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A podcast for the quietly overwhelmed and cautiously hopeful.
one more thing that anger does to your brain is it It reduces serotonin.
serotonin effectively the short version, it is a happy hormone.
It helps your brain just be okay.
If you have serotonin, you're just like, you're bi, but you're feeling all right.
Um, without serotonin in place, and this gets degraded by sustained anger.
Anger gets back to anger faster.
Your fuse is effectively shorter.
Here's a crazy one.
You feel more pain.
Serotonin prevents you from feeling pain and reduces pain in some ways.
So without that, you feel more pain.
And if you were like, that probably would make me angrier.
Bingo.
You're following along well.
Obviously there's an accompanying increase in aggressive behavior and surprise, surprise
to literally no one who's had this, it contributes to depression.
Welcome back to the Zero Dot podcast.
This is where we go when our resources are low and we need a little bit of a recharge.
I'm here with my buddy, John and Daniel.
Guys, how we doing?
We're in a new year.
It's exciting, kind of.
to everyone.
Welcome to the new one.
We're gonna try and make it a little more fun than the last one, which honestly shouldn't
be the hardest thing.
I notice we're all wearing black today.
Maybe we're grieving 2025, and that's like the new thing we do.
Instead of being happy for the new one, like, oh man, I missed 2025.
No one said, I'm the first person to say it.
Congrats to me.
I'll probably be the last as well.
Yeah, the first and the last person to say that they miss 2025.
Other than, mean, other than that, doing pretty good.
Doing pretty good.
Feeling pretty nice today.
Feeling pretty nice and sweet.
Sweet.
It's been a week.
Thank you.
It has been a week.
Before we get into how it's been a week.
How are you, son?
Yeah!
Yeah, think you'd get away with not telling us how you feel.
Yeah!
I'm feeling, I am feeling good.
My heart is whole.
Lovely.
It's excited that I can talk to people about the Zero Dot and be like, hey, here's a thing
I made with two of my best buds.
You should check it out.
I like explaining it to people.
um I'm in pretty decent good health.
I got my, got a ton of blood work done recently and everything was looking good and that's
always good news.
um Good with the blood.
And despite all the things that are happening in life, 2025 and 2026 onwards, I'm feeling
pretty optimistic.
Nice.
Nice.
I'm glad.
I'm glad to hear that.
Those of us who are me uh had in late December, and we did it, once again, big fan of the
people I work for, but they did their, um here's the insurance plans for this year with
like two days to spare.
It was a very last minute thing.
um And it's always fun to estimate your health for the next year and be like, well, I'm
pretty fxcked up, so I need to go get my shxt fixed.
But also it feels good to have like a fresh opportunity to get your shxt fixed.
I do think there's some like New Year's resolution hype stuff we could talk about at some
point, but it is nice to be reminded of like I probably should get a local doctor since I
moved a year ago and didn't do it.
I paid for dental.
I should use it.
I should use it.
All right, so it's been a week slash new year slash whatever.
Everything's going fine.
And I think that's the episode, right?
There's nothing else for us to talk about.
It's literally, I just wanted to ask how you were.
And then I really need to, I really need to go.
Sorry, everyone.
well, we had some feedback that our show was bad.
So what we're doing is trying to accommodate to that and just like get rid of the show.
We're still going to meet up and ask each other a very few questions and just like show up
for a hot second, slap on some headphones, you know, but like if people it's fine.
Like we don't have to do it.
No biggie.
We should make a podcast that is for people who want to say they listen to a podcast, but
don't actually don't want to listen to a podcast.
And it's just me just going through a script going, are listening to a podcast.
At the water cooler today, you can tell them you learned about frogs.
I'm not going to tell you about frogs, but right now you're listening to my voice say to
you that you've learned something about frogs.
And it's just that for two hours straight.
This, two things.
One, I would listen to this unironically, for sure.
Absolutely.
Two of all, if you've seen Severance, there's the part when there's like the positive
session, they're like, you're outie, where's sandals?
And like that had a very similar energy that I was just a little scared of, a little.
But also I would listen to that.
I would subscribe immediately.
The name of that podcast would be Podcast, a real podcast.
Well, yeah, new year, new meat.
No, it's kind of the same me.
You know, I like the one that I had before.
Yeah, I'm sticking with this model.
I'm pretty much the same.
Yeah.
uh
a fancier model out there, but this one's, we're reliable.
We're chucking.
We're doing okay.
When we were at Epcot in Orlando, Florida, there was a guy that greeted everyone and he
had a funny spiel.
He's like, hey there, you probably made some new year's resolutions and chances are you
didn't do any of them.
I'm going to remind you that today's probably not the day to try to do them.
Enjoy yourself, indulge, have fun.
And I'm like, all right, respect, respect.
I feel like they need that guy at all places of vice.
You go to it because they're like, fxck it, you're already here.
You made a couple of don't pull back now.
Come on.
I see I see you flip-flop now you were against the gambling now you're kind of for the
game Gotcha
I have incredibly low scruples when the money I'm given is significant.
I got ten dollars to change my mind.
So like, fxck it and gamble your shxt away at this point.
segue into our sponsor, Casino Kings.
Casino Kings, give us your money, idiot.
Casino Kings will ruin your life
Kings, first off, you're a corporation, I don't talk to you, get out of my face.
And if you're an AI made by Casino Kings, that's the scariest thing I've ever heard in my
life, so please don't exist.
Thanks, dog, appreciate that.
I think I've alluded to this story, one of the engagements I did do, and I'll never do it
for this company or any other company that does it, was for a sports gambling company.
And the course that I taught was coaching people.
And let me tell you folks, it thudded with them.
They're like, you have to coach people?
What?
They did not resonate with anything we talked about for four hours about coaching people
and recognizing how to coach people, how to.
how to coach them for success, how to coach them for improvement, you what are the ways
you do that?
They were like, what?
They hated it.
They were like, this is stupid.
I'm like, correlation maybe.
Maybe, I don't know, hmm, maybe.
Okay, I wanna take this moment to pledge this to our viewer and listeners.
um I want to do sometime in the next five episodes an episode on body armor against this
shxt.
We've touched on it on here and there, but I feel like having just an episode dedicated to
like common practices and things to lure people in is just, good information.
um And I just think it's super duper important.
The thing that Sam is talking about right now about how certain entities.
are less responsive to very human flavored material is significant and it is worth knowing
that you are going up against that and they will advertise it.
I read somewhere this quote that was just like, if a casino is nice to you they think
you're stupid.
And I just was like, that's kind true.
Cause if they see you winning they will literally just tell you to leave.
That's like a real thing.
You can find videos of it if you want.
So,
man, I'm going lose those $10 now.
fxck.
you've smacked up them now.
That's, yoink, take that money back.
Sorry, John.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I want nothing to do with that.
I do want everything to do with.
Some good news, happy news.
It gave me something to feel good about.
Please, to start the year off right.
I'd love that.
that I think.
um
There is some good news.
uh We talked, I I scoured and scoured like this is universally bad and then one good thing
happened.
That's a lie.
There was a few.
um One of the things that I did want to talk about a little bit is one that made me feel
happy because I didn't expect it to be true.
um I am a few things and one of those things is I try very hard to be an environmentalist
in that I want the world to exist.
gotten used to it.
I don't know, I like a tree sometimes.
Have you guys ever like seen a cloud and been like, ah nice.
Like I just, you know, I'm sticking around, it's fine, we're having a good time.
Well, I would talk about the ozone layer.
For those of you who don't know about the ozone layer, I'm sorry, I'm the one to teach you
about it.
I'm not really qualified to do this, but effectively what I would talk about it is
planetary sunscreen.
Effectively, it helps us not all burn to death.
So pretty good.
Turns out, once again, humans are really just cool.
cool little buddies just kind of tracking along, doing a thing, inventing a thing, making
a giant industry or two, not regulating stuff.
And also cows be farting, which is relevant to this.
If you don't know what that means, look it up, I'm not going to explain it.
But the point being, uh ozone layer had a hole in it.
And if you were like, that's probably great.
You didn't listen to the other part about the sunscreen.
If you ever don't believe this, don't put sunscreen on one part of your body.
I'm going to tell you a story right now.
I do a tangent.
Perhaps you've noticed that, dear long-term viewer or listener.
I went to this wonderful thing in Minneapolis.
It was like an outdoor concert, very Lake Superior to summer.
It was like super, super fun, very positive event.
And for those of you who haven't seen me before, I have long hair.
When you have long hair, you wear a headband and that keeps your hair out of your eyes.
It's very, it's like, it's a vibe.
It's a look, it's convenient, it's great.
And it blocks the fxcking sun.
So what happened was I had a really sweet headband tan like this and my job was unbearable
for a week.
because I talk to people and they look at me the whole time.
Well, they're allowed to look away now that they've asked for their rights back or
something, but um I kind of wish they wouldn't because it was just people like, what is
going on with your face?
So like that was my personal ozone layer story is like, just, you know, this was all
burned and this was fine.
This is the ozone layer.
So um the point being, and the actual point of the story that I should be trying to get to
much more swiftly than this, but if you know me, you know that I know your will.
is the hole in the ozone layer is closing faster than anticipated this year and in
general.
The damage that was done in children of the 90s, remember hearing about this and how
terrible it was.
And this is not, this is a conditional, this is an if, but if things stay on the same
track rate that they are right now, The World Meteorological Organization estimates that
the ban on certain carbon emission stuff
will enable a recovery of the ozone layer over the Antarctic where it is to the thinnest
to the 1980s levels by 2066.
Like, we're gonna unfuck the planet on this one.
This is one that was kind of like a GG you lose one.
And then it stopped.
There were some very significant changes that were made regarding pollution and it has
made a demonstrable difference.
It is working.
uh For the record, this was, and like, I don't mean to get all conspiratorial, but this
was one of the like the earliest predicted like we lose as humans events.
Like this was like quite significant.
um It feels insane that global warming would be like a topic where people are like, I have
an opinion about that.
Cause you, I mean, you can, it's fine.
But like, it's also just science.
Anyway, that is really relevant to this.
And there's good news on that.
If you're a person living in Arizona and you're like, it's summer and it's nighttime and
it's 104 degrees and I don't really like that, good news.
This is part of the healing there.
So yay for people doing that.
And if you in any way can ever like support this, get ahold of your politicians who are
regulating environmental stuff, support these things, plug it, cause it's working.
One of the reasons I wanted to share this story is because it's.
It's one of those lovely incidents where proof of like people banding together to make a
societal or global, in this case, literally global change is happening.
I did not know this was getting better.
I was under the assumption that this was still like sort of a doomish thing until I looked
this up.
This is really good news.
Yeah.
So phenomenal news.
So yeah, that's my less of a cute one more, but just an overtly aggressively good one this
time.
And I'm happy about it.
Love to hear it.
You know, John, Daniel, my job oftentimes is I have to be as neutral as I possibly can to
elicit good, thoughtful conversation.
One of the topics I have a real hard time being neutral on has always been environmental
issues.
Like when people say they don't believe in global warming, I'm like, you don't believe in
reality.
You don't believe in what's happening.
We have...
yeah...
we have one planet.
It's pretty special.
It's pretty great.
Please do your best for it.
It's the only place that we have to live.
And if you're one of those billionaires who's like, it's fine if this one goes to shxt,
we'll go to Mars.
Please take yourself to Mars.
I'd love that.
If you specifically could go to Mars, I'll stay here.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Please don't mess this up so bad that I can't live here when you do go to Mars.
erm Really, really, please, this is...
but it's actually a utopia, not a dystopia.
You want to go on the off-world colony?
Yeah, go for that.
I'm good here.
I do not want to live on Mars.
I am a big, big supporter of planet Earth, baby.
I wanna stay here and I wanna leave it better than I found it.
And I think you should do the same.
A of all, everything you just said is very true and accurate.
And I would also validate Sam's piece of being like, fxcking what?
When you get this feedback.
But I do, just for one second, I do want to talk to that for a second, right?
So I always try to make a point of saying like, I genuinely don't want to shxt on anybody.
That's not true.
There are some politicians that maybe I'll shxt on at some point, but like corporations
actually are the main ones.
But the point being, I think people are great and I like people.
If you're a person who has, and you're like, no, global warming is not fxcking real.
First thing, thank you for like hanging in here this long.
That's actually amazing.
I really do appreciate you sincerely.
Like not even like a, yeah.
Um, it's one of those things.
And if this feels kind of sending, I apologize in advance.
You know, the information you're presented with, and if you get emotionally invested in
information, it becomes harder to move your mind from it.
There's this thing with tribalism where you'll be like, we think this in our group, and
then you'll.
creep into some information like, oh shxt, the thing's not real.
What do I do?
And now you have to go against something.
So if you're a person who has any belief and you notice that like it causes you to stress
to have to keep defending that belief over and over again, this isn't me saying be a
cultist, given whatever you come across.
This is me saying it's okay to let a thought come in and kick around a little bit.
And if you feel like it's not, that means you don't actually hold your belief.
That means you're clinging to it from an emotional defensiveness standpoint.
And that's fxcking scary.
Like that impacts me.
That's not me talking to you from like a holier than that position.
Like I get that.
There's a silly example of this.
I'm from Illinois, natively, and Illinois and Wisconsin have like a thing.
It's not like super friendly.
There's a friendly version of it and like a little bit like they call us fibs, which
stands very cleverly for fxcking Illinois bxstards Great job, Wisconsin.
But I've had this terrible thing where I realized all the people I've met from Wisconsin
are amazing humans and I like them.
Everybody's like no fxck Wisconsin they're the enemy like no, they're awesome I like most
people from Wisconsin my car shxt out in Wisconsin once and this dude came to like he
pulled up and he Helps me and it sucked he was wearing all Green Bay Packers gear and he
like was like you need some help buddy Can I tow ya and he took me to the place and he
gave me waters I can't give you some money and he was like no man.
Don't worry about it.
Just helping out a friend.
I was like fxck you man Don't make me like you come on.
So where I'm going with all this
Hopefully, humorous anecdote is if you find yourself having a strong clinging to an
opinion and there's lots of distress around it, open yourself to new information if it's
presented to you kindly.
People who want other people to believe them, this could be show unto itself, so I will be
brief on it, but the worst thing you can do is try to convince somebody via data.
I hate that that's true, but you're talking with humans.
Humans are monkeys.
You gotta make us feel stuff.
And the first thing you gotta make us feel is safe and equal.
If you're talking down to me, I'm gonna tune everything you say right the fxck out.
It's not gonna work.
So that's my A, honest, actual, real gratitude if you don't buy the things we're saying.
Like, I don't wanna shxt on you.
If I have a reaction to something, I'm like, that's fxcking crazy!
Know that I might disagree with it, but I do wanna see you as a person halfway through.
And as a country speaking for the Americans, fxcking probably for more than the Americans,
but on American behalf, like, we gotta get better at this in a hurry, because we've been
turned against each other, and that's fxcking stupid.
We're a team.
very true.
um I will quote the great Aristotle, it does the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it.
I would encourage all people to do whatever they could flex on that, in whatever way
they're capable.
And I would quote Socrates, hell yeah brother, cheers.
brother.
I think Bill and Ted confirmed it's pronounced so crates.
That's true.
That seems accurate.
Hi everyone.
I want to talk about anger today.
Mostly because I'm fxcking sick of being angry and I'm willing to bet you are as well.
And if you're not, that's a weird take.
If you're like, no, being angry is so fun.
I'm Raphael.
I love being angry.
Bringing it back to TMNT.
Yeah.
Bruh.
So like, A of all, quick shout out to any sort of like media that presents a feature as a
personality.
I love when a character's like the sleepy one.
That's my thing, I'm tired.
Well, you need to get better sleep, sir.
Or like, I'm angry.
big fan of the Seven Dwarves Big, huge fan of the Seven Dwarves
Oh my God.
Dopey?
Every day wakes up and it's just like, yeah, no, another day of being the idiot of my
friend group, sick.
Also, we kidnapped a woman.
That doesn't feel great, but we got these floppy hats.
Anyway, much more relevantly, I do want to talk about anger, because I think it's an
incredibly misunderstood thing.
So first things first, we're going to do little experiment,
there's a thing where if you ask a group of people and you say, would you rather be angry
or, and then you do any other emotion, there are very predictable results.
say angry or happy, people pick happy.
That's a real easy one.
If someone doesn't say that, that's genuinely not good.
If you say, would you rather be angry or, and this is the big one, sad or angry or
fearful?
Angry is dominating.
This is especially pronounced in Western societies.
And here's a couple of things about that.
So anger is meant to be a very transitory state.
You're not supposed to be angry for long.
Angry should be fleeting because it has one job.
Uh, I think that I think is really neat and by neat, mean like low key, a little
terrifying.
I didn't think about, I wrote some notes on this and I was kind of working through them
and this is like a little fxcked up.
like.
Humans these days, don't know, dear listener slash viewer, feel free to chime in on this.
I was gonna ask my boys here, how many fights have you been in physically where one of the
combatants was severely injured in the past, I don't know, say five years?
five years.
I've been in zero physical fights where that has occurred in the past five years.
Damn, very well done.
In the past, my life, I have been in a big fat goose egg, zero physically combatant fights
where either one of us were injured.
I have not in the past five years, probably not in the past 10 years, I did throw a drunk
guy in a ditch once because he was trying to hurt somebody.
ah And I threw a kid on the ground once because he was trying to hurt me.
But like, these are not stories that are recent, nor are they stories that are cool.
And the reason that I want to talk about fighting um and anger is because that is the
mechanism that's going off and it should not be pertinent to your life.
Anger is built for combat or flight.
It is a full-on weapons online system in humans.
And you can see it in other animals and it makes much more sense.
So if you've ever like pet a dog and it goes, like you immediately are like, oh, I should
immediately stop doing what I'm doing.
This dog is going to hurt me.
That is what anger does.
It's built to protect things that keep us like from, you know, like being hurt.
Like if a person comes into your house when they're going to kxll you and they're like,
I'm going to kxll you with this weapon.
There's no escape, but the one behind me, you have to fight me.
Good.
Get real angry, fight them.
Cause some stuff happens when you get angry.
um And it's protective in that instance.
So there's like this idea of like you're gonna fight this home intruder to the death,
right?
Here's what your body does.
I'm gonna look at my notes so I don't accidentally lie to you.
The first thing that happens is a bunch of changes happen without you even noticing.
Fun, fun, and by fun I mean once again kind of scary.
fact, you will often be biologically angry before you know that you're angry.
Sometimes you'll realize that you're angry and you'll be like, damn.
What when did I get angry and that's a really frustrating thing for the record good on you
healthy to recognize it But it does kind of sneak up because what's happening is your
body's going hang on danger mode shift into combat mode and combat mode I Feel at this
take my general take is in like an optimistic world combat mode should be unnecessary in
civilized society We shouldn't need to fight other people to survive if we can all just
communicate which is a big thing come out of that later I know this thing protect yourself
protect your family like it's tough don't invalidate that but in general
If I have beef with either of my two friends on the show and we end up like fighting one
another or screaming at one another, we failed.
Like something went wrong.
There should be other ways to navigate this.
if you are having situations where your anger is physically protecting you from danger
every day, you need to make some changes.
And that's not in a condescending way.
That is your life is in danger all the time.
I've known people who I worked with in the past.
who had this experience, they're like, I need that though.
It keeps me alive.
And I was, I'm gonna cut to the chase.
This is like gang stuff.
And it's like, you have to be on or else you're in danger.
And no one that I've known in that life was like, this is so sweet forever.
There was a level of like, I'm saying this is sweet because I don't know how to get out of
it.
So I'm rationalizing it in my head.
That's a whole fxcking other show.
But the point being anger changes your body.
So here's some stuff.
um Anger is for killing.
Anger is for combat.
Anger is for at the best escape.
Here's some stuff that um
um Your immune system changes a little bit during it.
Effectively, your body is a genius computer and it will allocate things to other areas.
I'm actually moving away from immune for one second.
In the digestive system, your tummy stops digesting.
It goes, we don't need to digest food right now.
We need to kxll that thing.
We need to get away from that thing.
We need to stop giving a threat to our loved ones.
Which is once again, for the purposes of combat, amazing.
But if you do a little bit stretching out and also getting ahead of me in the lore here,
you'll realize that not digesting things on a regular basis probably has pretty bad
effects on your gut biome.
It can have straight effects on your whole blood flow and obviously your metabolism.
You're more susceptible to illness if you're angry all the time.
You'll get sick more often if you're angry all the time because you're constantly in war
mode.
warm mode is supposed to be really short.
One of the ones that's really cool from like being an anime fight boy, but really
disastrous over long periods of time is your pupils dilate.
You ever seen a cat?
A cat's playing with you.
You're like ding ding ding ding, you're swinging a little thing in front of it and it's
like whoop and the eyes get all huge.
What it's doing is it's becoming a better hunter.
It's dilating its pupils so it can be like, oh, there's my prey and it can track it
better.
Really great for tracking your prey or for fighting and looking out for being punched in
face.
But also it creates intraocular pressure, which is a term I didn't know about, but the
TLDR is it's gonna give you worse vision and sustained damage.
This correlates with headaches, migraines, I believe bone density.
And this is like, this all will just happen passively.
You're not like time for the eyes to become bigger, digestion halt, it's combat time.
Like this is all just boom, instant.
And this has become more weird of a problem over time.
If at any point, by the way, Sam or Danny, you wanna jump in on this, feel free.
I have so much shxt to say about this.
I've been burning to talk about this for quite a while.
um Like before we ever decided to do this show, there's a person who I think a few of us
may have known through a video game we were all in, and I really wanted to give them this
information.
So dear that person, if you know this is you, I love you, and I want you to feel this, and
I want you to take care of yourself.
So that's not a call out, that's a place of love.
So there's...
There's some like, gonna, how do I call this nerd shxt I was gonna say about like
hypothalamuses and pituitary glands.
If you want that information, it exists.
The long and short of it is things activate in sequence and then they release cortisol,
adrenaline, and noradrenaline, which your body can do cool shxt with over short bursts.
um Cortisol, yeah.
this over and over again, John.
I'm sure you're gonna get to it like, this is awesome in a very small space.
It does its function within a small space.
um It is necessary.
um Obviously, it would be great if we never had to do this, but our bodies biomechanically
can do it.
Fantastic.
Love it, love it, love it.
I am sure there's no cost whatsoever, John, if you're in this sustained state for long
periods of time beyond a few minutes.
I'm sure...
You know, if you decide just to have this level of anxiety, dread, stress, or flight
throughout the rest of your life, I'm sure you're going to live a great life.
Would that it were true, my friend, would that it were true.
Before I have a couple more things I wanted to make sure to hit on really quick.
So nerd shxt, super fast.
um Cortisol lets calcium through membranes, gets into your brain, bad stuff happens.
The things I wanted to hit on really importantly is your hippocampus and your prefrontal
cortex.
One thing that happens is it weakens your short-term memory.
I am willing to bet 100 % of people who hear or see this will have had this experience.
You're in a fight, perhaps it's not like a physical fight, but like you're arguing with
like say a loved one and you know that they're fxcking wrong.
And they're like, well then what do you think about this?
And you go, fxck, I had a thing for this.
I was about to, and it's gone.
This is an effect of this.
When you're angry, your body's not supposed to have arguments.
It's supposed to kxll that thing and run away.
So all it can do is just be like, I have to hit you now, which for the record, We should
just not be hitting things if we can help it.
And also it makes you not be able to form memories.
This is the chronic version of this.
If you're angry all the time, your memory gets like just relatively worse.
Like you can't keep track of things because you're seething.
And also if you want to keep using in my head, the, like the Gundam-y terms, like it keeps
a target lock on.
So if during the show Sam was like, great show everybody, John, your hat's stupid.
I'd be like, I don't like that.
And I would put over here in my brain a little bit of resources, a little bit of energy to
remember like Sam is your enemy now.
You need to keep cognizant of that.
He could hurt you.
Stay vigilant.
Look out for him.
That is really, really bad because I can't do this and also engage in my work.
Go be fun with my nephew or niece.
Go like, you know, skateboard.
I don't skateboard anyway.
But like, I can't do things because a little piece of my brain is like, hang on to that
thing.
You need to stay safe.
And this is really, really tough.
So the reason, one of the reasons that I wanted to do this topic on our show is because I
was podcasting, not this version.
I was listening.
I do both.
I swing both ways.
And the topic was about a thing I agree with, which is that AI is getting real stupid,
real fast.
And we had touched on that before, and we certainly will again.
2026, we're gonna, there's no way we're talking about this more.
It's about to get real dumb.
But it made me angry.
Because effectively, massive TLDR, corporation wants to use thing to advance its own
agenda, it will come at the cost of people suffering.
I don't like that.
So my brain's like, go find the corporation, mxrder it.
You can't do that.
You can't do that.
You can't just mxrder a corporation.
It doesn't work.
They'll just, it's like a hydra.
It grows new heads.
Um, we have to do as per the thing I said earlier about the hoseline layer.
Like it has to be systemic.
Like we have to, as a team, be like, okay, no more of this.
We're all changing.
No one can be just like a hero and like knock this down.
It's why vigilanteism doesn't work also because other many, many reasons.
Um, okay.
Getting ahead of myself.
So the last thing I want to say about the brain before I go on to the next part is the
prefrontal cortex.
Um, your prefrontal cortex is your thinky part of your brain.
and anger fucks up your judgment.
If you're ever, how many people, and if you're one of these people, I'm really sorry, I've
been this person before, you are angry and you haul off on somebody.
Either you shove them or you're like, fxck you, you're a piece of shxt, I never fxcking
lied, you said some really harsh shxt.
You didn't do that because you were like, you know, I've weighed the pros and cons.
I've been thinking about what would best serve us as a community and I've decided to tell
you that you're dumb and I hate you.
And that way we can all kind of advance from this as a team and feel a little better.
That will never happen.
It is an immediate short-term thing and what it's simulating is you engaging in combat
with that thing.
And if you're like, hell yeah, combat, it's because combat feels really good.
Bear with me on that, right?
The actual high of adrenaline is built to make you go, brrraaah, for anger.
Like it does feel very empowering for a short bit.
Like I said earlier in the show, people would rather be angry than sad because the initial
anger feels really good.
Isn't that fxcked up?
Like it feels very charging, very purpose-driven, but that's...
And that's like the main point of the spoiler alert again.
Um, the anger we experience as human beings isn't short fire burst almost ever.
It's delayed and sustained and endless and it racks and it writhes and ...
This is another reason that we wanted to make this show is because if you're a person
who's hurting, we don't want you to just be like, well, I guess this is life.
I guess I just sit here and seethe about things that I can't change because A of all we
want to make things change because things should change.
And B of all, that will fxck you up man.
I've worked with a lot of people who have anger issues, which is a, that's kind of a lazy
phrase.
I don't like saying that.
Just as a heads up, don't like saying anger issues.
That's trivializing things.
But um they so often are accompanied with health issues.
Gut stuff, migraines, back pain.
Well, the other thing too, is like, if you've ever been activated, your body is like super
tense, which is incredible for like throwing a punch or absorbing a punch.
and incredibly bad for your posture.
It's bad for your sleep.
It's bad for affection.
Hi, I'm Sam from the Zero Dot Podcast.
We can't do this without you.
So we really appreciate you tuning in.
Without you, we don't really have a mission in life.
In fact, we're hopeless, we're driftless, we're aimless.
If you could really just do me this big favor and subscribe and like and comment.
And if you're watching it on YouTube, you know, do the little bell, the little bell,
that'll be great too.
Do all those things.
You'll make me a much happier person and we will do a better job serving you as a person
as well.
Bye!
And if you are irritated at the fellow caveman who is stealing your, I assume, meat from a
brontosaurus you killed, I know that's not how time works.
You know, you can go kxll that guy, kxll that brontosaurus, kxll whatever else.
Whereas at this place, as a person, now I'm not gonna name any specific internet service
providers, but if there was one that rhymed with like,
bombast.
Boy would I maybe have a significant beef to pick with them ah for reasons.
And if you've ever yelled at a conquest representative, which to my credit, I have not,
but I have been quite terse.
um They're just like a person, they're just like trying to help.
I don't know what they're doing.
Like they're just following a script.
You can't kxll it.
You can't punch it.
You can't, like the anger serves no purpose.
So what I would offer you is this big takeaway.
um It's the last of my, no, I lied.
have two more little quick anger facts.
Um,
one more thing that anger does to your brain is it It reduces serotonin.
serotonin effectively the short version, it is a happy hormone.
It helps your brain just be okay.
If you have serotonin, you're just like, you're bi, but you're feeling all right.
Um, without serotonin in place, and this gets degraded by sustained anger.
Anger gets back to anger faster.
Your fuse is effectively shorter.
Here's a crazy one.
You feel more pain.
Serotonin prevents you from feeling pain and reduces pain in some ways.
So without that, you feel more pain.
And if you were like, that probably would make me angrier.
Bingo.
You're following along well.
Obviously there's an accompanying increase in aggressive behavior and surprise, surprise
to literally no one who's had this, it contributes to depression.
There's a common phrase that I have, not like issues with, I just think it's a little more
nuanced than this, but like depression is anger turned inwards.
It's you are the bad thing.
You need to be angry at yourself.
So the natural resolution per your biomechanics, and this is really stupid, is you should
fight yourself.
Dumb.
Overtly dumb.
Doesn't solve anything.
Just a stupid glitch.
So what I'm getting at is anger is not your fault.
It is a biological process from the Ye Olden times built to resolve conflicts in a way
that is inefficient and frankly very dangerous.
So, do you feel angry?
What I would also offer you is two things.
uh Here at the ZD we never introduce a topic without finding ways to help you feel better
about it and making a difference.
That's incredibly important to me.
So I have both physical ways to talk about this and psychological ways to talk about this.
But I start everything else with a teeny tiny bit of psychoeducation and validation as per
the uge.
Under your anger is another emotion.
Long ago, a father figure mentored me, David Ventrelli.
David Ventrelli, if you ever watched this, look at my stupid hair.
How do you feel about that?
He's not gonna like it.
He would hate that.
I love David Ventrelli.
He's a wonderful man and a brilliant psychologist.
um He looks like a psychologist.
I don't.
ah But he told me anger is literally always a secondary emotion.
I've been trying to disprove that for years.
If you think you can, write it in.
Because so far, it has not happened.
It is always standing in for a fear, for a sadness, for an anxiety.
It's really hard to see it in the short term.
So like, I'm in the street, buddy pulls a knife on me, I'm like, fxck this, and we're
about to fight.
What I'm thinking is, I wanna go home and see my family.
We're gonna eat tacos tonight.
I don't wanna do this.
I don't wanna die here.
That's fear.
If you feel anger at the drunk driver that hit your car, first of all, understandable, but
the core one is a sadness.
Dude, I had plans for this.
I just bought this car.
This car was gonna last me forever and now its value just tanked.
fxck, I can't afford a repair.
Probably a little bit of fear as well.
So some things to know, as we've said before, um if you express your emotions, they start
to like even out a little bit.
And this is actually a huge caveat.
I didn't plan on this, but it's just so important to it up.
Expressing anger?
This is such a fxcking important thing.
Expressing anger
in the form of doing rage doesn't like express it.
It doesn't go away.
It rehearses it.
It psychs you up more and more.
This is why as a big giant nerd who's on the internet a lot, if you ever see like a salt
channel.
Those are so fxcking stupid.
All you're doing is you're making a place to just psych yourself into a rage.
Because what'll happen is you'll like, this is fxcking stupid.
And people will either be like, yeah!
And you'll be like, yeah!
Or no one will answer you, and now you feel invalidated.
The hope of those channels, the idea of those channels, which is understandable, but a
little misinformed, is that you'll be like, I'm mad about this.
And a person will go, I understand that.
That must be really hard.
You know who talks like that on the internet?
I don't know who talks like that on the internet.
That doesn't really fxcking happen.
So the real thing you want to do, and I can't imagine any sort of Discord server doing
this, is have a vulnerability channel where you're like, this shxt's fxcking hard, And
someone helps you get to that core emotion.
This is what friends and family are for, ideally.
Perhaps even a very skilled dog.
Also, another thing I didn't plan for, not AI.
AI does not do this well at all.
AI can help with very basic decision-making flow charts.
And perhaps the time that you watch this, it's like 2064, and AI has become just so
incredibly amazing that we're all but placed, we're just like, know, podding it and just.
doing the matrix, AI is built to be sycophantic and it will 100 % tell you that you are
right.
They've pulled back on this a little because people keep talking about it, but it will, it
will psych you into a rage.
Rage is not utilitarian.
If you have rage, you need to either fight the thing that is making you have severe
problems because your life is in actual immediate danger or you need to help yourself
deescalate.
Now I've said 55,000 things.
and Daniel and Sam have been very patient and kind listeners.
They've also been humans for at least as long as I have heard, or nearly as long.
um And I'm curious if you guys have things that you think I'm missing, things that you
wanted to emphasize or things that you think you just disagree with.
ah Yeah, so John, you brought a question, a point about.
the utility of anger, the utility of rage.
And I guess this is more common than in the Americas and other places, but I am astounded
the amount of people I run into, which is more than zero.
It should always be zero, but apparently it's more than that, who actually know, Sam,
don't take the rage away from me.
I want this, this fuels me, this makes me a better person.
I perform better with it.
I need this.
I literally, literally was talking to someone at a very famous fighting game tournament.
And they literally said to me, I need to be in my rage space or I won't do well.
Leave me alone.
And I was like, okay, man.
All right.
And I'm curious, John, you know, like we could just zoom out a bit.
Like everyone on this call knows that's there's problems with that.
But I mean, like, how did we get here?
How did that become a viable option that people could consider?
I unfortunately have a very specific answer for that, which is we have been incentivized
to do so.
Human beings are hard to manipulate via reason because we're not stupid.
We're incredibly easy to manipulate emotionally because emotions are overpowering and they
destroy logic.
And if I want you to be outraged about a thing and spend money on my thing to make you no
longer well, to make me have money.
It's by far the fastest way to get what I want from you to show you that this thing is
terrible because you will be ready to fight and since you can't fight by you know punching
it in the face you can fight by giving your money resources time vote and whatever else to
me and my cause But also if you are following along with that logic at home what you
probably noticed and this is a thing that I really want to speak This is one of those
vulnerable moments for me where I want to make sure that people know that I'm not just
talking people who agree with me on things like This happens to everybody
This happens on all sides of the political spectrum.
It happens on all age groups, generations.
When anything in power is trying to get you angry about a cause, they are not incentivized
to stop.
They do not care if it hurts you.
Because to them, you are a number and a resource.
And they will keep milking that as long as it serves them.
And this is like real common thing.
You know what's really hard to do?
Hurt shxt with a face.
People...
Humans with empathy were bad at hurting things with the face.
It's why driving in cars and road rage is problematic.
Cars don't have faces.
Cars are anonymous.
It's really easy to hate cars.
It's really easy to like, person is a fxcking, I hate this fxcking idiot.
Whereas if that person was talking to you, you will never have that severe of a response.
And if you do, like genuinely, you need to seek medical help immediately because something
is glitching, because your brain is perceiving things as threats.
And we really need to help each other rehumanize this, which is totally doable.
And if you're listening to this, congratulations, you've been recruited into my team.
My team is people who want to be nice to each other.
It's a really great team.
There's no downsides.
It's free.
um You can leave, I guess, but I'd be really disappointed.
So please don't.
um And the way we do this isn't necessarily like a holier than thou.
Mmm, I almost said a spicy thing on accident.
um I'll say it.
It isn't a holier than thou turn the other cheek thing.
I'm not trying to make a religious flavoring of that.
But it's not like being like, well, I'm not.
It's helping yourself be like, hey, this is getting away from us.
Let's deescalate.
because we can't do this while we're angry.
And if anybody is incentivized to keep themselves angry, it is against your best interest,
and I promise you that.
Let me tell you a story, probably not even where my mouth is.
It's a true story.
I don't want to tell you this story because I don't like who I am in the story, but it's
true.
Long ago, not that long, less than 10 years ago, I am at a wedding with a partner that I'm
dating and very into.
And there's this guy at the wedding.
And he has been said, and it's come to my ears via the grapevine, ah that he is going to
make a move on the partner that I'm with at the wedding.
And someone's like, but John is with that person.
And he goes, it doesn't matter.
I'm going to do it anyway.
And I can feel in my chest, as I say that, I can feel my heart pick up.
This is an old story.
I'm not with that person anymore.
It's completely fine.
It doesn't matter.
But my body's like, we're going to kxll that guy.
And I found him.
in the bathroom and it was just me and him and I walked up behind him and I thought this
is a friend's wedding don't fxcking do this and I walked out of there and here's the worst
part of the story I felt like a bxtch I didn't feel good I shouldn't use the word bxtch
because of all the problems with that word but like I felt like he beat me I felt like I
lost but if you tell that story in different universes where I slam his head into the sink
which I was very interested in doing I'm catching a charge
I'm losing my license.
He doesn't learn anything.
I'm the villain.
The person that I'm with thinks I'm a nut.
Like, this is a disaster.
You can't do anything with this.
And you know, now that I'm years removed from that and ultimately very satisfied with the
choice that I made, I can still feel that anger.
It's so easy to tap into that.
It's so easy to tap into that.
And I'm going to play more of my cards face up here.
Politicians do this shxt all the time.
They go, that thing that you love, it's in danger.
And people are coming for it.
And they're insert vague descriptor here so you can be mad at these horrible people.
That is in their interest, not yours.
And this isn't me saying it's these politicians or those, it's everyone.
Because everybody knows that inciting people into a rage is the fastest way to get them.
We're so susceptible to this.
As I talked before about like the body armor for navigating society, this is like the
number one thing.
If something is trying to make you angry, you need to be careful when you interact with
it.
And this is tough.
because there's a lot of things that I agree with.
And they will make YouTube shorts for me.
And I'll click on them and I'll watch them.
And I'll go, yeah, I agree with that.
fxck that thing.
And then I'll go, I'm about to go to a kid's birthday party.
Like, it's my niece's birthday party.
I need to not fly off the handle and like, it doesn't serve.
So as we've said many, many times before, and we'll continue to say, if you have action
you can take, do it.
But if the action is destructive,
This is your old timey caveman brain not knowing what to do because it can't get to the
core emotion because it thinks it isn't safe.
Anger is a valid emotion, but it's always a hat to another emotion.
So now that I've answered Sam's question in the longest way I possibly could, I do want to
say that the long and short of it is we've been coached to be angry because it is a
rallying point.
And then that has been turned against us because it is lucrative.
Yeah, and if I could just piggyback real quick, know, everyone on this call is a gamer,
but I mean, this really hurts gamers because what gamers do, what we all do, is we give
ourselves up to a system for play.
But what John is saying is you kind of need to not do that sometimes, especially when
games are designed to elicit emotional responses.
whole modern gaming today,
majority of them, they're there to get money from you, get more money from you in whatever
way they can through skins, through DLC, through costumes, whatever, and hey look, you do
what you want with your money, right?
uh But giving yourself up entirely to that arbitrary system and not putting barriers up or
not putting guardrails or even just simply saying, I'm not going to let you take that from
me, I'm going to own my own happiness here and go and do it my own path.
uh
We're not just saying that.
I'm not just saying it.
I won't speak for John.
I'm not just saying that just to be that guy saying you shouldn't do that.
I'm saying you will leave a much happier, better life and you won't be taken control of by
a system that John already implied doesn't care about you.
It just wants your money.
And if I'm being real, super transcend all the problems, like chill about it, it's hard to
fault a system for doing what's advantageous to it.
I just want you to be informed.
Like, I just want you to make your decisions based on what you believe.
And I want to really reiterate and protect you with this knowledge.
If your prefrontal cortex is impacted by anger, you are not making your decisions.
If you make a purchase or you hit somebody or you quit something or you whatever during a
window of anger, that isn't you.
That is the mxrdering animal that lives in your head that you don't need anymore.
And if you trace this all the way back down the road, once again, anger only has the one
setting, violence.
Most of us don't get violent or angry these days, but there's a reason that we get so
supercharged to get a little more vulnerable with you.
I told you that story about that guy at that wedding.
I'm still tense.
It will fade.
I've told this story many times now.
But it takes a while to come back down.
This is why political stuff has been so painful, and especially in the States over here,
because there's no resolution to it.
So as per the ZD promise, I'm going to move to the part of how we fix this and how we help
this, because it's really important to me not to be like, you're fxcked, because you're
not.
You're not.
So I think the first, we're going to, probably, probably, and it will be if it's not.
The first thing to do, I'm gonna do, this is a hard one, okay?
So if you're like, this one's too hard, cool, stay tuned for the next one.
This one gets better with time, you learn better with time.
It is really tough.
It is tough.
It is identifying and expressing the core emotion you have to a safe party that will
receive it well.
So, I'm in an alleyway, walking around, having a great time.
And this guy comes up to me with a knife and he's like, hey, give me your money.
And I'm like, I don't want to, man.
I'm scared.
Make me feel real bad.
I don't want to lose my money, it's my resources.
And I don't want to get stabbed, that would hurt me a lot.
And he's like, yeah, no, that's the idea.
Like, you should feel afraid of me and that's what's gonna, now I'm gonna hurt you if you
don't.
Very transparent for a robber, but he's what I would describe as a terrible steward of
emotion.
He doesn't care what happens to you.
So what does matter is finding a person who does, who can receive the core emotion.
I'll be beating this drum for the rest of my life on this show and off.
It is so important to cultivate a network of different people who can receive core
emotions because perfectly good, wonderful, emotional stewards will be unavailable.
due to things that are not their fault.
If I go to Sam, who is a dear and close homie of mine, and I'm like, Sam, dude, I'm mad
about some shxt, and I'm scared about some shxt, can I share it with you?
And Sam just got in a car accident, it's not his fault that he can't hear me right then.
It's not his fault, it's okay.
Knowing Sam, he would try, but honestly, as his friend, I would rather not do that right
then.
I'd rather go to somebody else and give him time to tend to his own things.
And that's okay.
So the reason I tell you this is because if you go to somebody and you do this, you're
like, all right, these fxcking ZD guys, they'd learn like two things, let's see if they're
right about some stuff.
and it doesn't work, my god, it feels terrible.
It feels so terrible.
You go back to anger and now you're like, I tried to do the fxcking holiday thing, it
didn't fxcking work.
And like, that is a very bad feeling because now the anger's everywhere and you can't
escape it.
So, think number whatever we're on, I don't know how to count.
F of all, D of all, of all.
um It's okay if you detect.
That's really good.
That's a shirt, put it on one.
um That's really good, I gotta take a moment.
Okay, that's really good.
If you can't share it with somebody and you can smell that coming, it is okay to withdraw
that and just go do it to somebody else.
It's okay to be like, you know what, man, I got to take this somewhere.
I got to whatever.
fine.
Um, the other thing is you have to acknowledge that you're going to need a little bit of
time to come out of combat mode.
There's a cool scene in like movies and animes where like big robots like we're like,
there's a huge base sound.
Like the power turns off.
We don't do that.
We just stay jacked full of cortisol for a while.
And things you can do to make this worse, in case you wanted to be super destructive to
yourself, you can rehearse the thoughts.
So the other day, someone made me mad by doing a stupid thing that wasn't actually a
problem at all.
It wasn't actually a problem at all, a teeny tiny bit.
But I kept being like, that wasn't okay.
I hated that.
And I just kind of psyched myself into being frustrated for like two hours.
I'm a fxcking therapist.
I know better than that.
But it's hard, right?
Because my body feels rage.
So letting that go and knowing that it takes a little time is okay.
I'm going to move to the physical stuff because that's also very important.
Before I do, I want to check with my homies, see if I missed anything, they have thoughts,
or if think that I'm wrong.
Once again.
about the cool-down effect.
um
The hack that I try to provide people in this space is working on your sensitivity to the
poison you feel after the rage has happened.
As in, if you become sensitive to that, you won't want to be in this state anymore because
you will literally feel the poison and the disruption happening to you.
It does not feel good.
You thought it had a little bit of a high in the beginning, but now it's like, feel like
I'm killing myself right now.
And then that is a great motivator for a lot of people to be like, no, I don't want this
anymore.
But you have to work on that sensitivity and understand that one of the great bastions of
this is actually my wife.
She's, she's incredibly sensitive to that.
That's one of the reasons why she's so sweet and kind.
This is I don't like being angry, Sam, she says all the time, because the moment I get
angry, I can feel it and it's nasty and I feel sick and all these other things happen.
And I've learned a lot from her as well in that capacity.
So I'm always championing that element because there is
There's that cool down and unless you give yourself that space of like a proper cool down,
which can take days sometimes like a true fight or flight, like someone breaks into your
house and almost tries to kxll you 24 to 48 hours where you start feeling kind of normal
again.
But in the corporate world, you're in a fight or flight situation with your boss arguing
over something stupid like your performance evaluation.
And then you're just expected to go to the next meeting like everything's fine.
It's insane.
I just want to say that that was an absolutely incredible piece of input.
I, that's so smart.
That's so smart.
you need that time.
And if you can flavor it, not as I'm being weak and I'm losing this, but instead of flavor
it as, Oh, the switch tripped.
We're flooding the room with poison.
I got to not do this.
It's so much easier to turn it off.
To do a little bit of vulnerable shxt.
The things that I worked on with my therapist in 2025, year that's over now, and frankly
2024, is just like self-love.
It's just like being like, John's my boy.
I go to bat for him.
He's a good dude and I believe in him and I care about him.
And if you do that work, it's permanent.
Like I can be real mad that I fxcked some shxt up.
I'm never gonna like tear myself down.
I mean, can't say never cuz I'm not a wizard, but like at the end of the day, I feel very
strong against that.
So when someone is being shxtty to me online and trying to me feel bad about myself, I'm
like, but that guy rules.
I don't care.
Like, that's stupid.
It's like, if you tell me like Nick Cage movies aren't good, I'm like literally immune.
Nick Cage movies are good and you're wrong.
Sorry, doesn't matter.
You deserve that.
Everyone fxcking deserves that.
Two reasons.
One, you should feel nice.
Life is hard.
You should feel nice.
Two, I only want you to pick what happens with you.
I want you to make informed decisions based on the shxt you care about and the people you
love and the causes you support.
don't want you to get rage baited.
There's a reason, was it Time Magazine picked rage bait as the word of the year?
Or somebody did.
And like, or Slop.
Oxford dictionary, thank you.
It's a tool being used to hurt people and frankly to harvest money.
And if you see it for what it is, you can protect yourself from it.
Cause you're just like,
You're just a clickbaity little pooper.
You're not anything that I care about.
And it's scary and it's a little bit paradoxical because you will care about the material,
but you will recognize the format in which it's being delivered to you is a trap.
It is not earnest.
It is to get you to do things that serve someone else.
I don't want you to do that.
I want you to live a gentler, better life than that.
So my mouth had an opinion about how that was going be phrased.
I don't really know why, but we did that.
Yeah, I mean, it's this cheesy phrase of like loving yourself, but I mean, it's true,
right?
mean, I end, don't know how anyone else gets this kind of experience, but like the
relationships you build with other people, they mimic back the things that you're doing
and you see it.
And then sometimes they say it specifically, sometimes they kind of are, you know, a
little more sneaky about it, but like you see this like unwritten, unspoken language being
communicated like, you're something special, Sam.
You're something special, John.
You're something special, Daniel.
You make this person's life better because you exist, you interact with them, you
contribute to this, you're a part of this.
And having that makes it really hard to get angry.
Yeah.
Jesus fxck, man.
You are hitting out of the park today.
This is, um, I feel like I'm being a little casual with like a really serious phenomenon.
So sorry about that.
Um, but the idea of an incel if for somehow you haven't heard about that, it's a whole
thing, but the gist of it is it's an involuntarily celibate person who can't have a
partner and is very resentful and angry about that.
It makes me sad because no one has to be that.
Like you are not so disprivileged that you can't have things.
And if you are in a bad state and you can't have things, here's what you do is you work on
yourself.
You learn to love yourself.
And I'm fxcking living proof that this shxt works for the record.
So I feel like...
A huge part of that is having a community, which is hard.
And you notice the paradox there because you're smart, which is like, but I'm alone.
How do I get a community?
And then you work on yourself and the thing is they both kind of go up at once.
It isn't fix one.
then you have them like it's invest here, see if it works, take care of yourself, see if
it works, invest here.
High tide raises all boats all over again.
Because there's like Sam said it so perfectly.
There's an installation where like people can't hurt you because the things that you love
are safe, including yourself.
Also, like I have a huge beef.
Huge beef.
The beef is so big.
This is the biggest beef I've ever had.
We made it weak to love yourself for two reasons.
One, weird, puritan bullshxt I'm not gonna apologize for that one.
That's fxcking stupid.
You should love yourself.
There is no god that I can imagine that wouldn't want you to do that.
Two of all, it is so you're easier to control.
Hear me out on this.
Stoicism, being a tough person that can go through things, kinda cool.
Very heroic, very action movie coded.
also means you shouldn't need help and if you don't have help you don't have those
resources you don't have that insulation and I can control you now it is for my best to
trick you into thinking that you are suffering nobly and that it's brave to feel terrible
but that's fxcking stupid feeling terrible is bad you shouldn't do it please don't click
that out of context because then I seem real dumb but the point being like if someone is
telling you no you should suffer valiantly that's literally always a lie if you suffer
valiantly you should be for like two minutes
In a sport, it's like fourth down in American football.
Like, cool, work really hard, feel the pain, and then go like, chill, like take care of
yourself.
I'm someone who's very, very sensitive to suffering of others, especially.
don't like seeing it.
No one likes seeing it, right?
But I mean, the amount of mental gymnastics we have been put to do to convince ourselves
that the suffering is worth it, it's crazy.
It's literally, if I could, I'd call it a war crime on the human brain.
And I know it sounds extreme, but it is.
Even if you eat let's pretend for a moment you enjoy it There's a there's a there's a joy
to the sweat to the to the to the burn will call it whatever that is Okay, fine fine.
Let's say that's part of it We know from the social sciences.
You're still performing worse than the person who's not doing that So if you want to be
the best version of yourself The only reason you're doing is because you really just love
the torment and if that's your thing, okay, man, like cool, but like You can be better
We can all be better.
Hey, are you ready for the most nuanced and annoying take I've ever had?
This is an annoying take.
We're gonna lose a viewer over this, and if it's you, Carl, I'm sorry.
I still respect you.
we love and respect you.
Thanks for tuning in while you did.
Yeah, we do appreciate that.
It was really nice.
There are people who think they like suffering and they don't.
Allow me to money where my mouth is.
Because when Sam started talking about this, the first thing I thought is how much I love
to squat heavy.
For me, at this time.
So, you know, throw some plates on the bar.
You go under, you squat, and you finish, and you feel like a fxcking god.
It feels amazing.
I don't actually like the part when I'm squatting.
That part fxcking sucks.
It hurts and it's shxtty and I'm afraid I won't make it back up and my knee feels weird
and my foot feels weird.
What I like is when I finish.
Because my body is a biological organism that goes, shxt, this guy's under a lot of
distress.
Here you go, whoop, and then it floods me with all these wonderful feelings.
Guess what feelings don't come if you're sustained anger?
Those.
And if you like suffering, because it's like a kink thing, I got you again.
you actually get really nice pleasurable things from a very series of neural pathways that
go, how peculiar to be in such a situation.
This is not normal for me, and I think it's quite different and therefore arousing, which
is great, and I love that for you.
But what you actually like is feeling good.
If you actually think you like pain and you like suffering, more suffering, because pain,
pretty quick to the whole dopamine, if you think you like suffering, it is because you are
depressed.
Sorry to be that blunt about it.
And diagnostically, I'm not saying that, but I am saying it as a phenomenon, because
what's happening is you're angry at yourself, which is a misfire.
Because what you really are, because it's true.
Sorry, sorry if this is tough, Carl.
I miss you, bud.
um
You're not actually angry at yourself, you're scared or you're sad.
And there's a little piece of you, especially if you're like a dude who's been raised in
bro cultures, I'm not fxcking scared of shxt, I'm not fxcking with her.
Nah, that's dumb.
Like, you've been coached to do that, to make you better at things for short periods of
time, and I bet you're fxcking amazing at those things.
Way to go with those things, genuinely incredible.
You don't do those things 24 hours a day.
And when you're not doing those things, it's okay to be kinder to yourself.
I know some people who go to pretty fxcked up spaces when they're playing like really
physical sports.
I'm not going to try to tell them how to be a better athlete.
I don't know.
But I am going to tell you how to be a person that lives longer, who's happier in their
relationships.
And that is very much to develop a relationship with the people around you that allows for
gentleness and with yourself that allows for compassion.
This shxt is not fxcking...
I'm so frustrated with this.
It's been labeled as weak or bad for so fxcking long that it's so hard to go against it.
but I'm telling you, you are gatekeeping your progress and you're putting a cap on how
good you can be if you don't do it.
Speaking from clinical and personal experience and anecdotal experience.
Hate is so powerful and if you've been tracking along with our episode today, it only
serves one purpose, which is to destroy things.
Which is great if you need to destroy things, but you probably don't.
It's 2026.
That's over now.
It's been over for like thousands of years, but we keep telling ourselves we have to do
it.
So I would, I would bring you the final piece of my spiel.
And then for the record, we might lose another subscriber on this one.
I really hope we don't because this is so pivotal.
um And the reason we would.
is because people who talk about this do such a bad job talking about it all the time.
So I'm putting fresh around myself to do it in a good way.
um
to lose track of thought, but I want to pause you just here for a second.
The Zero Dot, what we do here is we talk about nuanced stuff.
We could have taken another path where we gave you stupid, flashy, hot takes that were
overly simplified and told you it was something that's going to change your life.
And we actively don't do that.
We tell you the truth.
Sometimes the truth takes a while to talk about.
There's deep understanding required in it.
Sometimes it's messy and sometimes the truth is this is just gonna be a fxcking hard thing
and you gotta do it.
So John's talking about here, there's truth here, but like it's taken a bit of time for us
to discuss it, but if you've been tuning in so far, thank you.
But also just know we at Zero Dot are never going to sell you on a promise that's not
real.
We're always gonna give you data, we're gonna give you anecdotes, we'll give you case
stories, we'll give you social sciences, all that stuff.
We'll invite you to tell us if we're wrong and that's totally fine too.
But we're not gonna, for the sake of clickbait or anything else, try to sell you on
something that's not real.
I do want to echo that, and it's not to be self-congratulatory.
What I would say is we're all pretty stable in our own lives, and there's not a ton of
pressure for this to succeed from a financial gain standpoint.
Hence, I'd rather offer you things that can really help you rather than things that will
get you to click on shxt.
The thing that we've all founded this on, all three of us, is authenticity.
If it's not going to be real, then it's stupid.
So thank you for going along with our nuanced difficult shxt because it, all I'm telling
you, from experience professionally and personally, it is the thing that works.
And to that end, here it comes.
It is a tool and it is frankly, I always tell people this when I'm being a therapist and I
always, I probably fxck it up and I say this about three things, but this is one of those
things when I say if you only take like one thing from me, let it do this.
um And it's gratitude.
See, I just lost that guy, the one guy who's like fxck gratitude.
The reason people don't like this, and this is especially true I believe in the corporate
world, speaking from a lot of experience with people who I've worked with who are like, I
got fxcking like brainwashed about this shxt, they don't like it.
Gratitude when it's done wrong is ignoring feelings.
Gratitude it's like, well just be glad you have a house dude, fxcking be glad you have
fxcking regular, that's not gratitude, that's actually shame and a very neat hat.
And by neat I mean shxt.
Gratitude is genuine appreciation for the things that you like and that you're grateful
for.
And I am telling you, it is by far the fastest off-ramp from rage because your brain is
incapable of doing both simultaneously.
You can't be in warm mode while you feel safe.
So this isn't gratitude, but it's an example of the idea.
There's a little thing I teach people over in Therapy Town, which is to, and I'm sure
someone will have beef with me doing this because of something about it.
Anyway, you'll see.
But like, if someone's really stressed out, you just take a piece of gum, start chewing
gum.
And here's why.
If you've been playing along the whole show, perhaps you'll recall that I said earlier
your digestion stops when you're in battle mode because your body's like, no time for
that.
We have to only fight and kxll things.
So if you're chewing, your brain goes, wait a minute, are we out of battle mode?
The last time that I was in battle mode, I definitely wasn't eating anything.
I think maybe we're okay.
Better yet, it becomes like a behavioral thing where your brain starts to associate a
certain taste or experience with like, I think that's okay.
I have mints in my car.
this purpose because if I'm tasting that lovely freshness my brain's like ah you're fine
bro you're probably just anxious and it's really helpful so this isn't me saying just like
eat your problems away that's the thing the person's gonna play about but it is saying if
you can jog your brain by doing a thing that's incompatible with the data your brain is a
computer and it will respond well back to the gratitude thing um lot of things I'm
grateful for I am I don't know this is like a weird thing to say I think I'm like one the
luckiest people on earth I have really great friends like the two people in this show with
me
I have the cutest dog, sorry other dogs, I'm sure you're like great, my dog's incredibly
cute.
I really like the state that I live in, I'm so grateful for the friends that I have.
Cheesecake exists, it's incredible, it's really good.
If you are a person who can consume cheesecake, I highly encourage it.
My football team is doing good this year.
And as I just go into this, I can tell you that that little bit of rage from that story I
told earlier in the show, I can feel it going.
That's a real fxcking thing, you can do this.
But to tie back to the thing Sam was pointing out earlier, you can't do this insincerely.
And if you start doing it insincerely, cool, bail out, don't do it right now.
Insincere gratitude is denial of your feelings.
Insincere gratitude is a platitude.
I wish that didn't rhyme so much.
But like, if you don't actually feel good about the thing, what you're ending up doing is
invalidating yourself.
And it's okay if you can't get to that space at any given time.
But I invite you, dear viewer slash listener, if you can go to a place right now and just
think of one person in your life who's been a fxcking absolute star for you, think about
that thing they did for you that was really nice.
If you can like feel, see in your body where you feel that, I get it right here.
Get it right here a little bit.
If you can think about like a time like a cute thing happened to you.
I'm thinking about my dog and his big dumb face coming up carrying his pirate chicken
meal.
I'm like, I love that guy.
You can think about like a thing that was really like just a warm moment since it's very
like holiday-y times.
Like recently been at like a Christmas market, had some hot cocoa, saw a person I liked
very much.
Felt really nice.
And as you tap into this, you will feel the anger leaving.
Heads up.
If you do this too soon while the anger is too hot before you do the step away thing, let
it calm down.
It won't work.
Other quick couple of things.
The gratitude one for me is my favorite.
It's the most nuanced and frankly, it is the most, in my opinion,
the most overall powerful.
one that's gonna lose somebody because it's cheesy, it works.
I only say shxt that works, that's my promise to you, is breathing.
Because breathing's another one you can automatically control that is a hard pivot out of
fight mode.
one because the moment you hear someone say, just breathe, you're like, shut up, that's
stupid.
But it does actually work.
No, it's such a hard fxcking cell.
It's such a hard cell.
It's free and it works so well.
There's the whole thing with diaphragmatic breathing.
There's a shortcut that I teach people.
This is maybe our little uh, electric meat cookbook move of the day.
Check this out.
Boop.
Hand on tummy, hand on chest.
Take a deep breath in.
Feel your chest rise.
What I want you to do for diaphragmatic breathing, I want you to, and it's okay if it
moves a little bit.
I want you to try to have your chest move less than your tummy.
Go ahead and stick your tummy out when you breathe in.
No one's looking.
Nobody can see.
that triggers a different response in your body because if you're breathing through here,
you're not doing action breathing.
You're not doing combat breathing.
If you're running or fighting, you're breathing up here and it's very like battle coded.
If you're breathing down here, you're okay, which is silly.
to be a singer, that's exactly how you should be breathing from your belly.
Yeah, yeah.
Another fun fact, this is important that I don't conflate this with magic, because it's
not.
What I was taught to do for this is to breathe in through your nose and out through your
mouth.
There is no magical science behind this.
What it does is it makes you breathe in a weird way to draw attention to the fact you're
doing a thing.
You're like, oh, I'm going to do like relax now.
The trick is for some people, they're like, I'm doing a thing and therefore it's insincere
and I'm still actually really angry.
If you're one of those people, don't fxcking do that.
But.
It's really important to to advocate this.
If you watched this today, listened to this today, and you're like, I buy into all that
shxt 100 % and you go try to do it, it doesn't work.
That's like, okay.
That's like really okay because these things are very much skills.
They're not an ability that you just have.
They're a skill that you have to practice.
And it's really hard because you're going against thousands and thousands of years of war
mode.
Shit, if you've ever had like a really hard part of your life where you had to like
actually physically like fight for survival.
You are playing straight uphill because your body's going, we are in danger.
You can't do this.
So you can always do a little check of if I don't respond to this in the next one second,
will I physically be killed?
Will someone I love be killed in the next like 60 seconds if I don't do something?
If someone will, fxcking action hero time dudes, strap it up, let's go.
But if not, this is a glitch.
And I applaud you for trying and I applaud you for hearing me out on this.
This is content that some people really don't like.
I hated this shxt.
When I first had a person in my life profession talk to me about this, I was like, this is
fxcking garbage.
I'm just gonna power through it.
This is fxcking stupid.
It is not.
I promise you.
It works.
you are not a special person because you get angry.
Yeah.
you're a special person kind of in spite of it.
Yeah.
Totally in spite of it.
Everybody's strapped to that defense system.
It doesn't, that's dumb.
That's like having a lock on your door and thinking you have a mansion.
That's not how this works.
Some safety is healthy and it's required, but you don't.
Well, okay.
I have one last rant.
This is like a really big rant.
I'm gonna keep it short, but like, there's this thing that has been popped.
has uh John said he's gonna keep this short?
Viewers don't listen to them.
In fact, I need you to spread propaganda immediately.
Be angry at them.
No, don't wait!
The wrong message!
um
There's this thing that I hate so much and I think I actually do hate this.
It's a brand, it's not like a specific brand like a Nike or something, but it's a style of
marketing and it's trying to get at someone's identity to make them feel seen and it will
make the person identify as an angry grumpy person.
There are people who can do this and it's cute and fun.
I know a guy who's just like, he's the grump of the group and he's actually incredibly
sweet and kind, but he's like faux grumpy and it's really cute.
It's really fun.
Other people are like, I hate people.
If you have a fxcking shirt that says this or a poster that says this, I invite you to
burn it now.
I am begging you.
Don't let this be part of your identity because what you're doing is you're separating
yourself off from the thing that will make you feel better.
There's a fxcking thing about me.
I could say that better, but I'm not going to.
where I'll go on the internet and I'll look for shxt for my gym.
I have a home gym, I love that thing so much.
I'm always buying crap to put in there that I don't need because it feels good.
And sometimes I'll look for like gym banners, funny ones, silly ones, whatever.
I want an Arnold, you big strong boy, you know, that's cool.
But I'll see one recurrently that says like, that's what I do.
I know things, I hate people, and I lived heavy weight.
And I'm just like, you're the dumbest fxcking person on the planet.
You're so goddamn stupid.
Like they're trying to get you to associate good things with being isolated and miserable.
That's so dumb.
My personality trait is that I take painful shits.
That's the same thing.
That's fxcking stupid.
Don't lock yourself into misery because you feel tough.
That's so fxcking stupid.
And paradoxically, it's not tough.
You know, it's easy acting tough.
You know, it's hard being vulnerable.
And if you think I'm wrong, fxcking be vulnerable.
No one ever beats that Trump card, by the way.
It's a little fun trick I used to do.
but like, I guess that's my point, right?
Is like, if you're a person who identifies as being angry as part of you, like that's a
warning sign.
If it's like your role at work is like, you're the angry one.
And I also want to let you know a little, vulnerable.
Once again, I've not always been the person that I am today that I like very much.
was in college, I was at party, I was in choir, my friends were hanging out.
And a woman in that choir said to me, like, John Merrick, I think you were the angriest
man I've ever known.
And at the time I was like, hell yeah.
I went to like lift some weights.
And I think what she was doing, whether she knew it or not, was like, here's a life vest.
Put this on.
You're going to die out there.
I'm struck by some emotions as I say that if I'm transparent with you.
Because there's a version of my life, and we've talked about some of this story before,
but like, I almost didn't do this path.
I almost picked a different path where I never would have had this and I never would have
expressed my shxt.
I know a lot of people on that path.
It's fxcking hard to leave.
And if you're a person who's on that path right now and you're hearing this out and you're
listening to it, fxcking shout outs to you, friend.
Seriously, it's so hard to give that up.
It's a shield and you feel so fxcking naked without it.
But I'm telling you, I'm telling you.
in my entire career, I have never met a person who tried to be kinder to themselves and
let go of anger who regretted it.
Asterisk, there is an immediate regret.
There's a quick flash and you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like you feel bad because you
just let your shield down and now your mean therapist knows that you're a weak baby and
they're gonna take advantage of you.
We won't.
And if we do, know, we'll get, us, sue us into the ground because that's not a good
therapist.
That's criminal.
It is really scary to break a promise with your past self.
You made a promise that this is who you are now and to go down a different path.
That's scary.
That hurts at first.
But if you give yourself permission, which is what I say all the time, it's fxck your
plans.
The plans you made was from an older, a younger version of you that was stupider than you
are now.
Give yourself permission to break away from that.
I promise you won't regret it.
I feel like Sam is always good at this, but like every time you talk to them, it's like,
fxck yeah, dude, like that's such a fxcking truth.
That's such a fxcking truth.
And I, this is, I don't know.
Hopefully we're approaching this from both an empowering and maybe a little bit of a
playful angle, but like, I really want you to try this, dear person at home.
Find a person who you think isn't a piece of shxt, a person who cares about you in some
degree, and like tell them a feeling that isn't anger.
And if you want extra credit points that I can clearly give to you, um say that you were
angry about this, but you think the core feeling is this.
It will change your life.
I know that you can't like necessarily feel this, like when I talked about that dude at
that wedding earlier, I was like ready to fight.
And my body's like, all right, fxcking all right, we'll find him.
not too late.
I don't feel it anymore.
That's real.
That's real.
I hate that I can't like give you that experience subjectively because that's, you know,
magic.
um And I also real quick rant, just like one second rant.
um AI simulates this poorly.
It was one.
It was one fxcking second.
That was it.
That was the whole rant.
I did that for the viewers.
I broke some bread with the viewers for that one.
That's good.
That's good.
We're all making people.
We're squashing our beefs.
um But that is the big thing, right?
Is like, you gotta take risks to grow.
And Sam's piece about like, it's going against your past self.
Your past self was, they were trying, but they might've been dumb.
My past self was real dumb.
So I had love for that guy.
He had a bunch of stupid opinions.
Cause he was young, he didn't know better.
True story, quote me, 16 years old, driving with my mom in the car.
I said, dang mom, I feel good today.
She was like, why?
And I was like, well, I've been dating so and so for a few months now.
I know what it's like to be in an adult relationship.
And she was like, John, no, you don't.
And I like flew off the handle.
So I was like, yes, do.
I did not.
I was like so stupid.
And that's okay.
Like, that's okay.
Back to the humans are cute reframe.
Like I was trying.
We were all just trying.
And if you try this and it sucks and you hate it, go ahead and like be calloused and
unhappy and shxt if you want to, but like, please try.
Please.
Viewers do it for me.
Listeners do it for me too.
I'm very selfish.
Do it for me.
Do it for Sam.
I mean, fxcking do it for yourself, honestly.
do it for yourself.
But if you if you're not there yet, do it for me.
Yeah.
Believe in the us that believes in you.
In lieu of subscribing to our Patreon, do it for us.
We're asking you to.
Yeah.
Honestly?
Yeah, honestly, I would much rather you do that shxt and leave a comment than give me
money.
I'm not even fxcking kidding.
Because you will make a much bigger dent in the world.
You will affect your community almost immediately, I swear.
And if you don't, okay, this is actually another caveat, if you don't, it's okay to notice
that your community might not be healthy.
I've had people who I've worked with in the past who were like super brave and super
awesome and did vulnerable shxt.
They're like, everybody's been fxcking cruel to me.
And what they reached was like, I gotta quit doing this.
I'm hanging out people who are doing a lifestyle that is not good for me.
And that's fxcking scary on its own, right?
Because everyone wants to feel like they belong and identifying the fact that the thing of
which you have adopted might not be where you belong is scary.
If you've made it this far, thank you for hanging out with us.
I don't know this is our most entertaining episode, but it's one that I feel
extraordinarily passionate about.
I have many times in my life wished that there was a bottled this information to share
with people who are in pain because people deserve to hear it.
Yeah.
So I hope that it helps.
And if it doesn't, because you're like, but what about blank?
Once again, like, please genuinely let us know because we might have answers.
all your what abouts.
What about this?
What about that?
Let us know.
We'll be happy to discuss them.
Brutalman.
girl
The time is nigh.
I feel like, just to cap off this episode, because we can always come back to this topic
if people have more things to say on it.
Sam, just double checking with you before we start wrapping up.
Is there anything that you desperately want to say this episode that cannot wait?
No?
John?
Do you have another one of your patented uh quick five minute rants that you want to slip
in?
For once, I actually feel like I've said everything I wanted to say on this topic.
This is like hurt to talk about briefly for snippets because it is in case you couldn't
tell, incredibly important to me.
We've mentioned gratitude a lot during today's episode.
And rather than do the thing that I said I wasn't going to do, I'm still not going to do
it, which is the New Year's resolutions.
What are you going to do?
Looking back over 2025, I'd like each of you to give me three things, and I will join in
on this as well.
So this is to myself as well.
Three things that you are grateful for in the year of 2025, because it's been a year.
And I would quite like to hear some of the silver linings of that year.
I, as a real quick aside, am cheating and very prepped for this assignment.
Recently, a person that I care about very much was having a very low moment and I was
talking about this and I gave them some examples and it ended up being a very like gentle
conversation with us of just like sitting with these things and I realized I can do this
literally and definitely.
So here's a few, you know, hits from 2025.
One, I am grateful.
I might get emotional.
Here we go.
I am grateful for the shared human resilience of the people I love.
2025 was a hard year and all the people I came into it with are coming out the other side.
So I'm in different shapes, I'm in different arrangements, but I'm really glad that we as
a group of people, I'm glad that we as a group here at the show have been able to kind of
ride the wave together.
I think the tides of change are coming and you can feel it a little bit in a way you
couldn't at the start of the year.
That's really big.
My personal one, perhaps the selfish one for me is in June.
2025 I had not lifted a weight beyond like, you know, a gallon of milk or something in
seven years I've been lifting weights consistently since June 13th and I can feel it in my
body I can feel it in the way that I move and look um and then also I have made so many
great friends this year and just unexpected places and it has been a Really brilliant
finish to a really stupid year and I'm so grateful for the people I've met along the way
and also bonus fourth one I'm grateful to you viewer for watching this
That's not just a fxcking lie, it's clearly a lie.
But it's also true.
Because as I've said before, for me this isn't a financial goal.
For me this is I want the world to be better and I truly believe that if people care about
this shxt together, we have a shot.
The powers that don't want things to change.
We outnumber them.
There's way more of us.
So thank you for caring, giving a shxt, and trying.
That's lovely.
What am I grateful for?
So many things.
In 2025, it was a pretty rough year in the sector that I work in, which closely is
associated with DEI initiatives, In that year, it was asked of me and people in my
industry to not use the word diversity anymore, not to use the word equality anymore, not
to use inclusion anymore.
and there was all these other things we weren't allowed to talk about.
I am proud in saying to myself that I did not adhere to any of those creeds.
I said, well, I'm going to bring up those words.
I'm going to talk about them.
Yes, there's stuff happening in the American administration right now in the government,
and we're going to talk about it because we can't keep avoiding this.
And what are you going to do about it regardless where you are?
So I'm proud that I stuck to that.
I stuck to my values.
ah Even at the risk of my job, I said, I'm going to do it no matter what.
You can fire me.
That's OK.
um
I am grateful that, reasonably speaking, I'm in very good health.
um That John talks about versions of himself that's like, holy crap, that guy, what the
heck was that guy doing?
There was a version of myself that didn't think he was gonna live past 30 and lived like
he was not gonna live past 30 and was very self-destructive.
I'm not that version now.
I'm very much like, wanna be on this planet as long as I can and I'm very grateful for all
of that.
ah
And my third thing, I'm grateful for so many things, but making me choose three, I'm
grateful for you two.
I'm grateful for you two taking a swing with me on this.
I'm grateful that we started this.
That's a pretty awesome thing.
Pretty great way to fight back against the agenda TM.
And uh I'm honored.
guys man.
Likewise.
Absolutely.
I am grateful for being able to see more of my extended family this year.
We've had a lot of...
A lot of family deaths, a lot of family just downturns in the family as of late.
but something beautiful that came from that.
And I wish it were due to better circumstances is that I got to see people that I'd kind
of lost touch with in my family.
I'm a big, I'm a big family guy.
And now the family guy theme is running through my head.
I wish that wasn't a thing.
I'm really big on family.
I cherish my family so much, but it was always very much.
my immediate little circle of family and as people have grown older and they've got their
own lives to deal with I've lost touch with a lot of my more extended family and it's just
been nice regardless of the circumstances that brought everyone back together to see those
people again and to kind of make a promise to see them more and to keep in touch
and not just to see them when something tragic happens and we're all the only time we see
each other is when we're grieving or when we're, you know, remembering what we've lost
just to see people to see them and to check up on them and to say hello and spend time
with them.
That's been really nice and I hope that it continues this year.
That'd be really nice.
The second thing is
Similar to John, I started going to the gym this year.
Last year, last year I should say.
I started going to the gym.
It's something that I used to have a very active job.
Used to have a very, a job where I was always on my feet.
I was walking long distances.
I was constantly picking things up, bending down.
It kept me active, kept me healthy.
And then I quit that job and I became very sedentary.
I started.
just sitting around all day, not really doing anything.
And I really, really noticed, I saw a photo of myself and I was just like, I don't know
who that is.
I don't recognize that guy.
Because it was such a slow gradual change, I didn't notice it.
And then I saw that photograph and I thought, wow.
time to do something.
So I did.
I did.
And it's been really, really lovely.
And a great side effect of that has also been it's really, really helped my mental health
so much.
Incredibly.
It's been because I know that I'm going and doing something that I'm improving myself.
I'm doing something for me to better myself.
And it's been great for my self confidence because I've gone to the gym.
and I've spoken to people, I've approached people and I've complimented them and they've
complimented me and we've chatted about routines and what brought them to working out.
It's been so nice to interact with people on a more daily basis again.
I am notoriously a...
not anti-social, I'm not what you would call an extrovert people person.
I am deep down.
I am deep down.
I just have a very, very tiny social battery.
So it's been nice to use what little social battery I have to speak with people again.
And the third and final thing before I drag on too long is
I'm grateful for the opportunity to do this with you too, as Sam said.
And I'm grateful to myself for...
taking the opportunity for getting over the hump of imposter syndrome and getting over the
hump of I dunno, like what if it fails, what if I don't, know, what something goes wrong?
I'm so happy that I tried, I'm so happy that I took the chance.
It helps that I trust you both very much, but I'm proud of myself for taking the chance.
Because there is, speaking of versions of ourselves, there's a version of me who would
have instantly just been like, find an excuse, find an excuse to say that you can't.
You're too busy, you've got too many things going on, or you don't really know if you're
the right fit for it.
You asked me to be a part of it because you think that I'm the right fit for it.
And when it comes down to it, if I trust and value your opinions, I trust and value that I
am the right person for this.
Those are my three things.
I also had that moment.
I think that this is part of the ADHD anxiety experience, is you're like, I'm gonna bail.
And then I know that for a fact, I was like, I'm not gonna bail on this.
I'm going down with the ship if I gotta, fxck it.
Both good eggs.
I know, good tofu, good.
Yeah, that's right.
Good avocados.
There you go.
You're both good avocados.
I'm done with that.
eh
perfectly ripe avocados.
Thanks once again for tuning into us for the Zero Dot podcast.
Once again, it's been Sam, John and Daniel.
It's been an absolute pleasure talking with everyone here.
And you know where to find us, thezerodotpodcast.com.
We're on Blue Sky, we're on Instagram, we're on TikTok, we're on YouTube, we're on
Spotify, we're on Amazon Music.
We're almost everywhere.
Until next time.
Goodbye my friends.
Take care.