Summary
Joe addresses the fundamental problem with consuming self-help content: watching videos and reading books rarely creates lasting change because information without experience doesn’t transform. He identifies three reasons self-help content fails and what to do instead.
First, passive consumption doesn’t work — you must design experiments to make ideas yours. If someone says “have discipline,” try it for a week and see what happens. If you can’t, there’s something you don’t understand yet, which becomes the next experiment. Without running experiments, information goes in one ear and out the other.
Second, there’s no quick fix. People scroll YouTube looking for the one insight that will make everything different, but transformation comes from relating to yourself differently — seeing patterns you don’t want to see, feeling emotions you don’t want to feel, and becoming intimate with what you’ve avoided. Transformation can happen quickly, but not because someone told you something — because you experienced something.
Third, you’re probably wrong about what the problem is. You think “I’m lazy” or “I’m poor,” but the core issue is always the relationship you have with yourself. Your external relationships with money, partners, and dreams all reflect your internal self-relationship. Self-help content that agrees with your brain’s problem statement will never address the actual issue.
Key Concepts
- Passive consumption of wisdom never transforms
- You are probably wrong about what your problem is
- Transformation requires experience not information
- The relationship with yourself is always the core issue
Key Quotes
“If you’re just listening to it and not actually making it yours, if you’re not running an experiment, if you’re not trying it out to see what it’s like to live that way, then it’s just going to go in one ear and out the other.”
“The way transformation works is that you relate to yourself differently. You see patterns and feel things that you don’t want to feel and you don’t want to see and you become intimate with them.”
“If you are having a bad relationship with money, it’s reflective of a bad relationship you’re having with yourself. If you are having a bad relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself.”
“What is it to stop looking for a solution? What is it to right now with me get in touch with what’s happening in you right now, to feel the thing that’s maybe a little uncomfortable, that maybe is a little intense, and welcome it.”
“As long as you’re walking around trying to solve the problems that your brain is telling you you have rather than the core problem, then the video is really just not going to get you where you want to go.”
Transcript
Most likely you have been trying to figure out how to fix yourself by like watching enough YouTube videos that you’ll finally get some piece of wisdom that’s going to get you to where you want to go. And what you’ve probably noticed at this point is that that hasn’t actually been working or it works a little bit for maybe a short period of time and then it doesn’t work. So, I want to go into what makes anything that you’re doing in self-help work and what makes the videos not work and how you can approach them differently so that they might actually have a long-term effect on your life. I can just sit here and say things and you can nod and say I agree or you can shake your head and say you don’t agree, but until you’ve actually experienced it, you’re not going to really understand if it works. So, if you really want to make a YouTube video something that is going to change your life, you have to design experiments so that you can find out what’s true for you or what’s not true for you or so that you can feel it in your body. So if somebody says to you, hey, you’ve got to have discipline to make it all work out, then go and try to have discipline for a week. And if you can’t have discipline for a week, then there’s something that you don’t understand or something that they didn’t communicate to you. And then you can design another experiment about how to have discipline. And so whatever is being told to you by a YouTube video, if you’re just listening to it and not actually making it yours, if you’re not running an experiment, if you’re not trying it out to see what it’s like to live that way, then it’s just going to go in one ear and out the other and you’re going to forget most of it and it’s not going to change anything. It doesn’t really even matter if it’s a YouTube video or if it’s a self-help book. making it yours, running an experiment to see what’s going to be true for you and see what it’s like to feel it in your body is going to make a massive difference than just actually letting it go in one ear and out the other or just hearing it and then not doing anything with it. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is you’re not going to get a quick fix. What that means is that you might change quickly. You might change much quicker than you think. probably your brain is saying on some level, I’m not going to ever be able to change. And that in itself is an issue. But when you’re on the YouTube channel like looking for things, you’re trying to find that one thing that makes you go, okay, good. Now it’s all different. And that’s not how transformation works. The way transformation works is that you relate to yourself differently. The way transformation works is that you see patterns and feel things that you don’t want to feel and you don’t want to see and you become intimate with them and you start to understand what’s actually behind it. And when you do, it transforms very quickly. If you start feeling the emotions you don’t want to feel, if you start seeing the parts of yourself that you don’t want to see, if you embrace the intensity of transformation, then things can change quite quickly. But that doesn’t come because somebody told you something in a in a YouTube video. It doesn’t come because of something that I’m going to say. It comes because of something that you’re going to experience. And so your personal experience is incredibly important. And your willingness to look at the things that you don’t want to look at is important. And in some degree, often times people are watching this YouTube video so they don’t have to look at themselves. So they can just say, “Oh, this is what’s wrong with me. This is how I fix it.” But that’s not actually looking at yourself. The third reason that YouTube videos often aren’t going to work for you is because you think that there’s a problem with you and you go to fix it, but most likely you’re wrong about what you think the problem is. Most likely you think, “Oh, I’m lazy. How do I get unlazy?” Or, “I’m poor. How do I get rich?” But the core is that you have a relationship with yourself that isn’t working. The core issue is that you have the way that you are relating to yourself is reflected in your life. So if you are having a bad relationship with money, it’s reflective of a bad relationship you’re having with yourself. If you are having a bad relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. If you are not living up to your dreams, it’s a reflection of not having a great relationship with yourself. But nobody on YouTube is saying, “Here’s how to have a great relationship with yourself.” What they’re doing is they’re agreeing with the problem statement in your mind. They’re agreeing. They’re saying, “Here, you want to be more extroverted. Here’s how to be more extroverted.” But what they’re not saying is, “Here’s the way that you think about yourself that says that keeps you small, and here’s how to actually change that relationship with yourself.” So, as long as you’re walking around trying to solve the problems that your brain is telling you you have rather than the core problem, then the video is really just not going to get you where you want to go. And honestly, the reason I’m making this video is because we’ve been sitting here in this place in Denver, Colorado for multiple days trying to figure out like how do I make videos that people are going to watch that actually say the thing that I want to say? And the problem that I’m having is that I know all the videos that people think they’re going to that like the producers and the and the consultants think are going to actually be watched are videos that I don’t want to make cuz they’re not going to actually have a significant change in your life. Because what I know actually changes the way that you are going to be is to change the relationship with yourself. How do you stop having a war with yourself? Because in a war with yourself, you’re always going to lose. right now in this moment with me. What is it to stop looking for a solution? What is it to right now with me get in touch with what’s happening in you right now to feel the thing that’s maybe a little uncomfortable, that maybe is a little intense and welcome it. to open yourself up to the thing that you don’t want to look at, that you don’t want to feel. And that’s how you you pay attention. You find the thing in this moment. Oh, this this way of thinking about it gives me some relief. This way of accepting it gives me some sort of of understanding. This leaning into a difficulty, this uncomfortable thing that I’m feeling right now, but I’m accepting changes me. It changes you right now, and it’s going to change you in the long term.