So this week is gonna be one of those weeks
where I share with you something that I am just learning
and the reason is because,
well, I just learned it and I think it would be cool
to do an experiment and have you explore along with me.
That thing is a new mindset
and it came from a book that a friend recommended.
One of the lines in that book said,
"I'm trying to be a better best friend to myself,"
and when I read that line,
I immediately thought back to the times in my life
where I was not a best friend of myself —
where I was mean, I bullied myself and I was kind of a mental terrorist.
And it made me think of the times in my friends' lives
where they've had issues
and oftentimes, what it seems is that they're self-bullying.
It's not that there's something horrible in that moment occurring,
it's that they fear something will happen or something happened
and they're beating themselves up about it.
So personally, where I went through,
was to a break up that I had
and if you watch the channel you know this was a couple months back,
broke up with my girlfriend about two years
and I was so mean to myself.
I look back at the types of things that I was saying to myself
that made me feel really sad and it was,
"Man, you screwed this up. You're going to be sad forever.
Did you screw your life up with this?
Are you ever gonna get over this?
Your friends are leaving, their going on vacation,
you're going to be alone —
what kind of idiot are you?" and when I think of the way
that my best friend talk to me
when I would reach out to him to try to feel better,
it was a very different perspective.
You see he came in from a calm,
not being completely emotionally-involved like I was perspectively and say,
"Dude, I love you, man."
I know this is a hard time but I gotta tell you
you're gonna be okay.
You're an amazing guy, you work hard to better yourself every day,
I promise you this is not the last time you're going to be in love
and I promise you that on your deathbed
you're not going to look back at this
and think, 'Wow, that was the end of the happiness in my life.'
There's so much more good to come.
Keep your chin up, it's gonna be all good,"
and when I talked to him in those moments, I felt much better
but as soon as I left I felt bad
and that's because I realize
I would go back to those mental processes of just beating myself up
and what I think would be interesting and what I want to try now
with you
is to have this best friend brain
where I don't need to go talk to my best friend every two seconds
if I'm having a tough time to get his perspective.
What if I could just have that locked in my own head?
What if you could have that locked in your head?
And that's the experiment that I want to run for one week.
Anytime life throws a small difficulty, a big difficulty,
whatever it is,
I'm curious of the type of results I can create in my feelings
and in my life if I don't let myself do that mental terrorism stuff
that so many of us do.
And I think that there's four pieces that I'm going to purposefully
make sure that I don't do for a week
and I want to invite you to do it with me.
The first thing is to feel mentally-isolated
and I know this is kind of sound strange
but one of the things that has made this exercise work especially well for me
is when I imagine best friend right brain in the voice of my best friend
when it's not just my own mental talk, my own mental imagery
because sometimes when you're in your own head
and you're going through the same phrases,
the same images that you always use,
it's tough to get perspective.
Whereas when you speak to yourself in the voice of someone that you respect —
maybe you have a best friend who's really great,
maybe there's a mentor that you look up to —
when you just take someone and you use their voice,
oftentimes, you get immediate perspective.
Their problems are not your problems.
They can see them with distance and say, "Okay, this isn't going to last forever.
You can overcome this."
They're not so emotionally-involved,
they can give good advice and oftentimes, the crazy thing is
all that you have to do to get that isn't necessarily just to pick up the phone,
it's just adopt a different voice in your head.
So that's the first thing.
Make your best friend brain
kind of a separate entity that you can talk with —
it sounds crazy but it makes you feel, I'll be honest,
less lonely in the moment.
The second thing is that your best friend brain,
even if your best friend isn't like this,
does not let you complain —
it is solution-oriented.
Now your best friend or your best friend brain
might give you 30 seconds to talk about the things that are wrong
but it's gonna whip you into shape and say,
"Okay, what are we gonna do about this right away?"
The contrast of this which I see so often —
I was on the phone today
with the girl who was having an issue with her roommate
and the roommate isn't cleaning up
the way that she would like as she would,
she told me about the issue for 30 seconds a minute,
I said, "Okay, here are some things you can do to change it,"
but then we talked for probably another nine or ten minutes
about all the ways in which it wasn't fair
and probably in that moment I should have put an immediate stop to it
but for her own sake and for all of our own sake,
that dwelling on the problem while it might feel cathartic
is just not useful and doesn't make us actually feel good in the end.
Yes, the best friend brain doesn't say,
"There are no problems. It's okay. Tell me your problems
but now we're going to fix them.
We're not going to connect and whine and cry about them,
we're going to come up with solutions,"
so that's the second piece — give yourself 30 seconds to a minute to
dwell or be sad about something
or even if you need more time to figure out what the real problem is,
take it but don't just repeat the problem and how it's unjust —
come up with solutions.
Third thing about best friend brain
is that the best friend brain gives you tough love.
It's got high standards for you.
So in this in the position of this girl who was talking with me
I realized what she should have done for herself
and many of us have been in this position before and said,
"Look. Yeah, it's a bummer that there are plates
but you're better than this.
Are you gonna let your hour or your day get upset by the fact
that there's dirty dishes that are left there by someone
who's actually really close to you and that you like a lot?
Are you going to focus on these things
and allow yourself to be miserable for any period of time
because there's plates in places you don't want them to be?
You're better than that.
Wake up. You got so much to be grateful for and you're—
I'm not gonna let you be unhappy. I love you too much for that."
That's the best friend brain — high standards, tough love.
And the fourth thing
that is very different sometimes from the way that I talk to myself
is that the best friend brain and my best friend, Ben,
is very flattering.
I don't often tell myself all the ways in which I'm amazing are great
because it can feel unhumble and I think that a lot of us feel this.
You don't want to have too much arrogant mental talk.
But for many people, and I suspect a lot of people watching this fall in this category,
we don't give ourselves enough self-congratulations
and the best friend brain, when I think of the way that Ben would talk to me, goes,
when I'm going through the break-up goes,
"Dude, I love you. You're awesome.
You're one of the coolest, smartest, and hardest working guys that I know.
You're going to be okay.
You're going to get an amazing girl.
You've got all these wonderful qualities,"
that sometimes in the situation while I'm going,
"You're never going to feel happy again,"
those things don't always come through.
So give yourself permission from that secondary perspective
to flatter yourself a little bit.
You don't need to become attached to all of these things
but in a moment it's nice to stop and reflect and say,
"You know what? I do work hard.
I have a lot going for me. This is going to be okay,"
and just a pause here if you're going,"
"Well, I don't have anything that going for me,"
I bet every single person watching this video can say the following things —
one — I do try hard to do the right thing.
Maybe not as often as I should
but I do try hard.
Second — I am capable of changing my life for the better.
I can overcome whatever problems in front of me.
I know that I can overcome it.
I have that capacity within me.
And so your brain can tell you those things.
If you don't feel like you've got everything else lined up right now
because of where your life is,
those things should still be true.
So what I want to invite everyone to do
right now if you're watching this is
for the next week
stop your thought processes when they go to a negative place
and sub in this best friend link here.
Someone else's voice coaching you through it with these four qualities.
And if you do that, I suspect I'm going to be doing it along with you,
you'll see that you can solve problems a lot quicker.
You probably spent a lot more time in your life being happy.
So that's what I'm gonna be doing this week
I wanted to make this video a little bit
brief and short because next week I'm
going to be created a much longer video
and it's on the I Don't Give A F--- movement.
I don't give a fill-in-the-blank...
I'll swear a lot more in that video but for now leave it as is.
And it's gonna incorporate a lot of different things
that talks about Fight Club,
it's going to talk about the character Tyler Durden
so if you're interested in seeing that
make sure that you subscribe to the channel
and if you are subscribed hit the little bell icon on mobile
or beneath this video on desktop
because if you don't we will not show up on your homescreen
just sometimes on the side bar which is a new change from youtube.
So I hope that you've enjoyed this.
If you do decide to participate, write with me in the comments.
Just go ahead and commit yourself so write, "Yes, I'm in for a week"
and if you want to come back, let me know how it's gone for you
with the first couple days.
It's definitely would be interested in seeing that as well.
So I hope that you've enjoyed this video,
I hope to see you in the next one
and I look forward to doing that.
See you there.