None of us is alone in this experience. We all have each other.

FINISHED!

It’s about to get so much better.

We’ll recap brain rot, the hazards it poses to your psyche and life at-large.

We’ll also go over the benefits of battling brain rot.

We’ll go over the challenges of change, why it’s so difficult, and how you can make it easier on yourself.

We’ll also talk again about the benefits of embracing change, even in the face of internal and external resistance.

We’ll go over the benefits of having a strong social support system and how to build yours up.

We’ll recap strategies for getting organized, staying organized, and managing the time you have to the greatest effect.

We’ll recap the underlying causes of procrastination, how to combat them, and the benefits of working with your brain, rather than against it.

In this lesson, we’ll go over key strategies for improving your willpower and discuss the benefits for your life.

Our thought processes aren’t a straight line from facts to rationality - there’s a lot of shortcuts our brains use that can distort our ability to understand truth.

This chapter will explore some of the most important heuristics to understand.

Averse events seem bigger than positive events of the same magnitude.

The opinions we form of other people can be highly irrational.

In this lesson, we’ll explore both the how and why of it.

The ease with which something comes to mind greatly alters our feelings about reality, often ignoring more common, yet less sensational information.

We’re more motivated by the idea of losing something, than we are about gaining something of equal or greater value.

This can often hold us back from living our best lives.

Why do we overestimate how great the past was and underestimate the good things that exist in the present?

And how does this impact the quality of our lives?

Why do we have a tendency to be overconfident in our own personal predictions? Why are we so certain of the accuracy of our judgements?

…and how can this cause dangerous situations?

Once we’ve invested time, money, or emotional energy into something, we tend to follow-through and stay on that course, even when abandoning it would be in our best interest.

We would rather go with the devil we know, than a potentially better option that is unfamiliar to us.

The tendency we have to stick to our initial beliefs, even when it’s not in our best interests, or when faced with contradictory evidence.

Our tendency to focus on trivial, short-sighted issues, rather than bigger, long-term issues.

Why do we do this? What is the origin of this behavior - and how can we combat it, for our own good?

We’ve all heard the term - but perhaps we can do ourselves many favors by better understanding why this happens, and strategies for disarming this frustrating roadblock.

Before we can understand how to resolve it in others, we must first understand how to resolve it within our own selves.

It’s easy to see how the Commitment Bias has a lot to do with saving face, among other things… but what are some things we can do to combat this?

We’re all familiar with Confirmation Bias - but can new perspectives on this old bias help us to escape its clutches?

We’ve all heard of this one before.

People who don’t know much about something tend to overestimate their own expertise in that area.

By contrast, the more a person does know about a subject, the more likely they are to underestimate their expertise.

The Einstellung Effect describes our tendency to return to solutions we’ve used in the past, even if better solutions exist now… and how this can prevent us from being our most effective.

Functional fixedness is our tendency to only use tools or strategies in the ways we’re accustomed to using them, rather than creatively inventing new uses for the same things… and how this can impact our psychological relationships and situations, as well.

The Fundamental Attribution Error is our tendency to jump to character assessments rather than taking into account situational factors that can alter behavior.

Why are we more likely to help a single, identifiable victim, or person who is struggling, rather than a vague group of people suffering in the same way?

How can we use this effect to better help others?

The more often a lie is repeated, the more likely we are to believe it - even if we knew it was a lie in the beginning.

We assume that we, and others, get what we deserve.

The belief that we are seeing the world perfectly accurately as it is.

We often believe nothing bad will happen, even when there is evidence otherwise.

Our minds tend to latch onto information that is interesting and forget or disregard information that is boring - when both pieces of information are just as relevant to reality.

This is the tendency to over-perceive another person’s sexual interest in you.

Typically, men tend to believe women are more interested in them than they are, while women tend to perceive that men are less interested in them than they are.

The tendency to resist change and keep things the same, even if that change could improve one’s life.

Because success stories are more visible than stories of those who tried and failed, we tend to focus on the one that survived and ignore the majority that didn’t make it, skewing our idea of the odds.

To outwit the forgetting curve, we’re going to do a quick and dirty recap of all the heuristics we learned here, why it’s important we understand them, and how we can combat them.

We’ll recap the heuristics we just learned again to defeat the forgetting curve and make it easier for you to implement this knowledge in your life.

We’ll go over: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

This will be a shorter recap than the first time we recapped it.

…if we’re thinking in terms of selling the idea of you to others.

When professional persuaders are trying to convince their target audience to take a particular action, they have to shift their thinking.

Persuade yourself the way the experts would persuade you.

The benefits of not thinking of yourself in terms of character.

Shift focus from what you think of yourself to what you want to think of yourself.

At first, it can sound heartless to think of life in terms of objectives, but not all objectives are selfish. There are objectives we have for ourselves and objectives we have for the well-being of others.

I’m going to say something radical: many of you out there can do more good if you don’t focus on the content of your character as a whole, but by honing your attention on your personal and altruistic objectives.

How banishing this one word can change your life.

Pay attention to what makes you tick, what motivates you, and what’s an obstacle. This includes information on what triggers certain emotions, and what de-escalates them.

Use a marketer’s tools to get your emotions where you want them to go.

These strategies are helpful for your own personal growth, but also for your interpersonal relationships.

How can your life improve using these strategies?

The Buddhist strategy to being in control of your emotions starts with observing their presence and pausing a moment to take inventory of your internal environment.

Give your emotion a name and learn to sit with it a minute. Strategies included!

Learning about the Buddhist concept of there being a garden of seeds within your mind can help you organize and manage your emotions with more dignity.

Learn how to identify the seeds you’re allowing to be watered, and divert that nourishment somewhere else.

Also, hone in on the specific external factors that are watering seeds you don’t want watered.

This step helps divert you away from making personal attacks in an argument.

You’ll learn how to zero in on specific actions that triggered a particular response in yourself.

When I behave a certain way towards you, what you received from me becomes a memory, it starts a process of pattern recognition in your brain. My action becomes a part of your mind.

This builds up over time. Part of our current interaction is colored by previous interactions.

This is the Buddhist concept with a name… but I’ll have to look up that name when I write this lesson.

Putting together everything we’ve gone through so far, here are some ideas for how to reframe difficult emotions the Buddhist way.

Here, we’ll put together all the benefits you can take into your life when you use Buddhist strategies for mastering your emotions.

In this lesson, we’ll define what we mean by “the Watchmaker.”

If you’re looking at things through the Watchmaker perspective, your journey, as a whole, is still in its infancy. You’re not meant to be your best self, yet.

Consider that you’re not defective, but made in this particular way for a reason.

If your life isn’t turning out the way someone else’s is, perhaps it’s because you need to learn different things for your next journey that they don’t.

In this chapter, we’re not going to go over how to talk to other people, because that’s pressing our religious thoughts on them, but we’ll use it to create better dialogues with ourselves.

Wrapping up this chapter talking about the benefits of using the Watchmaker strategy in your everyday life.

It can sometimes help to see yourself as the animal that you are.

You have ancient genes in you because you are an ancient creature.

“You” are not all one thing.

Parts of your mind are cutoff from the conscious experience… and yet, they are still influencing you.

It can sometimes help you to make more rational decisions to stop and consider which brain is currently motivating your actions.

We’ll never know for sure, but we can take some guesses.

Things like Confirmation Bias and getting angry when people believe something different.

Evolutionary thinking can help us make sense of emotions that are in conflict with one another.

Most of our emotions come from some evolutionary advantage. They helped our ancestors get this far. We can thank them for their service and send them on their way.

Reminding yourself that you’re just an animal that spawned here and is trying your best can help put your current status into perspective.

We’re not going to talk in this lesson how to speak to other people from an evolutionary perspective, because that can be taken as pressing your religious views on them.

But, we are going to talk about how to use this strategy to develop a more useful internal dialogue.

We’ll talk about how you can improve your life using these strategies.

We’ll recap the takeaways from the Marketer’s Strategy and how it can benefit your life.

In this lesson, we’ll go over the most useful Buddhist practices to one’s everyday life, and how they can make you happier and more in control.

We’ll talk about the Watchmaker Strategy and how it can help many people find greater peace and resolve.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over the Evolutionary Strategy and how it can help other types of people have a different perspective of themselves and others.

We’ll briefly go through the heuristics we learned and the benefits of being aware of them in your life.

We’ll briefly go back over: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

We go over it briefly again to thwart the forgetting curve.

Divide the origins of your thoughts into different tiers of programs starting with the lowest level ones.

Programs that are more complex, but still operate outside of the access of conscious programs.

Programs that don’t stay the same as they came out of the box. They become changed by the environment.

One way to look at our stubbornness when it comes to facts.

Another way to look at some of the odd quirks we engage in that don’t make sense… at first.

Your conscious mind has a lot of work it has to do.

A new way to look at those so-called NPCs.

Here, we’ll look at a few ways you can change the way you talk about human behavior or oddities.

You’ll be able to take these new skills into your daily life to become stronger and more resilient.

A nice little anecdote to get us started with this concept.

I’ve found that, when thinking of things in this way, people make a lot more sense.

If we didn’t already know about bias, this would predict it.

If you look for it, you can watch certain keywords trigger a record-match to occur…

How the Matching Game could predict the Horn and Hallo Effects (if we didn’t already know about it).

There’s something that’s failing to connect one thing to another.

Some matches will be stronger and more urgent than others.

Threats get encoded with a much bigger trigger than ordinary events.

A single event in a small sample pool will have a bigger impact than that same event in a bigger sample pool

How the Matching Game predicts some observable tendencies.

Thinking in these different terms can help you become more charismatic.

Explore ways to improve your life with the Matching Game.

It’s a simple concept, really…

We can look at it like an exchange of engines…

It helps if you think of there being thousands of mini-engines with very minor jobs scattered all throughout your brain. Let’s talk about some of them…

When one of those engines find something alarming, they send out a signal for attention.

The most important engine. Also the only conscious engine. Much bigger than the other engines and has multiple other engines churning inside it.

How to use this new thought process to think through conversations more thoughtfully. Lots of thinking being done here.

How to gain even more control and direction in your life by using the Multi-Engine Strategy.

There are photons you can’t see right in front of you.

…and yet, photons are the only thing you’ll ever see… even if sometimes they’re invisible.

We’re all trapped inside our skulls with only electrical impulses to keep us company.

The memory and the current moment.

Look at the situation, your assets and liabilities, and make the most of what you’ve got.

A new perspective on our internal voice.

How will considering things in this new light change how you move through your day-to-day life?

In this lesson, we’ll recap the Programmatic Strategy and how it can benefit your life.

We’ll go over again what the Matching Game Strategy is and how thinking of things in these terms can improve your life.

We’ll go back over what the Multi-Engine Strategy is and how you can use it to improve your life and the way you see the world.

In this lesson, we’ll talk again about the Photonic Strategy and how you can apply it to your life to alter you perception of everything that happens to and around you.

We’ll go back over: the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy… as well as how you can use those strategies in your everyday life to improve your time here on this planet.

We’ll go back over the most important heuristics to know for your own life and how you can use that knowledge to benefit.

We’ll go back over: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

The forgetting curve withers before us.

This lesson is going to be mildly academic - exploring what we know about the split between what we consider the “conscious” and “subconscious” minds.

Our subconscious minds to a lot of heavy lifting. It’s worth paying homage to all that they do for us.

Despite its strengths, our subconscious minds can also fuck us up.

It important to recognize when the impulses and beliefs arising from our subconscious are leading us down a bad path.

What is the conscious mind good at and how can you use it to maximum effect?

What forces are at work against the conscious mind?

How to be more deliberate and strategic about how to use the best of each brain system, while minimizing the weaknesses.

Recap of how this will benefit your life.

Everybody uses some combination of these three moral frameworks, whether you realize you’re doing it or not.

What are the personal, evolutionary, and societal advantages of virtue ethics?

What are the disadvantages of virtue ethics?

What are the personal, evolutionary, and societal benefits of deontological morality?

What are the disadvantages of deontological morality?

What are the personal, evolutionary, and societal advantages of consequentialism?

What are the disadvantages of consequentialism?

People can share the same moral framework, but have different values… and vice versa.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a common tool used by mental health professionals.

We’ll talk about common cognitive distortions and how they could be holding you back in life.

In this lesson, we’ll go over techniques you can use in your life to help you relax and relieve stress.

This is helpful for people who catastrophize and frequently imagine worse-case scenarios for things ahead.

Concrete steps to a better, happier, healthier you.

There’s a reason why these methods are used by the people who understand the human mind.

We’re going to change it up this time and talk about the benefits first.

Strategies for being a little happier every single day.

We’ll talk again about the usefulness of identifying which part of your brain a particular thought is arising from.

We’ll go back over the three major moral frameworks and how you can use them more deliberately in your life to make sense of the people around you.

In this lesson, we’ll revisit the dual concepts of ego and humility and the benefits to you when you can cast aside ego and embrace humility.

This course actually dives into CBT skills a lot in many different places, but we’ll recap some of the key takeaways here.

We’ll make a habit of incorporating gratitude into our everyday lives to boost our happiness and resilience. This will be a quick recap.

We’ll go back over: the Programmatic Strategy, the Matching Game Strategy, the Multi-Engine Strategy, and the Photonic Strategy.

We’ll go back over the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy.

We’ll go back over the most important heuristics we learned and the benefits of understanding them.

We’ll go back over: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

In this lesson, we’ll recap the many, many benefits of exercise plus some easy ways to get started.

We’re going to go back over some keys to healthy eating as well as a few more strategies to help you get started.

We’ll recap some of the best relaxation techniques and how you can bring them under your command at a moment’s notice - when you need them the most.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over the keys to good sleep hygiene and how they’ll benefit everything else you do.

We’ll go back over: conscious versus subconscious minds, moral frameworks, ego and humility, key CBT skills, and gratitude.

We’ll recap: the Programmatic Strategy, the Matching Game Strategy, the Multi-Engine Strategy, and the Photonic Strategy.

We’ll go back over: the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker’s Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over the heuristics we learned and how to apply them to your everyday life.

We’ll go back over: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

What is happening inside your brain when you become depressed?

Depression is hard enough, but it’s compounded by all the additional fallout that comes from a depressive episode.

Once you fall into a depressive episode, there are forces working against you that can make your depression worse.

Your brain is not a perfect rationality machine. Your sense of reality can become distorted by a depressive episode.

What are the chemical effects of exercise on depression?

What foods and nutrients help combat depression - and what are some easy ways to get more of those things in your diet?

When it comes to depression, not all social activities are created equal. In this lesson, we’ll explore the most effective social settings for pulling yourself out of the depressive black hole.

In this lesson, we’ll explore ways to protect your quality of sleep to give you the best chance of climbing out of depression.

When you’re depressed, the things that once brought you joy can feel stale and lifeless. Do them anyway.

This lesson is about how reducing your stress can reduce your depression… and how you can do that, no matter what life throws at you.

What is brain rot, how does it contribute to depression, and what are the alternatives?

In this lesson, we’ll talk about thought habits that can worsen depression… and ones that can help alleviate it.

These are practices that have to be returned to day after day, week after week. We’ll talk about some easy ways to do that.

Therapists have dedicated their lives and their education to understanding how to help you through the most difficult of times.

While they’re not always accessible - which is why we’ve gone through a lot of coping strategies here - there are more and more options available every single day.

In this lesson, we’ll not only talk about the benefits of therapy, but some of the options you might not realize you have.

Psychiatric medication can get a bad rap, but, for some people, it’s life changing.

Much of what’s going on in your brain is chemical. Sometimes you legitimately need medical help to get those chemicals back in order.

We’ll quickly run down the contents of this chapter including: the causes of anxiety, solutions to deal with anxiety, and the benefits of reducing anxiety in your life.

What are the psychological factors that could be adding to your anxiety?

What are the biological factors that could be working against you… and what can you do to help alleviate the effects of these things that are somewhat out of your control.

What are the pressures pushing on you from the outside that is increasing your anxiety - and what are some things you can do to combat it?

In this lesson, we’ll explore some of the medical conditions that can exacerbate your anxiety.

Many of these strategies will be familiar to you, but we’re going to go over them again because repetition helps your recall during stressful situations.

We’ll also talk about how to respond to triggers with helpful techniques.

Yes, yes, we all know that exercise helps with everything, but in this lesson, we’ll talk about more easy exercises you can do, and how they benefit you when it comes to anxiety, specifically.

This is another one we know already, but we’ll share some more easy healthy recipes and the benefits they have on anxiety, specifically.

We’ll revisit the causes of depression and some strategies you can use to combat the ways your brain is sometimes working against you.

Suicide affects men more than it affects women, but in either case, preventing suicide is critical.

We’ll go over again the causes of anxiety and ways to combat its effects.

Stress and anxiety are linked, but they’re not the same thing. In this lesson, we’ll recap the differences and how to identify and mitigate the effects of stress, as well as notice areas in your life where you could eliminate certain stressors.

Depression, anxiety, and stress are all related to burnout. In this lesson, we’ll recap burnout specifically and what to do when you find yourself in a burnout situation.

We’ll go back over: healthy moving, healthy eating, relaxation techniques, and sleep hygiene.

In this lesson, we’ll refresh our memories on: conscious vs subconscious minds, moral frameworks, ego and humility, key CBT skills, and gratitude.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over: the Programmatic Strategy, the Matching Game Strategy, the Multi-Engine Strategy, and the Photonic Strategy.

We’re going to refresh our memories on: the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy.

In this lesson, we’re going to remind ourselves of the natural heuristic tendencies that we can all fall prey to.

Once again, we’re going to examine: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

In this lesson, we’ll recap the ways autistic members of our community might be struggling and how we can help them. We’ll also talk about strategies for people who are autistic.

Many, many people in our community suffer from ADHD, and it’s probably not helped by the short-form format of our modern digital world.

We’ll recap strategies for dealing with ADHD when medication isn’t available.

PTSD can take many forms and come from many sources.

Here, we’ll recap what those are as well as coping strategies for living a better life despite the burdens that life has thrust upon you.

While this course doesn’t cover substance abuse, it does cover two other very common forms of modern addiction: screen addiction and porn addiction.

In this lesson, we’ll recap some of the strategies we learned to overcome these very frequent and powerful addictions in our lives.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over skills for handling: depression, suicide prevention, anxiety, stress, and burnout.

We’ll briefly go back over: healthy moving, healthy eating, relaxation techniques, and sleep hygiene.

In this lesson, we’ll recap: conscious vs subconscious minds, moral frameworks, ego and humility, key CBT skills, and gratitude.

This recap will cover: the Programmatic Strategy, the Matching Game Strategy, the Multi-Engine Strategy, and the Photonic Strategy.

Here, we’ll go back over: the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy.

Once again, we’ll do a quick shakedown of the heuristics we learned before and why it’s important to understand them in your everyday life.

We’re going back to the very beginning with this recap covering: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

In this lesson, we’ll go over again the origins of anger and the best known strategies to combat it.

We’re going to talk again about feelings of bitterness, hatred, and resentment - and how they can be our own destruction.

We’ll recap ways to combat these emotions inside of oneself.

While you may or may not have struggled with grief so far in your life, we’ll all have to face it one day.

We can prepare ourselves now to live bigger, fuller, more peaceful lives, taking advantage of every moment we have together.

We all have to get old someday (if we’re lucky). The sooner we can face harsh realities like this, the better off we’ll be.

This lesson recaps some of the coping strategies we learned before when dealing with a body that is betraying us.

In this recap, we’ll go back over: Autism, ADHD, PTSD, and addiction.

This lesson will recap: depression, suicide prevention, anxiety, stress, and burnout.

This recap will cover: healthy moving, healthy eating, relaxation techniques, and sleep hygiene.

In this lesson, we’ll refresh our memories on: conscious versus subconscious minds, moral frameworks, ego and humility, key CBT skills, and gratitude.

Here, we’ll go back to: the Programmatic Strategy, the Matching Game Strategy, the Multi-Engine Strategy, and the Photonic Strategy.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over: the Marketer’s Strategy, the Buddhist’s Strategy, the Watchmaker’s Strategy, and the Evolutionary Strategy.

This lesson will see us going back over the heuristics we learned and how knowing about them can improve your life.

Finally, we’ll revisit: brain rot, change, social support systems, organization and time management, procrastination, and willpower.

…and how your personal attachment style impacts your relationships.

What is anxious attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

What is avoidant attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

What is disorganized attachment style and what can you do if this is your attachment style to build healthier relationships.

How to develop a secure attachment style.

Your future partners will thank you… and so will Future You.

Change your life by keeping a journal of things you’re accountable for and things you’re not.

I don’t know much about stoicism… yet. I’ll research it heavily for this section, but I do know that many people have reported it changed their life.

Stoicism and our modern usage of the word “stoic” don’t always align.

I’ll add more lessons to this section as I do research.

In this lesson, we’ll go back over what the different attachment styles are and how you can develop yours with intention to become more secure.

Learn how to peer into this part of yourself and accept it for what it is.

Identify how your shadow self has helped you survive at some point in the past, even if it was your ancestors.

How to use your shadow self in a way that meets your objectives… both personal and altruistic.

Facing the darkest true part of yourself is hard, but it’s worth it.

There’s a lot of talk out there about “toxic masculinity.” This is his healthier cousin.

There are many ways to provide your protection… both for yourself and others.

Focus on how to be a good leader - not how to be a good boss.

Even if you’re not a leader in anything externally, you can still be a leader in your own life.

Another healthy masculine trait is care-taking.

Strength and empathy are a powerful combination in any human, but especially men.

Keep yourself grounded so you can be a strong leader of yourself, your family, and your community.

Tear down the moldy and damaged parts of your internal environment to make way for a better life.

If you’re in a low place, framing where you’re at as part of your hero’s (or anti-hero’s) journey can help you get up off the ground.

Consider this the start of your epic novel about your journey from where you are now to where you’re going.

Things might feel darker before they feel better.

Don’t be afraid of taking a while to get here.