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iAlign #83 - The Veritasium Video Is Not Why You Are Awake · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the IAline podcast with Flint Mitchell, where I provide stories, resources, and tools for ambitious builders who are ready to gain control over procrastination, overthinking, and distraction.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: There I am again, lying in my bed with my laptop on my stomach for the millionth time.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: My eyes were probably bloodshot.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was tired, doom scrolling, avoiding, probably a bit sad or anxious, or honestly numb.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely not the most proud version of myself if I was to be able to look at myself in the third person, you know.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was watching a Veritassium video on YouTube.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not in the know, Veritassium is a science YouTube channel where this guy Derek explains interesting concepts in 20 to 40 minute long videos.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as an engineer and a scientist and a social media and YouTube addict when I was younger, his video is always connected with me because I'm a nerd if that wasn't obvious from my other content.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: They gave me a good combination of an interesting topic that made me feel like I was learning something while being able to distract me from the things I was avoiding in my life through good visual graphics and stories.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You might call it educational brain rot, but I don't want to be unfair to his channel.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is actually pretty great.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: When engaged in in a healthy way, it definitely isn't brain rot.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: The issue here is that while I did enjoy the science nature of his videos, I wasn't really engaging with them in that way.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was just numbing.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was lying with my neck cranked at a weird angle watching a video on a science topic that, while interesting, probably wasn't interesting enough to be keeping me up at 2 a.m.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: in the morning with a bright screen eight inches from my eyes, especially when I had responsibilities in the morning and told myself that I was going to be getting to bed at 5 30 a.m.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: for the 700th time.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would, in fact, not wake up at 5.30 a.m.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: the next day.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is not exactly the image of peak performance, to say the least.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when watching that video inevitably ended up in me clicking on other videos and the YouTube suggestions, once my brain was officially fried enough to not even be able to pretend about focusing on an interesting topic.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it quickly spiraled into videos on fitness and some health grooves, hot take on whatever the new fad was.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's like eating raw beef is a good idea to consume.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, but that sounds like a fucking dumb idea to me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yet I still watched it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or new ways of doing the bench press.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are very few ways that you can actually do a bench press, but apparently several million ways that you can talk about it in a short video as if they are new.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this inevitably led into some ridiculous videos on telling pickup lines to girls in public.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's some random bullshit like that.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: That appears to have been replaced in the modern day of the era of the public influencer interviewer who asks rage bait questions to unsuspecting and unfortunate drunk patrons of the local dive bars.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's like 3 a.m.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And not only am I tired because my eyes hurt, but I'm annoyed as shit too, because it's basically impossible to engage with this kind of content and not feel annoyed.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wanna know why?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's designed to fucking annoy you.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The point of content online is to evoke an emotion in order to engage you.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And because most of the content people watch has no substance to genuinely interest you, they must solely rely on invoking your emotions.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, how the fuck am I supposed to get good sleep now that I'm in this exhausted and frustrated state of being early in the morning?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when it hits me.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, fuck, I still haven't done this.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I can fill that blank with a handful of different answers.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: A work assignment, paid my taxes, followed up with that important person, heard back from the girl, studied for the test, etc.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you get it, because this story I'm telling wasn't a random, spontaneous event.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: This was a pattern.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pattern that had existed in my life for probably over a decade at this point.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I was on this bullshit binge on YouTube was because I was numbing and I was avoiding.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it was a big, intense emotion associated with a fear or a worry that I had.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, honestly, it was just a smaller but ever-present emotion constantly there under the surface of the mind.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: That feeling of feeling behind or of discontent with my direction in life or my clarity over things.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Two clear examples stick out here in my mind.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: First on the feeling of anxiety, anticipation, and fraudulence.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the second on fear and embarrassment.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: In the first example, I remember a night vividly where I tossed and I turned thinking about an upcoming meeting that I had.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I set it up.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was over an opportunity that I was pursuing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had an idea and I wanted to speak to someone I looked up to a lot, so I reached out and set up time with him.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that night it hit me.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, holy shit, I'm not ready for this.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have enough work done yet.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: He even liked the idea on the surface and responded back to me positively, telling me he might even have some resources that I could use right away.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't ready for that.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Did I accidentally make it seem like I was further ahead than I actually was?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Will he actually like this idea?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or is he going to think it's dumb and turn me down?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if he does like it, am I even capable of doing this?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna find out I'm a fucking fraud and never want to talk to me again.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus, I'm blowing it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what was going through my head in that moment.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The anxiety of burning this relationship was, if I'm being honest, less crippling in that moment than the thought of feeling like someone who I deemed successful was going to realize, ah, went this all image and talk, not who he said he was.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So every time I closed my eyes and tried to get to sleep, I just laid there with my mind racing and think, wow, there's no chance I'm gonna get to sleep like this.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I should do something that should relax my mind.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then my mind goes, oh, you mean like get your phone out again and put a bright LED screen 12 inches from your fucking face?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Great idea.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing like trying to calm yourself while stimulating your nervous system with a bright light and scrolling annoying bullshit.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no chance I slept well that night because the anticipation of starting something cool and new that I might not be able to handle, and the anxiety of feeling like I would be found out as a fraud led me straight back to consumptive behaviors and away from genuine rest.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the second example was before a different type of meeting.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was a meeting to check in on work progress that I was supposed to have already completed, that I, well, I hadn't completed.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So once again, these thoughts came to me in a different way and sleep evaded me.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Things like, what am I even doing here?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm clearly not the worker that they or I thought that I was.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe I'm this behind.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: What have I been doing?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And in this example, I even remember actually having made some progress.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like I was gonna show up completely empty-handed, but it wasn't done.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And how could I ever live with myself?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Looking that boss in the eyes and seeing his disappointment that I didn't follow through.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was clearly not the type of person I made myself out to be.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The hardworking, trustworthy man that I thought of myself as.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was gonna be so embarrassing having to face that reality.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you've seen your mind spiral through similar thoughts, whether or not they are based on reality at all.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hint, they usually aren't.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even when they're based on real events, the spiral tends to lead toward completely irrational thoughts and beliefs about ourselves or about our situations.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I have plenty more stories like this, but I want to dive deep on the subject here to avoid being too broad.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that I scrolled YouTube and social media and ended up with short, horrible sleep was because of my inability to separate from the emotions and the actions of the day.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, at this time I also didn't have sufficient routines and focus and a good ability to prioritize effectively.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I allowed too much noise into my life, I overcommitted myself, I ended up spread thin and inconsistent.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: These are real and important issues that I was facing and have faced as well.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: There are obstacles I talk about in lots of my content, so I want to aim my attention to a slightly different place right now.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that we will never act perfectly.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there has ever been a day where I rested my head down and thought, yes, I dotted every single I and crossed every single T.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: That day was 100% absolutely, unquestionably, undeniably fucking perfect.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've had plenty and plenty of days that were remarkable, don't get me wrong.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there is no such thing as perfect, and therefore I cannot achieve it on any given day.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're being honest, most days end up falling far short of this bar.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So don't lie to me about this if you're resisting in your head of how many days do you end with your to-do list unfinished?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you got to the to-dos, right, that you wrote down, but there are still dozens or hundreds of other things you'd like to have gotten done that day, or done by this point in your life.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying this to try to point to you or I being a failure for not achieving everything that we want in life by a certain age or during a certain day.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: All I'm saying is that by and large, we must rest our heads every single day with the realization that we have not yet gotten done or achieved everything that we want in life, or even in that day.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that realization is only amplified by how ambitious you are as a person.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: For example, for me, my journey with this company, IALINE, is to support one billion people every day.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm well on my way, but let's just say I'm orders of magnitude away from that goal, like quite a few of them.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: So even if I have made progress, I haven't hit that goal.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: It will always be in the back of my mind, and that's not a bad thing, unless it eats at me, like the emotions I talked about earlier in these stories.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: If I constantly let anxiety or disappointment or fear or insecurity lead me toward consumptive behaviors and shitty sleep, I'll scroll my phone for the rest of my life and never consistently get good rest.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the reality.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because these emotions will continue to show up for me throughout my entire life, whether the reality of my situation justifies them or not.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have control over my emotions.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have control over which emotions you feel either.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: You only have control over how you respond to them.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I'm gonna feel like I could have done better or am disappointed or by a response or by an action.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm going to have a remarkable success and then walk into a new room with more successful people and feel insecure.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Even if I consciously don't compare myself against them and their versions of success.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that just proves my point.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you are an ambitious person, then every day for the rest of your life, you will have to go to sleep without having accomplished everything you wanted to in life.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's completely okay.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: However, if this is true, we need to make sure that we are capable of handling this ineffability.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if I become the absolute best version of myself with regard to my routines and focus and prioritization and efficiency and consistency, etc., all those cognitive obstacles I was working on that I mentioned before, I'm still just one man with 24 hours to spend each day.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as I would like to build a multi-billion dollar, human-centered and positive company tomorrow, it's going to take some time.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be uncomfortable.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, probably actually a lot of the time, it's going to give me anxiety and anticipation and the occasional feeling like a fraud.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So at the same time as I work on those cognitive areas of my life, I also have to work on the emotional ones because that is what led me to scrolling my phone each night and making my sleep and my life worse.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was unable to handle the emotions associated with not acting perfectly in the way that I want.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that would lead me to try to numb or to avoid those emotions, which led to tangible negative results.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Scrolling, eye strain, late nights, late mornings, poor sleep, low energy, brain fog, etc.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what do those lead to?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Intangible emotional negative results.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Self-doubt, fear, anxiety, sadness, embarrassment, insecurity, etc.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: All that juicy stuff.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: That means that any comprehensive personal development methodology must pay attention to the emotional side of the equation.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: The more I build, the more responsibilities I will have, the more people I will hire, the more lives I will impact.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The stronger these emotions will have the capacity to become.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, as I grow with my capacity to work smarter and harder and to be less distracted and prioritize and all that, I will actually be increasing the potential and the consistency for strong emotions to occur.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can't handle those, then I will inevitably lead to restless nights filled with consumptive and compulsive behaviors.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you resonate with this, if you have big goals and a lot of potential, but if you find yourself falling into consumptive behaviors, part of the reason is likely because you don't have the requisite competency and toolbox for alleviating emotions enough to de-stress and give yourself genuine rest.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: One element of this is legitimately just structure.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just going from high stress work to other areas of your life, you're working against your mind.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: The way that I personally started to handle this was by simply paying attention to the emotional side of my life.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's just that's how I started.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I started by identifying what emotions were showing up.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not so I could remove them, not so I could even heal them, but so I could find out why they were there and how I could handle them better in the future.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: In that first example, I realized that when I was feeling anxiety associated with a new upcoming event that I might not be prepared for, it was actually anticipation.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a form of excitement that manifested for me as a similar sensation to anxiety.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: It still gave me the lightness in my chest and the racing of my mind.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there are many ways that I worked through this, but one of them is just a series of simple reminders, honestly.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just because I haven't finished my goal yet, doesn't mean I can't make progress on it.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great one.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Even if someone else thinks that I'm less impressive than I'd like them to think of me, doesn't mean that it's true and certainly doesn't prevent me from doing things in my life.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or how about if my idea or new opportunity were to fail, it would be an opportunity to grow and learn from and do better next time.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so a failure, if I'm genuinely trying, would actually be a positive thing, even if it didn't feel great.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good one.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where the feeling of anxiety associated with a new opportunity or risk is actually a part of my value of adventure.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: There are no good real adventures where you don't feel some level of anticipation, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, there is no risk at all.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the more often I feel this discomfort, the more I can know with certainty that I am aligning with my value of adventure.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or for the second example, even in the worst case scenario where I didn't do my work and I got fired and I got humiliated and laughed at the end, could I still get better?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Could I go and find and do work and support myself?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it would hurt.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be embarrassing probably.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't be preferable.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But don't get me wrong, I could do that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: I could get better.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I didn't get enough done and it was embarrassing and demonstrated in this moment that my follow-through isn't where I would like it to be, is it a life sentence for me to have poor, lazy character?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, of course not.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can change my behavior and act better next time.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Even if this were a consistent pattern, it doesn't mean that I am forever labeled as a lazy person.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that I've had some lazy actions in my past and those can change.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: These reframes are methods that I personally use to alleviate the emotions associated with those kinds of events.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I also use other practices like breathing exercises, coaching, therapy, exercise, all sorts of things to specifically target what these emotions are preventing me from resting and performing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I want to pursue my large goals and I know that large goals come with the potential for strong emotions or inevitability for them, then I must be able to handle those strong emotions.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't, I am quite literally teeing myself up for failure.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, all right, Flint, I'm going to commit you to a responsibility with potentially serious and large consequences.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not going to give you any method of coping with the emotions that are going to show up.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Good fucking luck.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which, when looked at objectively, just sounds like a horrible and stupid plan.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: If your best friend was going into a big interview and had a ton of anxiety, would you say, oh, that sucks?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you should try scrolling through those short, angry dating TikToks and then go watch the news on the most recent war and famine.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: That always helps you relax and feel better.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully not.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You would probably point them toward a rational view of the situation.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: You might positively reinforce them with validation or a compliment or advise them to take a deep breath.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do great.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just do your best.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: So why wouldn't you support yourself the same way?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And long story short, if you find yourself consuming things like food or social media or porn, etc., instead of doing positive healthy things like sleep or focus or relax or read, you likely aren't giving yourself the space to handle certain intense emotions that will inevitably show up.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have big goals like me that you want to achieve, then it's a good idea to pay attention to those emotions and to build your competency and your toolbox to be able to alleviate, move through, and separate from those strong emotions so that you can still engage in life in a healthy way, even when they are present, because they will be present.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that episode.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've been told your entire life that you're smart and you have potential, but you continue to see yourself not do what you said you would do again and again, and it's made you stop trusting in yourself or that you will ever achieve that potential, I want to help you.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Together, you and I will implement a core value-based system that will help you become decisive and focused.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to feel the relief from the weight on your shoulders because of the decreased noise in your head, strength each morning, because you trust yourself to turn lost avoided hours of your life into forward progress.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you no longer have to hide, how you actually spend your time, and finally pride in yourself when you close your eyes every night before you go to the label.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: If that's of interest to you, click the first link in the show notes, fill out a 30-second application, and grab a time on my calendar.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: The odds are obviously limited because of my time and availability, but if they fill out and you're a good fan, I'll make sure you get on the waitlist.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to the video.