How To Trick Your Brain To Make Discipline Easy - Dr Orion Taraban

1. 0:00 – 4:04

   The Importance of Setting End Times

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Before we started, we were talking about the importance of setting yourself end dates for things that you're trying to do, new habits or goals that you're trying to achieve, or challenges and routines that you introduce, and how setting yourself an end time ensures that you spend sufficient effort, uh, uh, and duration to work out whether or not this is a good idea for you at all. And it's something that I've used an awful lot in my life, and you've done it with your YouTube channel.

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban0:25

      That's right. You wanna give things enough time to succeed. And in general, things will take a lot longer than most people expect. It's almost, like, two to three times longer than most people think. Uh, that's why when I started out this project with the YouTube channel, I made a commitment to myself that I would publish regularly for three years before I even entertained the question as to whether this was something I would continue to do. According to my research, it might have taken that long for me to get some sort of, uh, positive outcome with respect to my efforts, and I knew that if I was committed to that process, if I made that commitment to myself, I could maintain discipline to that process independent of any kind of, or the absence of any kind of positive reward that was coming back at me. Which was definitely necessary, because without that commitment I, I might have given up well before anything of interest occurred.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:22

      Yeah. Certainly in my life, some of the examples that I think fit this, whenever I'm trying some sort of new strategy out, or a, a new supplement or a, a new type of training routine or diet or whatever, uh, setting myself a minimum amount of time that I'm going to stick to it for before then looking at something else allows you to actually accumulate some of the benefits that you get. And some of the benefits can be in realizing that this isn't for you. It's not always that it was something good. Uh, y- you, I'm gonna pivot and I'm gonna try training CrossFit for a while. So I'll do 90 days of CrossFit, and I'm not going to, no matter how difficult it gets, shy of me being injured, I'm just gonna continue to do it, and then at the end of the 90 days... Because that takes the job of guessing out, right? You don't have to make decisions, you're just able to follow. Another one, um, I have found great success going sober even though I don't drink that much, really that much at all. But I love focused periods of sobriety, because it means that you're never dealing with a hangover once every couple of weeks, which I had in my 20s 'cause I was partying a good bit. And, uh, it meant that I could be more consistent. One of the things that people ask is, "Oh, what sh- like, h- I'm thinking about going sober, like, how should I design it? I wanna just go sober, I'm gonna stop drinking." And I was like, "Stop drinking, but give yourself a deadline of when your sort of period of sobriety is completed, because it just allows you to feel like you're making progress." Now, YouTube has the timeline bar on the bottom to show you how far through a video you are. If the timeline bar bore no resemblance to how long the video, if it was just this unlimited timeline bar that just went off the edge of your screen, you'd have no idea how much closer you were getting toward the goal. Whereas if you say, "I'm gonna go sober for six months," or, "I'm gonna go sober for three months," or, "I'm gonna go sober for a year," it's like, there you go. Now you know I'm one month toward whatever goal it is that I'm doing, and I hope that that... It helps to mediate motivation a lot for me.

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban3:16

      Absolutely. I worked in addiction medicine for about two years. I did my first two years of internship at an outpatient chemical dependency clinic, and the idea that I would never have a drink for the rest of my life was one of the biggest obstacles towards anybody even entertaining the possibility of some period of sobriety. And that's why in AA and a lot of 12-step programs they say, "One day at a time." They truncate, "We're just gonna get through this one day, and then we'll see what happens afterwards." I've used that myself. When I was trying to disabuse myself of certain substances, I said, "Okay, I'm just not gonna use today. If I still wanna use tomorrow, you know, we'll see." Of course, I could continue to kick the can down the road, and if I still had the craving tomorrow, I could just say, "I'm just not gonna use today." And that got me-

   5. CWChris Williamson4:01

      Yeah.

   6. OTDr. Orion Taraban4:01

      ... through the hardest periods of, of that recovery.

2. 4:04 – 12:33

   Creating a Negative Outcome to Motivate You

   1. OTDr. Orion Taraban4:04

   2. CWChris Williamson4:04

      There's a, uh, corollary of this, uh, when it comes to writing that Paul Graham talks about, about how he sits down and writes when he needs to do his essays, and it's that he promises himself that he's just going to read what he wrote yesterday. And as he sta- he, it's just a promise. He's like, "Ah, I'll just read what I wro- rest, wrote yesterday." And as he does, he notices, "Ah, I actually, there's a gap in between the comma and, and that word that I put in, there's a slight typo." Then he gets in and he's starting to edit stuff, and then before he knows it, he's, "Ah, well, the, I- I could add a sentence in." And so he, he says it's one of the only times that it's acceptable to lie to yourself. He says-

   3. OTDr. Orion Taraban4:41

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson4:42

      ... it's acceptable to lie to yourself to convince yourself that you're going to do less than you're actually going to do, so that you reduce down that bar that you jump over.

   5. OTDr. Orion Taraban4:49

      I think that's good. If you're thinking about motivating yourself to stick with a new habit, also escape protocols work really, really well. Like, writers have all kinds of strange idiosyncratic rituals that they've developed over time to keep themselves writing, because it really is a habit. You have to do it whether you feel like doing it or not, especially if that's your job. One of my favorite stories of this is Victor Hugo, the French author. Apparently, he every night would fall asleep in a very bare room with just, like, a bed and a writing desk in it. And in the middle of the night, he would pay his servant to come in and, like, steal all of his bed clothes and lock him inside that door. And in order to escape this room in which he was, he woke up naked with just a writing desk and some sheets of paper, he had to slip, like, 3,000 words under the door to his servant, who would then provide him with the key to get him out of his bedroom. And that's how Victor Hugo wrote several of his novels. So the idea here is to create a negative outcome that you have to escape by doing the constructive good thing that you want to build as a habit.

   6. CWChris Williamson5:56

      What is a less...... cataclysmic version of that.

   7. OTDr. Orion Taraban6:03

      Easy. So, I made a video about this a while ago. It's the trick for motivation that always works. People hate this, but it's never not worked. The idea is to nominate some amount of money that will sting. Like, you- you- it's not gonna break your bank, but you'll miss it if it's gone, and you'll have to write a check to either an individual or an organization that you disagree with if you don't perform the-

   8. CWChris Williamson6:33

      (laughs)

   9. OTDr. Orion Taraban6:34

      ... the behavior that you've nominated for yourself. So like, if you don't go to the gym today, you're writing 100-buck check to the RNC or the DNC, or, you know, pro-choice, pro-life, whatever floats your boat. And let me tell you, people hate the idea of giving their hard-earned money to an organization that they disapprove of. Lo and behold, they find a way to make it happen.

   10. CWChris Williamson6:53

       That is so funny. Yeah, I mean, uh, uh, it kind of makes me think... It's so strange. There needs to be a name for this kind of relationship, where the person who is subordinate does something, in- in some ways, or the person who is being paid does something that the person paying them to do that very thing wouldn't want them to do. So with that, uh, servant that's working for Victor Hugo, he doesn't want to be locked inside of the room. I mean, in some ways he does, because he realizes that it is a- a stepping stone toward his greater goal. But, when he wakes up and he's freezing cold and he's got no bedsheets and he thinks, "Fucking hell, like, the- damn it, the servant did his job again this morning." And I remember, I was friends with this girl, uh, who was at university the same time that I was, although she was at different uni, and she was a financial dominatrix, uh, like a f- what they called a fin dom, they're called. Have you heard of this?

   11. OTDr. Orion Taraban7:49

       No, what's that?

   12. CWChris Williamson7:50

       Oh, let me tell you about fin doms. So, a financial domina- at least the setup that she had with the particular gentleman, he was turned on. I don't know if it was a sex thing or, um, uh, just like an, uh, arousal or an excitement thing. It could have- it could have been either of those or both. And, um, she would get his entire pay packet sent to him, uh, sent to her from him, uh, every single month as soon as it lands. He didn't get to touch it. And then she would drip-feed 50p increments back to him. And there would be things where he would say, "Uh, I- I need to go to work this morning. There's no gas in the car and my wife's asking why there's no gas in the car." And she'd say, "There's 50 pence. Get the bus." And he would love the fact... I- in some ways would love the fact that he was being sort of tortured in this way, you know, quite... He- he kept on doing it. But then it's so strange because she had, like, dirt on him, compromising photos and messages and all of this stuff, and he's married with kids. And I was so conflicted because I- I thought, "Well, this man is evidently paying for a service, but he's like paying for the simulacrum of basically being blackmailed." But he is being blackmailed, which is exa- and the closer that it gets to legitimate blackmail, the more excited he... Like, this is, you know, axiomatically, this is what he requested, and it's kind of the- a- a much more protracted, extreme, 21st century, like, uh, (laughs) post-apocalyptic version of Victor Hugo being locked in his- uh, in- in his room by a servant.

   13. OTDr. Orion Taraban9:35

       Yeah, that's fascinating. That's really interesting. I knew a woman who worked as a actual dominatrix in a New York City dungeon for a while, and she would say that the most requested service was, uh, catheterization of- of the men, and all kinds of-

   14. CWChris Williamson9:55

       What's that?

   15. OTDr. Orion Taraban9:56

       What's that?

   16. CWChris Williamson9:56

       What's ca- catheterization?

   17. OTDr. Orion Taraban9:58

       It's a- it's a- a medical term for sticking a tube up your urethra so that you don't have to urinate.

   18. CWChris Williamson10:04

       All right, okay.

   19. OTDr. Orion Taraban10:05

       So... And this is an untrained 25-year-old woman without any medical experience.

   20. CWChris Williamson10:09

       Right. I see. Okay, yeah.

   21. OTDr. Orion Taraban10:10

       So, the idea is, "I need to pay exorbitant sums of money to be put in a very compromised situation. Uh, maybe I need to feel pain, maybe I need to be embarrassed, maybe I need to feel helpless, because it's the only time I get to feel outside of my power and control, because I'm a big swinging dick down at the stock market kind of a thing."

   22. CWChris Williamson10:33

       What do you think is going on there? It's the- the polarization of a life where you are the person that gets to call the shots, and somehow in their minds it sort of creates this excitement about being whatever the opposite of that thing is?

   23. OTDr. Orion Taraban10:49

       Sure. I mean, what's like the cycle of wealthy lifestyles is you start off poor and you work really hard, you make some money, and then you become... You know, the private jets and the yachts. And if you actually become a royal, what do they do in their spare time? What do they do for fun? They put on disguises, they pretend to be poor, and they go about the hoi polloi. You know what I'm saying? So it's like people want what they don't yet have. Alan Watts kind of talked about this in a spiritual way, which is, what if you were this kind of entity that could have any kind of experience that you wanted? Like, what if you were actually in control of the life that you were experiencing? Well, at some point, it wouldn't... You'd go through these lives where, "Okay, I- I was a king and I was all-powerful and I got everything that I wanted," and that would kind of lose its luster. It would lose interest to you. And so you'd kind of like up the stakes in order to feel something, which would mean giving up control and giving up awareness that you ever had, that you chose this to begin with. And so you'd put yourself like further and further out there so that you could have an emotional experience, which is really what life is all about.

   24. CWChris Williamson12:00

       There's no-

   25. OTDr. Orion Taraban12:00

       People want to feel things. People will pay all kinds of money to feel things.

   26. CWChris Williamson12:04

       Yeah, (laughs) that's true. And I suppose a-... a, a boundless existence due to the fact that it's so boundless doesn't, it doesn't give you, uh, uh, i- if there are no limits placed on anything, then there's no value placed on anything. There's this quote, uh, Peterson uses a good bit where he says, "If we created a sufficiently idyllic world, the only desired lack would be for the want of lack itself."

   27. OTDr. Orion Taraban12:30

       Sure.

   28. CWChris Williamson12:30

       And, um, well, it's so funny that you brought this up.

3. 12:33 – 19:33

   Mbappe’s Pursuit of the Simple Life

   1. CWChris Williamson12:33

      One of my friends, uh, George, (laughs) posted... Do you know who, uh, Kylian Mbappé is? He's a, a, a-

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban12:39

      No.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:39

      ... professional footballer, one of the best in the world. And, um, uh, Kylian Mbappé says he'd pay so much money to be a normal human being. Speaking to Envoy Special, he said, "Going to buy bread at the bakery, I'd pay so much money now to be able to do this kind of thing, which is normal for most people." He added, "I've lost spontaneity, the spontaneity of being a human being." Asked what he would do if he could become invisible for 48 hours, Mbappé replied, "I'd spend my two days outside, that's for sure. I can say that without thinking. Go eat quietly in a brasserie, go out, go with friends, piet qui- party, party quietly, without anyone to come see me. The next morning, a nice brunch in the sun on a terrace. There you have it, simple things in life."

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban13:24

      And I think that's wonderful to keep in mind, because the life that the ordinary person lives is what the hyper successful, most wealthy and powerful people in the world envy.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:37

      Yeah. It's strange the things that you get rid of. I came up with this idea, prompted by that in the Uber this morning on the way to the gym, came up with this idea of a Titanic problem, which is an issue that everyone says you're in such a privileged position to deal with. And this is a quote from my friend, Adam Masione. He says, "This is an extra special type of tragedy, a tragedy that unfolds while, while everyone cheers. Like being on the Titanic after the iceberg, water up to your chin, with everyone telling you that you're so lucky to be on the greatest steamship of all time. And the Titanic is indeed so huge and wonderful that you can't help but agree, but you're also feeling a bit cold and wet at the moment, and you're not sure why."

   6. OTDr. Orion Taraban14:15

      There's an old, there's an old story about a Chinese philosopher, um, Chuang Tzu. And he was widely regarded as one of the wisest men in the realm. And so one day, the emperor sent his retainers out to fetch him to come to the court, and they found him at a fishing pond. And they say, "Hey, good news for you, sir. You know, the emperor has taken note of your ability and would like to offer you a place of dignity here at the court, uh, at his right hand." And he basically said, "Look at that turtle swimming around in the mud. Do you think it would be happier here in the pond or embalmed in a mahogany case at the footstool of the emperor?" And everyone knew that, oh, he would rather be swimming here, eating the bugs. He's like, "Yeah, me too. I'd rather be wallowing in the mud, so get out of here."

   7. CWChris Williamson15:09

      That's very cool. It's very strange to think, uh, the kind of, the champagne problems that come along with stuff. I've used this story before, but Ben Francis, who's the CEO of Gymshark, uh, founder and CEO of, of Gymshark clothing, and I went for lunch with him in Manchester maybe a year ago, something like that, last summer. And we sat down in Nando's, which is like a very kind of cheap chicken restaurant in the UK, and we... he had two assistants over the far side on a different table that were doing emails or sorting his schedule or whatever. No security, no one noticed, no one cared. I think he was playing Sudoku or something when I arrived, or maybe he was on Slack, I'm not sure. We sat down and we had, uh, chicken, and then, and then we left. I realized that his net worth is three times what Drake's is. And then I thought, how much more difficulty would it have been if I tried to get Nando's with Drake? We wouldn't have been able to get within two miles, right? It would have... the roads would have been shut down and the press would have been everywhere and we needed 75 security and there would have been queues and there would have been news articles and all this stuff. So there's different routes to the kind of life that people think that they want. I think it's a Bill O'Reilly quote where he says, "Try getting rich and work out if you still want to be famous."

   8. OTDr. Orion Taraban16:29

      Mm-hmm. They are two different things. In general, visibility is interesting because it kind of has a curvilinear relation to power. Like, the least powerful and the most powerful people in any given society are the invisible ones. Like the ho- the homeless people in San Francisco in the middle of the day could be standing in the center of the street waving their arms and no one will look at them, right? So that's a type of invisibility that's just completely connected to powerlessness. But it's always the ones who are behind the scenes pulling the strings whose names you don't even realize are in the decision-making room who have not only all the power, but they have security in their power, because how do you dethrone somebody if you don't even know that they exist?

   9. CWChris Williamson17:17

      Everyone always does this. They always say about, um, the, you know, the Forbes top 100 richest people on the planet. I don't know who does it. The, whoever the top 100's richest people on the planet thing gets released.

   10. OTDr. Orion Taraban17:29

       Forbes.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:29

       And everyone has it in the back of their mind, like, "Yeah, but there's some Russian tsar or there's some Colombian drug lord or there's some Middle Eastern, uh, warmongerer or, or energy tycoon or something. And, you know, like Elon Musk, he's just the front. He's not the real one." There's, you know, there's levels and levels and levels. And if you believe that there's a new world order or a WHO conspiracy, or even not that, even if you just believe that there are, uh, mechanisms and dynamics that are outside of what we see, um, you can quite rightly presume, okay, so the richest company in the world, I have no idea what the richest company in the world is, but the... is it really that? Or is it the thing that pulls the strings behind the thing that pulls the strings?

   12. OTDr. Orion Taraban18:14

       Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, we might never know. But in general, it's a, it's a more secure place to be to be the, like, the v- vizier. I don't know, is that how you say it? Like Jafar in Aladdin. The, the, the, the man behind the sultan, the man behind the king-

   13. CWChris Williamson18:29

       Mm.

   14. OTDr. Orion Taraban18:29

       ... who, through his machinations and manipulations, can work through the emperor while remaining hidden in the shadows. And, and that person could even, uh, outlive several administrations. So...

   15. CWChris Williamson18:43

       We... Do we not see this with the American government as well, that literally the way that the American-

   16. OTDr. Orion Taraban18:46

       Yeah, they call it the deep state.

   17. CWChris Williamson18:47

       Yeah. But e- even, uh, without going so deep, that you have the president, the most powerful person in America, right? But you're just here on holiday. You're Airbnb-ing this room. In maybe four years, or at the very most eight years, you're out. But there will be people... I kn- I mean, I mean, I don't know what the oldest person working in, you know, the White House, or in Congress, or whatever is at the moment. But there's people... Uh, like, Biden's been in there for, like, half a century or something. Think about if you've been, um, the right hand or the, the vizier of the president, how many different administrations you've seen come and go. And these, uh, to you, a four-year or even eight-year tenure would just seem like nothing. You know, it's in and out.

4. 19:33 – 23:01

   How to Find What You Actually Want

   1. CWChris Williamson19:33

      Um, you've got this idea that I think is pretty interesting about why getting what you want is often disappointing. How does that work?

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban19:39

      Hmm. Oh, yeah. Well, i- first of all, it's disappointing because people don't really know themselves. A lot of the things that people think that they want aren't really authentically grounded in their being. Uh, this is something that I had to struggle with myself. So I'm, uh... At the very most superficial level, for a long time, I thought that what I wanted in life was basically like a Corona beer commercial. I wanted to be on a beach with a bunch of bikini women and some cool bros, and just, like, taking it easy and be really chill. And, you know, it's some sort of tropical paradise. And I now know enough about myself that if I did that more than two days, I would probably wanna shoot my face off. It's like that would be like enforced leisure, be enforced entropy for me. I need to grow. I need challenge. I'm sometimes happiest climbing the mountain in a sleety winter storm where I'll... I lost feeling in my toes and my fingers, and, but I feel so alive, and I feel like I'm struggling towards some personally relevant goal. That's my idea of happiness. But it takes some time for individuals to disabuse themselves of the cultural interject of what their happiness is supposed to look like, and to realize who they are sufficiently to identify something to replace that with. So a lot of times people haven't done that yet, and the tragedy is that they actually succeed in getting some approximation of that beer commercial, and then they realize, "Well, what's wrong with me? Am I depressed? You know, I, I thought this was what I wanted. It's certainly something that I've been striving for for my entire life. What, what's the matter?" One of the things I often tell my clients is that as a therapist, I facilitate their disappointment by helping them get what they want. Because once a person is sufficiently disappointed in some sort of external achievement, there's one fewer place for them to look for their own happiness and satisfaction, which is never found outside of themselves. But unless they get that themselves, they're gonna think I'm full of shit. It's like rich Hollywood movie stars saying, "Hey, money isn't everything." It's like, "Yeah. Well, it certainly could help me. I think I could handle that problem." Or being famous isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's like you have to kind of, you have to kinda learn that for yourself, or else you're gonna think these people are hypocrites. They're right, but it takes a while to figure that out.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:04

      Do you think that there is a way to shortcut that realization? Is there a way to realize that climbing the mountain isn't what you want to achieve without being stood atop it first?

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban22:16

      Mm-hmm. It requires accurate self-knowledge. Like, the more that you know who you truly are, the more able you are to make decisions that represent, let's say, goodness of fit between reality and yourself. And the more accurate self-knowledge you have, it's almost like a, a massive object, and it pulls more accurate self-knowledge in through its gravitational field, and you can make better choices with less information. But that's a, a lifetime process. And in order to even begin to accumulate accurate self-knowledge, people generally have to disabuse themselves of all the bullshit that's been put into their mind usually for the first 25, 30 years of their lives, which is considerable.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:57

      I've been thinking a lot about this term that's been stuck in my head for a philosophy

5. 23:01 – 25:31

   The Power of Being Intentional

   1. CWChris Williamson23:01

      that I'm working on, a book that I'm working on at the moment, intentionalism. So trying to come up with a philosophy of being intentional with all of the different things that you do, and trying to strip away... And that seems to be the description of, of what you're talking about here, is that the things that you do or the things you mean to do, and the things that you want are the things that you want to want. You don't do things that you're doing without realizing why you're doing them. You don't want things that our societies wants, or what your parents programmed you to want-

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban23:32

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:32

      ... or the way that you dealt with your past traumas, or the paths of least resistance-

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban23:35

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson23:35

      ... or the thing that's convenient or comfortable on an evening time, or the thing that's going to make you look cool to your friends. It's life lived by design, not lived by default. The problem is that most of our default desires are bullshit or, or-

   6. OTDr. Orion Taraban23:49

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson23:50

      ... or not even necessarily bullshit. They're like... They're just misaligned, usually, for you. And the more of a deep thinker, the more idiosyncratic you are, the less likely that whatever publicly acceptable version of success is supposed to be is the one that sits right in the middle of the bell curve of the best life that you could live.

   8. OTDr. Orion Taraban24:16

      That's interesting. I do think that a lot of the stuff that's in people's minds is, is bullshit, not just misaligned. Um, and I do think that it takes some time to see the default bullshit as bullshit, because most people identify themselves with that bullshit. Like, they think that that is actually them. And so, the fact that this is a default cultural introject or just the accident of their particular childhood upbringing is obscured to them, it's mystified. And that's actually the biggest obstacle that people face in divesting themselves of this bullshit. They, they can't recognize it as bullshit. They see it as themselves. And one pathway out of that is to understand, like, "This doesn't feel good to me. Like, if this is really what I want, if this is really something that aligns with my values and my individual preferences, why am I unhappy? Why am I unfulfilled? Why do I feel like something is missing?" Like, that's the little clue, that's the little thread that people can begin to pull to kind of unplug the sink to flush out their minds.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:30

      That's very interesting.

6. 25:31 – 30:51

   Achieving Success in the Wrong Thing

   1. CWChris Williamson25:31

      I've been, uh, thinking, since you said that earlier on, uh, helping people to become disappointed, uh, people succeeding at the wrong thing. You know, they've, they've achieved-

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban25:42

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:43

      ... success, but the thing that they achieved success in was not the thing that they actually wanted to want. And-

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban25:49

      Certainly.

   5. CWChris Williamson25:51

      Here's an interesting sort of paradox that because hard work is usually, uh, done as a predecessor to something which is worthwhile, there are some things that can come well without hard work, but many things that are valuable require hard work in advance. And hard work, although kind of satisfying, it's usually not... It doesn't fill you with always happiness in the moment, or sometimes even satisfaction in the moment. It can be frustrating, it can be anxiety-inducing, it can feel like pressure and all the rest of it. The problem is, if the thread to pull on, and I think that it's the right one, I agree with you, is, "Does this feel good to me? Like, am I having fun? Is this ni- Does this life feel satisfying to me?" There is an amount of puritan work ethic and sacrifice that you can continue to plug away at, where you just go, "Ah, no, that's not me bailing out of the wrong life direction. That's me paying the price that I need to in order to be able to achieve success. And I will continue to do this because I'm leaning in. This is the point that other people quit. Did you expect that this was going to be easy? No, of course you didn't. This is what hard feels like, and this is why you're going to win," and so on and so forth.

   6. OTDr. Orion Taraban27:05

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:06

      But that ability to dampen down the voice in the back of your head that goes, "Uh, I, I, I don't think I'm having that much fun doing this. I don't think that this is actually all that good for me," or, "This doesn't seem too aligned," bifurcating that from, "This isn't right. This is, this is in, directionally the wrong thing for me to be doing," that is a, that's pretty tough to pull apart.

   8. OTDr. Orion Taraban27:34

      Oh, yeah, it's very difficult. Oh, where to begin with that? So... Yeah, you need hard work in order to accomplish anything. So this problem is, is actually s- a problem that most people aren't going to experience because they're not gonna hang in there, right? So this is like a, a second-tier problem that people are subject to encountering. And when I say it doesn't feel right, I don't necessarily mean am I having fun or does this feel pleasurable in the moment? Sometimes this means, like, "Do I feel weak? Do I feel ashamed? Is there a nagging sensation that there's something more important that I should be dealing with?" And for a lot of people, they become successful at something that is like a, a step towards something else in life. Like, for example, I, for a long time, worked as a test prep instructor, and I got really, really good at test prep. I have a perfect score on the GRE. I've worked with thousands and thousands of people on this test. It's something that I got very, very good at, and that was necessary for me in my 20s because it paid my bills, it helped to subsidize my education. It, it was something that the market needed even though it wasn't like, let's say, the fulfillment of my personal destiny, you know? But I might have needed to go through that process in order to create the material conditions so that I might be able to launch that in the future. The idea... The problem is some people can get stuck there. They get stuck with some measure of success. You know, they're thinking, "Oh, I'm actually making decent money. I had to work really hard to get here. Maybe this is the best that life has to offer." And that might not be true. That might not be true. So-

   9. CWChris Williamson29:21

      I wonder, I wonder, I wonder how people work out that, whether this is a, a transitory period or whether they've outgrown the current modality that they're, they're developing themselves within.

   10. OTDr. Orion Taraban29:33

       Yeah, I made an episode about this a long time ago, which is that winners almost always quit. The idea that winners never quit is probably incorrect, and it speaks to that kind of mental monologue that you were describing just a few minutes ago. The fact of the matter is, is that mastery is very, very difficult to achieve, and so anybody who actually succeeds in arriving there must have quit pretty much everything else in their lives in order to devote themselves single focus on this one endeavor, right? So you actually have to quit pretty much everything else in order to arrive at some degree of mastery. Now, I think that once you have some success, you have some money, you have built a business or you develop some sort of fame, it's almost like you have a kitty that you can gamble with-And so, it's possible now to take bigger risks without necessarily, um, compromising the fundamentals of your lifestyle or your survival. And so that's why I think it's necessary for people to just get some sort of, like, stability in their lives, and then they can think about the next thing. They can think about the thing that's connected to, let's say, more personal fulfillment or their passion, whatever that means, as opposed to going after that right out of the gate. That- that might be p- poor advice for a lot of folks, especially young folks.

7. 30:51 – 33:40

   Why You Shouldn’t Idolise Your Heroes

   1. OTDr. Orion Taraban30:51

   2. CWChris Williamson30:51

      There's a Jason Pugin quote where he says, "Accept that all of your heroes are full of shit. Your heroes aren't gods. They're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by sacrificing literally everything else." And that's the quitting that you're talking about. You got another idea which I loved about, uh, overpaying is the cost of winning, and it feels like that's related here as well.

   3. OTDr. Orion Taraban31:11

      Yeah, it's connected to the idea that getting what you want is disappointing. So basically, I talk about how life is sort of an auction house, and the way that auction houses work is it's full of things that people want. But it's not a charity. In order to achieve those goods, people have to outbid every other person in the room. It's not a perfect system, but it's kind of what we have developed in order to maintain some form of fairness or justice with respect to the allocation of zero-sum goods. Because the universe is abundant in its generals, but it's zero-sum in its specifics, right? So, with respect to the analogy with life, it's not just about money, though it could be. It could mean that you have to work harder than anybody else. You have to work longer than anybody else. You may have to sacrifice your pleasure, your well-being, your social life, your friends. You might have to put that all into your offer to increase the value to surpass all other bidders for that one zero-sum good. And if you actually succeed in winning, it's because no one else thought it was worth that much. Like, by definition, you must have overpaid. Like, the likelihood that you hit the exact correct minimum amount of value, if you went any lower, you would have been outbid-

   4. CWChris Williamson32:30

      Mm-hmm.

   5. OTDr. Orion Taraban32:30

      ... is functionally zero. So you paid more for that than you needed to because no one else thought that that good was worth what you did. And so that's part of the disappointment of actually getting what you want, is you probably overpaid. The idea is, "Wow, I finally won. I got what I was doing for, but look at all that I had to give up, all of the years, all of the- the relationships, all of the opportunities that I've had to surrender to get this. Was it worth it?" That's a tough question to answer, and most people, in order to resolve their own cognitive dissonance will say, "Oh, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely worth it." But the way I kind of reconcile that to myself is, the goal is really just a pretext for the transformative process to achieve it. It's like, most people can't win as they currently are, so the goal is the excuse to become better than what they currently are, to put themselves in a competitive position to achieve it. And that's the actual, that's the actual gold, that's the alchemical gold, is the process by which the lead is, the base metal is transformed into something precious.

8. 33:40 – 38:23

   The Person You Become While You Pursue a Goal

   1. OTDr. Orion Taraban33:40

   2. CWChris Williamson33:40

      My friend Alex talks about how he spent, I think, five years building up his financial resources to the stage where he exited a business and was able to put it all into this new project, and this was, you know, he'd worked for five years and he'd worked like a dog, just so hard, and then dumped it all into this new business, and then the business partner sent it all to his girlfriend in Switzerland, declared bankruptcy, and he was back at zero. And he thought, "That was five years of my life and I have nothing to show for it." Literally zero, like, every single penny he'd spent, zero left. But within the next 12 months, he made more money than in the last five years combined, and then the year after that, he made like 10 times or 100 times that much money. And his point is not too dissimilar to yours, which is the real thing that he got out of that experience was the person who he became-

   3. OTDr. Orion Taraban34:29

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson34:29

      ... while he was doing it.

   5. OTDr. Orion Taraban34:31

      Mm-hmm. And you discover who you are in the process of striving towards a goal. Everybody in the privacy of their own fantasies thinks that they're bigger, stronger, smarter, more clever than they probably truly are, and we often only get to see who we are in the com- the competition for those zero-sums that exist in the world. Like, the goals are also an opportunity for us to get to know ourselves. It's very difficult to actually know who you are by thinking about it. The only way you can arrive at any kind of accurate self-knowledge is by taking action in the world and then examining in retrospect, "Well, what kind of person would have done this? Well, I did that, so maybe that's the kind of person that I am." It's not something that you can decide in your own cognition.

   6. CWChris Williamson35:25

      It's very difficult to do, uh, this is one of my criticisms with monk mode as a personal development strategy, that it's great, you know, y- you're going to do isolation, uh, introspection, and really focus on you, but until you brushes up against things that you haven't selected, because you're gonna go do, "I'm gonna run a 5K quickly," or whatever, all right, but you chose the distance. It's not, "Run- run until an undisclosed amount of distance where your mom is trapped under a car." Right? Like, that's really unchosen training or suffering, right? People in CrossFit, they talk about, uh, how hard the workouts are, and you go, "They are. They're difficult workouts." But you chose this modality, and the reason that you chose this modality is because you take a degree of pleasure from it. Now, if I was to say, "You need to lie on the couch for three months and you're not allowed to train and you have to eat dog shit," like...That would be difficult. That would be genuinely hard, because it's outside of your existing sort of paradigm of, o-of selecting things, so you're within this bracket. And, uh, Tim Ferriss, I heard this quote from Tim Ferriss which is fucking fantastic, he said, um, "Running a business is a personal growth strategy masquerading as a vehicle for accumulating wealth." That by doing things out there in the world, you learn so much about yourself, because you crash up against your inefficiencies and your self-doubt and your challenges with other people and your fears and your anxieties. And it's like, it's, it's more like running on a treadmill than running on a road, because the treadmill is continuing to move at a pace and you go, "I, I can't slow down. I need to keep this business going." As opposed to being like, "Ah, you know, maybe my meditation session was a bit hard today. Maybe it was easy." No one knows. Like, it's, you don't have an external counter of that. But when it comes to running a business or just testing yourself out there in the world up against other people, you do.

   7. OTDr. Orion Taraban37:21

      That's why I think one of the best little psych hacks that a person can have is to choose whatever happens to them. This was something that the Stoics talked about. They delineated everything in terms of what was within my locus of control and what was outside of the locus of control, and the vast majority of things are outside the locus of our control, and the proper attitude to develop towards these things is indifference, and to choose it. Like, Epictetus talked about how if Zeus wants me to be sick, then I want to be sick as well. I want what fate has in store for me. And by choosing it, you take some degree of psychological control over it, and you can kind of wrestle with it. You say that, "There's something in here that can better me. There's something in here that I want," in almost like a masochistic way. Like, "I can take this, I can struggle with this, and come out potentially reborn on the other side of it." Like, that's a v- indomitable mental set.

9. 38:23 – 40:24

   Taking Back Control of Your Life

   1. CWChris Williamson38:24

      Yeah. There's a, a study that I heard Matthew Hussey talk about, which you'll probably be familiar with, um, two hamsters, one who gets to run on the wheel when they choose attached to another wheel that has a hamster in that only runs when the other one chooses to. Have you seen this?

   2. OTDr. Orion Taraban38:40

      Okay. I don't know this study, but, uh, I can picture it.

   3. CWChris Williamson38:43

      You basically, you've got one that's got internal locus of control and the other's got external locus of control. One is running under their own volition and the other is being made to run when the other one chooses to. And a pretty nasty experiment. You know, if you imagine that there was someone that did something compulsively and you had to do it at the same time, it would be pretty painful. But very interesting, the stress levels of the two hamsters when you compare them together are just night and day. They're completely different.

   4. OTDr. Orion Taraban39:13

      Of course.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:13

      And, uh, yeah, if you are, th-this is the mental equivalent of that, i-if you can try and take a little bit of power back from whatever it is that's occurred to you, "I chose this," as opposed to, like, "I'm happening to it. It is not happening to me."

   6. OTDr. Orion Taraban39:29

      Mm-hmm. And of course, even the hamster who could get on the wheel whenever it wanted was in a cage. I mean, it had very strict limitations on what it could do, so we're really talking about just a relative difference. Most of us, in terms of our human experience, are the second hamster. There's, the universe is just so much larger than we are, and it was set into motion a long time ago, and we're coming up against forces that are rippling from across the stars. All we can really do is choose how we want to respond to them. Somet- Victor Frankl talked about this. It's like sometimes you're in a situation where there is no possibility of escape, and so all you can really do is choose how you respond to that. And he saw that there was an opportunity for dignity and self-transcendence in even the most, you know, abhorrent circumstances.

   7. CWChris Williamson40:23

      You mentioned

10. 40:24 – 48:16

    Should People Spend Their 20s Grinding?

    1. CWChris Williamson40:24

       just before about, uh, how you'd doubled up or tripled up on work to get you through your studies, and that you realized it was a, uh, stepping stone between you and something that you wanted in future. "I'm going to do these things, because in future it will get me toward a position that I want." What's your belief about whether people should grind out in their 20s or not?

    2. OTDr. Orion Taraban40:48

       I think it's a really important thing to do. Um, but everybody's on their own path. I initially wanted to be an actor. I was a professional actor in New York City for about 11 years, and I spent most of my 20s pursuing that, and I would travel around the world and do shows and party and live the life of a Bohemian. And looking back, I couldn't have chosen to live my life differently, because that's who I was. I'm sure if well-meaning Orion got in a time machine and said, "Hey, look, man, you know, your lifetime earning is going down, and your real passion is psychology and helping people and self-discipline," and he'd be like, "Ah, go fuck yourself, buddy." So, like, I had to live the life that I lived because that's who I was, right? Um, and that put me on one level behind some of my peers who, in their late 20s, were already... They've gone through medical school, they've gone through law school, they have their secure lifestyles, they were partnering up, they were having children, they were buying houses, and I was still living in subsidized housing in Brooklyn, you know, from month to month. And that's a harder look, uh, the older that you get, right? So then I entered into a period of grinding where I burned all my boats, there was no plan B, and I worked 120-hour weeks for five straight years without taking a day off. It was awful. Um, but it positioned me to create the life that I live today. I remember when I was back in that housing, I was visualizing my life, uh, like down to the decoration of the office that I wanted to have.And I realized eight years later, I had arrived there. Like, it took me eight years to vis- to actually manifest the dream that I had when I was in my late 20s, and I think that's about right. I think it can take seven to ten years to make a dream a reality, and I call that, like, a chapter of life. And people have several chapters to their lives, but they don't have an infinite number of chapters. You know, what is it, like, average age is 70, maybe 10 years at the... so like, so maybe 50 good years, divided by seven, so you get maybe seven or eight good chapters in your life. You- you gotta... and so, like, what's the theme of this chapter? What do you want to have accomplished at the end of it? Where do you want to position yourself for what happens next? I think it's really... it takes so much more work than most people think in order to achieve a goal, to make a dream come true. But that's really what life is about. Life is like the dream-making factory, man. This is where it happens, this is where you get to make it real. There's nothing more thrilling and exciting about this. I don't know what your spiritual belief is, but that could be why there's all of these spirits floating around just not... can't wait to get down here on Earth to make something happen, because this is... this might be the only show in town.

    3. CWChris Williamson43:43

       It's exciting to think about uncertainty of the future, and I understand, and I see it in myself. Like, it's anxiety-inducing. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't have certainty about the fact that things are going to work out or that my dreams are going to- to occur correctly or what... I- I don't even know what's going to happen in 10 minutes' time. I don't even know the next words that are going to come out of my mouth.

    4. OTDr. Orion Taraban44:03

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson44:03

       But there's something thrilling about that, and it's one of the reasons why I've increasingly been spending less and less time on the internet. I've been spending less time on social media, e- even though it's, like, partly my job. Um, but I've been trying to find a way to get the information that I need to not be completely siloed off and, like, totally hermited so I don't know what's going on in the world, whilst also not being trapped by a lot of the tenor of the internet, because the tenor of the internet, at least a lot of what I see at the moment, is very fatalistic, it's very cynical, uh, and it's not a dream factory. It's... but it's also not even-

    6. OTDr. Orion Taraban44:39

       It's a nightmare factory. It's... which is a type of dream.

    7. CWChris Williamson44:42

       Yeah, I suppose so, but I- I was about to say, I don't know if it is a nightmare factory. Like, at least the nightmare factory would involve... it would be exciting. It's more vanilla and beige than that. It's like this sort of slow, trudging walk toward inevitable boring despondency. I don't know, like it's just... I'm- I'm not a massive fan of a lot of the trends that I see on the internet at the moment, despite the fact that I curate a lot of things very carefully. And, um, yeah, I just... it makes me... when I think about it, when I truly, truly connect with this stuff, it makes me sad. It makes me sad to think how many people perceive the world in a way that is so, like, unintentional, so non-agentic. They're not a sovereign individual, they don't have control over their outcomes or their future, um, things happen to them, things happen for other people, but that- that's not going to be for them. And, um, yeah, it's- it's- it's unfortunate. Now, that is a difficult situation for one person to get in. The point at which it really starts to rile me up is when those people begin to try and convince other people that that's the case. I'm like, "Yo, you can be as despondent as you want. Is that your choice?" Free will debate, it's way longer than we've got time for. But you can be as despondent as you want, but it's... there is nothing more perverse and toxic than trying to convince other people that they're living inside of the nightma- the nightmare that you believe that you're already inside of. Like, that to me seems to be, like... I don't know, I- I- I think the world would be a significantly better place if those people just weren't allowed to talk.

    8. OTDr. Orion Taraban46:21

       Hmm. Well, it's their way of reducing their own cognitive dissonance, I assume, because the- the presence of other people who don't see that life is a nightmare, who are living their lives in an agetic way and moving in the direction with hopefulness and confidence towards their goals is a palpable counter-example, counter-evidence, counterfactual to their entire worldview. It denies the validity of that worldview. And that's embarrassing, because it, in some dim recess of their minds, calls up the possibility that things could be different and that they could be wrong, and that's actually very difficult to- to co- to approach. Like, this... there are actually some, uh, correlates here with depression. Like, I've worked with some folks who have been depressed for years and years and years, and at a certain point, after a certain amount of treatment, they do come to the understanding that maybe they've prolonged this condition longer than was necessary. Maybe they have been willfully mired in this state, and the possibility of recovery is isomorphic with admitting that they kind of did this to themselves, and that they might have been wrong for years, and that's really difficult. That's the sunken cost fallacy, right? And so if I actually get better, it kind of admits that I could have done this earlier, and I'm having real trouble making sense of that. Does that make sense, Chris?

    9. CWChris Williamson48:14

       Absolutely, yeah. Uh,

11. 48:16 – 1:00:01

    Ascending Out of Inceldom

    1. CWChris Williamson48:16

       you talk... we both have talked and researched a lot about dating. Have you spent much time looking at the black pill incel movement and those communities? Have you spent much time in them?

    2. OTDr. Orion Taraban48:28

       W- Well, f- I'll answer your question, but first of all, to your point, I actually don't consume a great deal of content on the internet, just like you were discussing. Part of that has to do with, I want to keep my...... content as original as possible, and I don't want to be unconsciously or unduly influenced by other people's ideas. I think that a lot of the value that I have to provide has to do with kind of being an independent critical thinker. Um, and I'm very careful about consuming content with respect to dating and intersexual dynamics, because there's a lot of angry men, there's a lot of angry women, and there's just a lot of hopeless and despondent folks. I knew about the existence of Black Pill, y- like abstractly, but I had never actually met somebody who identified as Black Pill. That changed when I, m- when my channel became more successful, and I could see some of the comments that were left on some of the videos, and I was taken aback by how hopeless and despairing some people out there are with respect to women and relationships.

    3. CWChris Williamson49:39

       So William Costello, one of my good friends, he's the number one researcher of incels on the planet-

    4. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:45

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson49:45

       ... and he-

    6. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:47

       Oh, is he the UK, the guy from the UK?

    7. CWChris Williamson49:49

       Irish. Don't say that.

    8. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:50

       Irish.

    9. CWChris Williamson49:50

       Don't say that. Careful. Care-

    10. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:52

        Excuse me. Excuse me.

    11. CWChris Williamson49:53

        (laughs)

    12. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:54

        I, I think I've watched some of, um, you-

    13. CWChris Williamson49:56

        It's fine.

    14. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:56

        I think you've had him on twice.

    15. CWChris Williamson49:57

        I have, yes.

    16. OTDr. Orion Taraban49:57

        And I think I've watched both of them. So he, he was, he was wonderful.

    17. CWChris Williamson50:00

        He's really brilliant. And, um, you know, he's doing this huge, a bunch of huge studies at the moment. Anyway, he, uh, he told me about ascending. Have you heard this word before?

    18. OTDr. Orion Taraban50:11

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson50:11

        Yeah. So ascending, for the people that don't know, uh, is rising out of the incelo sphere, potentially becoming a viable mate, and maybe getting a girlfriend. But what he told me, which was really interesting, and it kind of leads to what you were talking about, where I think the key word was hope, right? If you believe that things can be better, hope is painful, because it posits an ideal, and as soon as you posit an ideal, you then begin to compare yourself to that ideal. But if you just assume fatalism, that nothing can change, this is the way that things always are, there is no hope, nothing can be, can be altered at all, the- there is no such thing as an ideal. The ideal and reality fit together, because th- you are constrained. You are con- constrained by that. And he told me that, um, in some of the chatrooms, they'll say, um, uh, uh, with regards to ascending, or becoming a fake cel, as it's called, that, um, I, I said, "Oh so w- if you got a girl's number, or if you were on a night out and you ended up sort of kissing somebody in a nightclub," and he was like, "No, no, no. Much, much smaller than that." So if you went to Starbucks and the barista's eyes lingered on you for m- uh, half a second longer than you thought, and you were to go back and post in one of the forums and say, "This thing happened to me today," the problem with that is if everybody is completely locked into their position, if all incels can't get laid, if there is absolutely no hope to them, then there is no hope for any of the others. But if one of them ascends and becomes, uh, gets a girlfriend, well, what does that mean about me? Maybe that means that the onus and the locus of control is on me as opposed to out there in the world. I'm not constrained by things that are immovable and im- im- infallible. I am the architect of these things that occur, because Egg User2997, they just did it, and they just, they, they just managed to do it. And that's, it's an unfalsifi- in many ways, and I have an, an awful lot of sympathy as well for the incel movement, and I'm, uh, writing an article at the moment about that. But it is a completely impossible to disprove philosophy, because anybody that doesn't adhere to the philosophy gets accused of not being one of the members at all. Like if the only people who ascend are fake selves, then the, there's no such thing as an incel, because it's just anybody that isn't all of these things, that's outside of them, and the second that someone breaks those rules, they weren't one of us in any case.

    20. OTDr. Orion Taraban52:47

        I have a few thoughts on this. So for a couple of years, I did my pre-doctoral internship at the Cancer Support Community in Walnut Creek, California, where I was doing therapy with stage four cancer patients, and often their caregivers or their children. And that was a very difficult placement. It was the first time in my life I had experienced that much sickness and loss and death. I remember leaving that placement and crying, just, i- the tears would just be coming out of my eyes as I was driving home every day. I learned so much about life from working with those folks, and hope was something that would always come up in our group and individual therapy sessions. And hope is a very personal thing, because there is a time when the person is not gonna get better with a certain disease. And holding onto hope longer than is justified can just create more and more pain. Like, it is a roller coaster, hope, but it's not for me or for anybody else to say when it's time to kill the hope. For some people, as long as there's life, there's hope. For other people, y- especially those who are dealing with the disease, sometimes they're more comfortable giving up the hope than their wives and their husbands, who want them to keep fighting no matter what. So hope is not a, a unilateral positive. Like in the myth about Pandora's box in which all the evils were released into the world, well, the only thing that remained inside the box was hope. Hope was in the box with all the other stuff. Like, why would that be the case? Sometimes some folks have posited that hope is the evil that lives within.It's inside the box with all the other bad things. So, it's not unilaterally good, because it can create so much pain and suffering. It- hope is a very tricky thing. We need it more than we think. Like, the ability to feel like things could actually improve, without that, life would be a slaughterhouse. It would be an absolute miserable hell. And people experience hope in ways that they're not even conscious of experiencing. So, that's one thing. The second thing I want to say, particularly about incels, it's- 'cause it's also related to depression. So, there's many different forms of narcissism, and I know that's a loaded word, so I'm- I'm kind of gonna approach this more clinically, which is, uh, we all kind of start out narcissistic. All children are inherently narcissistic because they can't do perspective-taking, which means that their empathic ability is completely offline. Like, they can't help but think they're the center of the world, and as they age, then the world generally, more or less softly, or more or less harshly, beats that misconception out of them, right? Um, when we talk about narcissists, it's individuals who, for whatever reason, have avoided disabusing themselves of that fallacy of the necessity for perspective-taking, theory of mind, et cetera, et cetera, uh, into adulthood. But there's many different kinds. You look at the DSM and you just see one flavor of narcissist, which we might call the grandiose narcissist. "I think that I'm the- God's gift to women. I can't suc- no- I can't not succeed. Everybody loves me. I'm far more important and powerful than I actually am." But we might posit, there's another form of narcissism that's called, like, inverted narcissism. And inverted narcissism, I think, is very much related to depression. It's the idea that, like, "Oh, I'm- I'm so broken and damaged that nothing could possibly fix me. Happiness is f- is for something else, it's not for me." It's like a negative form of specialness. "I'm so broken that I'm a unique exception to the rule. This treatment would never work for me, this protocol would never help. I will n- because I'm this special, negative exception to the general rule." And that's a form of narcissism. And it's very difficult to... I have a l- actually a lot of sympathy for narcissists. I've worked with some of them clinically. Um, I've worked with enough of them to know that they're actually very scared, hurt children underneath, and they've done the best they can to develop this wall of defenses around them. And when that narcissistic facade, which could be, "I'm fantastic," or, "I'm so uniquely the negative exception to everything," when that collapses, they're back down being the scared, shivering four-year-old, even if they might be 30 years old or 60 years old, and they kind of have to begin building up emotionally from there, which is a very daunting prospect if they've already lived decades of life. But there's really no other way that they can begin to ground themselves authentically in their own being. And it c- and it can work. Like, after that narcissistic collapse, people can begin to build themselves up based on their authentic foundations, but it's very, very difficult to do. So, I think that this phenomenon that you describe in the incel movement is sort of related to this, is that, "I am this unique, negative exception." W- in grad school, I learned in my assessment class that people were- would rather be told that they have below average intelligence than average intelligence. Like, if you gave somebody an IQ test and you had to administer and interpret the results, more people needed, like, counseling and consoling to be told that they were averagely intelligent than if they were below average, because on some level it's like, "Oh, I was- I was special in some way," even if that specialness was negative. That seems to be almost like a badge of honor to a- to a lot of folks. There's- there's nothing that more people fear than just being average, which most people are, by definition, of course.

    21. CWChris Williamson59:05

        That is fascinating. I absolutely love that story. I learned about, um, herostratic fame.

    22. OTDr. Orion Taraban59:11

        What's that?

    23. CWChris Williamson59:12

        Uh, from my friend, Gwenda, uh, a couple of- a couple of weeks ago. "Herostratic fame. Many people would rather be hated than unknown."

    24. OTDr. Orion Taraban59:20

        Mm.

    25. CWChris Williamson59:20

        "In ancient Greece, Herostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis purely so he'd be remembered. Now we have nuisance influencers who stream themselves committing crimes and harassing people purely for clout." And it's not too dissimilar, uh, to what you were just talking about, which is that people would rather be special but suboptimal than average, uh, average at all.

    26. OTDr. Orion Taraban59:45

        Oh, we see that all the time in adolescents when there's trouble in the household or emotional neglect, they often act out. And- and most people, no matter what their chronological age is, are emotionally adolescent.

    27. CWChris Williamson59:59

        Yeah, that's interesting.

12. 1:00:01 – 1:10:44

    Effectiveness & Challenges of Therapy for Men

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:01

       Y- given that you've worked with and you now... I think you work exclusively with men?

    2. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:00:06

       In my clinical practice, I work exclusively with men, but I do consultations with men and women.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:11

       Got you. What do you think about the effectiveness and challenges of therapy for men and women? There's a lot of talk on the internet at the moment, a lot of criticism, about therapy for men. It's gynocentric, it's female foc- focused, it's- it's designed for women, it's instantiated by women. Um, what's your- w- what have you come to- to learn and understand about the role of therapy for- for men and its effectiveness and challenges?

    4. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:00:39

       I think it's something that really does change depending on the gender match between the client and the practitioner. I know that-There are certain topics in particular that men would likely feel far more comfortable talking with another man. These include anger and aggression, these include their own sexuality, uh, these include, uh, discussions of power. And I think that there are other topics, including these, that women are gonna feel way more comfortable discussing with other women, and that's fine. But the idea that the way that men communicate is the way that women should or vice versa, that's not quite true. And the vast majority of talk therapy, for better or for worse, is geared towards women. I think 85% of my cohort in my professional school were women. I interviewed at places that didn't have a single man on staff, like the vast majority of all kinds of mental health provisioners are women. The vast majority of mental health service clients are women. I mean, they use therapy three to four times as often as men do, so it's sort of like reflected in that marketplace. And I think that the way that men and women approach problems, there's a lot of overlap, but there's also some fundamental differences, fundamental differences that are kind of revealed in some of the stereotypic arguments that happen between men and women in relationships. A woman comes home, she's out of sorts about something that happened at her job and she's talking about it, the guy starts offering solutions. And the woman says, "I just want you to listen." He's like, "Of course I'm listening. That's how I know that I think that this is going to work." "Well, I just want you to just sit there and listen." "Well, what the fuck is that gonna do anything? How is that gonna help?" "Ah, you just don't get it." "Yeah, I guess, uh, fine, if you just want this problem to..." Uh, fine. So it doesn't work. Women actually just wanna talk a lot of the times, and if they can get it out, they feel better. And a lot of guys are just, are scratching their heads like, "How the fuck does that help anything?" Like most men are more problem-solution oriented, they're action oriented, they want to solve the source of the problem as it exists in reality, either out there or in here, and then they can move on with their lives. A lot of men, including myself, see talking simply for the sake of talking to be more or less a pointless endeavor.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:03

       It's very interesting. I've- I've started back at therapy in- in Austin. I've been doing it maybe three, four months now? Three months, four months, something like that. And it's very interesting, but it- it's made life, in some ways, more difficult because it stirs up things that are much more difficult to forget about. You know, like your story about Victor Hugo, it's very interesting and I'll probably be thinking about that at some point, 'cause I'm like, "Oh, that's cool. Like I got this image of Victor Hugo." But if I wanna forget about it, it's- it's not gonna be keeping me awake tonight. But if you have a particularly, or at least in my experience, if I have a particularly illuminating, uh, therapy session, there are things about myself that I literally didn't know existed three hours ago. And two hours ago, I stepped out of the therapist's office, and now I'm sitting down at dinner and all I can think about is this new thing. And, um-

    6. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:03:58

       That's great.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:59

       Well, I- I mean, it's- it- it is in some ways, but in other ways, like you still need to- you need to go through the world as a functioning person. You need to not-

    8. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:04:09

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:04:09

       ... permanently be thinking or talking or expousing and expanding on whatever the fuck thing was that you just talked about. Right? That wouldn't- that- that wouldn't be good. Uh, y- you need- you need to keep things... Or it- it stirs up in a, or at least the best approximation I can say is it, it stirs up things that are- are sufficiently deep that it's very hard to not think about them, and that's relatively rare.

    10. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:04:40

        That won't last forever. I mean, if this is something that kind of blindsided you, that you didn't even know existed inside of you, it's going to take some time for you to integrate that into your preexisting personality structure. And so maybe there will be some time that you'll have to devote to making sense of what you've learned about yourself, but that won't be forever. I started therapy-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:05:01

        Is that a bottomless pit of- of as yet undiscovered things that are going to be-

    12. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:05:06

        There might be. There might be.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:05:08

        I hope not.

    14. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:05:08

        But there- there might also be diminishing-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:10

        Sorry, I really hope not.

    16. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:05:11

        ... there might be diminishing returns of investment for you to seek them out and- and integrate them into your existence. Like maybe you're doing a- a good enough job, as it were, given your preexisting self-knowledge, you know? And for a lot of people, that's the truth, and they run into issues when their preexisting self-knowledge and their behavioral routines and their worldview come up against something that creates pain, that creates suffering. There is friction, there is resistance, there is failure and loss, and they don't know how to handle- handle it using their preexisting, um, knowledge base. And so that's the time to potentially go in and- and grow and expand. But yeah, there's a time to plant, there's a time to reap, there's a time to just get on with the business of living, as opposed to introspect simply for the good of introspection.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:06:04

        Yeah. That's- that's a really interesting point, thinking about, um... when you're supposed to stop doing all of these practice runs and actually just get out onto the field of play and make things happen in the world.

    18. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:06:20

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:06:20

        Uh, again, this is another criticism I have around monk mode, which is the purpose of monk mode is supposedly to prepare yourself and improve yourself to become a better version of you... so that then you can step out into the world as a more fully formed, better, more social, more likable, more successful, better balanced person. But monk mode as an end in itself cuts off the why and just continues the how for forever, right? Uh, uh, Bill Perkins-

    20. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:06:53

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

        ... says delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And monk mode can be very gratifying, which is great and- and fun, and I had huge success, huge, huge success sat on a couch in Newcastle upon Tyne doing breath work or meditation or journaling or reading or-... fucking yin yoga or whatever it was I was doing that month. But I realized, I, I, the addictive nature of it, especially if you're a, a, it's a particular pitfall if you're someone that's a, a little bit, uh, introvertedly inclined- Mm-hmm. ... because it legitimates your own retreat from social life, and it gives you nobility in isolation, and that is something where you need to go, "Okay, like, that's cool. Like, it's cool that I'm doing this on my own, and it's great and, uh, you know, this is my Rocky cut scene." But like, the purpose of the Rocky cut scene is to then prepare him to go and do the next thing, which is really, like, good. Sticking around and just doing it on your own, I think results net overall in a loss.

    22. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:07:53

        Uh, I would agree, and I think that monk mode is probably the less common manifestation of this. More common manifestations of this socially are like education, just for the sake of education. There's a lot of young people because of the way the educational system works, they haven't developed any kind of self-direction. Uh, they go to college more or less because it's expected. They graduate, and they think, "I'm unprepared for adult life. Maybe I'll go get a master's degree." And they do that for a year or two, and then they graduate, and they're a little bit older, and they're still unprepared for it. "Maybe I'll get a doctorate." That definitely happens or therapy. It's just like therapy is not a means to its own end. It's a means to get back on your feet to move on with the business of life. And to use your point about the Rocky cut scene, the reason why he's training at all is because he has an upcoming fight with Apollo. With- without that fight, there would be no necessity for him to train. People who are training without the fight may become trapped in that training as a means, as an end to itself. So, I think the goal is really, really important. The goal is the pretext for action, and it also lets you know when you get to stop because you should be good enough relative to what you actually need to accomplish in the world. There's a time to move forward. There's a time to move on.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:09:11

        I think that there's a reverse as well, um, which is the important never being gotten around to because the urgent always gets in the way. And that is, "Oh, you know, therapy or the gym or diet change or having that conversation with my partner or leaving that apartment that's in a dangerous area of town, or exiting a relationship that I don't like, whatever, I'll do that when..." Dot, dot, dot.

    24. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:09:38

        Mm-hmm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

        There's not so much stuff on the plate, when we're not so busy, when we're not whatever, whatever, whatever, and this is the reverse of what we're talking about.

    26. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:09:45

        There, there's never an ideal time, or to say it another way, now is the only time that action can occur. The present moment is the only time in which we can do anything. So, if not now, when? It's like, I've never seen tomorrow. I'm 41 years old. I've never seen it. I'm, I'm losing hope that I ever will see it. You know what I mean? So it's like, if I want to do something, now is the perfect time to do it because it's literally the only time anything can be done.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:10:15

        That's great.

    28. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:10:16

        And you can, you can begin to expand your conception of temporal reality in that way, to have the present moment ex- like, dia- dilate and expand both instances in the past and the future, and you can see that now you're poised for action in the present moment. This is the moment that you've been waiting for. Your whole life is actually conspired to bring you to this exact point. Now is the time to act.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:10:42

        I love it. Orion Taraban,

13. 1:10:44 – 1:11:42

    Where to Find Orion

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:44

       ladies and gentlemen. Where should people go? They wanna keep up to date with your work. They wanna check out all the things that you do. Where do you want people to head on the internet?

    2. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:10:50

       Certainly. Well, I have a YouTube channel called Psych Hacks, so you can find my content there. My website is oriontarabansyd.com. There are links on my YouTube channel. My side business is that GRE self-study program. It's called Stellar GRE. Uh, it's the only empirically validated test prep system on the planet. I wrote all the content myself. Um, it's also the most affordable option on the market. So, if you're going to grad school, you might as well check it out. Stellargre.com.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:17

       Hell yeah. Orion, I really appreciate you. I'm a massive fan of your work, and, uh, I look forward to chatting to you again as well.

    4. OTDr. Orion Taraban1:11:22

       This was great, Chris. I was really happy to meet you. Thanks for having me on.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:11:25

       Thank you very much for tuning in. If you haven't already hit subscribe, then press right here. It's the only way you can ensure that you won't miss episodes when they go live, and the next couple of months have got some of the biggest guests in Modern Wisdom history joining us, and it supports the show, and it makes me happy. Come on.

Episode duration: 1:11:42