The Best Podcast Episode This Year

I just watched the best podcast episode I’ve seen in the past year.

It was the conversation between Chris Williamson and Alok Kanojia (aka HealthyGamerGG) on the Modern Wisdom podcast.

This should be a mandatory listen for anyone who is serious about learning self-improvement/psychology.

And I’m going to distill the 5 best ideas from the episode in this newsletter.

1. All it takes is one negative experience to bias our recollection of the past.

Imagine that for your entire life, driving was your safe haven.

It gave you a sense of peace—being out on the open roads, blasting music, and temporarily forgetting about your worries.

But then, you got into a freak accident, and badly injured yourself to the point where you had to go to the hospital.

Now, driving takes on a completely different perspective.

You start thinking about all the times you nearly got into other accidents.

And the times when you were stuck in traffic.

This is your brain’s way of keeping you safe from future danger.

Driving is now associated with a dangerous activity (and your crash proved that), so your brain starts to bias your past to only look for information that confirms driving is dangerous/depressing.

Think about how a single negative experience sometime in the present, is potentially biasing your recollection of the past too.

2. Depression is the result of a prediction of future experiences based on past experiences.

Dr K. revealed that depression is usually not a result of present circumstances.

It’s the feeling that comes when you’ve analyzed what your life has been like up until this point (and it hasn’t been good), and you’ve logically concluded that there’s probably no way out.

If you can learn to outgrow the version of yourself that existed in the past (when you went through all those negative experiences), you can start to overcome depression.

3. Get in tune to your somatic map.

Your somatic map is where you feel your emotions in your body.

Emotions are much less psychological, and much more physiological (occuring in both the body and brain) than you might think.

And rationalizing your emotions is the key to gaining a better understanding of them, and being less controlled by them.

To rationalize, start by asking yourself where you feel a certain emotion in your body, and describe it in detail. (For example, I might feel anger as a lump in my throat, and a tightening of my chest.)

If you still can’t understand what emotion you are feeling based on what’s happening to your body, Dr K. recommends you ask this:

If another person was feeling these things, what emotion would they probably be feeling?

4. Whatever you want to cultivate within you, keep it within yourself.

Dr K. brought up a story of someone who was having homicidal thoughts.

They found that when this person simply opened up about these thoughts and talked to someone else (like a therapist), those tendencies/urges started to lessen.

Conversely, this can be applied to positive action too.

The more we talk about how we are going to start a business, go to the gym more, etc. , the less it will cultivate and actualize in real life.

If you want to cultivate something, keep it to yourself.

(Side note: This goes against the advice I gave in a newsletter not too long ago, where I said you SHOULD tell people your goals. This is a good example of how much some self improvement techniques are subjective. If you find you rarely get things done that you tell everyone you’re going to do, keep them to yourself. But if you’re like me, tell a group of people who rely on you so they hold you accountable.)

5. Most of your suffering comes from the abstractions that make up your identity.

This has everything to do with what we most closely associate with “ourselves”, or “I’.

AKA, our ego.

Who are you?

You are a thing made up of physical elements, but your identity is this thing built by the actions we have taken, the things we have gone through, and where we think we fit into society.

Some people might describe themselves as a “loser”.

But that implies there are “winners”.

And what does it mean to be a “winner”, really?

At what point does one switch from being a “loser” to a “winner”?

You can see how abstract these questions are, and just how confusing/abstract our identity is.

The more you can dissolve the ego, and stop attaching to your societal identity, the less you will suffer.

There’s so much more value in this podcast than what I went over here.

Go listen to the full thing yourself, or watch it on YouTube in the awesome studio it was recorded in by clicking here.

Become A New Identity

This abstract thing you call “I” can be your best friend, or your worst enemy.

You can continue associating with the part of your identity that thinks you’re a failure, a loser, and a person that won’t achieve what everyone else can.

Or you can learn the tactics and lessons that I used to transform my identity into someone that wakes up everyday with joy, purpose, and an unshakable level of confidence.

I wanted to create a complete resource for you to learn how to remove your negative beliefs, and replace them with ones that make every day feel purposeful and meaningful.

A resource that dives into the issue of knowing who you are, and the incredible things you’re actually capable of.

And that is why I created my self mastery school.

The Self Mastery School is a place for those who want to actualize their greatest potential, strengthen their self awareness, build better habits, and develop a fulfilling life.

It’s a culmination of years of research on behavioral science, psychology, and of course, trial and error from my own life.

Our community meets in a group coaching call every week to make sure we are all staying on the path towards self mastery.

And I’m guessing you feel like you can’t talk to anyone in real life about self-improvement, right?

The friendships in there feel genuine and real.

It’s easily the most fulfilling thing I’ve created.

Here's some recent wins from our community:

Watch the intro video on that page to see if the course is right for you.

Hope to see you in there.

Quote of The Week

Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoy your weekend.

-Cole