When "Self Help" Isn't Helpful [The Zero Dot Podcast#26]

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, boys and girls, everyone of all ages, I'm Sam, this
is Daniel.

Hello there.

And John, well John will be back soon.

But welcome to the Zero Dot podcast where we come to kind of recharge our batteries and
remember that during the times in which our resources are down and the chips are down,

that's when we are our strongest.

Welcome back to Team Human.

This is where we recharge.

It has been a week and I can't wait to get started with today's episode where we talk
about some good things, some not so good things, some things we can do about those not so

good things, and then level set.

and give ourselves tools and resources to be the best human being we can possibly be.

Now, not to remind ourselves some of the bad stuff that's occurred for us, but my overlord
and savior, AKA our administration's president, has blocked a lot of things.

And one of the things they had blocked federal funding for was good old PBS and NPR.

That's right.

Public Broadcasting Service as well as National Public Radio.

Both those entities have been blocked.

Well, guess what?

A couple of weeks ago, and this comes from literally PBS.org themselves.

This is reporting from then Washington Associated Press, citing the First Amendment, a
federal judge on Tuesday agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from

implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for national public radio and
the public broadcasting service to media entities that the White House had said are

counterproductive to American priorities.

The operational impact of the U.S.

District Judge Randolph Moss's decision was not immediately clear, so we don't know yet.

How that works in terms of back pay, both because it will likely be appealed and also
because too much damage to the public broadcast system has already been done, both by the

president and Congress.

But here's what's important.

Moss ruled that uh President Donald Trump's executive order to cease funding for NPR and
PBS is unlawful and unenforceable.

The judge said the First Amendment right is to free speech, does not tolerate viewpoint
discrimination and retaliation of this type.

So.

We don't know where this is going, we'll take the wins where we can.

I'm a big fan of PBS.

I'm a big fan of NPR.

We need those entities, those national public radio, as well as the public broadcasting
service, which are all non-profit, by the way, all user funded.

We need those things.

So we're big, big fan of that.

And thank you, judge, Tuesday.

This is back in a couple of weeks ago for doing that.

We appreciate you.

but you know what that's not just the only one that we have here We actually have some
more recent news as reported on April 9th by Andy Corbally from the Good News Network I

believe we talked about this before but planting 30,000 trees surpasses the goal for
regenerating a rainforest on the Isle of Man and why this is important

Three years ago this month, GNN reported that a UK land trust had set the goal of
reforesting a 70-acre Celtic rainforest on the Isle of Man.

30,000 trees later, that's right, 30,000 trees later, the effort exceeded expectations and
finished ahead of schedule.

We love to hear that when it finishes ahead of schedule.

The budding rainforest instead stretches 100 acres across an area called Craig E Cowan,
and I'm...

absolutely butchering that name but that's how it seems to be spelled for me, owned by the
Manx Wildlife Trust which owns three properties for the sake of conservation.

Temperate rainforests are one of the rarest kinds of ecosystems worldwide and in the UK
are found in Wales, on the Isle of Man and a few other locations.

So it sounds like things are on track.

It does say it's going to take about 50 years for these trees to reach the level of
maturity where that lush microclimate can be seen.

A date too far off for some of the volunteers.

may have whom brought their children with them to show them what they had hopefully
secured for their posterity.

Isn't that

So with that said, uh as much as that is good news, I have a little bit more good news and
it is EU, European related, but it's not amazing and incredible news and could lead down a

kind of a waterfall of other things.

So the first thing is first, this news comes from uh a reporting.

organization called AffectingChange.org, EFF.org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

And they report this literally just came out two days ago, April 7th, by Christoph Schmon,
the EU Parliament blocks mass scanning of our chats.

They're saying here the EU's so-called chat control plan, which would mandate mass
scanning

and other encryption breaking measures has had some good news lately.

The most controversial idea, the forced requirement to scan encrypted messages was given
up by EU member states.

That's nice.

And now another win for privacy, the EU parliament has dealt a real blow to voluntary mass
scanning of chats by voting to not prolong an interim derogation from the e-privacy rules

in the EU.

That's a mouthful.

But basically, these rules allowed service providers temporarily to scan private.

So that's another win for privacy and communication all around.

However, EFF does say that it's not room for celebration just yet.

There's more to it and voluntary scanning is still a key part of it.

Unlike the United States, where I'm coming from, where there is no comprehensive federal
privacy law, boo, the general and indiscriminate scanning of people's messages is not

legal in the EU without a specific legal bias.

The e-privacy derogation law, which gave limited cover for such activities,

has now expired, that might sound like good news.

However, it seems like there's still a lot of conversations about how we can spread those
gaps across Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and others, and get legislation done, uh

especially relevant to our interpersonal communication services, to see if some kind of
scanning could be had.

So we're still on the brink, there's still endeavors trying to be had in terms of, I
guess, people want to read your lovely sexting messages, I don't know, whatever messages

you are.

Apparently, the government wants to know all about that, and it sounds like

Even though this has expired and the chat control plan has failed, there's still other
endeavors on the horizon.

So folks, I'm going to recommend all of you stay tuned on these issues at EFF.org to keep
yourself apprised of these things in whatever way you can, just so that you're aware for

your local general area, what's going to be affected by this and not.

If you're listening to this podcast or watching it, chances are you are a digital user.

And if you're one of our lovely, lovely EU friends, this might affect you.

So be mindful of that going forward.

As an American, I'm jealous about all this because we have no privacy law at all.

They're scanning all of our messages as we speak and they have all of this information.

But still, I'm going to call that a partial.

And we'd love to get your feedback on this.

So if you have a specific take, if you have insight, if you say, you know what, there is a
good reason for this.

Call me a skeptic, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

You can go to thezerodotpodcast.com, drop us a line or you can send us your questions at
questions at thezerodotpodcast.com.

We read every single one of those.

We keep ourselves apprised and we'd love to have a chat with you.

Maybe even have you as a guest on our show.

If you're a subject matter expert in this field, we'd love to know a little bit more about
this.

and can help educate us on this.

You know, this makes me think of, I have an uncle who lives in Nicaragua.

He made the very, I wouldn't say rare, let's call it uncommon decision, like a lot of
Americans did, which is they're gonna retire in a country that's not in America.

And most of that has to do with the fact that Nicaragua, the US dollar against Nicaragua's
currency, which I believe is called cortical, is very strong, like very strong.

You can retire like a king over there.

And that's what he did.

He bought like,

One quarter of a volcano and land I'm not even joking he owns a quarter of a volcano and
he turned it to a peanut farm And he has servants that work for him I don't know why were

they're called servants if they work for you and you pay them I would just call them
employees But that's what you call them there in Nicaragua and I bring this up because one

time he was talking to me And he had just gotten this package in and it was a surveillance
camera and he had it and he hooked it up And I helped him hook it up and I asked him what

was the purpose of it as well.

I just have the feeling

that my servants are stealing from me or doing something.

But you know, I'm not going to do anything with the information.

I just want to see if they're doing it.

And I told him like, well, once you know, you can't unknow.

Once you see what they're doing in their free time, by the way, probably an invasion of
privacy if you're doing it along their living quarters, you can't unknow the information

that you have.

So even if you choose to do nothing with it, you will know that forever.

And he went, oh, I hadn't thought of that.

And I swear to God, Daniel, he threw it out.

He didn't plug it in.

What I told him that like, mm-hmm.

So what a world, what a time to be alive.

I wonder if that was, this is my question.

I wonder if that was his plan.

You know what I mean?

Like we, or whether he just retired there and he was just, he just kind of like fell into
the peanut farming sphere or whether he was like.

I am retiring and I am buying quarter of a volcano and I am opening a peanut farm that I
will then get others to run for me or whether it was like, it all just kind of came about

by happenstance or whether he'd got a written plan of like, this is exactly what I know
I'm going to do when I go to Nicaragua.

I love your thought on that.

I'll answer some of the gaps for you.

So I don't think there was a plan at all period end of sentence.

And that's because he married someone from Nicaragua who was in the States.

They migrated over there.

And I think she had some part and my brother and my father listening to this podcast, they
can correct me on this, but I believe some of them had partially owned that land or maybe

not, or they acquired it.

They purchased it.

He just fell into it, right?

uh But what I always resonates with me

not just the surveillance story, but again how strong the US dollar is there in Nicaragua.

One time we went to what is equivalent to like a like nice four-star restaurant and it
wasn't just me and my uncle and his wife and my parents and even my wife at the time.

It was like 18 of us, maybe 20 of us all total and we like kind of took over the entire
restaurant and everyone ordered drinks, hors d'oeuvres, a full dinner and dessert.

All of it.

Now Daniel, I realize I'm using US dollars for this conversion, so I'm gonna try to do
some math for you real quick.

Hold on, give me a second.

Let's see.

So for 18 to 20 people at a four-star restaurant ordering all of that for everyone, no one
held back, we ordered everything, how much do you think that would cost for all 20 of us

in British pounds?

So not in US dollars, but British pounds.

pounds.

I've done the conversion for you.

Yeah.

Uh...

Mm-hmm.

It's a four-star restaurant.

We all ordered as many drinks as we wanted, tons of appetizers.

We all got a full course meal.

We didn't share a meal.

We all got our own individual dinners.

We all got desserts.

18 to 20 of us.

Is it?

Is it triple digits?

So you think it would be triple digits?

Like give me a number.

Like how much would it cost if you bought that here?

me, there's part of me that when you're saying that it's like so strong against their
currency that like, there's part of me that's like, this is going to be something insane.

Like it costs like 80 quid or something like that.

But then there's also part of me that's like maybe like a hundred and something, maybe
200, something like that.

But like there's a big part of me that wants to say something really, really low, like 60
to 80 quid.

50.

50, I fucking knew it, I knew it.

Oh my God, 50 British pound sterling.

That is insane.

about $68 US.

That's how much it cost.

And that included the tip.

That's fucking wild.

And so when the bill came, and so we were with a bunch of other people, and apparently
it's a thing that some people do, again, from the United States, they retire in Nicaragua

knowing how strong the US dollar is.

Just one guy's like, yeah, I got it, just paid for everything, because who cares?

You live like a king there.

Hello there.

I'm interrupting your viewing slash listening experience to give a quick thank you to our
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In no particular order, we have Robert Restant, David Rivera, William Kirk, JP, Aid,

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Thank you as always everyone for supporting what we do here.

We really appreciate it.

And as always, if you need anything from us, you pay us for the privilege.

So let us know.

We'd be happy to serve you.

Back to the episode.

Well, that was a fun little, fun little, little, little jaunt there.

Man, now I want to go to Nicaragua.

No, I actually don't.

It's like one of the...

Worst impoverished places ever and the people there are living in squalor and that's why
the dollar is so strong because of that I don't want to do that, but still good trip down

memory lane

So Daniel, I thought we would have a chat today about something more specific to people
that are watching.

They're on the social medias, they're on the YouTubes, they're on the Instagrams, they're
doing whatever.

And this has always been a popular phenomenon or a popular industry.

But it's really becoming even more popular now thanks to social media influencers.

And it has a Venn diagram to the work that I do.

And that is the self-help industry.

Oh my, we're getting into the self-help industry today, are we?

Okay.

Okay.

oh

where we're going, but let me kind of start where I come from.

So I'm a leadership consultant.

People pay me money to talk to them about leadership, about hiring the right people,
firing the wrong people, critical conversations, how high synergy teams work, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera.

A lot of my work is very closely related to self-help industry, but just by definition of
the self-help industry, I'm different.

because I never once tell you that you can do this all on your own.

And the self-help industry is actually a lie all by itself because what are you doing when
you're getting into the self-help industry?

You're buying a book, you're going into a course, you're following a certain social media
influencer, you're looking at all their shorts and all their TikToks and their

motivational speeches and all that stuff.

You're addicted to self-help.

But what about this is actually self-helping yourself, right?

It's an oxymoron.

It makes absolutely

no goddamn sense, yet we call it that, right?

And I feel the need to defend my line of the sand, which is slightly different, but very
similar, than what self-help is all about.

And I thought we would do this in a fun way by talking about all the lovely traps that
self-help puts on us, the people that are looking for help, and ways we can try to avoid

those things.

Because if you remember what we're about here at Zero Doubt, we are not about trying to be
doom and gloom.

We're here to tell you, here's the real life situation.

Here's the tricky answers to these complicated issues.

Here's how you navigate these and here's solutions in what way we can possibly provide.

By the way, for those that might be confusing us, we are not self-help.

We're just a source of Team Human.

We have no books to sell you, no courses to sell you.

All we do have is a Patreon.

For $3.99, you can join us.

And what do you get for that?

Longer episodes, more vibes.

You get sneak peeks some other stuff we're working on.

But honestly, it's just Sam.

John and Daniel hanging out and we want to provide that to you all.

And I want to make sure that's really clear to you all.

We will never sell you a book unless it's a fiction book.

Maybe we'll write a book sometime just for funsies, but no self-help book, no training
course, no big giant.

It's give me five installments of 69.99 to get enrolled in a specific exclusive program
that you're on a mailing list that gets all the stuff.

We're never going to do that to you ever, ever, ever.

Not myself, not John, not Daniel.

Actually, Daniel kind of wanted to do it, but he was like, nah, we're not going to do
that.

Right.

I really, really wanted to push the zero dot gummies that are like a nutritional boost for
people.

Gives you more energy and everything you're eating is poison, except for these supplements
that I'm pushing on you.

But the other two taught me down.

I've now got a ton of these gummies stockpiled in my garage that I need to find out what
I'm gonna do with.

I've got to get rid of them somehow.

That's a problem for future me.

Yeah, but you know what?

We can make a Ponzi scheme later and we can, you know, if you buy it from us, then you can
have other people buy it from you and eventually you'll become a billionaire.

Maybe, kind of.

That's not how Ponzi schemes work.

There's actually a cap.

You can only do it like seven or eight times before everything falls apart and that's why
it's illegal.

But anyway, I thought we'd spend a little bit of time talking about the common traps the
self-help industry kind of puts on us as people and what we can be on the lookout for.

And one more thing I want to be clear about, I will be not be naming any names.

I'm not here to be critical of any individual person, but instead we're focusing on
behaviors, things that you might see out and about on the web, common foibles, common

pitfalls, and what we can do about those things.

So, first things first, self-help.

I've already kind of said this, but...

Self-help implies that whatever is going on in your life, it can be solved with one simple
thing, and it's usually buying something.

It's usually purchasing just one more thing.

One more thing will solve your problem.

That book, that program, et cetera.

Except social media, even if they're selling you something like a supplement, which was
Daniel was joking about before, they are also trying to buy your attention.

And if they buy your attention, that means more of your eyeballs on advertisers.

uh

videos and ads and so forth.

And one of the most common traps they try to sell you on is the quote unquote perfect
system trap.

Here follow this right system of a way that the five top tips to make sure you'll be
successful.

Five top tips to conduct your early morning routine.

The five top tips to write that book you're trying to do.

The five best ways of conducting that meeting with all your people, right?

If you just find the right system, everything will just suddenly magically click
overnight.

You know what's funny about that Daniel is if that's true, and you these videos are free
and everyone can find them, somehow these problems still exist.

Somehow people still have issues with their morning routines and how they conduct
conversations and how they be more productive.

It's always about productivity isn't it?

Yeah, endless apps tons of planners a lot of people they sell they sell books Notebooks to
like plan your day out guys You can just buy like an eight and a half by eleven, know

Piece of notepad and a pen if you really want to write stuff down um They're always
telling you that if this isn't work, you have to tweak it harder uh as Daniel said

Productivity becomes your entire life maximizing on every single part of your day

The perfect system trap is terrible because you get one bad day, one bad week.

What do do with that system now?

Do you throw it out?

Chances are you throw it out, you try a new system, you blame yourself, you then say, hey,
I'm the bad reason, I'm the reason everything's wrong.

And either that works for me in terms of me selling you something, because then I can
convince you that you're the failure point, not my system.

Or they all work together.

If you decide, hey, this system doesn't work for you,

Here's another system by this other guy who's doing the same exact thing, but just a
little bit different.

Maybe this system will be the one that works for you.

And it goes on forever, and ever, and ever, and ever.

And just to talk about this just a little bit, by definition, there's no such thing as a
perfect system.

Because we as human beings are not perfect.

So a system cannot be perfect.

And if we're trying to make our system so perfect that it never quote unquote fails, we
have a word for that.

It's called roboticism.

being a robot, being literally a robot.

And last I checked, our greatest superpower, Daniel, is our humanness, which means
emotions come up, bad days happen.

Some days you wake up and your back hurts.

some days.

Some dice, he says.

I suppose I'm being optimistic there.

I'm working on it.

It's hurting less and less now.

Now that I'm stretching and stuff more, but some days still stung a little bit.

If John were here, he'd say, you know, there's a time in life when uh sleeping becomes a
full contact sport, right?

And I think a lot of us can relate to that for sure.

But guess what?

The worst thing I can tell you is, Hey, that workout routine you made for yourself four
days a week, you got to do it.

And on the, this day, the day we're recording this, I don't care if you're feeling crappy.

I don't care if you have the flu.

I don't care if you're literally dying of pneumonia.

You got to do that workout.

Well, that's insane.

That's stupid.

No, take a break.

Breaks happen.

That's how.

This all works.

But the thing is, you bought into a theory.

We bought into a theory that this perfect system will solve all our problems and we try to
either adhere to it to the umpteenth degree or we fail and try to find a new system.

Daniel, I have to be honest with you.

I have been a notorious not-failor, meaning I grind myself so much that I'm like, no, I
will not be the point of failure.

I will make this work.

And let me tell you, it's almost always resulted in a nervous breakdown of some kind.

And so if that's you, if you're listening to this right now, you're not alone.

It's not your fault.

Your entire system has been weaponized against you.

So that's one system, the perfect trap system, but I wanted to use that as an illustration
of what all self-help is.

Self-help, at its purest form, is marketing.

That's all it is.

It's marketing and it's repackaging of things.

Now that's where self-help and I have a commonality.

I also do a lot of repackaging.

I look at the social sciences, here's what they're saying, here's the truth behind it,
here's how our brains work, and let me repackage it for you.

But my job when people hire me is they bring me on and I talk to, let's say, Daniel and
he's been in his role for 20 years and he's usually got his arms crossed like this, like,

I've been doing this for 20 years and there's no way some young buck is gonna tell me how
to manage my team.

And I have to repackage the science, which is true, in a way that lets Daniel know that
this is actually true and would apply to

That's where we have commonality.

Where we have a lot of distraction is, or lot of differences is in the self-help industry.

It's all marketing, it's all repackaging, and when one thing doesn't work, they're gonna
sell you on something else.

You usually can't get your money back on the thing you bought that didn't work for you.

That's almost always the case.

So whether it's the perfect system trap or the morning routine trap, how many videos have
you seen, Daniel, where someone's like, here's my morning routine, my perfect morning

routine.

Here's what you should do to make sure you capitalize on your day.

5 a.m.

wakeups, 4 a.m.

wakeups.

I literally see it on YouTube right now.

Mark Wahlberg has a video series he's starting this week about his 4 a.m.

workouts and he's bringing on all these social media influencers to show him that his
workout is the best and he grinds through it all.

Like, it's crazy.

But folks, that's the difference between me and a self-help person.

I'm never going to tell you to do that.

I'm going to tell you do it if it works.

If it doesn't, let's find something else, right?

Because some people are morning people.

Some people are not.

Everyone has a different circadian rhythm.

I'm not here to tell you that cold plunges have any kind of scientific backing to them.

I've read up on it.

It's all trace at very best.

Journaling can help.

Meditation can help.

Reading.

doing the gym, doing it all at 8 a.m.

if you want to, that's fine.

If it works for you, some people want to do it in the evening, that's perfectly fine.

I think we'd all agree though, and anyone that says they don't agree with this, I have
choice words for them, get your amount of sleep you need.

Some people only need five to six hours, some people need eight hours, some people need 10
hours.

Get as much sleep as you need so you're not tired every single day.

Because if you try to follow a routine like this, if it doesn't work for you,

And I'm using Mark Wahlberg's example.

I have nothing against Mark Wahlberg.

I'm just saying it's being propagated like the standard.

If you're trying to follow it and you fail, it has nothing to do with you as a person.

It's just the routine doesn't work for you.

And that's perfectly fine.

You're not broken, my friend.

You're just really tired.

And so again, a self-help person doesn't give a crap about you as a person.

They're trying to sell you on an idea to make you feel like whatever you're doing is not
enough.

And the more you believe in that idea, the more they can profit off of that.

And I'm not here to do that.

So there's a good old morning routine, which by the way, one of our episodes, Daniel, if I
recall, we talked about morning routines and evening routines.

And if you have to pick the two, I'm more of an evening routine person myself.

I think it's more important to set up your evening, get that ready, and let your morning
be as flexible as you want it to be.

But everyone's different.

Yeah.

I'm in camp evening, personally.

Because I'm a morning person, so I'm a person who wakes up early in the morning.

But I used to be that person who thought I still have to stay up late and party and do
hard stuff and then still wake up early in the morning.

And then why am I so tired?

I've only got two hours of sleep.

I should be able to power through this.

No, you idiot.

Mark Wahlberg does his 4 a.m.

workouts because he's up at like 2 a.m.

and he goes to bed at like five or six, right?

And everyone's routine schedule is different.

So do what works for you.

If it doesn't work, dismiss it.

You have my permission to do that.

The other trap we can think about that Daniel just brought up was the hustle equals worth
trap.

The more you grind, the more you produce.

That is where you get your value, right?

I hear this a lot.

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

We tie our productivity to our identity.

If I haven't done something today, then what even am I, right?

Well, guess what?

Some days you're going to have bad days.

Some days you're not going to produce anything and you're still worthy of living.

and To ask the flip question or even consider the following There are many people who are
way more productive than all of us combined and they still feel completely empty inside So

when people are trying to chase productivity, they think that's where they get their
worth.

Guess what?

Those people are still susceptible to things like depression uh manic depression uh
Feelings of anxiety nervousness feeling that they haven't done anything that day, even

though they've done a million things that day I remember during one of my

busiest times of my life when I worked in healthcare.

I was up at 2 30 in the morning.

I didn't go to bed till like eight or nine o'clock at night.

I was working a lot.

I was getting so much done and folks, I felt like I was dead inside.

I felt like I hadn't done anything even though I literally was doing things all day.

I was in meetings.

I was sending up expense reports.

I was presenting.

I was working with clients and with the FDA.

I did a lot of stuff.

but I still felt like I had no value and I wasn't doing anything.

So productivity, trying to chase that for your value.

As your life coach, I'd say, you know what?

It's good for a quick cheap high, but it might not be sustainable in the long run.

So I'm never gonna tell you to do that.

In the same way, another trap is consistency over everything trap.

I love consistency, it's great, but we can get a little dogmatic about it, right?

I think...

Jerry Seinfeld at one point said that he has a rule that he doesn't go a single day
without writing and he's like 30 years in a row in doing that.

Good for you, Jerry Seinfeld.

But if you miss a day, that's not having missed a day, right?

uh Consistency is actually not about doing it every single day or every other day.

It's about returning to where you go, right?

So if you take a three-month break from the gym for whatever reason,

As long as you come back at some point, I would still call that consistency of some kind.

You're returning back to center of any kind.

We get obsessed with streaks.

We have a guilt spiral if we fall off.

Imagine if you try to do anything and the moment you fail just a little bit, you miss one
mark, give the whole thing up.

That makes absolutely no sense.

It's pure insanity.

You get some of these programs that try to tell you how to be consistent.

Here's this calendar.

Here's this work plan.

We'll give it to you.

These 90 day, you know, what was that?

What's that workout plan TRX 90?

What was that called Daniel?

No, that's not what it was.

Workout plan P90.

P90X I think it was.

that rings a bell.

Yeah, P90X, was this workout plan really popular during COVID.

You did it at home and you basically did it for 90 days straight.

You never missed a day.

Okay, cool.

that's something that you enjoy and it'll work out for you, cool.

if you imagine doing anything and going, well, if I miss one day, it's a whole failure.

Imagine that.

It makes us go, if I follow this exact model, I just never fail.

I'll be perfect.

It'll be great.

But all human systems fail.

That's the art of being human.

We are not perfect by design.

We're never going to adhere to it exactly.

I was doing my evening workout and I was doing pull-ups and I've been avoiding pull-ups
for a while because my left carpal tendon has been a little twitchy and I was doing them

and I felt a pop.

Ah!

And I knew it.

I shouldn't have pushed myself.

I knew it.

Like, you don't want to hear a pop.

So now I'm, and now I...

Now I'm avoiding it for right now, but like that's me literally just 24 hours ago going,
Sam, what the hell are you doing, man?

You know something's a little off.

Take a break, take it easy.

And I was like, nope, gotta stick to the plan.

Gotta stick to the plan.

And that's me being a dumb dumb, right?

So from a fellow dumb dumb to other dumb dumbs maybe listening it.

Not saying you're a dumb dumb, but you know what I mean.

Said affectionately.

the most affectionate way we possibly can from from dum-dums to dum-dums.

Yeah.

We are giving you permission.

It's okay to take a break.

It's okay to not do something every single day or every other day.

Consistency is about coming back to the thing.

So whether it's three months from now, a couple of weeks from now, take a couple of days
off, whatever, that's perfectly fine.

That's what consistency is, right?

When people say to me, oh, know, I used to ride my bike every day, I haven't ridden in
like 10 years.

Well, you're riding your bike today?

yeah, I did.

Well, then you've been riding your bike for 10 years.

You just came back to it.

That's all it is to it, man.

As long as you come back to it and you enjoy it and it's sustainable and there's no pain
and you love it, that's all we could ask for.

It's not done when you fall.

It's done when you don't get back up.

So saying no, it's not no forever, it's just not yet.

We'll come back to it later, right?

um With that said, know, Daniel, you brought up something else, you know, there's hustle
and do more, but there's also optimize every single moment of your life.

Optimize, stack all your habits.

If I had everything mapped out exactly, I could get as much done as I possibly could.

Folks, with the exception of some of you that might be listening or watching who get a...

Let's call it a dopamine rush from that stuff.

If that's if that makes you happy go for it again as your life coach I would say do what
makes you happy but just know that if you do that with every moment of every single life

that would be unsustainable I'm gonna give you one very easy explanation which is mother
nature always wins no matter what plans you might have your body physically or otherwise

or Nature literally outside of you or your relationships or external forces.

They will win eventually and eventually they're going to make you be unoptimized

Eventually your body will collapse, eventually something will happen and you will need
some kind of time to be quote unquote, unoptimal.

But I think to all my friends who might do this out of recreation, you I think about last
year when I went to Paris with my wife for our 10 year anniversary, two years actually

ago, uh we were talking with uh someone who had been to Paris many times and they had
optimized every part of their trip and they sent me their travel plans to me.

Their entire itinerary, every minute was planned out, every place.

Their goal on a vacation was to hit every travel spot they possibly could in as short a
pound of time as possible.

Now, if that's what you like to do on vacation, fantastic.

But then I said, that's not how I do a vacation.

And they said, well, how do you do a vacation?

I say, well, I go to a place I don't know anything about.

And I literally start walking around and talking to the locals and I ask them, what's cool
around here?

What's neat?

Where should I go tonight?

I get their feedback and advice.

I might have an idea of what I want to do, but if they have a better idea, I go ahead and
do it.

And sometimes,

I'll go on a crazy adventure.

Sometimes I'll hate it.

Sometimes I'll love it, but it always have been authentic, interesting, and weird, and I'm
okay with that.

Because then at the end of the day, after my 10-day vacation, I had an interesting, lovely
experience every single day.

It wasn't always optimized, but I enjoyed it.

I also know that if I optimize every moment of my life personally, there's going to be
times when, okay, my calendar says I have to do this, but I'm not in the mood, or I'm

exhausted, or I'm tired, or okay, I'll go see, you know,

the arc to triumph, but like I won't be able to appreciate it because I'm just that spent
right now.

And you have to ask yourself the question, how well do you know yourself that you'll be
able to appreciate some of those moments?

So when we say do matter, optimize, stack all your habits, put it all together, we're also
kind of saying, and I think Daniel can relate to this, there can never be any room for

boredom or rest.

And I'm here to tell you that during your moments when you're bored, during your moments
when you need rest, that's when real growth happens and you're robbing yourself.

Like I've been that guy who had to optimize something.

I felt that was what I had to do.

I missed like one or two things and it just ate at me for months.

But I'll even offer the other thing.

I've had a couple of very rare circumstances where I got everything done that I wanted to
and I still felt empty.

So then you know what I did?

I made another checklist.

That's the other paradox, life being a checklist.

Life is not a checklist, but if we try to make things into a checklist and make it like
tasks are here to complete and optimize, then

What happens is we're so focused on optimizing, we're not really experiencing anything
anymore.

I've gotten something done, but I haven't really felt it.

So again, if you feel a certain kind of way that you get a joy out of that, again, as your
coach, go do it.

I'm not gonna tell you otherwise.

But I am here to say that if someone tells you that is the way to do things, uh-uh, that's
not it.

You notice we've said a couple things like, if it works for you, that's the important
thing.

We're gonna get to my top three things you can actually do to make your life a little bit
better and it's related to that.

But yes, if it works for you, work for it.

My my scare, my caution is adhering to it so closely you feel like you fail if you don't
adhere to it and then realizing that.

That thing gives you a little bit of dopamine, gives you little bit of serotonin, makes
you feel a little good, but once you take it to the nth degree, it becomes toxic like all

other things, right?

So be mindful of that along the way.

A few more things I want to, common traps we see, you know, this is common especially for
intellectuals.

Information equals progress, know, studying equals progress.

Let me read up on this podcast.

me read, let me listen to a podcast like you're doing right now.

Let me read a book, let me play, watch a video, let me watch an instructional thing, let
me hire a trainer.

All these things feel productive, but they're not actually productive if nothing changes
and they're not actually towards the goal that you have.

A lot of students do this.

go, okay, I want to do this one.

I want to learn how to draw, Daniel.

I don't know how to draw.

So let me go ahead and watch a tutorial on how to draw.

Let me buy a course on how to draw, a master class on how to draw.

Let me get all my equipment ready so I can start drawing, but I'm not going to draw just
yet.

And before you know it, it's been six months and have you drawn anything?

No.

I mean, think about our podcast.

started this.

We started planning it last August slash last July.

We launched our first episode in November.

There was a bit of planning phase, but there was definitely an element of like, do we know
what we're doing?

Nope.

We just did it.

We just did it.

And we're getting better every single day.

Imagine if the world literally was like, Hey, you can't do a podcast until you're better
than who you are.

Imagine that.

That would be absolutely insane.

I would give you the same grace.

You do not have to be good at anything before you start doing things.

In fact, you don't even know if you're good at something until you start doing it.

It would have been insane for us to kind of go down that pathway, for us to say, nope, we
can't do a podcast until we've got a production up.

We know exactly how to video edit.

We know how to do all this social media stuff.

We didn't let that stop us.

We just said, let's just start.

In fact, that was one of our superpowers when we pitched the idea of Zero Dots is we
really don't know what we're doing.

but we know a little bit about something and we can start it.

You can do the same thing with your life, right?

I think about video editing.

Like, I don't know anything about filmmaking really.

I don't know much about video editing really, but I've learned a lot of video editing not
from reading an 800 page manual on DaVinci Resolve or watching a 12 hour tutorial on it.

That stuff, when I tried to watch it, I got lost very easily.

I just started trying to do it.

I just went, I'm just gonna put a file in here, okay.

How do I make a transition?

Let me look how to find a transition.

How do I edit the audio?

How do I make this work?

How do I, I just keep going and I go and I go and is it perfect?

No, but perfect is the enemy of good.

And so you have my permission just to do it.

I'm so, I'm so privileged that I'm someone whom I was mentoring and coaching.

She just started streaming fighting games recently on Twitch.tv.

And this is a big deal for her because prior to that, uh prior to our coaching, she was
nervous to go to tournaments.

She was nervous to like,

talk and converse to people but since we've been talking she's gone to several tournaments
she's met people she's networked and she asked me Sam do you think it would be a good idea

for me to do streaming if I don't feel like I'm good at fighting games and if I don't know
how to stream at all but I kind of want to do it and I said let me let me be very clear to

you

Very clear.

Go and goddamn stream.

You want to do it, just do it.

don't, who cares if anyone's listening, who cares if anyone's watching, who cares if
you're good at what you're doing.

You just said it, you want to do it, you should go do it.

The only thing I ask, the only thing I ask, let me know when you're streaming, because I
want to be the first person to watch it.

I want to be your biggest fan.

And guess what?

That day she had 30 people watching her and she thought she was going to have zero, 30
people.

And she's got like 50 subs now.

So like,

Just do it.

Nike, we're not sponsored by you, but if you want to sponsor us, just do it.

so true.

It's like just start and don't expect to collect all the answers for the problems that you
may run into if you just start the thing.

And then say you want to get into video editing like Sam was talking about with DaVinci
Resolve or something.

You open up the program and you say,

Okay, what do I need to do?

Import a video file.

So then you find out how to import a video file.

And then you get a little bit into the video and you think, oh, I'd like a transition here
into a different video file.

And so you look up how to do transitions in DaVinci Resolve and you tackle the problems
one by one as they appear in front of you.

You're not going to collect all the answers to all of the possible problems that might
appear.

Just take it as it comes.

Great call there, Daniel.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Just give yourself permission to do it.

Take one step at a time.

And guess what?

If you fail, you didn't kill anyone unless what you're trying to do is kill people, which
we don't condone at all.

Don't do that.

We're not, we're not condoning that in any capacity.

No, no.

unless that thing is harming others, then in which case, don't.

listening.

You can be you can stop subscribing.

That's not that's not our deal Get out of here But yeah, you're probably not gonna kill
anyone No harm, no foul give yourself permission to fail trust in your future self and no

problem that you come across will be something that can't be undone in some capacity and
at the very least you'll have learned from it, right easy peasy

One final thing before we start tying all this together into one larger concept, which is
the common thing with self-help, which is when I talk to people and they say, my gosh,

Sam, I love self-help.

I'm a self-help junkie.

Why are you a self-help junkie?

Because if self-help does anything effective, if it's supposed to, it should be something
you do a little bit of and you get the fuck out.

You're done.

You're not in it anymore, right?

That's what you should be doing.

Yet there's a lot of people that do that.

because it helped you, you took the self help and then you've been helped and things are
better now.

So you don't need it anymore.

It's, it's, it's the idea is that it, it makes itself redundant.

Like you, you use it and then you get better and then you don't need it anymore.

So why, why do you need to keep going back to it?

If it's

doing its job.

They're coming back to it because they've been sold on the idea that you are a project,
that you're not perfect yet, you need to keep working on this until you become perfect.

There's always another flaw to correct, there's always some other mechanism to focus on.

If this doesn't work, then something else.

If you are in the self-help schism, we'll say, if you are part of that commercial system
and they've got their hooks in you, you will never leave that system because the entire

system mechanism is predicated on the fact that you need them constantly, which is why,
again, self-help is an oxymoron.

Self-help should mean you help yourself, but no, you're getting help from someone else,
and you're someone else, and someone else, and someone else.

I'm here to tell you, you're not a project.

You're never going to be perfect.

That's because you're a person.

And persons make mistakes, persons have emotions, persons can get better at their craft,
persons can go in all different kinds of directions.

And my biggest takeaway for this, for this one little concept is, if you do decide to tap
into the waters of self-help,

If you decide to, have an exit strategy to get the hell out as quickly as you can.

Because once you get stuck in there, you can be in there for a long time and you look at
your life backwards 30 years from now and go, what the heck have I been doing?

And that's exactly how they get you.

That's one of my biggest pet peeves about this industry is what they've done to really
good people who think that the self-help industry is helping them.

And it really is not.

One of the things John says, and I say it a lot, is my number one priority is to make sure
you don't need me anymore.

If I've done my job right as a consultant, I do what I gotta do, I get you on the right
path and I say goodbye and then you move on and we don't gotta talk anymore and you can

forget about me if you want to, right?

Like, I want you to live your life.

Now the irony is I'll always have a job because of things like the self-help industry,
because of our terrible education system, because of our terrible in the United States

healthcare system, and our terrible workforce system.

So I will always have a job just by proxy of that, but my goal is I would like to work
myself out of a job.

That's what I want to be doing here.

The self-help industry though, they're not doing that.

They want you around forever.

Because if you're there forever, then they can keep making that sweet money off.

Give us your $3.99 for the Patreon.

Give it to us now.

to us.

Or don't.

That's cool too.

You don't have to.

by the Zero Dot Gummies.

Buy the Zero Dot Gummies.

Their lemon and lime flavor, very nice.

lemon and lime.

I think my wife does not like lemon and...

I love a citrus.

Oh, very, very nice.

Yeah.

yeah.

So I wanna bring us then to like what this is all really about because if you decide to go
down the path of self-help, on maybe one hand, I won't name them today, there's maybe like

a few good sources of self-help if you wanna go to those people.

But the question you should be asking yourself is, any self-help person you get to meet in
person or talk to or ask them direct questions, which hopefully they make themselves

available to you,

which to me is the only good marker of a good self-help person as they make themselves
available to talk directly to them.

Ask yourself the question, or maybe have them ask this question, answer this question.

Are they willing to admit that all they're really doing is repackaging for you?

They're just marketing something to you.

Are they willing to admit that they're not giving you any new kind of information?

Because I'll be the first one to tell you.

I work in the social sciences.

I tell you what the data says, but at the end of the day, I'm just giving you a truth you
kind of already knew or kind of forgot about.

and giving it to you in a nice little package that makes sense for you.

And then I'm asking you to go on your way to keep living your life the best way that you
can.

That's what self-help people are doing, but none of them are willing to admit that.

I'm asking you to ask them that or ask yourself of that, because that's what they do.

We're repackagers, we're re-storytellers.

That's what we do.

We're not gurus.

We don't have any secret magic sauce to what we have to say.

We're just packaging something in a way that makes sense for you.

Because what's happening is they have

created a commerce out of what I call solutionism.

There's a whole mechanism now that you have a problem, you're trying to face it, and they
have now decided, hey, give us your money, we'll give you the solution you're looking for.

And what I'm here to tell you is, if you have a problem in your life that you're trying to
solve, that means you're a human being.

That's what human beings do.

We recognize there's a problem, there's a challenge, and we love working on those
challenges.

And the worst thing that I can do is give you a solution you didn't ask for.

The worst thing I can do is try to sell you on something that doesn't work.

The worst thing I can do is make you feel like you are less than and that this one model
that I'm showing works for everybody, but not you because you're a piece of shit.

That's the worst thing I can do.

That's what a lot of these, I'm gonna call them charlatans do.

So, how do we get away from solutionism?

How do we get away from this?

Again, if you're addicted to it, if you like it, if you want to spend your money on it,
okay man, you do it, right?

But I think there's three things we can do.

All of us can do.

These are the three biggest takeaways I have for today, as well as any kind of self-help
thing.

The first thing is, you're probably doing a lot better than you think you are.

Realize that for a moment.

If you're going through self-help, you probably think you're hopeless, you're terrible,
your love life is a mess, you're behind in life, your job doesn't pay enough, your family

hates you, uh you have social anxiety, you can't talk to people, there's all these common
things that come up over and over again in these markets.

And I'm here to tell you, you might have growth areas in those things, but you're probably
not as bad as you think you are.

Things are probably a lot better for you than you ever realized.

So realize that first if you can.

And one of the ways you can do that,

is develop a network of friends who check you on this stuff.

I can't give you that.

A self-help person can't give you that.

Have friends to say, hey man, wanna hang out today?

I miss you.

Or hey man, you're looking a little low today.

I'm checking on you.

I'm concerned for you.

I can't give you that.

But develop a network of friends to remind you that you're probably better off than you
think you are.

The second thing, always, always, always, action is better than ideation.

Meaning, if you think a lot and think a lot and think a lot,

That's cool, man.

But like, what are you gonna do about that stuff?

Action is always the solution to despair.

So, find that problem.

Tackle that interest that you have.

Learn video editing if you want to learn about video editing.

Learn this new challenge and start doing the thing.

We said, know, Nike, know, do the thing, you know, we're not sponsored, but seriously,
just go do the thing.

And no matter what your fancy, wonderful ideas are, they don't come close to the actions
you're about to do.

So please go do something.

I don't care if it's literally going outside and kicking sand for eight hours.

If that's what you want to do, go do something.

I don't care what the thoughts in your head say.

I don't care if the thoughts say, haven't done enough that day.

They're all thoughts.

They're all worthless.

Action is the antidote to despair.

And then with that said, there are going to be times when you get stuck.

Where do I go from here?

I feel like I can't solve this one problem and I need help.

If you want to go to self-help, okay.

But honestly, it's just called help.

You need some help.

And the whole purpose of looking for a solution is you find a solution that works good
enough, not perfect, just good enough to get you out of that rut so you can move on and

get away from the help industry and start doing the thing again.

That's what I said it before about me trying to work myself out of a job.

I'm trying to give you a solution that works well enough for you so you can get the hell
out of my face and go move on and do your life.

Because the worst thing you can do is spend years of your life thinking about what's the
right way to do something, what's the perfect way of doing something.

watching scrolling nothing but YouTube and Instagram and other social media videos trying
to find that specific video that's gonna give you the message you need, go and do

something.

Go do some kind of action of some kind.

You know, the whole reason why we have the Zero Dot podcast is because, well first of all,
three of us are friends and we like each other and we thought it'd be cool if we talked

with each other.

But secondly, when I go around the world and I talk to people, you know, we have great
workshops, we talk, we solve problems.

But then during our lunch breaks or our quick little meeting breaks, people whip out their
phones, right?

They get their phones out and instead of taking a meaningful break, they either check
their email or they scroll Instagram.

And how many times I see people scrolling the Instagram of someone saying, work harder,
grind harder, you're weak.

Here's the perfect morning routine.

Here's what you got to do.

And someone will say to me, Sam, I love what you talk about, but this guy's cool.

This guy's great.

and all they're doing is selling you on something you don't even need.

So I want to take the time right now to anyone that's listening, anyone that's watching
and say, you're doing fine.

If you want to make some improvements, you can.

I believe in you.

You can do that.

Action over ideation over anything else.

And if you're stuck, find the solution that works well enough, then get the hell out.

Optimization can come a lot later.

And you'll be a lot happier.

I've never met a single person, a single person who is so fixated on optimization that was
happy.

Not once.

Every person I know that is so stuck on making sure everything is perfect, calculated,
optimized, they're miserable.

The people that are happy are the ones going out, doing the things, and they go, yeah,
it's probably not perfect, but it's good enough for me.

And they're getting things done.

They're making that beautiful art.

They're making those books, those movies.

They're literally the ones who Artemis took off last week, two weeks ago.

The engineers are like, let's get something on paper, we'll optimize and perfect it a
little bit later, let's get something on the board now.

Even the geniuses have to do that.

and the rules that apply to those people who are all human beings apply to all the rest of
us as well.

And that's our Zero Dot moment for you.

All right, folks.

Well, once again, thank you for tuning into the Zero Dot podcast.

My name is Sam.

This is Daniel.

John will be here soon, hopefully.

ah As you can notice, we did this all in monochrome, black and white, and that's because
we're fancy shmancy pants.

You know why we did it?

Because we felt like it.

Let us know if you like it.

If you don't, let us know that too.

Will we change it because of your opinion?

I don't know.

Probably not, but maybe, you never know.

You can only find out by tuning into us.

You can find us at thezerodotpodcast.com.

You can send us your questions at questionsatthezerodotpodcast.com.

We are streamed wherever podcasts are available.

That's Amazon Music, that's Apple Podcasts, that's Spotify, and everywhere else in
between.

Until next time, cheers.