Okay, so we've talked about the ego. And we've talked about the inner critic. But what I want to tell you is all these defects of character or flaws it's trying to bring forward to you are also a fiction. Now, you can act mindlessly based on a story you tell yourself about who you are. Or you can move on and you can decide that you want to write this story. See the story, this story, this drama, The story of you, is a piece of fiction created by the ego.

It's trying to tell you who you are, who you have to be in how you have to act, absolutely, positively fictional. Don't let it dictate what you'll do and what you won't do, break free. So, I'm going to tell you something that you'll think is stranger than how you're selling image is just an idea in your head. It's an idea. You are not the image you have of yourself. Let me explain.

We have a story that we tell ourselves about ourselves. But it's just a story. Okay? We are creating it, and we can change it. Like any good actor, we have a script that we follow. We play it out.

We rehearse it, we perfect it. And when the time comes like muscle memory, we can perform it effortlessly. But our responses aren't a reaction to reality. Most of what we do are pre programmed responses to our bs our belief system. Most of what we do is we run on autopilot. acting as if we are this character in this story.

But remember, it's just a story. We can be the authors of our own story, decide who we want to be, decide how our life is going to be. But we have to take our power back, we have to say that we're not going to listen to our negative inner critic. We're not going to listen to our ego. We're not going to be held back by the programming of our past, we are going to rewrite the story. I remember there used to be a bumper sticker that showed you how fast simple and easy it can be to rewrite your story.

It was just a cute little bumper sticker and said, What would Jesus do? Now I don't know if you believe in that type of thing or not. That's up to you. But anyway, I think everybody's got an image of what Jesus is and supposedly he's this good guy. And he's out there and he's never going to do anything wrong because he's Jesus. Okay.

So you simply say, what would Jesus do? And then don't do anything that doesn't look like that. I don't know if you'll end up being Jesus. But you'll be several steps closer. Remember I said my job as a therapist was not to be perfect. But I was to bring you a little closer to where I was my level of skill by sharing my skills with you.

Another way you can do that is picture somebody in your mind a role model and say, what would they do? then that becomes part of your story. You are changing the script, you are no longer following your script, you're following their script. And that's why that technique actually works. Because given the fact that you're making this stuff up, you might as well give yourself a more idealized character to follow. And that will be as good or better guide than what you've been doing.

It'll certainly be different, right? We're just making this stuff up. your self image is just an idea in your head. Think of the word self image, it's your image of yourself. It's how you picture yourself. That's just an idea.

In your head. You can make it up. Most people's self image, their picture of themselves, okay? is wrong. I'll have people come in and say, Oh, Mr. Paul, I'm so depressed. My life is horrible, and I'm no damn good and I'm not a good person.

They do these bad things and bla bla bla bla, I go. I don't really know what the hell you're talking about. I know you I spent time with you. You're an awesome person with me. Unless you're secretly a butthead off to the side. Okay.

I think you're a good person. You think you're not? One of us is wrong. You better pray to hell, it's you. Oh, by the way, I'm a therapist. I get paid to be right.

I'm not wrong. I'm making a good assessment. You are a good You're wrong about you being a bad person. That's it, that'll be 300 bucks. And we have a laugh about it. But I go back to it.

I'm not wrong. You're a good person. Matter of fact, most of what you consider bad about you, is you crapping on you, because you think you're not good enough. Now, most people would think if they could get to your level to be awesome, but you think it's not good enough, and therefore, it's crap, and therefore, you're crap, and therefore your life is crap. And everything's going to crap. Did I say crap enough.

This is the craziness that goes on in people's minds because of their self image. And I'll tell you, you never match up to your self image. You're always trying to better yourself. So you always make your self image higher and you can probably accomplish based on all these phobias that are already programmed in. So it's kind of a, you know, pre programmed failure and you go out and of course you fail, you know, where you don't meet your own false standards, and then you feel bad. And everybody else is looking at you like, what's he talking about?

He's fine. He does this and does that does the other thing you know, it kind of myrlie does this stuff over here. There's nothing wrong with this person. Everybody likes you, but you why negative self esteem based on a fictional self bad old programming, maybe a bad history as well too. I won't discount that. You know, life is rough.

We're gonna talk about that later. Don't think we'll miss that. But it's wrong. And you can move past it. So I want to give you that, that hope America it's navan. Hope it's a certainty.

If you choose to move past it, you will and we're going to teach you a little bit about how to do it here. So why do we protect our self image so desperately? One, we judge ourselves based on what others think remember that metacognition, thinking about yourself. Thinking. We not only think about our thinking, we think about everybody else's thinking, oh my god, what does everybody else thinking about me? If I can't keep my brain busy, okay, your ego wants to keep your brain chattering all the time.

If it doesn't have enough to chatter about me thinking about my thinking, I can always move on to the other person. I used to love the episodes of Seinfeld, because that was like a show based on neurosis. Everybody was worried about what everybody else was thinking that was like a quintessential almost cultural thing for New York released the Jerry's crowd right? Boom, watch that show and watch how many times and a half an hour you can have a little tick she just make a tick because it'll happen so many times you won't be able to write this stuff down or take notes you can just put tick mark worried about what other people think worried about what other people think worry about what other people think they're even worried about what I think oh my god, am I a good person? Are people gonna hate me to do should I have done that?

Did I do the right thing? Blah, blah, blah. That's thinking about your thinking. Then if they weren't thinking about that, Oh, my God, you know, so and so thought this and I I thought that, you know, if they're not thinking about what they did wrong or thinking about what the other person did wrong that's thinking about other people. They're either worried that other people are judging them. They're judging themselves, or they're worried that other people are judging them.

So studying neurosis all in 20 minutes, you know, if you skip past the commercials, boom, not a good way to win. That's why the ego does this. So it can create a problem and then defend itself and look like a hero problem posing as a solution. Now you actually have multiple minds. I actually did a little piece on YouTube and I put this up. I think I called him multiple minds.

I believe I did. And what it does is it says, You don't have just one mind. We've been talking about like to like there's the real you and then there's your ego. Well, I drew a picture of a brain, you know, up on the board. And then I did like a checkerboard just put a bunch of lines through like a tick, like a like a checkerboard Exactly. And then what I did is I put different things and Well, here's how you are with your friends, here's how you are when you're alone, when you're at work, here's the part of you that's ambitious and wants to go out and kick butt and take names.

But then there's this other little piece of your brain and it's lazy and just wants to eat bonbons and sit on the couch. Look for the next exotic beach, you know. And then there's, you know, one way when you're at work and one way when you're with your family and other way when you're alone. You're different, you know, when you're in even different places when you're you act differently when you're in a firehouse versus a concert versus a bar versus a library, but you're the same person. So how can you be all these things and still be you? Well, what actually creates the congruency is you are all of these different personalities.

You have a multiplier. assisity of mind, not just the true self and the ego, there's all these little sub personalities. This is the adaptation of the mind, to adapt the mind to different situations. It creates these little sub personalities. They activate when they're needed, they deactivate when they're not needed. And sometimes we don't always pick the right one, like look at the one for ambitious and the one for lazy.

Here's what's interesting. The ambitious person and the lazy person are the same person, the ambitious person because they want to move towards pleasure and away from pain says if you're really really ambitious, and you work really hard, you'll get ahead quick, you'll have a bunch of money that you can do what? Go relax, retire and be lazy. So what was their actual goal? they work their butt off so they could achieve the maximum amount of laziness. Not a lazy person says, Well, really relaxation should be happening right now want to relax while I'm young.

I don't want to work too hard. I want to just do just enough not to get fired, and they're gonna pay me just enough so I don't quit. And I'll get by somehow I'll get lucky down the road, and I will maximize my relaxation and my laziness. Both the ambitious and the lazy person's ultimate goal is to be what? lazy, free of pain. Now, you may not agree with that 100%.

But you can agree that they're both trying to get maximum pleasure, minimum pain, they're working two opposing strategies, trying to get to the same place. It's like if I said, my goal is happiness, and you said, Oh my god, Paul, my goal is happiness to how many different ways can you do us to get there? That's right, there's almost an infinite number of ways. And it's also an infinite number, even larger, infinite number of ways to screw up but we aren't we there's lots of ways to achieve the same thing. And some of them will look wildly opposed, like the ambitious and the lazy person, but the ultimate goal of happiness, which both the ambitious and lazy personal law that actually is The ultimate goal they're just trying different systems to get it. You know, a police officer and a gangbanger both working a system to achieve happiness.

The gang banger says hey, I can cheat and get some free money. I'll be cool. I'll hang out my buddies I used to get I used to be the guy getting beaten up by the gangs now in the guy protected by the gangs and beaten up other people. I'm stronger now. I'm significant. I'm powerful.

I feel like I have some control Finally, in my life feels wonderful. That's the same thing a police officer does. Well, now people respect me and I'm cool. And I got a job and I got security and I got a pension and people used to beat me up. But now I got a gun and we have a totally different relationship now and I'm helping the community and I can feel good about myself, you know, who I feel wonderful. Those are almost identical.

There's very few distinctions. I mean, we could argue it back and forth. But the more you argue with me, the more you'll find out it's actually the same just done from a different perspective. Theoretically, they're identical. They're wildly different, no argument about that in their approach, but to get to the same place. This is what's called multiplicity of mind.

Now, sometimes you need both these characteristics. There's some times when you need to go out and be ambitious and kick butt and take names and be hard charging and make a lot of things happen fast. That's the perfect thing to do at that time. Too much of that you can get burnout. Sometimes Remember, I told you the perfect thing to do sometimes is nothing. Isn't that a wild concept.

Sometimes you need to kick back. You know, the strongest battery will wear out with use, you need to recharge your batteries, being lazy as the perfect thing. Sometimes you need to relax when there's nothing to be done. Sometimes there's nothing to be done. We just have to wait. Enjoy that lazy time.

Don't be revving up and trying to figure out what else you can do on both Blah, blah. Use the right function of your brain at the right time. A lot of us have, I think, Well, I think all of us have all the right characteristics. We're not using them at the right time in the right sequence in the right amounts in the right proportions. Okay. That's all the error we're making.

In wire lives are less livable, livable. That's why I want you to understand that you have multiple minds. That's why you say Oh, how come I was so good at this time that I was so bad at this time? You know, it's the angel and devil on your shoulder. You know, they're always talking to you. Those are the subcategories your mind.

It's which one you listen to. I used to tell my addicts this I said, you have this huge mind literally hundreds and hundreds of different sub personalities like we just talked about. You only got one that's an addict. We need to beat this guy up. We got you know, if I walked into a room with 100 people, I don't care if you're Bruce Lee. You're going down Bruce Lee couldn't take Got more than 30 people at a time.

And I got 100, I can beat them three times over, they could be three, Bruce Lee's, I still win, okay? Use all these good resources of your brain to shut down the part that's negative, and even teach yourself how to ignore the negative part to suppress the negative part or just tell him to take the day off. I'm teaching you these strategies. So now you know these strategies will get better as you practice them. But think about it. You have a lot of good characteristics.

Like if you're lazy, but you want to be ambitious. What you do is you learn the philosophies of the party. Your mind's ambitious, because there's a little part that's ambitious, and what does that part think even though I'm not going to follow it? What does it think? If I think that way, I'll feel that way, and I'll act that way. Isn't that where we started?

So the lazy person can become ambitious. I remember when I was going to go, I was thinking about going to school, but I didn't really want to go. I said, Hey, I just did 12 years of school, you know, I just graduated from high school, you know want to go out there and work for a little while. I'm sick of school. Now you want me to do a four year commitment, there's gonna be really smart people to school you know, this is not playing around like high school they do real papers, real assignments. You can't, you know, fake it till you make it.

I never thought of myself as that smart. It was a four year commitment. It was a lot of money. What if I screw up? And what if it does doesn't do me any good? And I thought like that my buddy, Nick said, Paul, most of it is you're lazy.

You don't want to do the hard work. I mean, if I could snap my fingers and give you that degree, would you do it? Yeah, that's an advantage. I throw that up on the wall. make myself some extra money a better job prospects? Yeah, if I just snap my fingers and make it happen.

I do it. He said. So the only difference between that and where you are is you're lazy. You're not going to do the four years worth of work. you're lazy. That's okay.

That's okay. just own it. I'm like, Yeah, you're not wrong. He said, But here's what I want you to do. I want you to work your lazy strategy more effectively. I don't think you're being lazy enough.

I'm like What? He's like, yeah. He said, I'm lazy. I said, Nick, you can't be lazy. You're working like two jobs and go to school full time. That doesn't look lazy to me.

He said, You're not wrong. But Paul, think about it long term. If you're quote unquote, lazy, and you go out there and you work 40 hours a week, and you don't have your bachelor's and I worked 40 hours a week and I got my bachelor's, I'm making least half again as much as I do. So I can either work hard for four years, and then be lazy for the rest of my life. Just work 40 hours and make half again or double what you're making. Okay, at some point, I could work half the hours or retire in half the time and be lazy twice as long.

The way that you actually work the most from start to finish is be lazy for four years and don't take that degree. The truly lazy person takes that degree and they maximize their gains and they mentally In their work, matter of fact, the lazy people get bachelor's in their supervisors. Why? Because the laborers the line people do the labor. That's the opposite of lazy. The managers just watch them do it.

Make sure they're not screwing up and give them a little bit of advice. They are the laziest people you ever want to see. They live a lazy life. You know, in your 47 year career of working, they are damn lazy. They have it so easy and everybody else has it's so hard. Wouldn't you rather do the four and four years you're going to arrive?

Do you want to four years from now be able to be truly lazy and wealthy for the rest of your life? Or do you want to be overworked, underappreciated, underpaid? That doesn't sound lazy to me? It sounds like a hard working guy who's not getting the benefits of his work. I said, damn, that makes a lot of sense. My lazy ass became ambitious.

So fast. jumped into school so fast. I said, I'm gonna do it right next there. Okay. And I jumped in. And he was right.

He was absolutely, positively. Right. So how did he convince me, he didn't try to turn a lazy person into an ambitious person, he tried to show me how I could use the strategy that I was currently using, because apparently I wasn't gonna let it go or being lazy and turn this part of my mind to my advantage. So whether I was using the ambitious part or the lazy part, they were still going to see the goal as the same and move me aggressively in that direction, which was getting the degree. It was damn genius. So that's a great strategy that you can use.

Now to wrap this section up, I want to tell you, an old Zen believe that's absolutely true. And I think I've been proven it to you over and over and over again, but I just want to seal the deal. We're absolutely trapped in our own minds. We don't know how to program ourselves, we don't know how to deprogram ourselves. We don't know how to get out of this multiplicity, we don't know how to stop being negative to ourselves. We are trapped in here.

We didn't even realize there's these multiple minds that were literally stuck in here. But the old Zen belief is once you realize you're in jail, you can start plotting your escape. This is the first realization of the wise man or the wise woman, realizing they have a problem. In medicine, they have an old Maxim, it says proper diagnosis is half the cure. Once I know what's wrong with you, the solution is obvious. Now that you know you're trapped, you can start plotting your escape.

Now that you know you have multiplicity in mind, instead of having it work against you, you can have it work for you. realizing there's an inner critic, you can change what the critic chain says in turn it from a critic into a coach from somebody that whine bitches and complains into a cheerleader. You can switch all these things Think you can come up with as many creative ways as I can come up with and a bunch of haven't thought of. So I hope that as you're learning these things, you're also seeing the solutions. Okay, that's it for this section, and I'll see you in the next training.