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A podcast for the quietly overwhelmed and cautiously hopeful.
But like human beings crave stasis.
They want more than anything to just like a thing and just be like, that's my thing
forever.
And that's not inherently wrong.
It is inherently improbable.
And that's really tough.
That is what I was saying.
was speaking tongues and I thank you for bringing that back to me because I didn't know
what actually came out of my mouth.
that concludes our episode.
Glad we recorded all of that, Daniel.
I'm sure we didn't miss anything, right?
No
hours.
I got it all.
It's good because the timer says 31 seconds.
I'm going to take your word for it.
We got all three hours.
is lying to you.
Which is something that I wouldn't do.
I'm sure.
Welcome to the Zero Dot podcast.
This is where we go when we feel like our resources are down and we want to make sure we
get a little bit of a recharge and join my good friends John and Daniel.
John and Daniel, it's been a week, hasn't it?
Oh, yes, it has.
It has been one week, seven consecutive days, a number of hours of that times 24.
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and to those who don't celebrate, uh I also like
you, and I hope you're having a nice day.
uh Have a solid not Christmas.
Yes.
Yeah.
Have a great whatever it is that you do.
Have a good anti-Christmas.
Go put a tree outside and then take presents from people and just see what happens.
I, so like, I'm a big believer in journaling.
I'm also riddled with the kids who are calling ADHD.
So I don't, I don't like do one of these.
I don't do one of these.
I do this.
I talk to my phone while I'm usually I'm driving, just like I have like a 30 minute drive
a couple of times a week.
So I just like talk about things to myself.
And I was listening back to them the other night and in every one of my, God, these roads,
like what the fuck?
So windy, so much snow.
Like I think there's a collective.
like just like a chip damage like over time my brain just like everything's so cold and
slow and like we have that undignified ice right now because there's like you know like
there's day one snowfall is pretty poofy snowy just delightful and then there's like day
two and you're like oh man it's kind of fun but like we can get around now and there's
like day 18 it's like everything's fxcking cold and there's ice and it's uneven and i
can't fxcking drive and it's drifting and you have to like if you've ever been in a snowy
area if you haven't i'm gonna teach you some shit right now people will drive their cars
in the snow with me so far makes sense
Cars typically have two sets of tires, like know, front and back, and they're in line.
So what'll happen is you make these little paths, and the car behind you will drive in the
same path.
and it will just kind of stay, so you have this nice little lane you can stay in.
But the wind happens, and it moves the path.
So everybody's like, okay.
So what will happen is, whoever on the far side of the road is now driving with one tire
off the road, because we're staying in lines that were made by the wind.
You can't beat Mother Nature.
You can't do it.
She cheats.
always wins.
Nature always wins.
have the hacks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ugh.
So it's been a year.
I think I can say that.
It's been a year.
One of the years of all time, I'm sure.
Mm.
Yes.
running joke in 2020 where the people would be like, I was saying it was my year and I was
wrong.
Like, this is my bad.
Let me take that back.
Like, no, no.
And I sort of feel like a remix of that joke is appropriate.
Cause I would describe 2025 as just like a real stinker.
Just like not a super, not a fun old time.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
If you're a time traveler and you for some reason are using this show to base your
destination on, go ahead and skip 2025.
There's some really good video games in it, like genuinely, but like I don't have a lot of
other good stuff.
My football team is good as well this year, so.
But that's it.
That's kind of what I have to offer.
Maybe, maybe skip it.
Maybe keep going.
Yeah.
Remember when we thought 2017 was like the worst year?
Because 2017, we had so many people die.
Like we had David Bowie die.
We had a bunch of like horrible people dying like right before the new year happened.
We were like, this is the worst year ever.
Remember that?
Yeah.
I've had a terrible realization and will be changing the nature of this show based on what
I've come to think of and I hope my co-hosts can get along with it before I hijack this.
I'm looking directly in the camera so you know that I'm serious.
Listeners, that's what I'm doing.
Even you should be included in this.
um Sam draws attention to the fact that people died in 2017 and everything was kind of
fine.
So I think what we should do is start a death cult and just people die and it'll postpone
problems.
Does this making sense to people?
Because I feel like
like a blood sacrifice kind of thing, it could be good.
So, you know, just put that on the back burner, kick it around, see how you feel about it.
It could be fun.
Mm-hmm.
Oh.
a purge,
I'm not talking about the Purge in that I think it's a little too theatrical.
I think this would be just sort of just like boop boop boop boop boop done like next year.
We'll do like maybe like some sort of lottery.
That couldn't have been poorly.
Just see what happens, you know.
They could make a play about it perhaps.
Shout out to my people in high school English classes.
You're loving that joke.
Or you're not, or you're resentful of me that you had, I'm sorry.
I've made a mistake.
But we're going through on the blood sacrifice thing.
They might, I'm doing it.
Zero Dot does not wish bad ill against anyone.
Well, know, maybe the problem is just not enough people passed this year.
I don't know.
I didn't look at the data on that one yet.
Maybe not enough people died.
Maybe that's the problem.
No, we're doing it.
We're doing it.
I'm tired of this positive bullshit.
here is because we're all alive.
I wonder if I should have died maybe.
Maybe it was me.
You just-
This is a real dark start today.
um
all you, John.
I'm going with your, your train.
No, no, no, could, you know, choo-choo, motherfucker, like, let's do this thing to the end
of the line.
All aboard.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
No.
adult men laughing about the prospect of death.
Well, here's the thing.
feel and this this could be a part of a show or not.
I do feel like you kind of have to laugh at the crazy bullshit these days because there's
so much of it.
And if you don't laugh at it, it's real.
It's real scary times.
um One of these days, I have a show to talk about the results of those scary times.
We'll see if the mad producer Daniel decides that's the day or a different day.
But.
I'll leave that.
For the future.
enjoy the title that you gave me, the mad producer.
Yeah, I like that.
You have sort of Mad King vibes.
Like if you were to sit like this and just have like, I don't know, like a scepter and
like a globlet of wine.
A globlet?
A globlet of wine.
A little buzz ball.
That's a good goblet hand for the listeners who aren't viewers, which is maybe redundant.
um Well, no, I viewers also listen.
They don't put it on mute.
For the dear one specific viewer who watches this on mute and reads the closed captioning,
thank you for tuning in.
You are a neat, esoteric creature and we would be less of a good show without you.
My new favorite meta joke is how all the things that are bad for us are hilarious.
Like, no, we've survived so well that we no longer have to go out and toil in a field and
back breaking to do labor and die in our early 30s.
So now instead we're too sloppy in our chairs and we make our bodies sad.
It's just like, oh, suffering from success.
Shout out to DJ Khaled.
Some say the greatest musician of our time.
He specifically does.
Yes, yes, he's the one to say that.
Yeah.
him so much.
human beings were meant to have a physicality to their life.
And we said, nah, man, nah.
We are dealing with the repercussions of that.
It is really funny.
um I don't mean to go on this evolution rant, but I always go on it in my head.
We were built to do this one thing and like, low key it sucked.
It was like, work really hard, be afraid all the time, die.
And then we were like, well, what if we lived longer and were less afraid?
And then our brains were like, no, dog, I gotta be afraid.
I gotta be worried about some shit.
And if it's not...
Saber-toothed tigers, it's gotta be like that Timmy has a nicer chair than me and that
means I'm inadequate and therefore cannot procure a mate because of my inadequate chair.
And I might die.
That's also the best part is that our brains are wired to think in terms of you will die
or not.
I think that's the funniest thing in the world.
It's necessary though.
You ever meet a person who doesn't have like a functioning amygdala?
Like you didn't because they're dead.
They just walked into traffic like, And they were just gone.
So you could always tell when I'm segmenting, when I'm going into another section of the
podcast, because I'll say, so that's boys, lads, brutal men.
Yeah, that one, that one time, you all remember that one time, right?
at one time at zero.camp.
Yeah.
What else do you find whimsical and lovely, John?
What do you have for us this week?
What do you have for us this week?
I mean, it might not be whimsical, but what do you have that could take us away from this
fear of not having good chairs and passing away?
I two things.
I always have two things.
uh
whoa, Daniel only asked for one.
You're going above the, calm down.
many more episodes after this that you can use these on.
I don't wanna let, I don't wanna let the fans, fans have presumptions of me.
Dear the Zero Dot viewing audience and or listening audience, we don't know what to call
you.
I've been calling you like buddies or like Zero Doties or whatever, but if you have a cool
name idea, you should let us know.
ZDs is fine, but also it really sets up a thing that I don't want to happen.
Maybe you can hear it as you say it out loud.
Any his.
It also sounds like uh a dish, ziti, which is a nice dish.
I have a bunch of breakfast food crap to say none of its relevant.
I'm not doing it.
I won't do it I'll never do it even on patreon.
I won't do it.
You can't make me anyway
Here's a problem.
So have you ever been a psychology student before?
you will learn some stuff about humans.
And then you'll learn later, if you're a good psychology student, that those things might
be slightly wrong because most psychology studies, uh maybe most, maybe still
statistically most, were normed on a specific population of like kind of whitish
college-aged males because that's who signs up for studies.
And there's this sort of creeping issue of non, how's a smart way to say this?
We don't have representative groups of different people.
uh So in another,
hard pivot, I would talk about how this can be impactful for, say, women.
One thing that's interesting, if you were ever aware, okay, we're going on another
tangent.
This is a very ADHD friendly episode, and for everyone else to strap in, there was a
cartoon in the 90s.
It's called The Crash Test Dummies.
If you remember this, you're officially one of my dear friends and I love you.
Well, you're one my dear friends and I love you, as per the promise.
Well, you know, you were like a C-, it's fine.
But if you recall The Crash Test Dummies,
They had several things with a head going.
have like, you know, a head, a little like thing representing a neck to like, you know,
handle the jostling in the actual car accidents.
And they also were like yellow.
And they recently have started to make, I'm gonna tie all this crap together.
It's coming together in this sense.
Here we go.
They've recently started to make crash test dummies that are shaped like the anatomy of
women.
So now when women get into car accidents, they're not being normed up of people who are my
size, body type and shape.
and they can actually be protected in a way that accounts for their actual physiology.
Which as it turns out is really important because if you ever tried putting on clothes for
someone who is a different size and shape than you, go, ha, that's whimsical, this doesn't
work.
If you've ever used a safety restraining device to keep yourself alive that wasn't
designed for you, you're like, I'm gonna fxcking die.
Which as it turns out is bad.
So I think this is really nice.
They've said, it's long overdue and is meant to close decades of safety gaps in vehicle
crash testing.
uh
The Transportation Department of the United States unveiled their first crash test dummy
modeled specifically on female anatomy, which is a movement to close the difference in
damage.
And they say this, let me get this stat right.
So men make up the majority of annual car crash victims, as we know, men go hard.
Not always a good thing in this case.
Frequently not, actually men are in way more car accidents.
If you ever paid insurance for your car and you're a man, you already know this.
But women are, and I believe it was 73 % more likely than men to sustain serious injuries
in a crash.
Isn't that fun?
No, it's a disaster.
And that's why this is happening, is to make up for that step.
Because this might be in less accidents when they're taking more damage because the
protection we have in our cars hasn't been designed to specifically help that type of
body.
So I just think it's good.
I have this really brave take that we should like help all people, not just people who are
shaped like me.
So I don't want to say that I'm a hero.
So maybe someone else will.
hero.
oh, that felt good.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
of times, uh you know, my lovely uh other gendered individuals and friends say they get
into a car and they're like, this is uncomfortable.
This isn't fun.
This feels like it's, I feel like I'm being smushed in this car seat or this seatbelt.
Related but not related, we were just at uh Epic Universe near Epcot ah and my wife and I
rode on many, many, many rides and I can tell you,
99 % of those rides were not meant for women.
They were meant for skinny young men.
um They did not account for different anatomical parts of women.
um Yeah, so I'm big fan of this, big fan.
um John, do you know, I'm just curious as you're reading about this, this is a fun, fun,
cool thing.
Why did it take them so goddamn long to do this?
Do we have a root cause?
Do we have like something that just inspired them?
Like, ah, yeah.
We gotta do it now, not 30 years ago.
Well, shout out to my home state of Illinois, Tammy Duckworth, who's a senator from there,
and other people have been pushing for it.
And I think honestly, and this is just like kind of a bummer, one of the main reasons is
because we just typically don't prioritize women's healthcare.
We just kind of don't do it.
It's a thing that is weirdly undervalued and studied.
If you have any women in your life, one of them will surely tell you a story of going to a
doctor and being told that they're just anxious.
And here's the thing, you can be anxious and also have a real problem.
Like it can be anxiety making a thing worse and you can still have like, don't know.
um What's the one that so many people that I love have right now?
PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome.
um That was getting like just ignored for fxcking.
literally yesterday with that exact thing.
Yes.
So, I don't know, we're pretty big on inclusivity here at the old zero dot and I feel like
the literal basic safety of people is kind of a non-negotiable.
So I'm very glad, but I think historically there perhaps have been certain dominant forces
and parties that really did not just have enough empathy for others and therefore just
kind of didn't consider it.
So, yay for people voicing their stuff and saying, hey, this sucks for me and you have
people following through with it and making a little bit better of a world.
for all of us.
It does just make me happy.
it does.
I get a little mad because I feel like it should happen sooner, but you know, it's fine.
It's fine.
know, yeah, I feel like uh there's a thing with that.
Really solid take so far, John.
But the thing is that like, we have so much catching up to do as a creature, as humans in
general, because of so many things that are backwards.
And if you can help yourself, this is hard, by the way.
This is actually like a mildly spicy take.
So if you hate this, um I'm sorry, but like, I'm gonna say it anyway.
uh
This isn't pausing for dramatic effect.
This is pausing because ADHD took my idea and randalled the minds.
em But the gist of it is like...
I think finding ways to laugh at the things that are stupid and bad is important because
otherwise it contributes to a lot of resentment and anger.
And that is a thing that builds up and just does catastrophic damage.
And there are so many reasons to feel that.
And this is not me saying don't be angry, be angry, feel whatever your feelings are.
Just at the same time, like...
I believe in celebrating progress.
Um, not because we shouldn't have had to do it earlier, but because like, I'm glad that
it's happening now.
There's there...
One, one like little fun thing I would let people in on, um, with this is that whenever I
am doing my little like kicking around the inter webs for things to talk about that are
lovely before we do our shows, uh, it's kind of nice.
Cause for me, there's like an avalanche of just like good things to talk about.
Like I struggle to pick a thing or two to talk about.
Cause they're just a whole bunch of really nice things and
Putting that kind information does have a very demonstrable effect on your outlook.
We'll talk about gratitude sometime, maybe today, who knows?
It's just, it really shapes how you feel, and feeling is kind of everything for humans.
So, with that, I will stop rambling.
I mean, I'm a big believer in, know, anger is a valid emotion, but holding on to anger is
not a good thing.
It's not good for you biomechanically.
It's also a little selfish.
Just let the feeling pass through you.
And then, you know, I like John's uh hack of finding the humor in all kinds of things that
way you can live a better life and just be more at homeostasis with yourself.
I think we all deserve that.
But yep, that's good stuff.
Love it.
So John, I have a question for you for us to discuss a little bit.
um And I think you have some insight on that.
In the year of 2025, which has been a year, one of the years of all time, ah it has been a
stressful time for many, many, people.
Even those of us that are doing well in life, they can still say there's a lot of stresses
to it.
Yes, sir.
I think in times like this, in the year 2025 and onwards, it's really easy for us to slip
into this mindset of, it is what it is.
We just got to deal with it.
We just got to deal with it.
And I think you and I have interesting feedback and data to suggest that actually you
should recognize not just the stresses in your life, recognize how it's impacting you in
your environment and actively, actively work towards changing your environment so that way
those stresses aren't on you.
every single day.
The amount of people I know, really wonderful, amazing people, they hate their job.
Their home situation sucks.
Where they're living just isn't fun.
And they just go, I'll just keep being that lobster in the slowly boiling water and I'll
just be here forever now.
It's my job to handle it.
And the amount of times I convey and talk to them and say, the stresses that you have,
they're at a toxic level now and you owe it to yourself to make a change about that.
The hard thing is how do you convince people that?
How do you talk to people about that?
How do you get people to see that versus uh just settling for it is what it is, John?
That's my question to you.
a really good question.
um So I both like this topic a lot and I also feel sad about it.
uh I am not shy.
uh I'm not shy about the volume of my experience as a therapist and the things that I've
seen and the significant change that people make.
Like I have a lot of data to spoil from this part of all I'm hearing on this show.
And the bad side, I don't want to say
Bad, bad, like bad, like as in like a child just died for no reason, but like bad as in
like, fuck, there has to be a better way to do this.
And spoiler alert, there's not, is.
Okay, I'm gonna half answer that clearly and then we'll answer it now.
I believe we may be touched on motivational interviewing before.
Does that ring a bell for you guys?
Okay, I thought so.
So the notion of questioning people, does this serve you?
And letting them go through whatever they're at right now begins to kind of stir the pot
on willingness to change.
And what's really hard is human beings, this is so sad.
But like human beings crave stasis.
They want more than anything to just like a thing and just be like, that's my thing
forever.
And that's not inherently wrong.
It is inherently improbable.
And that's really tough.
I give an example of this that I see all the time in my job, which is a relationship
doesn't go bad, it goes stale.
So you'll have a person who's a friend and they'll hang out for years.
They're like best buddies in college, whatever have you.
And now they're just kind of growing apart.
And no one's done anything wrong, nor has done anything villainous.
But there's this level of like, damn, I keep trying to hang out with Timmy and he just
like is never available and it just sucks.
Like what do I do?
And the real answer is you say you probably start to invest in other relationships.
But I can't tell somebody to do that, right?
If you have a therapist who tells you what to do, you don't have a therapist by the way.
You have a coach.
Those are different things.
Don't let therapists do this.
We should offer you stuff, but not tell you what to do.
to help people feel that you have to do two things.
One is help them decide.
that their current thing isn't for them, which involves differentiating acceptance from
like genuine suppression of dissatisfaction.
So let me think of an example or two of this.
If you're a person who wants to like get a different job, shit, let's talk about that.
That's a really good one.
So I'm gonna come at this course from a millennial perspective because I am one.
We were kind of taught growing up,
that like, hey man, if you just get it, like a thing you're good at and just go work at a
job, you just, you know, climb the old corporate ladder and you'll get to the top and
you're be so great.
And then we learned, like we learned via like live experience, I'm doing that and I do
appear to be very stuck.
I don't think this is going anywhere.
How do I, hey corporate overlord, how do I ascend?
And they'll go, and the honest ones would go, I don't know that you will, Doug.
I'm sorry, man.
Like this might be a bit of a log jam.
And then the person goes, I,
don't want that to be the way that it is, but I'm in stasis right now.
I'm sort of comfy.
So I, I don't want to change my example of this.
And probably a better summative point of it is about my license.
So, I am an LPCC in Minnesota and I'm an LCPC in Illinois.
If that's confusing, it is.
It's really weird.
have state by-laws.
It's very dumb.
Anyway, the point being, the way you do it in my counselor town is you study.
and you get your degree and then you work and you have like clinical hours and you have to
have, believe it's 2000 hours, it's been a long time since then.
It takes approximately two years of being in practice full time.
And for me, I got through two years and then I could take my big boy therapist test and I
didn't.
Because what I would have had to do is go study.
I'm old and I graduated at grad school on the DSM-IV.
Those of you who are aware of these things now know that the DSM-V is out, which means I
had to teach myself the DSM-V.
by candlelight in my own room at night.
It wasn't by candlelight, but the rest of that's actually true.
And that test was really time consuming and frankly not a lot of fun and secretly not a
very good metric of if you're a good therapist, but don't tell anyone I said that, I
actually do.
But the point being, I didn't hurt enough to make the change.
Nothing was terrible.
I had enough income, I was okay.
I wasn't getting enough that I could pay all my bills super comfortably.
I couldn't like do anything new.
I couldn't.
go to a new place or get a new TV or anything else, but I was okay.
And then all the things in my life started to be like, well, wouldn't you like to live in
a bigger city?
Wouldn't you like to have a car that works?
Wouldn't you like to not worry about rent?
Wouldn't you like to, and all of these things start to add up.
And it became very clear that the whole pathway for me was to study and get ready for this
big test.
I just kept not doing it.
So for like two more years, I just keep like grinding and feeling happy with my friends,
happy with like my free time, you my health, and just kind of dissatisfied.
So the thing that helped me come over the top was frankly, the loving pull of others and
not the push.
So I would have people be like, why aren't you doing this?
You need to do this.
And I'd be like, tuned out.
Nope, not gonna hear it.
But then people were like, hey man, I want you to have good things.
And that made me feel things and that made me have kind of this, not to be too
self-congratulatory, but this courage to be like, all right, I'll try a thing.
So what you're doing is you're to answer your question after 400 years, you're building.
a sense of momentum emotionally by establishing that you have a need for change and you
believe you're capable of change and that people are helping you cheer yourself on.
This is a little tricky because as an American, we have had it institutionalized in our
heads that like, you know, be a strong individual, which is like, that's great.
That's fun.
Have a little training montage for yourself.
But at the same time, having people around you who encourage you to help you grow is a
huge deal.
really facilitates this.
But the thing I've
Kind of a throwaway line from earlier.
It can't be pressure.
Pressure doesn't make people grow.
Pressure leads to paralysis.
Pressure leads to shame.
Sometimes pressure in the clutch is like, we're not going to be okay.
We have to do it.
That's a different thing.
That's crisis.
That's survival.
Whereas like for facilitating change, for a specific example of getting a new job, a
person has to say, when they're stable specifically, a person has to say, I think I can do
this and I think it's worth it to establish those two things.
uh And typically people get stuck on one of the two.
That comment about it's worth it, doesn't it?
I think people also need to have a good sense of self too.
Like, so like, if you believe this is all I deserve in life, or I deserve even worse, or
who am I?
I'm nobody.
I think you have to have an element of, no, I deserve more and I want to live a
value-accordant life and this is not jiving right now and something needs to change.
I think that needs to be part of the motivating factor as well.
Absolutely.
It's the sense of self thing is really hard.
Um, this is the thing that I think about a lot.
And if you are a viewer slash listener and you have thoughts about this, I would love to
learn more about it because as I increase my sample size of people's experiences, it just,
it's enriching for me.
Helps me learn more about people.
Um, but you kind of don't, and I'm speaking globally, so feel free to argue with me, but
you kind of don't know who you are until your life is like a third.
You have to be in your late 20s ish, if that, to like know yourself.
Dear 18 year old, though I just made angry, I'm so sorry.
I am sincerely sorry.
But there's so much more coming.
There's so much more change coming.
As you enter the world of professional work, you might be like, you know what, actually
this fxcking sucks.
I don't like doing this.
You might be like, actually my friends and my partner that I've invested in heavily, I
think I maybe don't actually want this.
Or maybe you're like, I've been this way and I think this one makes me feel bad.
I want to change this thing.
So as you get that sense of self that enables you to change,
A lot of time has to pass and you have to try on, this might sound weird, you have to try
on different selves.
So stupid.
Like, said with love for myself.
I like tried to be like a tough guy for like a hot minute.
Like I was like, I was like, you know, like getting into like boxing and shxt and like,
that's dumb for me.
Like I'm not a tough guy.
I'm like a little sweetheart.
I'm like a little baby.
I'm a little gentle guy.
But I just was like, maybe if I do this, I'll be safer.
Maybe if I do this, I'll have access to the things that I want.
I know I have friends who tried to be like super, and they were succeeding, um like
lucrative business bros.
And then they were like, I'm rotting from the inside out.
I want to go paint pots.
And they did, and they're happier.
But I think that it's also, speak to that sense of self, it's really scary to endorse
oneself as like, this is my thing, because people will have reactions to it, especially if
you're young, especially if you're like, you know, say in middle school, which is where we
all have collective trauma from.
But fostering that sense of self.
And taking swings at bat and being okay with missing is how you do this.
So it's, it really, in my opinion, boils down to teaching yourself to be okay with
missing.
To try on a hat and be like, that hat doesn't fit at all.
Okay.
As opposed to like, that hat doesn't fit at all.
And I don't think I'll find one that does.
Very long answer.
Hello, I am John.
I'm part of the Zero Dot team and I'm here with yet another take you've never heard
before.
uh I think YouTube metrics and the way this site works is getting better all the time.
But because I'm a counterculture rebel, we're doing Patreon anyway, even though YouTube is
doing a great job and I'm happy with it.
It's not concerning to me or you, but if perhaps I was saying this under duress and I
really wanted you to click a link and find better content and help us escape platforms
that, you know.
maybe uh are totally satisfying you could maybe find it below please hurry before they
take this down
It's a great answer.
um Yeah, I mean.
People I talk to all the time in my my goings of the world.
There's people that it's really a rarity to talk to someone and they're exactly where they
want to be.
And they're they're they're feeling it.
They're like, yep, I love what I do.
We're I'm providing a service to my people.
I love helping my team.
I love the company that I work for.
I couldn't be happier.
And I'm like, that's amazing.
And I asked them the questions, you know, what brought you to where you are now?
says, honestly, uh
when I think about the influence I could have on my life and everything else and the
things that I want out of life, this kind of fits all the boxes.
It goes into that gratitude thing you talked about quite a bit, John, about just, when
they really zoomed out and goes, if the life that I wanted, what would I need?
I'm like, well, I'd want to have a job that serves my community.
And I'm actually a contributor to that.
I want to have a job that has.
an element of intellect with some physicality to it.
So that way I just feel good about the job.
I want to feel good after every single day's worth of work.
Like I've done something.
I'm not just a cog in a system.
And I want to build meaningful relationship with people while I'm on the job, meaning the
people that I work with.
And yeah, sure.
I might not be working in industry that I would want to, or I had a dream, Sam, of being a
film director one time.
And that would have been nice.
But like this right now, this is great.
Like I love what I do.
And that's rare.
Most people that I talk to, they go,
Well, I had this job because...
It supports my family.
I have kids.
I have a wife.
I have a husband.
uh Put my kids through college.
Pays the bills.
And then some people go, I'm in this job because...
Well, all jobs suck, so it's fine.
That's what they say.
And it always breaks my heart.
It always breaks my heart when that's where they are at.
Because it requires a mind shift change if they were if they ever wanted to make a change
like
was thinking about this today uh in the context of generations.
And this is to be very, very clear, this is not me taking shots at any generation.
I just kind of like people.
We all raised in different batches and groups and times, so we different values, we'll
internalize different things as normal.
uh And there are strengths to every generation and there are challenges to every
generation.
uh I do think uh my generation, millennials,
said with compassion for us, we're sort of like tragic heroes in our show.
Like the shit got real hard for us.
And I don't need to like paint you the picture if you are a millennial, but like 9-11,
scary war stuff, graduate with no jobs available, economic crisis, houses don't exist,
scary political stuff, COVID.
Like it's just been like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Like things are just been, it's been spooky.
But this is kind of a shout out in a way to uh Gen Z because they don't deal with it.
They're not like, yeah, just the job's a job.
They're like, nope, I don't want that.
I'm not going to do that.
I need to feel something.
Sorry, can't do it.
And it's because they, and I don't mean to take credit for it.
I think they've seen kind of our angst and been like, God, no, Jesus fuck.
Like, I don't want that.
That seems really bad.
And I genuinely don't want to like shit on the boomers here a little bit because the model
that they endorse worked.
Like for them, it worked.
Like it did.
It doesn't work anymore for systemic reasons.
and other reasons we get in on time.
But like, there's a level of being like, but I did the thing and it worked.
there's this divide of, don't see how your pursuit of change makes sense to me because it
doesn't line up with mine.
And to stay generationally, and I'm speaking in generalisms here, so that's a little iffy
of me, but there's this sort of millennial hopelessness.
of like we watch the dream slip from our fingers and go, oh, fuck, and Gen Z and I love
them.
I do, I love them for this.
It's like, I'll go down swinging.
I'm gonna get the dreamer, I'm gonna die.
And there's this weird, and they're famous for this sort of apathy of just like, I don't
care if it works, I'm just gonna do it.
Like I'm just gonna live in the now.
And I think that can be very empowering.
But also, and this is not, once again, not a knock on Gen Z.
It can also lead to sort of a, believe,
kind of a short-sightedness and not like they're foolish, but like they just literally are
looking right here instead of like right here.
So making changes can be hard when you aren't concerned about changes because you have
this sort of view of like, I only want to pursue meaning, which once again, not a bad
thing.
So it's kind of a different thing per, you know, your age group, your stage, your end of
life, whatever else have you.
um And then also as Sam was alluded to earlier, prioritizing yourself.
I know a lot of parents who would like to change careers because their career while
actually often fairly lucrative.
does not feel good.
It either has like on-call hours where you're like constantly stressed out or it has
pressure that has grown cataclysmic and they're like, but I can't change because going
back to school would be a pause in our finances and that kills my family.
So finding ways to say it's okay to prioritize myself.
There is a level of practicality there because like if people die, if I stop doing this, I
just genuinely can't.
But I think even then helping yourself build like a narrative of like, I'm going to
though.
Good news about that by the way.
Having hope, generally a good thing.
There's a scary part that you could lose the hope, but like the alternative of not having
hope so you can't lose any, disastrous.
Like absolutely terrible.
No upside.
Hope is a secret good tech, and by secret I mean everyone knows it.
People are afraid though.
Yeah, well, and I.
about realists?
Realists are cowardly optimists.
Yeah.
No, for sure.
do think, not to, I'm going to get off my generational horse here in just a second, but I
do think there has become a prevailing negative outlook on things that I maybe is one of
the topics that I submitted to talk about because I think it's really important.
um In that like, we are such an internet built society at this point.
mean, dear person observing this, you know that cause you're
We're doing it right now unless you are like in this room with me in which case that's
fxcking terrifying.
Please come out and show me where you are but the internet operates Incredibly efficiently
in certain ways.
It has streamlined to a science the things that people like are gravitated towards All of
those things involve distress and that's not me being hyperbolic and that's not me being
mean or shitty or shamey or anything Humans respond to distressing material.
If I show you two videos one that's like ice cream pretty tasty
And one that's like, this ice cream is causing people to die in Kentucky.
That's the one you're clicking.
It's just gonna happen that way.
And I think that when you're impacted by this general, like, I am weary, I am tired, your
brain, which is an animal, wants to seek respite and wants to go crawl in its cave and
feel safe.
And I'm like, hey, come out of the cave.
We're gonna go build a bridge and help some guys.
You're like, dude, like, no, I just, the cave is real warm and those guys are far away and
I am so tired and scared.
So it's hard and it does come back to feelings.
Surprise, surprise, therapist thinks feelings are important more than 11, but they are,
they're central.
Humans are motivated more by emotional choices than logical choices.
If you don't know that, make sure you know that.
It's incredibly important to know that.
Yeah.
em And you know what, John?
It sucks if you know that because people don't want to believe it.
Like it sucks.
It sucks being the person you talk to someone and they're under distress, whatever.
And they're telling you how they think they're being so rational, like you're not being
rational.
Like you're, you're, you're, you're limbic brain's taking over, which is totally fine.
That's how the brain works.
It's just, it's doing survival things.
I do.
Then I think about it later.
Now you're, you're post.
retroactively rationalizing it and all of it's bullshit by the way, but they don't wanna
believe it.
Because we have to believe we're the hero of the story and we have to believe that we are
on top of it all.
It just sucks knowing that.
Yeah.
No, it does.
I have this reframe that I use a lot, and if this gets lost on people, that's more than
fine.
I fear it may be slightly pretentious and or self-indulgent.
I don't care.
really like it.
Which is I think of humans as viewed by the ultimate alien species who looks down at us
and sees us being primitive and thinks we're adorable.
Like, oh, they're all corporeal and stuff.
When they like each other, they extend their limbs and do this.
How fxcking cute is that shit?
Yeah.
one of them thinks they're like important.
None of them fxcking matter.
But look at this guy.
He bought a hat and he thinks people are going to like it more.
That's amazing.
And like, if you can stay out of the condescension part of it, it is genuinely actually
kind of cute that we all think we're the main character.
And it's OK.
You're supposed to.
You're biologically supposed to.
Like being like, oh, this guy's got manicured energy.
I know it's kind of a popular phrase these days.
Well, he's built to.
And so are you.
And that's OK.
You're supposed to.
If you're just like, yeah, I'm an NPC.
I follow Sam around and try to make his show better.
When the show's not on, I just go like T-pose and just like wait for the next show.
That's like a terrible existence and no one should do it.
And yet we all kind of assume people do.
Are you familiar with Frison?
Okay, hang on second.
I'm gonna Google this definition to make sure don't say it wrong, but it's my favorite
thing.
You'll notice that I say it's my favorite thing, and then I always say it.
This is my actual favorite thing?
This might be my favorite thing for realsies.
It's a neurological emotional response when things trigger these intense feelings via
dopamine release.
um I often get this when I realize that other people have lives.
There's a thing when I was a kid, would like look up at my, I'd like press my face against
my little, yeah, the planes.
And I would think about like how there's someone on that plane having their own life and
how I might meet them someday in like Miami, Florida, or perhaps we'll be at a conference
in Calgary, or perhaps we'll brush into each other in like an elevator in like New York.
And it just is like, wow.
What an amazing tapestry of wonderful things.
And like life feels so good.
um Tapping into that with other people is an amazing feeling.
Feeling just like the joy of existence.
Like just like embracing a moment, right?
um And it, it's okay.
It's not even okay.
It's important to savor those little things because the big crunch of like be better, stay
alive, get stuff, be good enough.
The systems we are in, this is going to get a little, this is going to get a little
intense for like a ZD take, but like.
The systems were inter-crumbling under their own weight.
They're built as short-term systems.
And this isn't me taking a shot at anybody, but like indefinite growth will fail.
You can't do it.
You go to the gym, you expect to pick one up, one new pound, lift one more pound per week
on your, on your squat.
You can do that shit for years.
And then suddenly you can't.
One pound, two pound, three pound.
And then eventually you're like, and now I'm like 337, 338, 339, and your CNS just shuts
down.
And I think we're kind of experiencing that.
as a society, the things that we want to do are becoming hard to do, which is good news,
great news about humans.
When this happens, we make societal and global change.
Scary news, that can be kind of an uncomfortable process.
Yeah, I talk to companies all the time and I talk to executives and they're always, you
know, they're very growth oriented.
Like got to make sure we grow more, we grow more, got to make sure our QBR is looking good
and got to make sure that, you know, we're seeing, you know, significant growth in this
area by 2018, 15, whatever number they arbitrarily make up.
It's a real nice treat if you ever talk to the one company that's like, we just want to
like,
be around forever and some days we're gonna grow and some days we're not and that's okay.
But like our goal isn't to grow forever, our goal is just to be in the game as long as we
can and whatever that means.
I'm like nice, all right, now we can have a good conversation.
Because this whole conversation about just, hey, know, quarters are down, we gotta keep
growing, keep growing, keep growing.
I don't wanna have that conversation anymore because eventually it's just gonna fall
apart.
Infinite growth is not possible.
uh
And your analogy about, you know, lifting weights is powerful because newbie gains is a
thing.
The first time you're, you're lifting weights.
Yeah, you're going to grow a lot, but that's not going to be the same rate of growth
throughout your entire career of lifting weights.
If, if that was the case, we'd all be Hulk, like literally the Hulk.
And that's just not possible.
There's limits to our biomechanics there.
There's limits to life, limits to nature, limits to everything.
And I think sometimes that if people realize that John, that's
that does the opposite effect if it actually shuts people down.
Like, oh, I have a limit.
What's the point?
I'm five foot six.
I'll never be an all-star athlete for the Chicago Bulls.
What's the point?
People say that.
But I think there's empowerment there too.
I think there's empowerment in knowing there's things you're good at, there's things you
have a propensity for, things you have preferences for, and then you've only got so much
time on this planet before you're gone.
What are you going to do with that time?
What are you gonna do with that time?
And I always find that empowering.
Some people get really upset by that, but I think just, you know, I could not wake up
tomorrow.
That's a possibility for whatever reason.
And that sounds depressing, but it's like, okay, what am I gonna do today to make sure
that if that happens, it was a good day and I did something.
I did something of value, something that made sense to me.
It can be really small things and what gratitude can I have for that?
And then that fuels me to go, okay, I'm in a situation I don't like right now.
How can I get out of it?
How do I change it?
How do I do stuff?
um And just recognizing the stresses on life and everything else.
We've talked about quite a few things now and I can tell John's typing away.
My fervent listeners, John's doing that thing where he's like, he has billions of
thoughts.
He's also doing the eyebrow raise.
Very, very, very classy of him to do that.
And he's doing the dance.
em
I have one more question, but I'll let John say his spiel, whatever the spiel is, before
my further, question.
Prepare yourself for my triple shot at spiel.
Three things, one thing that Sam just alluded to, which is incredibly healthy, and if you
aren't in this space with Sam, that's totally okay, you can get there.
Sam has very high self-efficacy.
He is a man who believes if he cannot do a thing right now, he'll find a way to do a
thing, and if he can't, he'll find a different way to get to the thing he wanted to.
That's incredibly healthy, and I want you to able to foster that and grow that.
It's really good for your brain.
There's reasons people can't.
One of the reasons people can't, the most common one, says I, is depression or anxiety.
Anxiety goes you can't and if you try here the risks of what you'll experience if you fail
That is a paralyzing thing um If you've ever I don't know like you buy a gym membership
you buy a new video game computer system Maybe you buy some new clothes to wear out Maybe
you do whatever a piece of your brain goes if we spent resources on this and it doesn't
pay out We're one step closer to death and failure and then it floods your brain with
scary time juice and things get really hard um Some good news to know one that is a glitch
that awareness even if it is true
is not beneficial, right?
Because it's the same thing as being like, a second past, I'm closer to death, a second
past, I'm closer to death, a second past.
It's true, but like who fxcking benefits from that?
That's a stupid, like, and that's not you.
That's not you, that's your amygdala.
He's a little dumb dumb silly boy, and he can only think about those things.
That's okay.
Another really good thing.
I'm gonna do a bad thing and then a good thing, so I end on a good thing.
Check that out, genius.
Yeah, I know, I'm pretty good.
you're pretty bad.
So, the thing is this global miasma of hopelessness is pretty bad.
um Is it miasma or miasma?
Or is this like a British versus American English thing?
Cause they don't respite and respite are different.
John, it sounds so much better when you say me asthma.
I don't know why.
say my asthma.
Okay, I like miasma because it, I think I associated with a video game I played long ago
called the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.
Anyway, the point of it is like, miasma.
So this miasma of hopelessness, um I feel like is really scary, right?
Like you turn on your phone and you look at the news and the news is like, guess what?
Things are bad.
AI is gonna require all the chips.
No more of that.
Economy bad, friends bad, health bad, everything bad.
um And it gets really hard.
to go to this place of self-efficacy, because you're like, dude, if everything's bad, can
I even put a dent in this?
Which leads me to my happy thing, which is, yes, you can.
You absolutely can.
um My favorite, I do say that all the time, my favorite thing is that humans are naturally
self-actualizing.
It's a real thing.
You are built to overcome your shxt And this isn't me being a woo-woo hype man, this is me
being a scientist.
Like you're built to overcome obstacles and pursue them.
If you wake up and you go, my God, there's a snake in my room.
You're not like, well, I'm gonna let it eat me.
You'll be like, well, fxck And then you'll try to get a stick or get around it or prop
your door open and hop over it or go out your window.
Your brain wants to handle things.
If you're a person who wants to get into art, your brain wants to get an art supply and
try some stuff out.
We're built to succeed at stuff like that.
And not succeed like conquer, win, be the best.
We're just built to grow.
That's what we're supposed to It's one of the most powerful things about humans is we are
built to learn.
It's why we kind of won evolution.
And how our brains are huge.
Anyway, the point being, the obstacle, and like my entire job as a therapist, is to figure
out the things that are in the way of that self growth.
So in this context, in the context of like looking for a better job, a better life, of
changing and improving who you are per your values, getting out of a thing you don't like,
our job isn't to be like, do it harder, do it faster, it's to be like, well, what's in
your way?
What's stopping you?
And I implore you, if that sounds too simple, you know, prove me wrong.
Take some time and write down the things that are in your way.
See what they are.
Because what you'll be secretly doing, and you will have fallen into my therapist trap, is
you'll be identifying the things that cause you feelings and anxiety.
Or things that are biomechanically impossible.
If for instance, you're like, I want to eat the earth, and you're like, but my mouth is so
small.
Cool, you've solved the problem, you can't do that.
But for most of us who are like, I want to move to California, I want to have a uh dog
orphanage.
Is that a term?
A thing where you take in dogs, a dog shelter?
I don't know.
Something good uh for people who are like, I want to become faster or stronger.
Like the, can't do it.
If you sit with those and recognize what we were talking about earlier, the emotional
influence, the anxious influence, the depressive influence, the societal influence, you
can kind of begin to piecemeal a project towards those ends.
And as we've said in the last episode, believe um anything that's a failure is just data,
a body of wood approach it.
Automatic judgments internally are the death of this.
Fear is the death of this.
ah But fear isn't meant to be, this is like a whole thing, but like fear isn't meant to be
an ongoing status effect.
Fear is meant to be a temporary deep up that then is alleviated and you go on to the next
thing.
So if you are living in constant fear, which is not meant to sound dramatic, but if you're
like, everybody's like, my God, how am gonna do this?
Like we gotta help you move away from that.
That is not fair to you.
We have to find a level of gentle or.
existence so that you can function at the way your brain wants to.
That was a lot of spiel, but it is really important that people know these things because
if you don't know these things, you will feel like it's your fault.
You will feel trapped.
That is not true.
People are incredible in this way.
And if it's, if this helps anyone, um, when I'm able to talk to some of the most
successful people on the planet and by success, I don't mean monetarily, although
monetarily they are also successful.
mean, they are successful in that they did exactly what they want to do.
They're really happy and all that stuff and living the life they want to live.
Um, they treat everything they do like an investment on themselves.
So even if it's a failure, they invested in the knowledge of what that failure has now
brought them.
They now have new tech.
have new knowledge.
And on top of that, they should know this, and if they talk to me, they'll know it.
Unless you have a significant cognitive disorder or you have brain damage or dementia or
anything of that kind, if you have a brain of any kind, even neurodiverse brains, uh it is
kind of impossible for you to not get better at a thing if you give yourself a second shot
to do it.
You will improve.
You might not see the improvement, but your brain is literally...
creating new synapses, new things, new connective tissue to allow you to do the thing
faster, more efficiently, better.
That's what we're supposed to do.
That's what brains are meant to do.
It's impossible to do something 10, 20, 30 times in a row and the 30th time isn't more
efficient, isn't faster, isn't better than the first time that you did it.
Unless you actively were trying to do that in some weird way, but the brain can't do it.
Like we, we literally, our brains work in a way in which we're always trying to connect
dots to things.
We're always trying to do it.
When we don't have anything, we're trying to connect the dots.
And so just knowing that and treating everything like an investment on yourself,
regardless if it works out or not, um I find leads to just a happier life.
It leads to less catastrophizing when things do go wrong.
but I I remember a version of my life,
20 years ago when I did not feel that way, I felt like this has to go right.
I'm doing this thing, this has to go right.
Everything had, as you say, huge stakes to them.
Everything had huge stakes.
This car has to last me another year.
I can't afford another car.
And sometimes financially, logistically, that's kind of where our life is and we have to
navigate that survival space.
But when you can get to that space of like, let's take a shot, let's do it.
didn't work out, all right, get another one.
Whatever that looks and feels like for you.
um
With that said, John, uh the segs into getting people to realize to get out of their
stressful environment, whatever that is.
But John, help me figure this out.
Because not all stress is bad.
Some stress is good for you.
There's even a thing called eustress, which is like a positive stress.
And I imagine for someone listening, not our viewers, because our viewers don't count, but
my listeners might be asking the question, well, how can I distinguish between the two?
Well, the viewers count doubly for me, so I'll be speaking exclusively to them.
Uh, listeners, I'm gonna not say anything until you hang up, so take a moment, end the
show.
I mean it, talking to you, Turn it off.
Okay, we're good now.
So, talk about you stress versus regular old stress.
Uh, stress is funny.
Stress is good thing.
Um, me rewind that a little bit.
Stress is a good thing at very certain levels for very certain lengths of time.
Stress catalyzes action.
It's actually quite healthy.
So the other day I was driving, it was very windy, it's so windy.
And I was doing an audio journal as I drive, as prev said before.
And I felt my car go, I drive a car that's shaped like a box, so the wind hits it really
hard.
So I feel it.
And in my recording, I go, because like you can feel the car drifting over.
So I went whoop and I corrected what I was doing and I was good.
That was really good.
Thanks stress, you helped me right up.
It helps me make sure that I made the right choice.
um
But then it was gone because I was fine.
uh Detrimental stress that we've talked about before is like ongoing, especially like
chronic stressor, because stress, the system that I was just alluding to is meant to be
short-term, meant to be resolvable, meant to be like, hey, this is an indicator light.
I'm doing a gesture that only the viewers can see.
It's very helpful for this purpose.
You you're loving it.
No, it's not like that at all.
It's not like that.
Nope.
Nothing like that.
Anyway, um you're supposed to be able to go, okay.
I'll resolve that or you're supposed to be able to go, okay, I'll tune that out.
As long as that system is happening, that's fine.
You stress is a thing related to things that you want to happen.
Allow me to give you a litany of examples.
So um a really great thing that's happened in my caseload in the last year is I had a
couple of clients who, I was gonna say it without knowing, I assume they didn't have like
a cabal of people who chose to this all at once, but I had several people who just like
had babies, like on purpose.
at the same ish time.
And if you're a person who has a baby, you already know where this is going.
Babies are tremendously stressful.
And yet, most people who intentionally bring a baby into this land are very excited to do
so.
There's that thing where you see your baby, you're like, my God, what an incredibly
special thing.
Your body fires off and it's like, this is as close to spirituality as you're ever gonna
feel.
There's that thing people say this cute thing like I feel like my heart is outside of my
body Like I have this whole reason for joy that I never had before and I care so much more
about everything That's really good.
In fact, like just biologically evolutionarily you should care about your baby If you
don't that's really bad.
We should talk about that.
It's a whole other thing.
Um, but you probably do and it's but The way you can differentiate this at a quick glance
is is this a thing that I wanted?
If I told this story to someone else and I said like, a person is dealing with chronic
debt payments with interest that they can't get out of versus a person is dealing with
planning for a wedding for a person they love, bringing a baby into this world and
accommodating for that and having a room ready for them.
um Celebrating a friend's 50th birthday, taking on a new promotion at work.
All of those, but the first one are examples of youth stress.
They're very good things.
um And if you tell the story, people will go, yeah, sick for them.
Love that.
Amazing.
But I do want to follow up on what Sam had kind of hinted at earlier, which is it hits
your body the same way.
a little more John Lord dump here.
Um, my spouse and I are friends, but we are not spouses for much longer.
We've chosen a while ago to separate and have gone through the motions for the last
several months.
And I remember, I say this with compassion and a warmth in my memory, she and I planning
for our marriage and it was like the most miserable time.
Like the wedding itself killer and honestly just a truly like a wonderful experience so
many friends and family were there and it was a really nice day but like the trying to
pick who would cater it and negotiating which would be the most affordable catering and
figuring out how to get the flower stand to stand up at the venue and like how to get a
donut wall to be available for another like this is all stupid banal banal I don't know
how to say any words I'm so sorry but all cool I'm not
but all retentive, I don't care if that joke's good.
I liked it.
You can just, thank you.
um But it just like started to add up until eventually we were just like, fuck this, we're
not doing this, I hate this.
And that wasn't fair.
Like it was actually a very like positive experience at the time.
It's just that the stress, know, jacks up your cortisol, you're feeling really bad and
it's like, it won't be okay.
And then you're just constantly under siege because your body, once again, bodies don't
speak in details.
They speak in big, flat answers like,
things are bad or you are safe.
So really good things can trigger the you are not safe feeling.
I give one more example and then I pass it back to Sam.
um One of my clients who I care so much about, she's one of my favorite people in the
whole world.
I adore this person.
um Has a little baby, little cutie patootie baby and is constantly worried about how this
baby's going to impact everything.
I can't watch my shows the way that I used to.
What if I, do you guys know about
What is it called?
It's a hair tourniquet.
You want a hair tourniquet?
I didn't know about this.
With a baby, you know, I have long hair.
And if like you get my hair and you twirl it around your finger and you're a full-sized
adult me, you're like, all right, you can just pop it off.
Babies don't got strong fingers and not strong toes.
And they can like self-amputate with a hair.
And if you were ever just like, I'm comfortable with my baby having its toe amputated.
I don't think you were.
I think I'm the first person to say that possibly.
And if you are comfortable, get off the podcast.
Yeah, you're not the demo we're going for.
um We don't take bloody cat money, we don't take em limbless child's money.
Yeah.
But to the main point, worrying about your baby's toe being amputated via a hair turns out
tiny bit valid, like it can happen.
But also the stress from that, disproportionately intense for this individual, who is for
the record, an intelligent, clever, fun, smart, capable.
This person handled so much impossible shit in the time that I've known them.
I adore and admire this person so deeply, but that was causing them so much stress.
And it was stress over a baby that they had been so excited to have and bring into the
world.
There was so much fear and stress around, I need this, I want this to be so good, me and
my partner are gonna feel so happy together.
And all of that did come to fruition, there's all this wonderful warmth, but there's also
this piece of like, I can't stop worrying about this.
So you stress associated with good things like taking care of a child in this instance, it
still hurts the same way.
And frankly, it still needs to be resolved the same way, which is a mixture of value
accord and action and acceptance.
For the record, value of cordon action and acceptance is a lot of what therapy boils down
to with good therapists.
It's the execution of that that's hard because you're piloting an electric meat robot that
is trying not to die and is sure that it will, especially if you're under high levels of
stress because that is like a genuine cortisol degradation of your nervous system.
I'll skip all that sciencey stuff, but like, yeah.
So to pass it back to Sam, you can tell by linking your values,
the stressor.
If it feels like a thing that touches your value, that's good.
That is eustress.
And if it doesn't, and it just feels cataclysmic or dangerous or, you know, the impending
doom cloud we all talk about, um that is just the good old garden variety.
Stress.
Yeah, I'm glad you made that distinction, John, because as we talk about stress, I would
not want anyone listening, only listeners, viewers, you can think whatever you want.
I would not want listeners and viewers to get the idea that all stress is bad.
Stress is a very helpful thing.
uh I know the people, I'm sure John knows the people, I think Daniel might know the people
who literally...
kind of made it their mission to get rid of all stress in their life, like all stress in
their life.
uh And that is a certain kind of person that does not know why they are miserable.
They do not know why.
I don't get it.
I have the easiest life.
I got rid of everything and yet I'm still, the brain is still finding ways to come at me,
man.
I don't like this.
The amygdala is just being a silly boy, as John says all the time.
You need some kind of stress.
You need some kind of something and where to anchor it.
uh
which is why the distinction of eustress and distress is very important.
Very well said.
um I would say a couple of things.
ah Let me think of how I want to say this.
So the first thing that I would say is that there's an issue with knowing that stress is
supposed to be short term.
um If you have any stress, it should be resolved, which is why things like an economic
crisis or other things along those lines can be very difficult.
Because you can't be like, well, let me just go get my hammer and nails and just finish
this economic crisis.
Except that doesn't really work that way.
But you can do is say, I've done what I can.
And at this point, I'm not able to do anything else.
At this point, I've already implemented the value of chord and action available.
It is OK to put this off on a back burner because that's the only place it can go other
than a front burner.
And the front burner holds one thing at a time.
So if you have a stressor that's hurting you and you've gone, I keep thinking about it, I
don't know what do, I don't know what to do, that's actually your brain giving you a
signal that you do know what to do, which is not interfaced with it anymore.
And I know that it's scary to put it down because that little voice in your head, that
little feeling in your chest is going, we can't put it down, it's wrong.
from a radical acceptance standpoint, we're gonna do the radical acceptance conversation
part one of a thousand.
Radical acceptance has kind of like in my mind, sort of a bad uh vibe, a bad stigma,
because it feels a little, is what it is-y, but it's not.
Radical acceptance is based on the idea of if you can't change a thing, to ruminate upon
it further is suffering.
We don't do suffering at the ZD podcast.
We do pain, we do feeling sad, we do struggling, but we don't do I'm gonna feel bad for no
reason to get no benefit out of it.
if possible.
So once you say, I'm going to radically accept that this is going to be this way.
So I don't care, like maybe I do, I, whatever political party somebody falls into, if the
other party wins a thing, it's scary.
Whatever football team you like or other sports team you like, if the other team wins, it
feels bad.
There's nothing to do about it in that moment.
You can feel your feelings so that your body can effectively discharge the tension that
it's feeling or whatever else.
You can communicate with somebody who can be close to you and care about it.
I can start on that same thing.
But then radical acceptance says, I'm going to choose to not be okay with this, but I'm
going to choose to begin devoting resources away from it and go back to Sam's point from
earlier, which is I'm going to go do some sort of action elsewhere.
I'm going to go do a action, un-action, if you will.
Radical acceptance is fantastic because it's giving yourself permission to be the
protagonist of the story because every story you've ever read, seen, watched, whatever,
it's the same thing.
There's a group of people, usually more than one, who do not want to accept the reality in
front of them and the hero of the story is the one who finally realizes the reality in
front of them and does something about it.
So that's exactly what you're able to do in that particular capacity.
when you accept that.
You get to be the hero.
You get to be the Samwise Gamgee of the lore, as they say.
And I love that for you.
Yeah, I love that for you as well dear viewer slash listener um I have okay.
I opened myself up to some real easy shots here But I have some beef with a couple of
internet isms over the years The first one that ever bothered me was like you mad bro cuz
hey, it's funny and I'll confess I've done that you mad you mad bro and like stupid like
Reddit arguments But like it presupposes that being mad is invalid, which is fxcking dumb
Yeah, I am.
I'm functioning.
I have a biological body that works.
I'm experiencing anger like that's dumb It's like you breathing bro, like a fxcking like a
wuss you breathing again soft you pooping bro You pooping bro, like stupid stupid, but and
the current one is like, they have main character energy on the one hand I do believe that
like there can be some self-centered egocentrism that is maybe worth poking a little fun
at
but no one shouldn't be the main character in their story.
I said that earlier today, I think, but it's really kind of hitting me how just real that
is.
You should care what happens to you.
You should be motivated to make a change.
You should give yourself the grace to be the character of your story that you draw the
most attention to and spend the most time with.
And frankly, fxcking cheer for?
It's like a big deal.
I talk about this, I'm sure I have before on this show, and I will again.
If you externalize yourself and you view yourself as your friend, if you don't cheer for
that person, we got work to do.
that person's gonna be with you for the whole fxcking story.
I have a very niche, niche complaint.
um There's a certain book franchise perhaps about wizards, perhaps about a school where
the wizards attend, perhaps it's British, perhaps owls are involved.
And there's one book in particular, some would say it's the fifth book in that series,
where the protagonist becomes insufferable.
He is whining on every page the entire time.
He's just like, my friends are bad, everything's bad, perhaps that was the author's
intent.
I quit the series right there.
I did not come back to it because I was like, I don't want this guy to win anymore.
I hate this guy.
He sucks.
If that is how you feel about you, we got to rewrite some stuff.
We got to do some character work.
We got to turn out another book or something because being able to cheer for yourself is
is I think Sam said it so well earlier like he said it so well that I wrote it down
actually.
Did I write it here?
Did I write it here?
I know.
I wrote it all over the place.
I don't know.
The point, the thing that I'm trying to say is that Sam was like, you have to have like a
sense of self.
see there it was, boom.
um And if your sense of self is a sense of shame, that's really tough.
I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go on another tangent really fast.
It's super fast.
It's so fast.
You'll see how fast this is.
So the tangent is this.
There's a thing that you'll see sometimes, especially with folks who have like a good old
CPTSD diagnosis, which is like, it's effectively PTSD plus like shame.
um That's a little reductive, but for our purposes it's fine.
Where they will over apologize for everything.
And it comes from a place of A, like just legitimate trauma stuff, which we can get at
another time, but also from a place of supposing and just assuming that you are the
problem with the thing.
That is a glitch.
I say that with so much love for the people who have this situation going on.
Your brain is gonna keep putting you as the problem and the shameful thing and nothing
that's holding things back.
That's not actual reality.
And it feels so fxcking real.
And people, when they hear me say this in my professional capacity, A, I say it a little
bit less bluntly, but B,
they want to believe me and they're scared to.
Because it's so internalized.
It's sort of like me saying, uh you know what man, like green lights, those are the stop
ones.
You gotta stop at the green ones and go through the red ones.
People are that's fxcking, no, no, it's very dangerous for me to believe that.
Yeah.
But I'm telling you from all of my years of experience, from the thousands of people I've
known and worked with, from all of my schooling, and I'm sure Sam and Daniel too can back
this up, that doesn't make you better and it doesn't make you safer.
It makes you more alone and it makes you have chronic stress.
And it's not you stress, it isn't this improving thing.
It's this I am bad and I have to own that lest I hurt more people than myself.
Yeah.
Yeah, couldn't have said it better myself.
It's really frustrating, John.
I'm just, I'm gonna be honest.
I've been the guy who did the whole over-humility thing.
I've been the guy who apologized for everything.
I've done that.
I know how far you can take that and there's a limit to it.
And when I notice other people are going down that pathway,
I'm like, man, I can't wait for you to get out of this.
cannot wait for you to either break through this or find new tech as we say.
There's another way you can do this, because what you are doing right now is a short-term
solve, but the cost and problem is massive.
So many lovely people I know who, with the best of intentions, just apologize for
everything.
Literally, they may have coped with everything.
And it's like, they literally...
They learned this lesson that psychologists learned, is they did the famous study that
happened where they took a group of people um and they ran two different tests and in one
scenario, one person asks people on the street, hey, I left my phone out of my car, uh can
I borrow your phone?
And then another group of people said, hey, I'm really sorry about the rain, could I
borrow your phone?
I left it in my car.
One group of people just apologized for something they had no control over.
And that group of people saw a 66 % higher return in people wanting to give them their
phone.
So we know, instinctually it works.
We know that apologizing for things that are beyond your control makes you more
approachable and likable.
I get that.
But there is a limit and it subterfuges yourself for sure.
And I do whatever I can, in whatever way I possibly can.
to let people know, man, if that's working for you, cool, but there is another way.
You raise such an important point.
So at the end of the day, I do adhere to lot of behavioral psychology, which depending on
where you are in your psychology student career, might sound like a spicy take, but there
is a very obvious and real thing about reward.
If I do a thing and I'm rewarded for it, my brain's like, neat, it again.
And if I go, oh my God, I'm so sorry, people are like, oh, approachable, friendly, nice.
And you get an immediate short-term gain.
like Sam was just alluding to, heads up, that stops.
People start to get annoyed with it and not like, fuck you, I've been away like, dude, you
don't have to be sorry for everything.
Like it's actually okay.
Like it's not your fault.
But those initial gains hit really hard.
And there's a whole reinforcement principle that we can talk about about this, but like
sporadic here and there reinforcement really nails patterns in.
So this is a very hard thing to break.
I'm.
As a quick aside just to validate, I'm not even touching the trauma side of this.
There's like a whole other trauma side of this that's like hard to get to.
So if you are a person who's been in this position and you're hearing me out, first of all
know that like this is the thing that gets treatable.
It can get better.
This changes.
I've seen it.
em But I also know that like I just want to put in people's ears if you, if this happens
to you, really working on this self-efficacy stuff, this early self-concept stuff, it will
help.
You deserve it.
Everybody can have it.
My favorite thing, man, I said it four times in this fxcking episode, but my favorite
thing.
is the notion that the distress we feel is subjective.
Whatever pains you feel aren't like a real concrete truth, they're like a thing you're
going through.
And you have a little bit of editorial power to change how those hit you.
So when you have that insight and you're like, hang on, I do this differently.
Can I go on this little tiny brief thing really fast?
I've already decided to do it, so thank you for the permission.
um Which is, and this is for everybody, if this impacts you or not, I don't care, do this
thing, little electric meat cookbook recipe for you.
What I want you to do is think of a thing that you're happy about in your life.
Maybe you just did good in a video game, in a meeting you were in, maybe just a person who
you liked said a nice thing to you.
Maybe you just have a banging outfit today.
What I want you to do is to go to a person and say, can I brag about something real quick?
Use your own regional dialect.
That's how we talk over here.
You can say, yeah, I shouldn't go with you.
You can say, can I be a little like, a little hype for myself about this?
Because what you're doing is you're approaching it in a curious, gentle way.
and the person will say yes, and if they don't, good, bullet dodge, run for the hills.
But more often than not, they'll say yes.
you go, here's my little thing that I did.
I like the way this shirt looks.
And they'll be like, oh, cool.
This starts to help lay a nice little layer of like, it's okay to like yourself.
It's super easy, it costs you five seconds.
And if for the record, you hear me say this, and you're like, dog, that's not easy at all,
that sounds fxcking terrible.
That's a good information piece for you.
And not in like a shitty way, not in like, get your shit together, in a way of like, if
you can't do that.
It tells me that your brain has a wound and the idea of liking yourself is scary.
So obvious plug here goes in like, this is the thing to talk about with therapists and we
are trained for this one.
So it, it works.
I don't know.
Like at the end of the day, I'm, I'm an optimist for two reasons.
One, it's scientifically better for you.
Um, and two, like, I do believe at the end of the day, like the news is good.
Like you can change your perspective.
can pivot from the things that hurt to things that feel good.
It's quite possible.
I'd be a real shitty therapist if I didn't think that.
And I do.
With that said, you just brought something up I wanna reiterate.
If you follow our Blue Sky account, you might have noticed we celebrated one person's life
in particular who recently passed.
uh Rob Reiner, the famous director, passed away uh earlier.
uh But one of the most profound quotes he said was this.
I'm gonna make sure I get it right.
I wanna make sure I don't screw this up.
Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you
can do is fix yourself.
And that's a lot, because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.
Those are his exact words.
And I can't agree with that anymore.
I would say my trademark 100%, but I'd actually wanna say 200 % if I could.
Yeah, no.
A of all I agree and B of all I agree again.
I just super to the, yeah, absolutely.
Okay, so like one more little bonus like therapeutic anecdote.
There's things that come up all the time.
People really struggle to put their needs first because they have loved ones who need
things, kids who need things, people in their community with special needs who need
things.
Like these are real things that need, they're they're valid, right?
And I'd be real weird, like those are stupid, don't do this.
Like that's not, that's not the take.
But it's bouncing off of this quote.
which is like, the way I like to phrase it, it's like a high tide raises all boats.
If you take care of yourself, the people around you will receive better care.
Quick fxcking specific shout out.
One of my favorite populations to work with, where I'm the therapist, is other therapists.
It's really fun to be a therapist with other therapists.
I see a therapist too, he's great.
But like, people who provide help in any capacity, teachers, oh my God, teachers,
teachers, you're the top of the list, just so you know.
A of all teachers, thank you so much.
Sincerely, you are the most undervalued people in the world and you make such a colossal
difference.
I see you.
I talk about this all the time.
um It is okay to be like, I can't do this today.
I need a break.
It is okay to like prioritize those needs because you will be better at serving the people
you serve.
You'll be better at helping.
You'll be a longer term, more sustainable thing.
Doing something infinitely does not mean doing it.
the cadence that isn't right for you.
It's a very common thing I see with teachers, with all kinds of people, people in the
healthcare industry, like, can't do this anymore.
Like, hey man, I mean, obviously the world needs you.
Obviously, you know, I'm not saying don't stop saving lives, but, and obviously there is a
point where like, you know, I think when the pandemic happened, a lot of healthcare people
were like, you know, screw my feelings.
Like I'm, I'm burning at both ends, but I got to save lives.
But I know a lot of people who left that life because they felt like they couldn't keep up
with the pace of that cadence.
I'm like, okay, you can't keep up with that pace of the cadence.
Find another one that you can keep doing what you want to do, especially if it's your
passion.
Yeah, I think we were on the same page with this one, which is moving towards change.
Very valuable, very scary, very confusing.
Um, but I would, I would echo the thing we said earlier, which is like, if you keep doing
it, you will find a way.
There isn't, it might take longer than you think.
You might end up at a different destination than you thought originally, but like effort
doesn't get wasted.
That's real.
Effort doesn't get wasted.
It'll get you somewhere.
And if you don't think that's true, you should let me know.
And that isn't me throwing out a gauntlet, or if it is, it's like a mitten, it's like real
friendly gauntlet.
But like, I do think sometimes people benefit from exploring this.
So like, let me know.
We can talk about it.
The main character thing I would draw another parallel.
uh If you're a nerd, which there's an okay chance you might be, and if you're not, maybe
be one.
It's a lot of fun.
I recommend it.
There's this common composition.
You find it in video games and you find it in Dungeons and Dragons and all sorts of media
where you have like party roles.
Sometimes you'll find it in like Guardians of the Galaxy.
They kind of have this.
Like you have like your hit, your hitting stuff guy.
You have like your B in the front line, like big tough guy.
You have your like.
You know, your ranged guy, you have like your wizard or your perhaps archer.
You have perhaps a sneaky rogue type.
You think, you fall into these archetypes and it's fun because each of them can have like
a scene where they're the best.
And I like to talk, when I talk about these things, about the bard.
And it's because bards like bring life to the party.
So if you're like, I'm not this, I'm not this, Timmy is good at this, Billy makes more
money, like whatever else, you might be the bard.
You might be like the fun one who's bringing his little zany energy.
And maybe, you know.
Maybe you're a bar that makes sex puns every four lines and people like I kind of hate you
someone else will really like that like Finding your fit is important and it's so
important to know that there are so many more categories to fit in Humans are so cute We
love categories that book series that I was alluding to earlier may or may not have four
houses where you can get filtered into to be a wizard of a specific flavor and also
weirdly like and these are the bad ones was an option that the author wrote very nicely
and subtly done good job author he said sarcastically
um But like that's not the case.
Like there's so many flavors.
We're way more Baskin-Robbins than Hogwarts around here.
Like there's plenty of options for the thing that you are.
And if you haven't found yours, what happens is you keep trying to be one that you are
told exists and you're kind of like, and that's dumb.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
But like it feels really bad.
You're going to try on three hats that don't fit you, and that's okay.
And I promise you later you will laugh about it.
It might hurt in the moment, Try it out.
Have fun.
It's free.
No cost.
If your brain just said there was a cost, that's anxiety.
Also, you deserve to be in an environment where people celebrate that about you.
So true.
So true.
So true.
So aggressively true.
I feel like, to kind of go the inverse way of what Sam just said, you also deserve to not
be in an environment where people put you down for trying stuff.
Because that's fxcking stupid.
And it happens a lot.
And it happens because frankly, if I'm just being blunt and cutting to the chase, because
people are insecure.
Because they go, that's different than the model that I understand.
I don't like that.
I don't want to think about it.
I don't want to have to change.
I don't have to adapt.
That's their problem.
Not even said in a combative way, said in a way of like, they just don't get it.
If you show me a song that you really like and I'm like, I don't care for this song, cool,
that genre of music is still great.
Don't worry about what I think, it doesn't matter.
I'll take a moment to flex, or as John just said, can I brag for a second?
On that note, um if you are watching or listening to this podcast, you are probably
familiar with the socials and all the different ways you can consume content.
You might find that a lot of content, the stuff that's in your face a lot, is all kind of
samey.
It's all kind of doing the same thing.
And there's reasons for that, right?
There's psychological reasons, there's ways people try to hack your attention span and
make that work, and that's whatever that is.
But I am especially proud of Zero Dot, that we are actively not doing that.
That we are singing a different tune of music, and we are not for everyone.
But the people that we are for, I think, we're something special.
So thank you, John and Daniel.
Thank you, man.
And I, um...
I'm eating a cookie, because I thought I had two more bites worth of talking to my
brother.
That's who I am, though.
Anyway.
I also want to do, a genuine thank you to anybody who is watching this.
Seriously.
um We have some lofty ambitions here at ZD, and it only works if the whole fxcking team
plays.
Because talking into a void about positive shit is fun.
Like, I would hang out with these guys on the weekend anyway and just do this.
It's just a good time.
If other people don't hear it and like make this whole thing like happen.
I don't mean like our show.
I mean like making a dent in the world to make shit better.
Like bringing the good news along to other people.
Helping the people in your community feel better and supported.
Then this is like not important.
It's still fun.
I would still do it but you make a difference.
Cause we all have decided before if this show never makes a dime, we want to tell people
things to help them feel better.
I was.
driving home from the city of Minneapolis to my home in the Boonies.
And I was leaving YouTube on as a podcast on the way here.
And it was just like angry.
It was so angry.
And it was like AI is bad, government bad, everything bad.
And like, would like, was shuffling.
Like was trying to find other things.
And then one of them was like, was like, don't know, like penguins are fluffy.
It was like some random thing that was like nice, but by and large, I do think it's
important to not get.
caught up in a culture that wants you to click like and subscribe.
I mean like I do want that to happen for the purposes of our communal growth but at the
same time much more importantly I do want to not be part of a culture that spreads growth
via fear.
Fear is the most accessible emotion.
You can reach people's fear faster than you can reach their joy or their vulnerability by
like a billion fxcking percent which is also cheap.
um I have a take this is a hot take I might lose a viewer or two over this.
um I love
horror movies?
I don't love jump scare movies.
If you jump scare me and tell me that I was scared, no, that's not true.
You made me physically react to a stimulus.
If you paint a terrifying existence and spooky times, and I'm like, god, I'm in the zone,
amazing.
And I feel like the clickbait bullshxt of like, this is bad, look at it, it's so much
easier to make.
And this isn't me being self-aggrandizing here.
Like this is just like a thing that I want to talk about as a phenomenon.
Like I do sincerely say thank you to anybody who's like hanging out with us for this
because like you've chosen to do a thing that hopefully helps you feel a little better,
helps you feel a little more armed against some of the scary shit out there.
It's real easy to just click on the next thing and just be like, all right, fxcking, this
is bad.
Or this is stimuli or whatever else, but like.
And also really important, and maybe this is just me having anxiety, but like, that's not
me passive aggressively, guilting you for not paying enough attention, especially if you
have ADHD.
That's totally fine.
It doesn't fxcking matter.
uh I just think making a choice towards what hopefully is a positive or kind for you is
the same choice of like choosing to go to the gym, right?
In theory, it's the same choice as like choosing to like text your family member and be
like, hey dog, been thinking about you.
Same choice as giving your dog a slightly extra long walk.
Pick the positive thing, pick the kind thing.
It's harder, takes a little more time.
The net gains are ridiculous.
I have enough of a sample size to prove that, and I wanna talk about it every single day.
So thank you for hearing us out on that.
Yeah.
Aye.
I know that it will be harder for us to grow a large audience when we don't use clickbait,
we don't use rage bait, we don't misinform people, we don't mislead people, and we don't
use fear for our own gain.
I don't care how long it takes.
I don't care if it never happens at all.
I would not be doing this if we had to resort to those tactics.
I would never do that.
I never want to be part of anything that does that.
If you think, if you think that thumbnails could be more click-baity, could grab people's
attention more.
Okay, I'm not going to do it.
If you think that we are going to
you know, come in, arms flailing, shouting at the top of their lungs about everything
that's wrong, everything that's bad.
And we are putting the fear into you just so that we can get your clicks.
No, not gonna do it.
And if you think I'm gonna sit here and ask you to click like and subscribe and ding the
bell for notifications, I am.
Because it helps.
It really helps.
But I'm not going to force you to.
And I'm not gonna make a big deal of it.
If you like what we do, please do that.
It helps.
But at the same time, I want you to like us for who we are.
I want you to like the content for what it is.
I want to trick you.
None of us want to trick you.
None of us want to hurt you.
We want to hang out and be cool with you.
So thank you.
As a note from me, who is not as audience facing as the other two people on this podcast.
A sincere thank you from me as well.
lovely message.
Yeah, very well said.
And that voice, every time.
Just perfection.
I will always show this.
We all have a little like shillspeel.
Shillspeel?
Say that, that's fun.
Shillspeel.
um Mine will always include this part, which is if you're like, hey, this is my thing that
bothers me, fxcking tell us, please.
Because this show is better if it's for the people who are watching it.
And man, trust and believe, as you can tell from watching or listening to anything, we can
talk about shit forever.
Like we've plenty of material for 800 years.
But I feel like I want people to be part of this so this can be the people's show, so that
it can feel like just we are on the same team.
That is the dream.
Like to get really ambitious and frankly, maybe very, very honest with you, there is a
level of ambition underlying this thing that's not financial.
It's that the world sucks in a lot of ways right now and we deserve better.
and we can have better and we're gonna make better.
And if you're like, no, we can't cause a blank fxcking let's talk about it.
Let's make that happen.
It feels good to be like activated on this.
feels good to be part of this.
I want that to be you.
I that to be, I want the whole fxcking team, man.
Like I want everybody on the same team.
And we're not even the captains of the team.
We're a mouthpiece.
That's all we are.
and you can submit your questions in a variety of ways.
You can comment on our podcast wherever you look at podcasts, we look at all of those
things.
You can submit your questions to questions at thezerodotpodcast.com or you can go to our
website where we literally have a forum saying, man, what are your questions?
Pop that sucker in.
And if you put your name in, we'll shout you out in the podcast.
If not, we'll still talk about the question.
We wanna make this for you.
for you and with you.
and with you.
But by us, because we want to take all the credit.
bias.
And more for the viewers also, a little less for the listeners exclusively.
So maybe if you're a listener, don't write anything in.
I'm gonna stand by that.
I will now do the thing where I'm just like, I need something from you.
Either one of you.
We didn't say goodbye to the viewers and the listeners and everything.
We haven't ended this episode.
We haven't ended this episode.
Give us a little goodbye, would you gents, please?
Well, that wraps up our episode.
I hope you found this enjoyable, educational, maybe a little enticing, maybe a little
perky.
I can't wait to hear your questions if you submit them at thezerodotpodcast.com.
I can't wait to hear from you on all the socials that we're on.
Can't wait to just vibe with you even more.
John, Daniel, it's been a pleasure.
I'll see you next year.