Escape the cave

Before we dive in, I went to the UK recently and I took all this footage, and I have no idea what the hell to do with all of it. So, I'm just gonna let that play as I'm talking about this stuff.

I wanted to address a topic that so many of you guys message me with. I see it in the comments section all the time. Comments like, “I feel like every day I live the same day. I want more than anything to be motivated but it just feels like no matter what I do, nothing works. I feel so stuck.” So, maybe you're in that situation. Maybe you watch self-improvement content like this hoping for an aha moment—you know, the special sauce, the secret mindset that'll propel you out of the current life that you live. The mindset that will make everything make sense.

But here's the thing. Instead of waiting for an aha moment, you can be doing something a lot simpler. There's an easier way to escape the mental patterns you've imprisoned yourself into, and that is to go outside. And I know that probably sounds super condescending. Go outside? How is that going to solve my financial problems, make me eat healthier, or stop being depressed?

But here's the thing: yes, I mean literally go outside. We'll talk about that in a second, but I mean go outside in every sense of the word. Because so many of us don't realize just how inside we've become. We're living inside our house, inside our room, inside our heads, inside ourselves. It all just feeds into each other, and then we feel trapped. It happens so gradually and so naturally; we just sort of wake up one day and ask ourselves, “How come my life feels so small?”

I remember when I was a kid, there were new sights and sounds and people to meet, things to experience. But now it just feels like my life is tiny; there's nothing new under the sun and that's because we've become inside. How did this happen?

See, the more time we spend being inside our house, inside our car, on our phone browsing social media, watching YouTube videos on our laptop, and the less time we spend as part of a community, being a person in the world, exposing ourselves to sunlight and external social scrutiny, we become isolated. When our mind isn't focused outward and instead completely inwards, it's like we become toxically self-conscious. Not self-conscious like, “Oh, do these jeans make me look fat?” but more like we become hyper-aware of our own existence.

Our thoughts become extremely loud. We start to obsess about our own thoughts and our own ruminations, and our brain needs variety. You know, a healthy mind goes to different places, sees different things, engages in unique challenges, talks with different people. So, what do we do about it?

You know, not all of us can just quit our jobs and start eating sushi. Most of us are constrained. We're all pretty short in the freedom department. We can't just do whatever we want. Most of us have to go to a job whether we feel like it or not. We have to make money to support ourselves and our family so we can pay rent. So, if that's you, are you doomed? Obviously not. Why would I make this video and just tell you you're doomed?

You probably know instinctively that there is an answer. There is a way to break out of this pattern, and that's why I'm saying go outside. Because sometimes the most complicated problems have the simplest solutions. If you're feeling stuck, and you're looking for answers, and you want new ideas, and you want to change things up, then the very first thing you should do is to leave your house.

Go on a walk to somewhere you haven't gone before. By physically going somewhere different and taking in the surroundings, I guarantee you will think thoughts you haven't thought before. Because as it stands, if you've been doing the same thing every day, you will think the same thoughts that you think every day. How else are you going to get a new thought?

What's in your brain is already in there. So when something bubbles up from your subconscious, it's not going to feel very new to you because it was in there the whole time. We don't think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. Just by doing that often, going for a walk and experiencing something new, you'll see your problems from a new perspective.

You'll gain some distance from your problems because from a distance, even the biggest problems can seem small. Even the most complicated scenarios can start to gain some simplicity. And speaking of thinking new thoughts, limit your time on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok because these algorithmically dependent platforms are the antithesis of thinking new thoughts.

These apps are literally designed to keep you watching the same content constantly. Like anybody who spends any time on YouTube has the exact same complaint: they’re like, “Man, I hate my YouTube homepage. There's like three channels on here. Where's the entire rest of the internet?” Like it's wild. My own YouTube homepage is like three types of videos: it's like hockey highlights, rust gameplay, and Chiropractic adjustment compilations.

Like one day in the entire year, your friend could be like, “Oh, check out this cool golf video. You should watch this funny golf video.” So you look it up and then you're like, “Okay, that was kind of funny; I watched most of that.” And then for the rest of your life, your recommended golf content—you get sucked into this whole golf phase.

So it's like you get trapped into these very sticky topics. You get trapped into this mathematical algorithm and your world shrinks and shrinks and shrinks until you're thinking the same thoughts and watching the same things for the rest of your life.

Anyways, the world is huge. There are so many thoughts to be thought. There are so many things to be thunk, so many things to experience, so many places to go. There are answers to your problems. Your giant complicated problems might actually have very simple solutions. But maybe you just can't see them because you're right in the middle of it.

So go somewhere new. Physically go experience something new—15 minutes, 20 minutes. Go walk somewhere new, and while you're out there being a person in the world, ask yourself, “How can I be motivated by, incentivized by, and look forward to the things in my life? What problems do I have that if I were to solve them, my life would be more exciting? I wouldn't need to escape all the time.”

And if you feel like you're just in this phase of escaping from life—playing lots of video games, being on your phone a lot, watching Netflix—ask yourself, “If I keep escaping from reality, how do I create a reality I don't want to escape from? How can I help myself make my life more exciting and more hopeful?”

Hopefully, this video gives you some perspective and gives you something to think about because personally, in my own life, just gaining some distance from my problems adds a level of clarity that has been desperately needed.

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Increase friction in the way of watching YouTube content. Increase friction in the way of watching or browsing social media. And while you're in the cave because you have to get dressed and clean up after work, don't design your cave in a way that just keeps you in it—that keeps you stuck in it.

So many people just buy bigger TVs, bigger iPhone screens. They invest in better hardware for their gaming PC. They get a comfier couch. They find ways to make being inside the cave as appealing and as comfortable and as pleasurable as possible. But then you have to think about instead incentive structures, right?

Like, are you interested in, motivated by, and incentivized by the things in your life, or are you motivated by increasing the quality of your escapes? Are you motivated by buying a bigger TV so you can watch more YouTube content that you don't give a damn about, really, and it makes you feel terrible? Or are you focusing on and giving air time to the types of thoughts that make the rest of your life better? You know, that help you be a person in the world? To help you be a character that people know?

You know, that's why I say things like, “Let people know your name.” Because even something as simple as that phrase, “Let people know your name,” it just implies like, yeah, be somebody who people know and think about. They know your character.

And a lot of the time what you find is when you're part of these sub-communities—when you go to choir practice, when you go to drop-in hockey, when you go to this book group that you never go to, or where you go to this young adults group at your church or something, right? You have all these things that you probably could make an effort to be like, “Hey, what's going on with this? I know I don't show up, but I want to start showing up.”

And a lot of the time, the people who run these things are like, “Oh thank God, yeah we could use more people.” But a lot of the time, by being a part of these communities, we learn so much about ourselves because of the role that we play in these sub-communities.

And I think this is just part of our human nature. We need other people to remind us of who we are, and if we don't—people are invaluable; they provide invaluable feedback too, right? Like, if you say something and jokes just continually don't land right, and you're seeing and people look at you like you have some sort of problem, maybe that's an indication that your comic material needs some work. Maybe you need to learn how to listen instead of just monologue like me.