immediate impact. If we're out of shape today, we'll still be out of shape tomorrow. We won't gain weight overnight from eating pizza or lose weight overnight from walking for an hour, but these choices compound into bigger results over time.

Daily exercise will get you in better shape over weeks, months, and years, and a regular diet of high-calorie pizza will result in higher numbers on the scale. So to become the best version of ourselves, we need to learn how to develop good habits that compound over time.

In 2018, James Clear published his book, Atomic Habits: A Guide to Developing More Effective Habits and Behaviors. In the book, James teaches us how to change habits in a way that will last. But before we try to develop new effective habits, we have to understand our current habits because there aren't really good or bad habits, only effective and ineffective habits, depending on what your goals are.

So you need to constantly ask yourself: does this behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Right now, when we understand the habits that aren't helping us become the person we want to be, then we can start working to fix those habits.

There are three ways we can go about changing our habits: outcome change, which focuses on getting a different result; process change, which focuses on how we go about getting that result; and identity change, which goes even deeper and asks us to change from the inside out instead of the outside in.

Outcome change is what most of us do when we write New Year's resolutions. We write down the goals we want to achieve, the things we want to change in our lives. Yet often, we don't write down the process that will get us there, and we don't change our identity regarding that goal.

But changing your identity is the best way to stick to a new habit. Instead of not eating that entire birthday cake alone because you're trying to lose weight, you take one slice because you're a healthy person. Once habits become a part of your identity, it's easier to do and doesn't require much effort.

In fact, this is how most of our habits are formed. From an early age, we imitate the habits of people in our environment, and as we grow older, these habits become a part of our identity. But if you want to change, you have to let go of that identity and create a new one for yourself.

Doing that isn't easy. Trying to change who you are is going to require a lot of work because our brains like to follow the path of least resistance. But the good thing is that we can use that to our advantage. When trying to build a good habit, make it as frictionless as possible. Choose a gym that's on your way home from work. Prep healthy meals for the entire week so it's easier to reheat something for lunch than it is to drive to McDonald's.

Leave those vitamins you always forget to take right next to the coffee you never forget to drink. In order to find effective habits that work for us, we have to simplify as much as we can until things become automatic. Putting your vitamins next to your coffee makes taking the vitamins frictionless because you're pairing the habit you want to form with a habit you already have.

This is what James Clear calls habit stacking, and it's one of the best ways to reduce friction when building a new habit. If you're trying to get better at exercising, try doing five push-ups the moment you get out of bed. You know you're going to get out of bed every morning, so just tack a quick burst of exercise on.

This connection can help us find a new routine, and before we know it, the habit becomes automatic too. Maybe you found a new podcast you're dying to get into. What if instead of listening to it on your drive to work, you saved it for an evening walk or for the chores you're dreading when you get home?

By stacking the habit with a desirable reward, you get a dopamine hit, which makes it more attractive to do. The great thing about dopamine is that it's released when we anticipate pleasure. In fact, it's the anticipation that usually pushes us into action.

That's why the donut on the counter and the comfy couch are so appealing, because they make us anticipate a moment of pleasure. The rush of dopamine! So when you pair the thing you don't like as much but need to do with something that you already like doing, the dopamine hit can spur you into action.

This might sound like simple advice, but if you've ever tried to change your habits, you know it's not simple at all. When we're trying to form new habits, we need to make things easy for ourselves. If you told yourself you were going to read 50 books this year, what would your immediate response be? Probably one of fear—that's a lot of books!

But if you commit to 10 pages a day instead, the prospect of regular reading time doesn't seem so impossible. This is the difference between being in motion and being in action. When we're in motion, we're suggesting things to ourselves, planning, strategizing, and learning about how we can get to where we want to go.

This is important because being in motion is a necessary step to a change, but when we actually take action, our behavior changes, and we start to make real progress towards our goals. Thinking about reading 50 books a year is a beautiful idea, but sitting down and taking it 10 pages at a time is a much easier step to take.

James Clear also gives us a tool called the two-minute rule. If we break down our new habits into two-minute pieces, then we don't feel so overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. Instead of cleaning the entire kitchen, just do the counter. Instead of tackling an hour workout, do 2 minutes of squats.

Two minutes of a habit motivates us to mentally start the process, and once we start, it's much easier to continue and ultimately finish. This goes back to the small decisions we make—the 11 seconds we're trying to shave off our mile. Making the starting point feel manageable is a quick way to trick our brain into doing the most challenging part: starting.

If we make a bad habit too difficult to tackle, it'll slowly fade away. We can create our own obstacles, like leaving our phones in the living room when we go to bed so that we don't look at it as soon as we wake up. These kinds of commitments are intentional actions we take to make it harder to give in to the easy, sometimes ineffective old habit.

And because we're human, we also want these new habits to be satisfying, which is sometimes the hardest part. The reason we don't do these habits already is that they seem daunting or unnatural. They don't immediately offer us the reward we might find in other older habits, so it's important we find ways to get that satisfaction, no matter how small.

Have you ever written down your workouts or made a list of the foods you eat in a day? This kind of tracking gives us the opportunity to celebrate small wins. If we're trying to lose weight or get healthier, seeing that we resisted sugary treats for an entire week might feel really good.

That pleasure teaches the brain that the current behavior is worth repeating. You can do this kind of tracking with a simple pen and paper. Marking each day you complete the habit or logging your progress with more detail gives you a way to feel accountable and excited about continuing.

If you're a spreadsheet wizard, this information can be tracked digitally. It might help you find trends in your habits and give you ways to manipulate your data. Some apps like Habitica and Strides can also do this tracking for you.

Tracking in whatever form works for you can help us clarify a distorted view of how good or bad we're doing on our path towards habits. When we have evidence in front of us, we're less likely to lie to ourselves. The tracking itself can even become a reward that reminds us of the importance of the journey—not the destination.

So focus on your current trajectory rather than the results you're craving. Satisfaction isn't just at the end of the road. If you save a little money each month, the results may not seem astronomical at first, but you know that by the end of the year, you'll see big improvements in your savings account.

And look, we all break down. We all slip up, even when we're on a roll. But James Clear gives us a simple rule to live by when we're on this journey: never miss twice. Missing once is an accident, but missing twice is the start of a new habit.

So we have to just keep going and not judge ourselves for being human. One way to keep things interesting is to look for tasks that are right on the edge of our current abilities. Human brains love challenges, actually, but only in the optimal zone of difficulty.

If you're on a roll with your new habit, try turning it up a notch and keep your brain interested in it. Many times, boredom is a bigger threat to success than failure. We're all unique in how our habit forming will affect us. What seems boring to one person will seem the most interesting challenge ever to another.

We need to build habits that suit us, not ones that suit everyone else. So we can ask ourselves some questions like: What feels fun for me, but is work for others? What makes me lose track of time? Where do I get greater returns than the average person? And what comes naturally to me?

We're more successful in adopting new habits when we focus on fulfilling our own potential instead of comparing our progress to someone else. People are constantly changing! Think back to who you were 5 years ago, 10 years ago. As a child, you're different, and therefore how you approach life and growth will also be different.

As we find new, more effective habits, we can expect the journey to end. Can we aspire to become at least 1% better every so often instead of remaining static? That's how you find real long-term growth. Our habits shift, adjust to our future needs.

We're not defined by just one habit. Just because you work out for an hour a day doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other aspects to your personality. If that was your defining characteristic, then God forbid, you get sick or find yourself without the time or place to exercise for a day.

If one habit is the end of the game, and it gets interrupted, then we just find ourselves demotivated and angry. And who wants that? So, never stop making improvements! Mastering a habit doesn't mean it's the end.

We might get in great shape, but then we get injured. At that point, we need to form new habits to recover and heal. In the end, habits are important, but they're not everything. If we become so obsessed with picking apart our every move and decision, we're missing a lot of what is already good.

All of us can change our habits to be healthier, cleaner, and more efficient. Watch this video next to find out how to conquer your New Year's resolutions.

I made my first video on this channel in July 2017, after months of going back and forth on whether or not I actually wanted to create a YouTube channel. What would people think? What if people hate the videos and tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about? Who am I to talk about these topics? These were the thoughts that flooded my head.

If you've ever been in a situation where you have to start something or give a presentation in front of a group of people, then I'm sure you've had a similar emotion: it's the fear of being judged, the fear that keeps us in chains and holds us bound from achieving our true potential.

To understand why we care so much about what others think about us, we have to go back to the beginning of human history. Man, like many other animals, evolved to be social. Our survival was dependent on close-knit communities, tribes, and clans. We would hunt together, make shelter, and protect one another from predators should they dare strike.

Being together made us thrive. So at the time, being cast out of the clan almost always meant death. Without the technologies we have today, making shelter, hunting, and protecting yourself from wildlife was almost impossible for one person to do alone.

Sadly, even now that our society has evolved to a point where we no longer have to worry about predators and we have the tools and resources to provide food, clothing, and shelter for ourselves, the need to be part of a group still has been maladapted to our current reality.

Then we were scared of being left out in the cold; today, we're scared of getting canceled on Twitter because of something we said, or getting insulted for repeating clothes on Instagram, or getting hate comments on your YouTube video of people telling you your voice is becoming redundant and boring.

You see, this feeling of being ostracized has worsened woefully because of social media. By creating likes and dislikes, we brought to light this need to feel validated and seen. In an instant, you can see just how many people support you, and that number can be addicting.

It gets to the point to where we stop saying what we really want to say, and instead start saying the things we know will get us the most likes. Before you know it, you're posting certain thoughts, photos, and writing specific statements to get that attention and validation from others.

How many times have you seen your favorite influencers and creators online suddenly sell out, where it feels like they're no longer authentic, only doing or saying the things they know will please the algorithm?

I made a video about Unit 731 and the despicable things the Japanese government did in the Second World War. However, because it was not advertiser-friendly content according to YouTube, the video didn't perform extremely well. And that's fine.

This is the kind of 'airiz' and social conditioning that makes people fall in line and stop saying anything that might offend the people with money. It's like they tell you there's freedom of speech, but only when your microphone is turned off.

Growing up, I always felt different. Of course, I had friends and wanted to be part of the social group, but I had questions about the universe that people just didn't like to discuss. Who wants to talk about death and the afterlife on the school playground, after all?

Because of that, I felt different from everyone else, like a piece of a puzzle but from another set. And so I grew up worried that everyone would look at me as weird and different. So I tried my best to hide my essential dread to fit in like everyone else.

If you're watching this video right now, there's a high chance that you were also once a kid like me, who was so worried about being disliked that you shielded the real you just so you wouldn't be thought of as different.

If you're still in that position, listen: stop caring so much about what other people think, and start living your life authentically. Yes, caring what others think is healthy; however, it becomes hurtful when we try to change ourselves just to be liked by others.

You would enjoy your time on this floating rock far more if you choose to live your authentic self. And if someone rejects you because of it, you'll know that they were never meant for you in the first place.

Now, if that sounds like a lofty dream and not really grounded in reality, I understand. Because the sad truth of this entire thing is that we do need to be judged fairly by others. At its core, that's what makes our society work.

We agree that something is law, and whoever breaks it gets judged. We agree on certain moral principles, and whoever breaks them gets socially ostracized. We're judged at our places of work, in school, in our society as a whole. As sad as it sounds, gossip and ostracism helped the greater good of the group.

In 2014, Stanford Professor Rob Willer led a study that explored the relation of gossip and ostracism to the harmony and functionality of experimental groups. In this study, Rob found out that groups that allowed their members to gossip and hold out underperforming members were able to sustain cooperation and prevent selfishness much better than groups that weren't allowed to do so.

When we think of ostracism, we almost always see it in a bad light. However, this study proved that it does have a much more important role in preventing the weak and vulnerable from being bullied and ridden upon.

Have you ever been in a group for a school project only to quickly realize that there's one person who just wouldn't do anything because they know the group will pick up their slack? How does that make you feel?

Now imagine you could remove these people from the group and then gossip to other groups about how bad of a team player they are. It might seem harsh at first, but because of our innate fear of being ostracized, more often than not, these people would see the reality of what they're doing and actually act better.

When reinvited, it prevents these selfish people from exploiting the more vulnerable people in the group and allows them to reach their full potential without fear of being taken advantage of. The researchers concluded that exclusion compelled participants to conform to the more cooperative behavior of the rest of the group.

So yes, we need to be good team players for the proper functioning of society. However, being part of a group should never be at the expense of our own individuality. We should never get so scared of being ostracized that we do not say the things that matter to us for the fear of being judged.

We need to realize that we will get to a point in our lives where we'll begin to assess everything that we've been taught as children. When you start to outgrow old beliefs and walk into new ones, do not be held back by the fear of what everyone who you grew up with would think.

Caring about what other people think is necessary for the proper functioning of society, but when caring what other people think affects our abilities to make decisions for ourselves, that's when you need to pause and reconsider.

You're a person with your own thoughts, ideas, dreams, and goals. Don't let the fear of being disliked hold you back from expressing that you want to drop out of school to become a comedian. What would people think?

You want to start a YouTube channel? What would people think? You want to be with someone from a different culture or religion? What would people think? This one question holds so many people back from doing what they love.

It's like a chain that binds our neck and leaves us no room to breathe. We're like circus elephants held back by a rope that might only exist in our imagination.

Ultimate freedom is having the courage to be disliked: the boldness to stand firm in what you believe in, even when the crowd is saying something else. The courage to stand when everyone else is sitting and run when everyone else is standing.

The courage to be your authentic self, regardless of what everyone around you tells you to be. Instead, developing the courage to be disliked is not easy.

Remember that it's in our nature to care what other people think. So to stray from that, even minutely, would mean going against our very own biology, and that's never very easy. But the good news is that we can actually do it.

The first and most important thing to realize is that everyone, just like you, is worried about their own insecurities. When we go out into the world, we're often so consumed with our own insecurities that we feel like everyone else is thinking about us and condemning us. But the reality is, more often than not, just like you, people are so worried about themselves that they aren't really thinking about anyone else.

And when they do speak out against us, they're often projecting their insecurities onto us, trying to bring us down to feel better about themselves. Don't let them do that.

The difference between ostracization in early humans and what we have today is that with early humans, it was only your closest relatives and members of your clan that could cast you out. However, today, because of social media, anyone and everyone can have an opinion about us, share that opinion, and we're forced to take notice of it.

The problem with this is that we're taking criticism from people we wouldn't take advice from. Think about it: if you wouldn't let this stranger into your house for fear of invading your privacy, why would you let them into your head, the most private place of all?

Sometimes, the people judging you and not letting you live your true potential aren't strangers; they're childhood friends and relatives. When that's the case, we need to remind ourselves that the consequences of living outside the group are not as sinister as it used to be.

You have the tools and resources to thrive away from your primary group. And in fact, you can find another group to join—one that would accept you for who you are and not try to force you into being something you're not.

I know I've said some negative things about social media in this video and many others, but there are some positives as well. In this scenario, where you no longer feel part of the group you were born into or grew up in, the internet offers you a community of people who are willing to accept you from all over the world.

You just have to take the time to find them. Lao Tzu wrote, "If you care about people's approval, you will be their prisoner." The courage to be disliked is the key that opens the prison doors and sets you free to be the person you've always wanted to be.

Imagine you're an Olympic athlete. You could be a track star, a distance swimmer, or a figure skater. Whatever sport you choose, chances are you've been training for it since the moment you could walk. You have your gym routine down to a science.

You've hired specialized coaches to help you along the way, and you eat a specific meal plan that ensures you perform at your best physically. You're at the peak of your sport, and you've done everything you can to be one of the best athletes in the world.

But to win, your game needs to extend way past the physical. Mentally, you have to believe you will win, no matter what. Crouching at those starting blocks or mounting the balance beam, you must think that at the end of the day, you will end up on top of the podium with a gold medal around your neck.

Otherwise, what's the point in competing in the first place? The problem is that every athlete you're competing against shares this belief. And you know that! You also know that there can only be one winner, and so statistically, the chances of you coming out on top are pretty low.

Yet, you must go against your own logic and believe that no matter what, you will win. This is naive optimism, the belief that good outcomes are more likely to happen to you than bad ones in any given situation.

You must keep yourself unaware, or naive, of what could prevent you from your goals and forge forward as if you will achieve them, regardless of any external factors. No matter the circumstance, you believe things will work out for you, even when the odds aren't in your favor or when certain obstacles are in your way.

To be a naive optimist requires a suspension of disbelief. You must adopt a positive stance or perspective in every situation without familiarizing yourself with its nuance or details. It's like walking around with blinders on, ignoring everything that could go wrong.

Or, in the professional athlete's case, using naivety to forget about all your competitors and the statistical likelihood that you'll lose. The ignorance of the naive optimist can serve them well.

Have you ever felt anxious before a party where you don't know many people? You run over all your insecurities and the hypothetical social blunders that could occur, and it might feel comforting to go through all the scenarios that could go wrong in your head.

What will you do if you spill your drink all over someone or forget the name of a person who swears you've met before? But is it really comforting, or do you just end up feeling anxious and worried throughout the party, forgetting to enjoy yourself or meet new people?

The naive optimist would go into the night assuring themselves everyone will like them and everything will go off without a hitch. And while this might not be true, awkwardness is almost a given when meeting new people.

When you have positive expectations, you stop anxiety and catastrophic thinking in their tracks. You go into the party with a more open demeanor, making it more likely that you will make a good impression.

You could have a similar attitude when interviewing for a job. Believing you'll do well and achieve the desired outcome makes it more likely to happen. Blocking out the negative possibilities helps you focus on all the good things that could happen.

It prepares you to confidently communicate your credentials and why you would be the best choice for the role, instead of worrying about why you might not be. To take your naive optimism to the next level, you would prepare for the interview as if you already have the job.

Despite the other candidates interviewing for the same role, as someone who overthinks, I sincerely understand just how difficult naive optimism can be. Mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and even just regular worries and life struggles, can prevent us from seeing the bright side of anything.

From the outside, it can be easy to conflate naive optimism with manifestation. Both methods constitute an unwavering belief that you will achieve what you want, but that's about where their similarities end.

Manifestation is putting an intention out into the universe and expecting the universe to grant you that wish. It relies heavily on energy and things like journaling and visualization. At least how it's been popularized suggests that something will happen, even if you don't work for it.

On the other hand, the naive optimist knows this mindset doesn't guarantee all their wants and desires will plop into their lap. Asking the universe for the winning lottery ticket or your dream home won't get you those things.

Naive optimism is about tangibly working towards your goals and believing you will achieve them because of that work. It's being optimistic about the results of the work you've put in, regardless of the challenges you might face.

Sadly, our society has gotten to a point where being optimistic is now being seen as wrong, and to an extent, I kind of understand. Our shared culture is riddled with political discourse, climate change, rampant inflation, and a general fear that we're headed towards doom.

So it's hard for most people to see or even imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, naive optimists are often ridiculed for being arrogant or even stupid. And what these people don't realize is that a naively optimistic outlook might open up a new perspective.

In these conversations, while everyone is so focused on what could go wrong and the problems we face, you could be the person focused on making the best possible outcome a reality.

Another critique is that naive optimists lack the perspective to see the nuance in complex situations and it's a frustrating perspective to work with when solving complicated problems with tangible barriers. Optimism is good when doing focused detailed work like policy making or engineering, but naivety can hinder you from confronting genuine issues in large-scale projects.

The naive optimist does have their place, but it's also necessary to balance that perspective with a more realistic outlook. One of the best utilizations of naive optimism is at the outset of a massive project or challenge.

Naivety is helpful in situations where confronting the whole picture could discourage you. Consider it like starting a business or writing a novel or completing a triathlon. If you begin a big project thinking about all the problems you'll inevitably have along the way, you won't be motivated to start.

Instead, it's best to be optimistic that you will complete the project without considering the obstacles. And even if you don't reach your goal, you'll still be further along at the end than if you had convinced yourself that it was impossible from the start.

Naive optimism will always push you further toward success, even if you don't make it all the way there each time, and it allows you to try new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone. Because you're not as focused on what could go wrong, you build confidence and trust in yourself by giving yourself that chance, however naive it might seem.

This reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Usually, this phenomenon refers to the type of person with a low skill in a particular area who grossly overestimates their ability.

Anyway, think of an audience member watching a ballerina on stage and thinking, "That doesn’t look so hard; I could do that!" And then fast forward to them in a ballet class, struggling to do even the most basic steps with the proper technique.

Often, the Dunning-Kruger effect has a negative connotation. People are so ignorant about their abilities that they don't even know how ignorant they are.

But it's actually not that bad, because it is the Dunning-Kruger effect that allows people to take the first step to achieve greatness. Yes, that audience member who watched the ballerina grossly overestimated their skill, but that naivety allowed them to enter the dance studio.

And sure, they may have two left feet at first. Still, through perseverance and an unwavering belief that they can succeed, in just a few years of training, they too will be pirouetting and leaping across the stage while another audience member watches and thinks to themselves, "I'm pretty sure I could do this."

This is why kids learn things so quickly. If you spent significant time around children, especially toddlers, you'll notice they're very optimistic about their abilities and overly so. From dressing to pouring juice, to cutting their hair, they think they can care for themselves despite their lack of life skills.

But their naive optimism is what builds those skills. It allows them to practice, so eventually, one day, the orange juice ends up in the glass instead of all over the floor.

Older children also tend to overestimate their abilities, allowing them to have zero fear when trying new things. They're like little sponges eagerly soaking up information. They learn quickly and hungrily because they don't possess all the self-conscious baggage surrounding ignorance.

It might be helpful to adopt a childlike mindset when learning new things. It comes from a want to learn and forgetting how likely failure will be at first. Overcoming that initial mental hurdle is the most helpful thing naive optimism can do for you.

Another instance where naive optimism can aid you is when facing a difficult life decision. Maybe you or someone you know is dealing with a chronic illness, financial stress, or relationship struggles.

A naive optimist would believe in their core that they will make it out the other side. They wouldn't spend time considering what might be in their way or the realistic likelihood that things might turn for the worst.

And I'm not trying to say that naive optimism will make these situations quickly melt away. Instead, this philosophy is meant to help you see a favorable resolution in cases where it's too easy to focus on the negative.

As humans, we tend to have a bias towards the negative, and evolutionarily, this makes sense. We're urged to protect and prepare ourselves for the worst that life can throw our way.

But an overemphasis on the negative isn't helpful. It can cause you to overblow a situation and indulge in unnecessary worry, feeling overwhelmed by negativity when life inevitably becomes difficult, as normal.

But just because you encounter a challenging situation doesn't mean that you have to give up the idea that at some point, things will get better and work out for you.

With a naively optimistic attitude, you can make better decisions with your future self in mind. Naive optimism takes practice; as a chronic overthinker, it's not a mindset that comes naturally to me.

The key might be to fake it until you make it. If you act like a naive optimist, you will likely sincerely adopt the attitude over time. Start with the small things: I will complete everything on my to-do list. The meeting with my boss will go well. I'll successfully bake a loaf of bread from scratch.

Then hopefully this attitude will seep into more influential sectors of your life. Even if you don't become the textbook example of a naive optimist, these thought patterns will get you further than if you didn't use them.

Remember your ideal Olympic athlete self. You must believe you will win the race to reach the starting blocks. And when the race begins, you are in pace ahead of where you would have been without this belief.

Even if someone runs faster and beats you, the idea that you would win still did more for you than the belief that you'd lose. And there's always the next race—the one you know you'll definitely win!

But if you're still in your head, unable to entirely give yourself over to naivety, it might be helpful to check out another theory: optimistic nihilism. This belief is that nothing matters, but rather than letting that be a reason for fear and anxiety, embrace it as a good thing.

Now, click the link on your screen right now to find out.

The year is 1665 and Isaac Newton is looking out his window at an apple tree standing tall in his orchard in Lincolnshire, England. All of a sudden, a ripe and lonely apple falls from the tree and makes its way to the ground.

While most people would consider this a mundane event, Newton followed its trajectory with great interest. Young Isaac didn't know at the time that this apple would become the most famous piece of fruit in human history, as its natural attraction to the ground would spark a moment of genius, leading him to create the laws of motion that revolutionized modern physics.

Newton wasn't conducting an experiment when he discovered the laws of gravity; he wasn't overloading his brain with information trying to figure it out. He was simply looking aimlessly outside his window. He was bored.

But that was in the 17th century. Times have changed a lot since then. These days, we hardly ever allow ourselves to just stare out a window or sit in our backyards doing nothing but staring at the sky.

We never pause for a moment and just let our minds wander into deep, unexplored territories. Turns out that diving deep into our own thoughts is something that we don't really like to do.

We find it boring and will do anything to alleviate boredom, even if it means subjecting ourselves to self-inflicted electric shocks. This sadly is not an exaggeration!

In a study conducted at the University of Virginia, a social psychologist named Timothy Wilson recruited hundreds of student volunteers to take part in what he called thinking periods. Individuals were placed in small rooms with blank walls and no personal belongings. They were asked to entertain themselves with nothing but their thoughts for just 6 to 15 minutes.

When asked to rate their experience afterwards, about 50% of the volunteers did not like being alone with their thoughts, citing it was boring. Then researchers left the volunteers in the room for another 15 minutes.

This time though they introduced a button that participants could press to shock themselves if they wanted to. Around 67% of men and 25% of women chose to voluntarily inflict pain on themselves rather than just sit and do nothing.

This research suggests that sadly, a lot of us would rather experience physical pain than sit in our own thoughts. When left with nothing else to do, most of us immediately grab our phones, switching from one app to the other as the algorithms of the internet feed us with the exact content that’ll keep us from being bored.

What we fail to realize is that for these algorithms to understand what makes us tick, they take so much of our information. Companies then sell that information—things like your name, phone number, and home address to data brokers, who sell them to other companies.

In the spring and summer of 1665, an outbreak of bubonic plague spread through London, and by July had claimed more than 177,000 lives. Almost at once, people throughout the city began fleeing to the countryside, isolating themselves in fear for their lives.

Among those who fled was none other than Sir Isaac Newton. Of course, at that time Newton had not yet been knighted. In fact, he had not yet even witnessed the famous apple falling.

Interestingly though, his two years spent in isolation away from the bells, whistles, and distractions of the city was the time when Newton's genius came to life. He was able to invent calculus, create the science of motion, and develop a framework for gravity.

These two years spent in quarantine were Newton's own 15 minutes, isolated in a room with nothing to do. Newton, however, didn't seek external stimuli to prevent his mind from wandering; instead, he welcomed the boredom that often comes with deep thinking and stared out the window, which has without a doubt paid dividends for all of humanity.

During this isolation in the countryside, Newton also invented calculus. Throughout his life, he also made major discoveries in optics, proposing that white light is actually a combination of light from all of the color spectrum. Most famously, following his apple incident, he developed the three laws of motion.

In all fairness, attributing Newton's greatest accomplishments to him being quarantined in the countryside is a bit misleading. The truth is the incident of the apple falling wasn't an isolated moment of genius. Newton's various contributions to science were the product of years of hard work and dedication, tediously working towards these moments of revelation.

However, it is still helpful to recognize the importance of solitude and boredom in creating that particular Eureka moment. According to psychologist Dr. Sandi Mann of the University of Central Lancashire, once we start daydreaming and allow our brains to wander, like Newton did when he looked out the window, we start thinking beyond the conscious and into the subconscious, which allows for all sorts of connections to take place.

This is called the default mode. When you're bored or performing mundane tasks, like doing the dishes or folding the laundry, your body may be on autopilot, but your brain is actually pretty busy.

When in the default mode, your mind gets the chance to connect to different ideas, try and solve some of your most pressing problems, and even create personal narratives or set goals. This is why programmers often tell you that they figured out their problem with their code just as they were jumping into bed, ready to get some shut-eye.

Or why you feel like your best ideas come when you jump in the shower. The problem is that today, those are the very rare moments that we allow ourselves to be bored. Every other time, we almost always choose the electric shock method.

Living in a society where we have the entire world of entertainment at our fingertips has led to our immediate dissatisfaction with even seconds of boredom. The more we fill our world with fast-moving, high-intensity stimulation, the more we get used to it, and the less of a tolerance we have for boredom.

On average, Americans reach for their phones 344 times a day—that's once every 4 minutes! From quick email checks to diving down the rabbit hole of reels and memes, Americans spend an average of 2 hours and 54 minutes on their phone each day, with some people clocking up to 10 hours a day on their phones.

Without a doubt, technology has definitely made the world a better place, but this unhealthy dependent relationship we have with our phones is robbing us of our most creative selves.

German psychologist Theodore Lips proposed one of the first definitions of boredom in 1903, saying, “Boredom is a feeling of displeasure arising out of conflict between a need for intense mental activity and a lack of excitement to it or inability to be incited.”

In other words, it's an underwhelming state where none of the options available to us seem appealing. Instead of letting this feeling run its course, we overstimulate our brain and prevent it from taking advantage of the true power of this downtime.

Our first instinct when we experience boredom is to just endlessly scroll through feeds, switching through social media apps even when we're walking from one room to the next or waiting for the cashier to bag our groceries.

We've become conditioned to constantly seek out novelty and deliver the very hit of dopamine to our brains. Sadly, once that sense of novelty fades, it leaves behind a stronger feeling of boredom, which we then try to get rid of with even more stimulation.

It's a vicious cycle that keeps our brain occupied with mindless entertainment designed to capture our attention for the longest time possible. Studies have shown that when given tasks that require minimum mental capacity, participants often contemplated their future and their plans for it.

On the other hand, if your brain is constantly consumed by stimuli, it'll rarely have the time to think of the bigger picture and is less likely to set goals for the future or to be more creative.

A 2017 study from Georgia Institute of Technology measured the brain patterns of more than 100 people. Participants were asked to focus on a stationary point while they lay in an MRI machine. The goal was to figure out which areas of the brain work together during an awake but resting state.

The team compared the data with questionnaires that the participants filled out about how much their minds wandered in daily life. It turns out that participants who had reported more frequent daydreaming scored higher on intellectual and creative ability and had more efficient brain systems recorded on the MRI.

These findings are supported by a lot of artists when discussing their creative process. In his book, Creative Quest, music producer and drummer for The Roots Questlove wrote about his battle against the many distractions available to us in today's world.

On the face of it, it doesn't make any sense. Boredom seems like the least creative feeling, but it's actually a way of clearing space for a new idea to spring back up. Similarly, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, formulated all the ideas for her book during a 4-hour train ride from Manchester to London.

If she had an iPad and binge-watched her favorite Netflix show instead, she probably wouldn't have brought Harry and his magical world to life. In his book Daily Rituals, Mason Currey studied the routines of hundreds of other artists, writers, and creatives, and concluded that boredom is a recurring theme that leads to the mind wandering and having a kind of diffused focus, which allows for creative production.

This diffused state is when the mind enters its default mode and comes up with its best work. Perhaps the best proof of this truth is none other than Albert Einstein himself. Einstein took over where Newton left off and gave us a more advanced definition of gravity with a notion of a curved spacetime.

Einstein was known for his extremely vivid imagination and inspired thought experiments that allowed him to define time as the fourth dimension and to change our understanding of the mechanics of the universe itself. Many people believe that the seeds of his genius were planted during the year he took off from high school in the 1890s when he simply wandered without purpose and contemplated the world, free from any external pressures.

Throughout his life, Einstein would take regular walks to clear his mind. In a letter he wrote to his friends while sailing in 1932, he said, “A cruise in the sea is an excellent opportunity for maximum calm and reflection on ideas from a different perspective.”

It was clear that he knew the importance of sitting still and letting the mind wander. Our history is full of many great thinkers who have been conscious enough to take advantage of their downtime and utilize it in the name of creative production.

Psychologists today encourage parents to allow their children to be bored instead of occupying all their time watching YouTube on their tablets. The idea is to give the young minds the time and space needed to discover, create, and find their own genius.

Teaching people, especially kids, how to use technology to improve their lives while also self-regulating their exposure to it should be a crucial part of digital literacy. There's a saying used in tech: when the product is free, you are the product.

Our attention is being fought for by a magnitude of applications, and at the end of the day, we're left with no time to just sit and contemplate our own life and experiences. But that shouldn't be the case!

Next time you find yourself reaching for your phone when you're bored, remember you're choosing to voluntarily shock yourself instead of looking out the window and contemplating on your own metaphorical apple falling from the tree.

You'd be surprised what your mind can achieve when you just allow it to wander for a moment.

Are you the type of person to analyze every second of the interaction you just had with someone for hours on end, or are you normal? Either way, you probably don't think all that hard about every single detail of the decisions you make in social situations.

But believe it or not, there's an entire scientific field that applies to social situations and decision making. We're talking about game theory. Game theory can be used to analyze both economic and social situations.

It's essentially the science of strategy, and just like the reality it is trying to model, game theory can get really complicated. And yes, although game theory is relevant to games as we typically understand them, such as poker, most research in game theory focuses on how groups of people interact.

Let's first define what a game is. What exactly is a game? It sounds like a stupid question, like who doesn't know what a game is? But games in the field of game theory are a slightly different concept from what you might expect when it comes to game-theoretic analysis.

A game constitutes any interaction between multiple people, where each person's payoff is affected by the decisions made by others. Let's apply this definition of a game to a couple of games.

Is Sudoku a game? Well, in the traditional sense, sure. But in game theory, no. Sudoku is not a game because how you decide to complete the puzzle doesn't affect any other player. There is, after all, only one player in the game: you!

What about tic-tac-toe? Is that a game? Two players can play the game, and each box that is filled by one of the players affects the other player. Winning requires both players to respond optimally to what the other player is doing, so yes, it is a game.

You could also have a situation where two shop owners choose from a finite number of positions to strategically place their shops for maximum profit. They are each affected by what the other person does since they may be opting for the same market, and there's certainly a win-lose situation here.

So even though placing your shop may not sound like much of a game in the eyes of game theorists, it certainly is.

Game theory is the study of games like these, and game theorists try to model games in a way that makes them easy to understand and analyze. I say easy, but a lot of games can end up having pretty similar properties or reoccurring patterns, and more often than not, things can get pretty complicated.

Game theory has two main focuses: cooperative games and non-cooperative games. Most game theory models involve five conditions. It goes something like this:

First, each player has two or more choices or sequence of choices. Think of these like typical moves in a game, like moving a chess piece.

Second, all possible combinations of decisions or plays result in a clear outcome. Basically, you can win or lose.

Third, it's clear how you can win or lose, and participants will gain or lose something depending on the outcome.

Fourth, the players know the rules of the game as well as the payoffs of other players, meaning everyone is aware of what is desirable to the other players as well.

Fifth, the players are rational, sensible people. Rational here means strictly that when they're faced with two alternatives, they'll choose the option that provides the greatest benefit. While players know the rules and their opponents’ options, they don't know their opponents’ actual decisions in advance, so players must choose options based on assumptions of what their opponents might choose.

Some game theory scenarios are zero-sum games, meaning one player's win is another's loss and vice versa. Others, however, allow mutual gains and losses. These games can involve multiple strategies.

You can try to minimize the maximum losses another player can cause and make decisions based on probable outcomes. This all really just sounds a bit confusing, so here, just let me show you.

If life is indeed a game, then the first rule is to be skeptical of other people's suggestions. As we said, if it's a game, someone else is going to be competing, so there's definitely going to be competition and sabotage.

Perhaps a straightforward and well-known example is the prisoner's dilemma. The game goes like this: two criminals are caught red-handed and are arrested. Each has two choices—they can either stay quiet or testify against their friend.

Upon arrest, they are each separated and offered a deal: testify against your friend, and they'll let you off the hook easy with one year in prison and give the other person 10 years. If both stay quiet, the cops can't really prove the more serious charges, and both criminals would spend only 2 years behind bars.

If they both testify against each other, however, then both would get 5-year prison sentences. At first glance, keeping quiet seems like the best strategy.

If they both did this, they would both be out after just 2 years. But right before they're about to testify, one of the two thinks to himself, "What if I stay quiet, and the other guy rats me out?"

Without knowing what the other person is actually going to decide, it's a reasonable worry to have. The smartest solution to this would be to react in a way that is beneficial regardless of what the other person does.

A Nash equilibrium is actually a state in which no one person can improve given what the others are doing. This means you're picking the best response to a particular strategy from your opponent. A quick analysis of the prisoner's dilemma reveals that they would both most likely testify, which is the Nash equilibrium for this problem.

This is because, regardless of what the other person does, testifying will lead to a maximum sentence of 5 years, with the potential for a 1-year sentence. Meanwhile, if you don't testify, you could end up with the 10-year term. It's easily the safest thing to do, considering neither party knows what the other is going to do.

Even though both criminals are better off if they just stayed quiet, the individual incentive wins over group interest. Testifying is a better option because you know that you'll be in trouble if you stay quiet but your friend testifies.

But if you can think of that, your friend can too, so he knows you're likely going to testify, given that it's the safer option for you. And you know he's likely going to testify too for the same reason, and you know that he knows that you're likely going to testify. You see the loop that's forming?

These types of problems are examples of non-cooperative games, which means the two prisoners can't convey their intentions to each other. If they were able to talk to each other, however, we would be in a cooperative setting, and that would affect the likelihood of certain outcomes.

As you can imagine, for example, it would become much easier for them to agree beforehand that they're both just going to stay quiet. On the contrary, a coordination game is one in which everyone benefits from working together.

There's no incentive for either party to cheat since it will result in a worse outcome than if they just cooperated. A good example is driving on the correct side of the road. You win nothing by driving on the wrong side of the road, but sometimes you lose without even playing.

The principal-agent problem is when one person is allowed to make decisions on behalf of another person. In this situation, the first person is likely to prioritize their own interests and pursue their own goals.

And well, yeah, that's the basis of modern politics! Game theory can also be applied to biology. In fact, its application in the field of biology has allowed biologists to answer a lot of questions about evolution, which is remarkable since game theory was never designed for this.

For example, it's helped scientists explain biological altruism, where an organism acts in a way that is most favorable for the overall species, even if that action is harmful to itself.

A bird might warn the rest of the group about the arrival of a predator, doing so risks its own life since it essentially announces itself to the predator. But this can later help that bird, assuming it survives, of course, when other birds return the favor and warn it.

These concepts might help you anticipate some of the strategies others might be using to get one over on you. But who really knows what they're thinking? The concept of guessing others' moves is what makes the game so tricky.

While each player is likely to be certain about only their own move, they still have to speculate about other players’ decisions. More importantly, other players' conception of every other player's decisions. Essentially, you are no longer making a decision based on what you think is right; rather, you're anticipating what your opponent thinks is right and simply reacting to it.

But then again your opponent is doing the same exact thing. So who's really making the decision here? Whose mind is the actual decision being made in? Let's put it another way: each player must know their own chance of coming out on top, guess everyone else's chance, and also guess what everyone else is guessing about their own chances of winning.

Not only this, but you also really need to be able to guess what other players are guessing about your guesses about them. And now look, we're confused again!

Another problem is that although game theory has many benefits, it would be impossible to properly apply it in all situations. There will be times where rationality might not offer the right solutions, or where mutual benefit might not be the most ideal outcome.

When you come up against these, you have to not only recognize them but also decide whether using game theory would be the most helpful way to deal with the situation. By then, the moment could already be gone! The assumption that everyone is going to be rational, a basic premise of game theory, is also a really risky one.

Humans can be extremely unpredictable and emotional, and this makes the guessing work near impossible. There's a ton of real-life examples that illustrate the basic concepts of game theory.

Apple and Samsung are involved in an endless game of advertising. It's not like either company needs to advertise, besides advertising can get extremely expensive. So why not just forego this task altogether and use the money for research and development?

If both companies did this, then they would probably have better phones by now. But sure enough, Apple banks on the possibility of Samsung advertising and gaining an edge over the market, and Samsung does the same.

And that possibility soon turns into a certainty, you and I have all come to accept now. This is an extremely simplistic example that bypasses many other variables, but you see the basic concept.

Another good everyday example can be found in the treatment of public goods and property. If everyone decides to be good citizens and not litter, society benefits as a whole.

But you're inevitably going to come up against one or more people who choose to essentially go rogue and behave selfishly by littering. This leads to society as a whole bearing the cost of cleaning up, all the while making not littering a less worthwhile decision.

After all, if the road's already littered, the work to not litter is that much less meaningful. You can probably now see how applicable this is to other situations in life, like every big important decision we're supposed to be fixing. But more on that later.

As interesting as it is, game theory can still only analyze simple situations with well-defined constraints. You must remember that any model is a subset of reality, no matter how good it is; it's essentially intellectual guesswork.

The bottom line is, we're all constantly in the game. It's pretty impossible not to be. Our lives are endlessly and unavoidably impacted by the actions and decisions made by others, so you might as well play the game the best you can.

And that interaction you spent hours analyzing? After the other person has already long forgotten it. Maybe it's not such a bad thing after all. We're just trying to win the game of life, and the reason to win is so that you can be free of all of this.