How the best entrepreneurs REDEFINE reality..
Summary
- I believe that labeling is one of the most powerful cognitive tools we possess.
- Our brains create meaning and ascribe labels as a survival mechanism, but it's important to recognize our brains keep us alive, not necessarily thriving.
- Labels can have a persuasive power; positive labels can induce actions aligned with them due to cognitive dissonance.
- However, negative labels can hurt people, especially when they pathologize normal human experiences.
- I am concerned about how the mental health industry sometimes portrays normal emotional variations as disorders.
- It is crucial to understand that human emotions exist on a continuum with opposites like happy/sad and energized/tired.
- Labeling an emotion or state as "bad" can escalate a transient feeling into a perceived persistent issue.
- Phrases like "should," "have to," and "need to" can create unnecessary pressure and imply threats against ourselves.
- I advocate for listening to language patterns which often reflect our thought processes and possibly distort our reality.
- Accepting that human experience includes both highs and lows lessens unnecessary suffering.
- A mental refrain of "and that's okay" helps in accepting and not judging what we feel at the moment.
- The space between circumstance and response is where we exercise choice, as Viktor Frankl suggests in "Man's Search for Meaning."
- Misery or suffering often stems from the labels we assign to our experiences rather than the experiences themselves.
- Wisdom begins with defining terms—as Socrates said—and understanding the terms can help clarify communication and resolve conflicts.
- Legal contracts often spend much time defining terms, which illustrates the importance of clear definitions in mutual understanding.
- Embracing both ends of the human emotional spectrum without judgement allows us to live fully and reduces suffering.
- We need to redefine the human experience to not include suffering as a default condition, instead embracing the full range life offers.
Video
How To Take Action
A good way of doing better in business and personal growth is to change how we think about our labels and judgments. Here's how to use this to thrive:
Understand Labeling: Recognize that our brains label things to keep us safe, not happy. But, we can choose labels that encourage growth.
Positive Labels: Use positive labels to motivate actions. If you think of yourself as a hard worker, you'll act like one.
Avoid Negative Labels: Don't let normal life ups and downs become "bad" labels. If you're tired or sad, don't see it as a problem, but a natural human feeling.
Change Your Words: Cut out phrases like "should" and "have to." They add pressure. Instead, say "I choose to" or "I prefer."
Listen to Your Language: What you say reflects what you think. Watch out for words that make things seem worse than they are.
Embrace the Spectrum: Understand life has highs and lows. Accept them. When you're annoyed, tell yourself "and that's okay."
Define Your Terms: Clearly define what success and happiness mean to you. This helps you understand your goals better.
Learn from Legal Contracts: Just as contracts define every term to avoid confusion, do the same for your life terms.
Remember, you always have a choice in how you respond to situations. By reframing your thoughts and language, you can turn problems into normal, manageable parts of life. Take these small, thoughtful steps to redefine your experience and enjoy the full range of what life offers.
Quotes by Alex Hormozi
"Our brains Are Meant To Keep Us Alive not meant to help us Thrive"
– Alex Hormozi
"Suffering is optional"
– Alex Hormozi
"In order for there to be light there must be Darkness"
– Alex Hormozi
"Wisdom begins with a definition of terms"
– Alex Hormozi
"The strongest mental health thing I did for myself is that I created a mental refrain… and that's okay"
– Alex Hormozi
Full Transcript
about how to eliminate problems in your life without taking any action and as crazy as that may sound I think that what I will share with you may sound even crazier if you don't know who I am my name is Alex Mosey on acquisition.com it's a portfolio of companies that's over 100 million a year and this lovely dolphin background paintings because my wife I've been traveling a lot and we're in random airbnbs so that being said let's rock and roll so yesterday I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine and we have different beliefs around the topic of problems especially when it comes to The Human Condition and I went on somewhat of a rant about this topic and I figured I would encapsulate it here for you guys and so the problem that this individual was talking about was a lot of stuff that has to do with you know mental illness and mental health and I think that this is a an interesting topic because the entire like industry didn't even exist until a few hundred years ago and humans have existed for a long period of time one of the more interesting things about the mental quote illness category is the importance of label and if you followed me for any period of time you'll know that labeling to me is one of the strongest powers that exists in the mind and I'll give you a reason why our minds are meaning making machines and so what that means is we determine what is Meaningful and what is not and then we ascribe labels to them in terms of positive and negative because that is how we survive now that being said our brains Are Meant To Keep Us Alive not meant to help us Thrive right to use a rhyming word for you now that being said with this whole concept around labeling it's something that I'm probably most passionate about like the concept of labeling as a whole it's unbelievably powerful when it comes to persuading people to do things unbelievably powerful when it comes to changing people's World Views and their perspectives on life and I will share a few of those examples with you so I'll give you a quick persuasion example for how powerful this is if I wanted to persuade someone to do something then what I would do is I would create a positive label that I would associate them with so I would say you are probably a loving and caring man and for you know you want to provide support for your family is that true they're like yes and I'm like yeah you definitely seem like one of those types of people and since you are one of those types of people I think that you should invest in this program that we have because that would be in alignment with this ideal that we just labeled the person with and so what happens is it creates cognitive dissonance because for the person in order for them to stay in accordance with the label that they would like to have they then feel obligated to then act in accordance with that label that we just uh prescribed now that's a very simplistic example you can weave that into narratives and sales scripts so that people become psychologically labeled and then want to act in accordance with that label because they see it as positive right the thing is is that it can also work in Reverse in terms of how you can harm someone and the reason that this is so viscerally upsetting to me is that I have had members of my family extended and whatnot who have I would say debilitated themselves in large part because of what they believe to be mental illness and I disagree now many people will get triggered at this and so I will say my big disclaimer which is this is not Financial advice this is not grammatical advice this is not spiritual advice this is not even advice this is a guy making a YouTube video about stuff that pisses me off and hopefully some of the things that serve me well now let's talk about the labels that are negative one of the things one of the most pernicious acts that exists negative bad stuff is when we take the human experience that has ups and downs that has extremes that exist on continuums and we label one side of the Continuum is bad and the other side of the Continuum is good for example happy sad energized or weak tired right we have equal opposites they're you know relaxed stressed right there's lots of examples of these the reason that this is so dangerous when we give a positive or negative label is that people think that they have a problem when they are not feeling happy or energized work relaxed or clear-minded versus foggy you you know what I mean whatever and the thing is is in order for there to be light there must be Darkness think about that for us second in order for there to be good there must also be bad one if you want to admit the existence of one there must also be the existence of the other right awesome now the problem this is why we have to be careful with labels that most people suffer from is that they label normal variations in The Human Condition with negative experiences and so they see themselves as tired and say this is bad whereas it's really just part of the human condition they see themselves as sad rather than happy and see that as bad and so what happens is you start to upgrade a finite emotional condition into a long-standing emotional disturbance because you think it's a problem and the thing is it's very easy to sell people on why these things are problems big Pharma is is the king of this are you feeling tired stressed you know are you hungry are you horny well you are suffering from being a human being it's being human and so I think a lot of this and the reason that it wraps into the original part of the prompt of this video is that if we want to be enduring entrepreneurs we want to be people who have resilience we want to people who have men fortitude we must be careful about the things that we label and there's also the good bad label which is the simplest label that a lot of people ascribe to conditions that are that are ephemeral right they're they're brief right and then they change but there's also the shoulds have must need to Etc that we say in our lives that we have to do these things or we must do these things and if we do not or else we put out a threat towards the universe if I don't get my coffee I must get my coffee I need to have coffee before I start my day what happens is that we create these implied threats to ourselves in the universe if we don't then what right and so I see this and this is probably the number one thing that people when I'm having conversations with them it's teaching yourself to listen for these language patterns because they are indications of in my opinion broken thought patterns people ascribe positive and negatives two things without understanding what the Deep ramifications of those things are and so if you are unhappy awesome you're human this is the human existence if you are tired awesome it will create more contrast for when you are awake if you are stressed amazing it will give you contrast for when you are relaxed if we constantly want to eliminate one side of the Continuum what often happens is that we get neither side and we become numb to the Continuum as a whole and so we end up missing out on some of the human experience and that's okay if that's what you want to do but the reason I'm making this video is that a lot of people think they have problems that are not actually problems at all they're just part of being human and I think the biggest problem that most people have is that they Define Being Human as the problem which inherently is why they suffer so much and I'll say something else that was pissing this person off yesterday that I will I will reinforce with you which is suffering is optional and an easy uh story to to to reinforce this foreign stream example of this is you if you've read a Victor Frankel's man search for meaning and it's a very visceral description if you haven't read it of uh of Auschwitz in the in the prison camps uh during World War II he basically posits in the book and this is a one-line summary that's doing a massive distrust uh uh Injustice to the book that between circumstance and response is choice and that is the power that all of us have even when he was stripped of everything that he possibly could have he still had choice and so in that Gap is where I believe we find The Human Experience we find how we Define how we choose to live it drives me up a wall because I feel like a lot of people suffer because they feel like the way that they are living is somehow wrong or bad or non-optimal or they need to take a pill or an injection to solve Being Human and I think if we can simply change our expectations about what Being Human really means and I say this passionately because I very much suffered from this for a very long period of time I was obsessed with being happy and in being obsessed with being happy anytime I was not happy I saw it as bad rather than a part of being human and I drove myself nuts I think I made myself more unhappy now I say this now not as though the being more unhappy is bad or good but I think that most people want to decrease their emotional disturbances that they experience right and so I think a key to not suffering is a understanding that The Human Experience has Peaks and troughs and it is normal and it is okay and as a side note one of the strongest mental health things that I did for myself that I'll share with you things that work for me is that I created a mental refrain it's just a simple thing that I can say to myself in my mind over and over and over again is that when I'm experiencing a negative quotes here negative part of The Human Experience I'll say and that's okay that's all be like I'm really annoyed right now I'll be like and that's okay rather than then casting judgment on the emotion because a lot of times you don't have control over your emotions but you do have control over the Judgment with which you apply apply to the emotion that you experience and the response that you have as a result and so I think this is where power is formed as humans is that some people two people are exposed to the same stimulus right same circumstances and one person perseveres and the other person does not then a lot of it is because of the choices that we make between circumstance and response and that's kind of back to Victor Frankel's thing I'll wrap off this this this final little thing here this rant with a quote from I think it was I think it's Socrates you said wisdom begins with a definition of terms and so most arguments or disagreements can be resolved if both people come to an agreement on terms and it's because we say things like happy we say things like healthy we say things like wealthy we say things like success right and we haven't defined the terms yet and then two people will have different definitions of what those terms mean or more likely non-existent definitions because they've never even thought about it right some amorphous word that they throw out bucket some general ideas and disagree but they have very different definitions of those things and the way that you define the outcomes that you want to experience will help you achieve them if that is what you so desire and I think that there's a tremendous amount of wisdom in that concept because you know in Socrates is quote because like for example when we sold our three of the companies that we sold last year right Jim wants Prestige labs in Allen we sold those to different buyers and what was interesting to me was when I read through the contracts the first half of like 50 plus page contracts were just defining the terms and I thought that was just so interesting that in order to come to an agreement we must first agree on terms right what is the scope or territory of a non-compete and then there would be a paragraph and then that word non-compete would be put somewhere else and the actual agreements themselves oftentimes are very simplistic it's like party a as defined by know appendix one agrees to sell right cell being defined in you know in appendix two to party B right as defined by said assets said assets to find it you know I mean and so what happens is when you become clear about the words you say you can communicate and think more clearly and a lot of times I think that this resolves a lot of the emotional disturbances that we experience as humans because we realize that they were never problems to begin with only that we Define them that way and therein by the problem of how we experience them and so this is something I'm very very passionate about hopefully the topic was not as amorphous as hopefully it sounded to you but people suffer because they choose to Define their experience as suffering and I think that many of us can experience fewer emotional disturbances or not upgrade them to long-standing emotional disturbances by simply saying a I'm experiencing this emotion which will pass comma and it's okay and B subset this is part of being human and then what happens is we could start redefining what The Human Experience should be and if we say for example that experiencing the full spectrum of The Human Experience is a life well lived and we desire to have a life well lived then we are doing a good thing when we suffer when we are sad when we are stressed because we are living our life to both extremes at different times in different seasons to the fullest degree so that we can look back on our lives and say I was a human being I lived this life and anyways these are things that keep me up when I think about what it means to be human and I think Buddha uh had a really interesting concept around this which is you know he talks about the middle path um in life which is by the way a lot of people don't know this but you know Buddha was a prince beforehand so he had all the riches he had all the Comforts right and then he went to extreme poverty on the other side of the spectrum and he was like the middle path right so it's understanding both sides of the human experience and not saying either one is good or bad but they just are and then I think when we do that we we remove the Judgment of self which is where a lot of the suffering occurs rather than simply being present for the experience and enjoying it for what it is which is just being human and we don't fall prey to The Narrative of the big pharmas that say that being human is wrong being human is bad experiencing emotions is not normal it's the most normal thing it's the most normal thing for people to be unhappy sometimes it's the most normal thing for people to be tired sometimes it's normal to be hungry it's normal to be horny it is part of being human and we create so much suffering for ourselves by saying that there is a problem with simply existing during a period of time on a Continuum and then that problem that we label then becomes long-standing rather than something that passes with time so lots of love everyone Mosey Nation appreciates you if you're new to the channel welcome lots of love keep being awesome I'll catch you next