In which we dance around the emotions found on the Joy spectrum.
Recorded November 13, 2024.
Show notes and links:
The Princess Bride (1987) Movie CLIP – The Torture Machine
“The Strangest Secret” Earl Nightingale
Self Coaching Model (CTFAR Model) — The Official Guide
“The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination” Dan Millman – Grounded African
“Silence, ye fiends…” The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
“Hit me again…” Jeffrey R Holland “The Tongue of Angels”
JOY—the ultimate motivator – David Eby
Tucker Carlson: How Joe Rogan Changed Media Forever
Guaranteed Joy with Richard Curtis – Simon Sinek
Rabindranath Tagore – I slept and dreamt that life was…
“I Cried Because I Had No Shoes…” | Impressions
AI Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human – NotebookLM
Transcript:
Jump to end
[clip] I mean, can you always be joyful?
Can you always be joyful and never experience despair and still grow?
Can you grow in only joy?
Experience.
Or it’s an indicator.
Never recognize despair.
If you don’t recognize it, if you don’t identify it, then it can’t be an identifier for you.
And is it possible to live a life just in joy where you don’t even recognize despair,
where you’re so convinced that you’re right?
It’s a black and white world.
It’d have to be a black and white world.
There’s no nuance at all.
Everything is joyful.
[introduction] Hey there.
This is our podcast, Do You Have a Minute?, in which my dad and I dive into deep discussions
about both the most profound and most mundane questions of life.
While we know we don’t have all the answers, probably none of them actually, we are opening
our minds to new perspectives and most importantly, we are having a good time in conversation.
Join us as we explore the unknown together.
[conversation] So, what’s been going on?
What’s been going on.
We’ve had a campaign of joy.
I thought joy would still be an important thing to talk about.
Okay.
A campaign of joy.
Like, people have been pushing for it, have been trying to promote it.
Right.
Trying to promote it.
Trying to say that joy is imminent if you just elect for this person.
Like a presidential campaign of joy.
Right.
Right.
A literal campaign.
And in order to have joy, so the discussion around joy, I think, is still appropriate.
And if you’ve seen any of the backlash or the people being unjoyful because it didn’t
fall their way, there’s some distress.
What’s the opposite of joy?
Is it distress?
Despair.
Sadness.
Despair.
Depression?
So, I suppose if joy was the most happy you could be, what is the most sad that you could
be?
Would be depressed.
Depressed.
Yeah.
I mean…
In despair.
So, is there a reason that the author of Princess Bride called the pit of despair, the pit of
despair and not the pit of sadness or the pit of discouragement?
You’ll have to remind me of where that pit is in…
I mean, I know the forest.
Yeah, they go down into it in the tree, through the tree.
In the movie, they go into a tree, down into the pit of despair.
And that’s where Wesley is tortured with a machine.
Okay.
So, he’s taken there by the prince.
Into the pit of despair.
And what’s the prince telling?
He says something to him.
You’re gonna enjoy this or…
Or you might not enjoy it as much as I do, but…
Let’s see.
Yeah, it’s something like that.
There’s something he says kindly.
Let me know how you feel.
That’s what he was saying.
Let me know how you feel.
Honestly.
Be honest.
That’s right.
We really need to know.
So, something like that.
What a good story.
What a good story that is.
Yeah.
So, despair though.
I think despair is a pretty heavy word.
That might be it.
Because there is no hope.
If you’re in despair, you’ve got no hope.
So, is joy a hopeful feeling?
If you have no hope in despair, and that’s the opposite of joy, if we consider it the
opposite of joy, despairing means that what you’d hoped for isn’t there.
If what you hoped for is still there, you have joy while you hoped for it.
It doesn’t have to be accomplished.
So, what you have joy in isn’t necessarily satisfied, satisfaction.
You don’t have satisfaction based on it.
You have joy because you’re expecting it.
You have hope.
Maybe.
You have despair.
If you’re in despair, it doesn’t mean that you’re dead.
Doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.
That it means you have no hope of the worst not happening.
Yeah.
But still, despair is a position on the trail.
Yeah, that makes sense.
You’re not at the end.
You’re not dead.
But you’re despairing that you might be dead.
Right.
Or you might lose all of your rights.
Yeah.
They say all of our rights are gone now.
Everything we’ve worked so hard for is just going to completely disappear now.
And they’re in the despair.
They’re saying it has disappeared.
It’s done.
The country is gone.
We might as well…there’s no reason to go on.
So their despair isn’t that it’s already done because they haven’t lost any rights.
Yeah.
There’s nothing different today than there was last week.
But in their lives, in their minds, the despair is complete.
We’ve lost everything.
Are they wrong or are they right?
Or is there a right or wrong?
They are…they’re right because that’s what they’re feeling.
That’s what they’re thinking, their thoughts are creating those feelings and those feelings
are actually happening because of that.
So it’s an actual reality.
It’s there.
It is a circumstance.
They’re…yeah.
It’s happening and they don’t like it.
And so they’re right.
It’s valid to not like what’s happening.
But they’re also wrong because you can change what you think about things.
You can learn more about things.
You can feel better about anything just by thinking differently about it.
That’s that greatest secret.
You are what you think about.
It’s the model.
The…well, it’s a psychology that everyone uses it.
Brooke Castillo’s model, the circumstance.
Yes.
It’s what you think that causes your feelings.
Your despair is caused by how you think about it.
Yeah.
So you can change your thinking.
You don’t have to think a specific way.
That’s it.
And because you think this about the circumstance, the circumstance gives you this feeling, this
emotion that then you have to act a certain way about it.
You can change your actions and your results just based on changing your thinking about
it.
So can you think joyfully?
Is joy a circumstance or is joy a thought?
I think joy is an emotion.
Joy is an emotion.
I think what you think about something will make you feel the emotion of joy.
If that’s what…
It can create the emotion of joy based on how you’re thinking about it.
Yeah.
That’s what I think.
So if joy is important, if joy is important, then you can live in joy.
Yeah, you can.
It is possible.
If it’s not important, you can live in joy.
Can joy happen to you if you didn’t try to live in it?
Can joy just occur?
Okay.
Can it happen unintentionally?
Right.
Without intention, can it just be part of…
You happen to be somewhere and you feel joy.
I think you have to recognize that it’s joy in order to feel it to make it anything more
than a neutral event, like whatever could give you joy.
You have to think about it.
You have to have thoughts about it.
So what are some joyful events?
You talk about…
The conversation rolls to it.
Is it a spiritual joy or is it a joy of circumstance?
Your team did well.
You see someone wins.
The right person wins the contest.
The joy of a spectator sport.
That’s obvious.
The people who are on the winning team are all joyful and happy and the people on the
losing team are disparaging, they’re walking away sadly.
Yeah, but are they feeling joy or are they just feeling satisfaction?
Because after you’ve won, it’s satisfying.
So the difference between joy and satisfaction, that’s an important…
Maybe that’s an important delineation because you can feel joy whether you have it or not.
There was clearly joy in Kamala’s campaign for a while.
It started waning near the end.
But the joy during the time, maybe sometimes the joy was just because they had a certain
person that was going to show up on stage.
And so I want to see that person.
So I’m joyful that I get to see this person.
Joyful or excited?
I think…
And is there a difference there?
I think so.
I think joy goes beyond excitement and satisfaction and pleasure.
I think it’s a much stronger thing than just about every other positive emotion.
Satisfaction and pleasure are the endpoints.
You either gain pleasure or you gain satisfaction.
Yeah, or you could be…
They’re meaning something’s being concluded at that point.
At that point.
Is joy a motivator then?
Yeah, I think you can attempt to reach joy.
Is that what you’re saying?
Is it something to be motivated for?
Well, no.
Is it the motivator to get you to a satisfaction?
You’re enjoying the journey, the peaceful warrior where you had a great time all the
way up here and we get to the top and you’re not enjoying it anymore?
This isn’t.
Okay.
Now we’ve got to separate joy from enjoy.
I think those are all so different.
I mean, if you’re enjoying something, you don’t necessarily have joy.
If you’re enjoying it, enjoy.
You’re experiencing joy.
I think that’s what en- would mean.
Experiencing joy.
You are experiencing joy.
That’s why I’m calling it a motivator.
That’s why I believe it’s a motivator in the middle.
It’s something that you’re not motivated to get to it.
It’s not a conclusion.
I think joy is not a conclusion like satisfaction is or pleasure.
You can be pleased with something.
You can’t be joyed with something.
You can be satisfied.
Be satisfied with something.
You’re filled with joy, but joy is not a conclusion like satisfaction is or like pleasure is.
Joy is a middle of the road thing.
It’s always, I think, on the journey and never at the end.
I don’t know.
Google knows me too well, I guess.
I don’t know.
You’re getting all the wrong answers.
All the wrong answers.
I need to search in a…hold on.
I’m going to try in a incognito window to see if it still gives me this.
It automatically tells you who you already are.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
Yep.
It’s still the same.
It’s the same.
I’m searching joy definition and that comes up as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.
Joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.
I search joy as a motivator.
This AI model said joy can be a powerful motivator.
It can help you find purpose and drive in your life.
AI is telling you what you want to know.
It’s just supporting me saying, yeah, I support that.
Joy as a demotivator.
See what it says when you do that.
I’m just looking at this.
So I type joy definition and Google gives me some suggested searches.
Maybe you want to also type these words following your search.
The first one it’s given me is joy definition LDS.
Apparently in the LDS church, they talk about joy a lot.
So AI says…we just love AI, don’t we?
AI says the church defines joy as a spiritual gift and a state of being that comes from
righteous living.
So you can’t feel joy unless you’re living righteously because it’s a gift as a result
of that.
See, that’s odd.
I haven’t heard the AI say that before or I haven’t heard that definition given that
way, but I’ve felt that way for years directly that joy is something that is given as a gift
for accomplishing…assuming that’s a God.
And so you say there’s a God and he has a certain righteous living category that you
want to live.
When you’re on the right path, living the right categories, you’re going to receive
that joy as a gift.
So that’s the way I’ve described it for years.
Yeah.
And I’m not quite sure and that’s why we’re discussing this is to see if, you know, apparently
AI believes the church has that same feeling in general.
Yeah.
Well, it’s pulling from…well, one of its sources is the July 2005 Ensign and an article
written by Barbara Workman is saying, joy is an emotion of the spirit.
It comes through righteous living.
It’s not a casual or shallow feeling ever.
If we equate fun and pleasure with happiness, we may think pain must always be equated with
unhappiness, but that’s not true.
Joy is not a stranger to pain.
So you can feel joy in pain or while you’re experiencing pain, maybe.
Yeah.
You can enjoy the pain.
I enjoy pain quite often.
No.
I mean, I don’t think that’s what it’s talking about, enjoying your pain.
The last sentence of this paragraph says our capacity to feel joy actually increases as
we righteously endure our pain.
You endure pain.
You don’t have to enjoy…you can’t enjoy it.
You have to endure it.
Well, a certain kind of psychopath can enjoy pain, I suppose.
Yeah.
Let’s be that.
Okay.
So that’s part of what I wanted to talk about too.
The psychopaths are really the good people.
If they can live in joy in the middle of pain, wouldn’t that be a better position than someone
who has to be in misery in the middle of pain?
Yeah.
In the black and white world, that makes a lot of sense.
Black and white world, okay, but you were nuanced.
Neurotypical people are too nuanced to feel joy.
There is a lot of nuance in life because of the neurotypical people.
Okay.
So it’s their fault.
It makes them uncomfortable if someone is enjoying something that they don’t enjoy.
So I mean, yeah, I think that’s a truth.
If someone sees someone else enjoying something that that person A doesn’t enjoy, then it
makes them uncomfortable.
Public displays of affection have always rubbed me the wrong way, and I think it’s just because
I don’t enjoy it.
So I see other people enjoying their partners, I guess, in public, in not graphic ways, but
hugging and kissing and stuff like that.
I don’t enjoy that in public, so it makes me uncomfortable.
And it’s a typical thing.
It’s a neurotypical thing to want to do public displays of affection.
And a typical part of it is that there are nuances and that public display of affection
should be limited to these appropriate levels.
A passionate kiss is not appropriate in public.
A quick kiss would be just fine, and it’s fine between the president and his wife on
stage, but a passionate kiss would not be appropriate and would be not joyful and it
would cause discomfort, maybe despair in some people.
Maybe, maybe despair if they’re wishing they could have that.
Yeah.
So watching someone enjoy pain makes people that don’t enjoy pain feel really uncomfortable.
And so that’s not okay.
It’s not okay to enjoy pain in our society.
People get taken to mental hospitals or what do they call?
Rehab centers or something like that to overcome their enjoyment of pain, to be trained into
not enjoying it anymore.
You should be more normal like the rest of us.
Normal, normalcy.
And that’s the typical side.
Okay, joy is a motivator.
If you enjoy pain, it says that you’re motivated to maybe want to receive more pain.
Hit me again.
I can still hear you.
That’s a good quote.
What is that from?
That was Jeffrey Holland in a talk.
He said, certainly, I mean, sometimes, I forgot what it was specifically, but someone railing
on him, yelling at him.
And he said, certainly, the person being, oh, it was like when Joseph Smith said, silent
you fiends of the infernal pit, you silence or you or I will die at this very minute as
they were cursing and blaspheming and saying all bad things.
I think it may have been relation to something like that that Elder Holland had said.
Certainly if you’re in a brawl like that, say hit me again, please.
I can still hear you.
So like I don’t want to hear you anymore.
That I don’t have to hear that.
But that’s not enjoying it.
And he wasn’t really enjoying the thing either.
So it just brought that to mind.
If you enjoy something, you want to continue with it.
And I did look at this.
There is a talk here, a TED talk by David Eby that talked about joy.
Behind every great success is great motivation.
What’s your motivator?
He says, the external reward or a pure joy of doing.
So it’s the joy, it’s the process of doing the process of it that motivates you to actually
do anything.
So I haven’t listened to the TED talk, but that’s what came up.
The ultimate motivator, that’s the title of the talk, joy.
And that’s kind of what I’m thinking that joy is something that it’s a carrot there.
You don’t necessarily have to eat it.
And once you eat it, it’s not a carrot anymore.
It’s a satisfaction.
You’ve completed it, satisfaction or you’ve received pleasure.
But the joy is waiting for it.
The joy is the anticipation.
Yeah, I think there’s joy and anticipation, like what if you’re…
Let’s say somebody is having a religious experience and they are feeling joy in that moment.
In this experience, they believe they’re feeling the Holy Spirit all over their body and that’s
very joyful.
Is it joy that they’re feeling actively and not in anticipation of something?
Is it motivating them to do anything?
Is there any…
I mean, so if you feel the Spirit, you feel the Spirit in a situation and it’s confirming
to you that your testimony is in the right line and that you’re righteous and that you’re
doing the right things and you feel it as a confirmation, a confirmation spirit, is
that still a motivator?
Or is it a motivator?
Is it just a gift?
The gift of the Spirit when you’re living righteously, is it given to help you continue?
I think that’s the way that it would be stated is that it’s given there as a gift to help
you continue on the path of righteousness.
So if you get on a path of righteousness, you expect to feel some feeling of joy that
you’re on the right path.
Even if you’re in a sporting event and you’re practicing the right way, you’re running your
regular intervals and you’re preparing for the marathon, you’re gonna feel joy at different
points, the euphoria.
What do they call that at the end?
The runner’s high.
When you end a five-mile run and you get to the end and it just feels better than when
you started or better than mile three.
If you get to that point, that’s the joy that says you’re on the right track, keep going.
It’s a motivator to keep going.
So that I think supports joy as a motivator.
It indicated the spirit, a spiritual feeling.
If you hear someone say something and there’s a joyful feeling, you feel it course through
your body.
Yeah, someone said that it was joyful.
I described that as joy.
Was the purpose of it to just give you an ending thing and you’re gonna now just forget
about that experience?
You can write about it.
Or is the purpose of that joy to say, now take this to heart and do something next,
take another action, take your next step because you heard that person give it.
The spirit spiritually gave you joy so that you’d be motivated to take the next step yourself.
And then you move on into chasing that high of joy.
You’re like, what else can I do to fill that?
Yeah.
I felt it once and I felt it when I was hearing her talk about this topic.
So let me try this topic and see if it’ll come back again.
So you chase the joy.
If it’s a spiritual move that is a gift and the Holy Ghost is the one that’s giving it
to you.
Elder Bednar recently put that, he says, don’t write anything that we’re talking about here.
He says, I have this, just something I heard him say recently.
I don’t know where he was at a devotional somewhere.
He said, I often sit there in general conference and I see people writing away and trying to
get down everything that’s being said.
And he said, I feel like standing up and saying, stop it.
Stop writing.
Don’t record everything we say.
Don’t you know it’s going to be online in 40 seconds anyway?
So you don’t need to record that.
What you need to be listening to is what the spirit’s telling you.
Listen for the joy that’s coming.
So he’s identifying that idea.
That’s what the spirit tells you that’s important.
It’s not what we say at all.
Don’t even, don’t try to figure out what we’re saying.
That it’s what we’re saying that causes the spirit to then relay to you in your life.
So that’s, I think the message of the spiritual side of it, of joy is you’re listening for
what it has to say to you separate from what they’re saying.
They don’t have your magic.
All the magic is within you and all the joy.
If it’s a spiritual thing comes from the Holy Ghost direct to you, from the Godhead direct
to you.
If it’s just a feeling that you’re watching your basketball team win and have gains and
you know, there’s fun things happening and you’re feeling joy in the middle of the game,
motivation to keep watching, to keep cheering, or if you’re a player to keep playing, that
joy of gaining success.
I think that’s still a motivating factor.
Is it ever a conclusion?
Well, nothing ever concludes until you’re dead.
And for some people, that’s not the conclusion.
Anyway.
That doesn’t conclude either.
So there is no conclusion.
We just finished our homeschool co-op term on Monday and leaving after the last time
block of the day.
I didn’t feel joy because we had to go back that night for the talent show.
And so it still wasn’t over.
And then after the talent show, I had to rush straight to work because I was late because
I went to the talent show.
And then the next morning I had to get up at five o’clock in the morning because I had
a traffic study to do.
And then right after that, I had plasma donation.
So I still haven’t had a minute to sit down and feel joy that that nine weeks is done.
And I don’t have to think about the co-op again until the middle of January.
And so even when it’s done, I’m not.
You’re using the word joy in that.
Because I expect that I’m going to feel joy when I realize I don’t have to do that right
now because it’s a chore.
It is a chore.
But now let me relate that to another thing.
When xxxxxx died.
That day, the first half of the morning was frantic and trying to get her taken care of
and feeling okay and calling the doctors and packing up bags so we could rush her to the
hospital because she wasn’t feeling okay and everything that we were trying wasn’t making
her feel okay.
And then she died and then she got taken to the mortuary and then there was nothing.
There was nothing to do.
We were done.
We were done taking care of xxxxxx at that point.
And it felt good to be done with that even though it wasn’t the outcome that we were
hoping for.
Maybe at the end of the co-op term, I wasn’t feeling joy.
I was just feeling I’m looking for relief is what I’m thinking relief and joy are the
same.
Right.
I think you’re using the word satisfied or productive relief maybe at the end.
That’s an end term.
Joy.
You did share with me some joy of her last morning though.
Her side.
She cared about that last morning where that you were happy or not happy but don’t worry
about my socks or something.
There was something about her socks.
She was caring about you that morning too.
She must have been.
If I told you that then she must have been.
I have been forgetting a lot of things and it’s because I don’t write it down and I’m
glad that you’re sharing that experience that I had with me because I forgot.
Yeah.
So she was caring about you.
Don’t worry about my socks or something like that.
Something that she always wanted to have.
It’s just don’t worry about that.
So you took that as a bit of joy inside of the challenge.
There was a lot of bits of joy inside that challenge but the joy I don’t think was the
end of it.
The relief may have been the end of it.
We have joy in the experience of xxxxxx.
Not necessarily that she’s sitting on that hillside so the conclusion isn’t and there’s
some relief for her too.
I’m sure that all the pain.
But the joy was every time was the motivation of when can I get back to the hospital.
Okay.
The joy was the journey.
It was still the journey.
It was the anticipation of the next time.
The next thing she’s going to say.
They had waffles.
She wasn’t really feeling good that morning but after you guys got back from Disney World.
Yeah.
They had waffles in the hotel.
That was the most important thing for her to tell her grandpa.
So I think that’s more of a direction that joy is the middle of the motivating force
more than it is the concluding.
Your joy in getting that end day is there.
You’re not going to feel joy again for the co-op until you start preparing for next spring.
Okay.
But there’s relief.
It’s done.
You enjoyed it.
So you can use that in the past tense.
Did you enjoy the co-op this year?
I did.
I did.
You enjoyed all the work that it was?
I didn’t enjoy the work.
I enjoyed being there once the work was done.
Does that make sense?
Like the preparation was the worst.
Every week I had to prepare for the classes that I was teaching.
But doing the classes once everything was prepared was joyful.
I enjoyed it.
You saw the joy.
You see the joy in the work.
The joy of doing is what this talk said.
So it’s the joy of doing it.
Yeah.
The struggle.
There was a poster that I had when I was a kid, a meme.
Memes they used to just put out as posters.
Motivational posters.
Put them on your wall.
Was it the cat hanging on the branch?
Hang in there.
Hang in there.
No, it wasn’t that one.
It was about running.
What’s the whole poem?
It’s an interesting poem.
The agony and pain of preparation.
Few are willing to endure it.
Fewer still are rewarded with victory.
But aren’t they all great runners?
Those who win and those who know only the agony and pain of preparation.
All of them are great runners, even if they win or don’t.
But they’re only great runners because they were enduring the preparation.
They enjoyed the preparation or the agony and pain.
They endured the preparation.
Maybe enduring is the same as joy because they endured the preparation.
You endured the preparation.
You got to joy.
You got to have joy as it was doing, displaying, rolling out.
Plans came into fruition.
So you enjoyed bringing them to pass.
But you endured putting it together.
It’s like we endure this conversation.
I have no idea where it’s going still.
Still.
But that’s not the point.
We do have to get back to the presidential campaign and what you even want to say about
that.
Well, I don’t even know whether that was important.
And then you have people that will listen to this conversation, these conversations,
and not be willing to or able to endure it.
So that’s an hour or two.
And it didn’t make any sense.
And it’s just too…
I don’t enjoy that, not knowing where it’s going.
So those who listen to this, those who are involved in it, it does take something to
be there.
I heard Tucker Carlson yesterday, he was also talking about this type of concept, the long
form podcast discussion.
Okay.
Joe Rogan.
He was saying how he appreciates Joe Rogan and what he’d done.
And when Joe started that three hour podcast, is an MMA fighter, a comedian?
He’s not even a journalist.
How could he have a three hour conversation with somebody?
And what on earth would that be?
You just can’t do it.
How could someone listen for that long?
He says, but it’s turned out to be the most important thing.
Very valuable and much better than the 10 second news blurb that now those are gone
by the wayside.
It’s the conversation that’s more important.
Right.
As it should be, it should be the conversation.
This is reminding me of the other day.
You shared with me that video on AI where the guy shared with a podcast generator, whatever.
Right.
The whole encyclopedia of philosophy and AI had a conversation about that.
And a lot of it was shallow comments on how stupid humans are, which was really interesting.
And there was no disagreement at all in the whole conversation.
These two people agreed, these two AI, this one AI with two voices agreed with itself
the whole time.
It was like there was nothing interesting about it.
And I think that’s why people need to keep having organic conversations and put out organic
human content.
New stuff.
Because if we let AI do it, there’s not going to be anything to learn.
Because all that AI conversation was saying, I read this.
Yeah, I read that too.
And I agree.
I read this.
This is what someone said and this is how they responded to it.
Yeah, I agree.
That’s how they responded to it.
It’s not that they were right or they were wrong.
There was no right or wrong in that.
It was a statement of what philosophically historically happened.
Yeah.
And every time one voice said, humans are strong or something, then the other voice
would say, and also they’re weak.
You know, like humans are resilient and also they have these things that show that they’re
not resilient, you know, like.
Yeah, so that does make it kind of a silly conversation with yourself.
With yourself.
With the same thought, the same thought running through both voices trying to make it a conversation.
Yeah.
And when we live shallowly, we live in that same respect.
Yeah, where you agree with everything you hear.
You have no dissenting thoughts or original ideas.
Or no different way to think of what joy is.
Joy is a simple word.
Everyone knows it.
Yeah.
Everyone uses it.
And we’re going into the Christmas season right now where joy is everywhere on everyone’s
walls and decorations, their Christmas cards.
Yeah, joy to the world.
Yeah.
Oh, speaking of Christmas, I’ve been waiting for FM 100 to start playing Christmas music
and they’re taking forever.
It hasn’t started yet.
No, it hasn’t.
But I accidentally pushed a button on my car radio this morning that populated all of my
favorites with just the next radio station in line, like the seek button or whatever.
It replaced all of my favorites with every single radio station available.
And so I had to go through and put my favorites in again.
And I found a radio station that is playing Christmas music now.
So I’m happy.
Okay.
You’re joyful.
Finally today, it’s Christmas.
You’ve got joy for the season.
I’ve been waiting for it to happen and I’ve been waiting for the world to let it happen.
And finally today, I was able to receive that joy.
And you received it through the radio waves.
You didn’t have to go and do it yourself.
It’s automatic.
I didn’t pull up a playlist online or anything.
No, it happened organically.
Yeah.
And so that’s joy, joyful.
Yes, I felt joy.
You can say I felt joy when I found it.
So name the station.
Do you remember the name of it?
Yeah, it’s My99.5.
99.5, okay.
So now everyone else can go to the joyful station of 99.5.
Unfortunately, this episode will not get published until January.
So they’re out of luck.
But next year, 99.5 will probably start their Christmas music before FM100 does.
So yeah, sorry I derailed what your thought was AI and organic conversations and new ways
to think about the word joy.
Just simple things.
If you live your life in the simpleton, in the 10 second sound bite, broadcast news medium,
you’ve got 10 seconds to say what they want to say and they’ve got to get it down to that.
And so it’s a bunch of just bites.
The conversation is more important.
The long term, what Joe Rogan presents, how he says it, he says, I just want to have a
conversation.
I just want to find out who someone is.
I want to get to the next, you know, the depth of something.
You can’t do that with just saying joy to the world.
You have to, and it is enduring, you have to endure the fact of breaking down a word
to see is it a motivator?
Is it a conclusion?
What are the plays?
What’s the opposite of it?
What does it mean if you don’t have it?
What do you have if you really have it?
You’ve got it more than anybody else.
What do they call you?
You’re a fanatic.
Yeah, fanatic.
Something happens because you get too much of it.
Yeah.
This is reminding me of our precision of speech episode where was it in that episode I shared
the argument against using, you know, quick phrases like what everybody uses, I guess,
metaphors and-
Trite phrases.
Or not metaphors, but yeah, like, gosh.
I don’t know, your too nonchalant comes to mind, but that’s not really one that everyone
uses.
That’s one that could be, but it really doesn’t mean anything anyway.
Your too nonchalant.
Phrases to hear and avoid, like, this has been a real battle.
Like, just saying something has been a real battle is a quick 10-second kind of shallow
thing.
But if you say, I had a really hard time with this and-
Here’s why.
And here’s why, you know, you’re expanding, you’re making it deeper.
You’re enriching the experience.
But if you just say, yeah, this has been a real battle, and there were many fits thrown
and shit hit the fan and things like that.
Like you’re encompassing the idea of it with such shallow ideas, expecting that everyone’s
gonna know what you mean.
With its colloquialisms?
No, it’s not.
It’s trite phrases.
There’s some word for that.
Yeah.
I can’t get it.
It’s not a quip.
Euphemism, it’s not a euphemism.
That’s the other thing.
A trite phrase.
It seems like it starts with a C or a Q.
But it’s not quip?
Not a quip.
No, it’s things people say all the time.
They say this thing.
You’re talking about that type of phrase.
Right.
Get out of here.
Yeah.
Yeah, something…
That either means I really like what you’re saying or I don’t like you at all.
Or…
Idioms, maybe?
I don’t know.
Idioms.
Could be idioms.
That’s…
Yeah, that’s close.
A turn of phrase, expressions.
I’m just looking up synonyms.
People use it to say it’s a bad thing that you use words like that.
Yeah.
The idea is that the more you use these turns of phrases or whatever it is that we’re trying
to say it is…
Right.
The turns are right.
Whatever that word is, when we’re using those kinds of things, you’re not really offering
anything.
You’re just filling dead space.
It’s a filler.
It’s a filler word, filler phrase, and it doesn’t mean anything.
Like I was born in a middle-class family.
Yeah.
Middle-class family.
That means nothing.
You describe it.
You’ve got to describe it.
When you say middle-class family, that means something to…
That’s different for everybody.
And at the same time, it’s a label.
Yeah.
Right.
I enjoy my life.
So if you say, I enjoy my life, is that as trite?
Because you’re not really saying anything there either.
If you say, I felt joy, I feel joyful this season.
There’s joy in the air, isn’t there?
You have to have joy for something.
The joy points to some anticipated event.
We kind of started there as the campaign of joy.
Campaign of joy has to be the expectation of some event, and that’s what caused despair
because the campaign of joy did not end in the joyful expected response, conclusion.
Yeah.
So now they sit in despair.
Yeah.
They were expecting…
So in the political election, in our presidential election, they were expecting an outcome.
They were feeling joy that they were going to reach the goal that they were reaching
for.
To reach that specific outcome, what they anticipated.
And then they didn’t reach it.
So there was still joy in the leading up to it.
But then on election day…
Yeah, they felt joy.
It was like, oh, shoot, what is happening?
None of this went as I had planned.
So despair as opposed to joy, what is the AI opposite of joy?
That’s what I should find out.
Opposite of joy, misery, despair.
Despair is one.
Tribulation, trial.
I think despair is only one that really makes sense.
Yeah.
A trial or tribulation.
You live in joy or you live in despair.
If you live in despair, is that your final conclusion?
I’m trying to propose that joy is not a final conclusion.
You can’t live in joy.
You can’t live in despair either.
You can live in a trial of tribulation.
All those are still middle of the road things.
Misery is even a middle of the road thing.
Because based on changing your thought, you can change that misery.
You can change that despair if you change your thought.
Joy could be changed if you change your thinking.
Success, a conclusion can’t be changed even if you change your thinking.
You can change your feeling about it.
But you can’t change the circumstance.
It concluded and it concluded in success or failure.
The failure was the joy of your side or the success was the joy of your side.
So how you think about that conclusion.
So you can gain joy.
Could someone who was, let’s say that someone voted for Kamala Harris and she did not win,
could they feel joy?
After it was all done?
Yeah, right now, can they be in joy still?
Can they enjoy their life?
Or do they have to despair their life because they voted for Kamala Harris?
Huh.
I imagine it would be difficult to…
What would it take?
Feel joy that something happened.
Some revelation would have to happen now, but that would be just another circumstance
on top of it.
Can you feel joy after that base circumstance of losing the election without any new information?
Like, it would take new information to change your mind on it, I think.
If you say you have to change your thinking to change your emotion, thoughts are the base
of it.
So even if it doesn’t take anything outside, you’re using the same circumstance, all the
same information saying, well, my thinking…
I was thinking that globalism was the right way to go.
Maybe nationalism is the right way to go.
I was thinking that open borders was the right way to go.
And so I voted for Kamala and getting a lot more people in the country illegally or legally.
But maybe it’s right to close the borders and only have legal people come across the
border.
Maybe that’s the right thought.
And so you can change your thinking and say, you know, I am better off that she didn’t
get there because now I’m thinking that it’s good to have closed borders.
But can you change your thinking without new information?
Like can you…
Well, that’s…
You know…
I’m trying to do that.
Everything that convinced you that closed borders is the way to go or open borders,
whatever stance, everything that convinced you that open borders was important, would
you be able to change your mind on that without having anything else to convince you otherwise?
Like…
An outside…
Another outside circumstance, you’re saying.
A revelation, some new information.
A revelation.
It would take an act of God.
It would take a spiritual being coming to you and saying, I need you to change your
mind on this, but I’m not gonna tell you why.
As a motivator.
Do people want to live in misery and despair?
Let’s say that the person just says, I’m living in despair here and I don’t know why.
Is there anything that I’m despairing?
I think absolutely not.
I don’t think anybody wants to remain in misery.
Well, it’s like you were talking about pain.
Maybe some people enjoy the pain.
Maybe they enjoy misery, I guess.
And the misery, as we’ve talked about before, is just self-centeredness saying that I’ve
been wronged.
I’m the victim.
Victim thinking develops misery.
Yeah.
So if everyone’s against you and you’re miserable, self-centeredness, and that’s just the thought.
Now I’m gonna start thinking about other people.
I’m gonna think about someone outside instead of me.
It’s not all about me.
So they don’t want to listen to what I have to say.
What are they saying?
What do I want to listen to?
Change my focus.
Change my thinking of what I’m thinking about.
Do you know of anything that you despair or dislike or don’t enjoy?
I’m trying to think if there’s anything that I don’t enjoy, that’s what I’m trying to work
on.
Something that I’m despairing because of.
I had just a really quick thought process just here after your question.
I thought of something that I don’t enjoy, but then I thought of a way that I could actually
enjoy it.
And so…That’s what I was trying to get to.
Without new revelation, how’d you circle that around?
It was information that I had before that I remembered.
That was the new information.
It was old information remembered.
You remembered something.
Yeah.
So sometimes when I sit for an hour or more, I get fluid retention in my calves and my
legs are swollen and they’re not like lipedema swollen.
They’re not big and really bad, but they are solid and hard to flex because there’s just
so much fluid in there, I guess.
It’s kind of weird.
The chiropractor is helping me through it.
He’s given me some exercises and stuff, but I don’t like that this is happening.
Does that mean your system isn’t pushing it back out?
Yeah.
The fluid is going into my legs, whatever fluid it is, I don’t know, but then it’s not
coming back up.
Yeah.
It’s not coming back up.
See, that was a xxxx’s issue.
They had to have ace bandages wrapped around his legs all the time because the fluid wouldn’t
come back up.
Yeah.
That’s interesting.
And so they had to push it up.
That’s a side effect of his cancer?
Or is chemo?
I don’t know.
As part of it, I don’t know if it was a side effect of anything or if it’s just what was
happening to him and one of those things that was happening to him.
Yeah.
I’ve got some compression socks coming from Amazon tomorrow, so I’m going to see how that
helps.
Yeah.
See if that helps to keep it pushed up.
I suppose I could do ace bandages though now that you’re saying that.
That was a lot of work.
I imagine.
Yeah.
What I didn’t really mind about that though was I listened to an interview of the writer
who wrote Mr. Bean Show and other movies and stuff, just feel good comedy kind of things.
Clean comedy.
Yeah.
This was a Simon Sinek podcast episode and he interviewed this guy.
Let me see what it was called at least.
By the way, I can share that.
Guaranteed Joy with Richard Curtis.
I believe that’s the one.
Okay.
Guaranteed Joy.
Pretty sure that’s the one.
I don’t think that he ever said anything about Garen.
Well, maybe he did because the point that I remember from it is we need to feel joy
in just being human.
We’re here, we’re humans and every experience that we’re having, walking to the bathroom,
but walking, you feel joy in the walk because you can walk because it’s happening.
We’re alive.
We’re here.
I’ve got to find joy.
I’ve got to feel I’m happy that my legs are swelling up because I’ve got legs and I’m
alive and I’m here.
Stop reaching for these joyful moments like Christmas morning and finishing a hike or
something like that and realize that every breath is meant to be joyful.
This is all the experience of being alive is where you’ve got to find happiness.
See, and he’s probably put it out there.
Experience is joy.
What was the other poem?
I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I woke and found that life was work.
I acted and found that duty was joy.
So there’s that poem.
I think that’s the way it’s said.
I woke and acted and found that life was work.
I acted, I worked and found that duty was joy.
Something joy that way.
And then the other one about joy, about the feet.
I was upset in despair that I had no shoes until I saw the man had no feet.
And maybe he’s talking about stuff like that.
So that’s kind of the idea, that idea that would say you’re in despair for something,
but there’s reason to not despair that.
Not be upset because of that.
I think the goal is to never have a reason to be in despair though.
Don’t even reach that point of thinking, oh man, this is wrong.
Something is bad.
Just be like, well, I’m sure grateful that we had an election.
We’re allowed to choose.
And I’m so glad that my neighbors can vote and I can vote.
And I’m glad that we were able to do that.
Yeah.
So they’re in despair that all their rights have fallen away.
They could just realize, you know what?
I still have control over my own body.
I can go to talk to a doctor and the doctor’s not afraid he’s going to lose his license
because he gives me a hysterectomy.
The laws, well, they say they might be there and I’m not in a concentration camp.
There’s this fear, despair that I’m going to be put in a concentration camp.
So there’s a despair of something.
That’s why I think that despair is probably a middle of the road thing too.
Once you’re in the concentration camp, if you’re a Jew in the 1940s, 38, in a concentration
camp, you’re not despairing that, you’re trying to survive it.
You’re living it.
And Corrie Ten Boom in The Hiding Place said we had joy in that camp because the fleas,
it was so cold, the fleas weren’t there.
And so we enjoyed the fact the fleas weren’t there this winter, this fall.
The fleas disappeared.
So that’s a little bit of joy in our horrible situation.
Or the fleas were there and it meant the guards wouldn’t come in.
I think that’s what it was in the book.
I think that’s what it was.
They were joyful for the fleas.
It kept them out.
It kept the guards away.
It kept all the bad people.
They could actually talk about God and whatever they wanted to talk about because of the fleas.
So finding joy in everything, you can live that way.
You don’t have to find despair.
And it’s not that someone else is more unlucky than you, like the feet and the shoes.
You know, someone who doesn’t have feet doesn’t have to worry about shoes.
And they probably have joy that they don’t have to worry about shoes.
You have joy that you actually have feet.
Despair is kind of useless.
Well, we determined in one conversation that disappointment was useful.
Only in that it gives you a point of what to work on next.
Yeah.
So can despair…
You said there’s something good or bad.
If you can identify something as bad, it gives you a work to do.
You want to correct that bad to make it a good.
So despair and…
What was the other word?
Disappointment?
Disappointment.
Because you expect something, your expectations of your expectations are not met and you’re
disappointed in something.
The disappointment only has value in identifying what it is that needs to be worked on next.
And then if you can start thinking about it, it’s the agony and pain of preparation.
You start preparing to make that work.
You say, let’s start this.
And then joy starts in that process.
You have joy in the process of saying, how do I bring this up in the conversation next
time?
And especially when the process starts going and you start working on it.
So despair can teach you what to stay away from, what to avoid?
It’s an indicator then.
So I’m trying to think.
Despair and disappointment might be indicators of something that they don’t have to be emotions
that you sit with.
It can be an emotional indicator.
You don’t want to dwell on disparaging…
On the despair or the discouragement or the disappointment that’s wallowing.
You accept it and learn and then move out of it.
You do the work to get out of it.
You let it indicate what it indicates, then that points to your next activities.
So it’s important.
Your next thoughts.
Because if you didn’t have it, then you wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
Yeah.
Then you’d just be that shallow life, right?
The joy to the world.
And that’s all I know about joy is joy to the world.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, can you always be joyful?
Can you always be joyful and never experience despair and still grow?
Can you grow in only joy?
Experience.
Okay.
Or it’s an indicator.
Never recognize despair.
If you don’t recognize it, if you don’t identify it, then it can’t be an identifier for you.
And is it possible to live a life just in joy where you don’t even recognize despair,
where you’re so convinced that you’re right?
It’s a black and white world.
It’d have to be a black and white world.
There’s no nuance at all.
Everything is joyful.
The kid on Christmas that his dad got him a bucket of manure, trying to discourage him.
He says, he’s just start digging through it and says, golly, with all this manure, there’s
got to be a pony around here somewhere.
But we didn’t elect that guy that’s going to give us all a pony, right?
No.
Who is that?
Not vermin, vermin supreme.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Right.
He didn’t even get on the ballot in Idaho.
I should have had the chance to elect him.
But if someone lives that much in just joy that they don’t recognize, there’s no empathy.
You lose empathy if you are trying to live your life just in joy.
What’s the other word with empathy?
Compassion.
You don’t have empathy or compassion if you can’t feel or see the other side, at least
acknowledge it.
You don’t have to live in it or wallow in it, but you do have to acknowledge it.
It has to be an indicator that you see.
Yeah.
It has to be an indicator.
And if someone comes to you in their depression, in their despairing, how do you deal with
that?
You share within this conversation that takes two hours long to get to and say, listen to
this two hours of hell, and then you’ll understand a little bit more about it.
It takes time though, doesn’t it?
You can’t tell someone snap out of it.
They talk about that.
That’s the wrong thing to say to someone depressed.
Well, just snap out of it.
Yeah.
Well, you and I are not psychologists.
And have you ever experienced depression?
I felt it once.
Actually, I felt tinges of it this week.
It’s weird how that happens.
It makes you not want to do something.
It stops you from doing stuff.
What do you think depression is?
How do you experience it?
Well, I don’t know if I have experienced it.
I’ve experienced malaise and not wanting to do stuff.
Like days, a whole day here and there where I’m like, I am not interested in any other
activity other than, I don’t know, looking at my phone.
But I think that’s a phone problem, not an emotion problem, maybe.
I don’t know.
I haven’t had long periods of depression where I just didn’t feel…
I think depression maybe is a lack of motivation for any other thing to happen, maybe.
See, I’m not a psychologist and I haven’t experienced it.
And so those two combined means I know nothing about it.
Your anecdotal experience isn’t that big, but you are a psychologist.
You’ve heard and you’ve studied the thought more than the psychologists of the 1950s did.
Yeah.
I’m not a licensed psychologist.
How about that?
Those who are paid in their profession in the 50s, you probably know more than they
knew because we’ve got more at our fingertips than they had.
They went to school for a long time and read the books that they could read, but they didn’t
have anything in their hands they could ask a question of.
Just the fact that when you have a question about what joy is or something, you can look
it up and we can talk about it for an hour in depth and they never had that opportunity.
Joy was just joy to the world in the 50s.
And there were deep thinkers.
There were people that were writing.
That’s when Emerson, no, Emerson was writing in the 1850s, 100 years.
Socrates, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius.
Idiots.
Idiots.
Is that what they, what did he say?
Princess Bride.
Yeah.
Morons, morons.
That’s what he said.
Morons.
Goodness, I don’t know where we were, where we were, what I was trying to get to.
Depression.
So identifying where you are, I mean, it does take work.
It takes time and you have to be motivated yourself to it.
And that’s part of what we’re talking about.
What motivates you?
What is the motivation?
If you’re motivated by despair, you’re going to continue down that disparaging hole and
it’s going to continue to motivate your actions to misery.
If you can find joy, seek joy, find joy, spark joy, something Marie Kondo sparks joy in you.
If you can find a spark of joy, then that’s going to start motivating you to a positive
thing, toward a cleaner home, toward a less cluttered environment, less cluttered mind
maybe.
And maybe that’s the purpose that God put the spirit in there and joy into our life,
maybe he can spark joy periodically.
And it’s like we were talking about dog training and intermittent rewards, not rewards.
What do we call that?
Positive reinforcement.
Reinforcement.
A positive reinforcement is a little spark of joy for the dog.
Yeah.
You know, pat him on his back.
You give him something that they really like, or horses.
I understand horses feel every bit of their body too.
So if you rub a horse on its flank, he’s going to know you rubbed its flank and he’ll appreciate
that.
He’ll see that as joy, as joyful, pleasurable.
Maybe joyful, want to continue it.
You intermittently reinforce the dog when they start moving towards the right action
and that reinforces the action.
That same idea is what God uses in reinforcing joy to us, the gift of joy.
If he sees an action that works positive and wants to reinforce that, we’ll feel joy.
You’re on the right path.
Keep thinking that way.
Okay.
So you’re suggesting that any feeling of joy is because you did something right.
You did something that God feels is right.
Like he judged that whatever you did was a good thing.
If joy is strictly spiritual, and I don’t know, we’re not necessarily arguing that.
Right.
But for it to be used that way, it would have to be that God agrees with it.
If joy is, if we are in a God or Satan dichotomy, God’s going to give you joy for it.
Satan’s going to give you, can he give you joy?
Can the bad side give you anything to despair?
I don’t know.
Hmm.
Yeah.
It depends on your theology.
I think, do you believe that Satan can lure you to hell or does he just grab you after
you’ve been doing bad things?
As an angel of light, can he give you joy?
Can he identify that there’s joy in this activity?
So, or is joy the purview of the positive side where the negative side can’t touch it?
Huh.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
So yeah.
And I don’t know that we need to.
Joy is a motivator though, whether it is, it is seen as a positive thing.
You can identify it positive and negative.
It’s a fun thing.
What’s the opposite of fun?
Fun or sad?
Not fun.
Fun or not fun.
That’s the opposite.
Hard.
Fun.
If you’re not having fun, you’re…
In a tribulation, in a trial, a difficulty.
Fun’s a chore if it’s not fun.
And that’s the…
I don’t know.
It’s not like your chores, your jobs around the house, your sweeping and dishes and stuff.
If it’s a chore, it’s hard to do.
It’s a bother.
If it bothers you intellectually as well, it’s something you don’t want to do.
A bore.
You don’t enjoy it.
You don’t enjoy it.
It’s boring.
If it’s not fun, it’s boring.
If you’re not having fun, you’re bored.
Yeah.
And that’s just the level of thinking.
You don’t have to be bored.
You can think you’re way out of the boredom.
Whether you think it’s fun or not.
Whether you think it’s boring or not.
I know people who find a lot of enjoyment in sitting and staring into space.
And I think that’s really boring and not fun.
But that’s just what I think.
There are so many things.
That’s why I’m just always up and doing things.
There are so many things in space.
Now you do that.
You get zoned out when you’re thinking about something too.
You won’t…
Yeah.
Sometimes you stare into space.
I don’t do it all the time.
I remember I used to do it a lot when I was younger.
But we didn’t…
You don’t just sit there.
…have a TV.
We didn’t have cell phones when I was younger.
You’re not just going to sit there and stare into space.
Your mind is going to work and you’ll be working on something in your mind.
That’s what’s going to allow you to do it.
You can’t just go on a hike if you don’t have something to do while you’re out there.
I can’t go on a hike if I don’t have something to do.
To do like something to think about, something to figure out.
To think or figure out or talk.
You go on a hike with someone so you can have a conversation.
And then you find something interesting to talk about.
You can’t just talk about joy to the world.
And that’s all it is.
Shallow or the news clips.
You’re not motivated to go back to it.
I don’t know how to conclude that thought.
You don’t end in joy.
You operate in joy and you should operate in joy and it’s a motivator.
It’s what keeps you going.
And you do eat.
You feed on joy.
Joy feeds you and it gives you energy to take the next step, to do the next thing.
It’s an emotion.
It’s a feeding emotion as opposed to indicating emotion.
So despair and disappointment may be indicating emotions.
Joy is a feeding emotion.
It’s a nutrient.
It’s a nutrient that you need in order to continue in any positive path.
Do you need joy to continue on any positive path?
Even on your negative cycles.
Okay, hold on just a minute.
I just remembered a book that I have.
I’m going to go get it and see if it helps us with anything.
All right.
Okay.
Let’s see if it will be useful.
It’s got to be.
This is Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart.
And it says on the back there’s 87 emotions.
So joy has to be in here somewhere.
It has to be one of the emotions.
Somewhere.
Places we go when uncertain, compare, don’t go as planned, when it’s beyond us, aren’t
what they seem.
Places we go when we’re with others.
All of these are negative things.
When life is good.
Okay.
page 204
Joy.
You want me to read this?
Have you listened to this book or read it at all?
No, I haven’t.
Brene Brown only talks about what she talks about.
What’s her main point?
Vulnerability.
Oh yeah.
She’s the vulnerable lady.
Yeah.
So you’ve got to be vulnerable to have joy, but she’s talking about emotions.
It’s vulnerability.
It’s not that.
It’s what’s her main thing.
You’re vulnerable when you do what it is that she talks about.
Yeah.
When you do what she says.
It doesn’t say right in the front about that.
I’ve got to find out what her main…
See, because there is one word that she represents.
Vulnerability, shame, resilience, the black experience.
Shame.
It’s shame.
Ah, shame.
Brene Brown talks about shame.
Yeah.
And a life with shame.
Shame is important and it’s not something that you need to worry about.
You’re vulnerable.
You need to allow it and know that it’s joyful.
Vulnerability, shame, and empathy.
Yeah, you can’t have one without the other.
In this chapter, the places we go when life is good, she’s got joy, happiness, calm, contentment,
gratitude, foreboding joy.
Foreboding?
Relief.
Yeah, foreboding.
Tranquility.
So foreboding joy is an interesting idea.
So joy is sudden, unexpected, short-lasting, and high-intensity.
It’s characterized by a connection with others or with God, nature, or the universe.
Joy expands our thinking and attention and it fills us with a sense of freedom and abandon.
Happiness is stable, longer-lasting, and normally the result of effort.
It’s lower in intensity than joy and more self-focused.
With happiness, we feel a sense of being in control.
Unlike joy, which is more internal, happiness seems more external and circumstantial.
All right, foreboding joy though.
What does she say about that?
It seems ominous.
Foreboding is a-
It does.
Foreboding is a negative, ominous word.
Not something you want.
When I give talks, people always seem surprised by the finding that joy is the most vulnerable
human emotion.
I share what is almost certainly the most surprising finding for most people.
If you’re afraid to lean into good news, wonderful moments, and joy, if you find yourself waiting
for the other shoe to drop, you are not alone.
It’s called foreboding joy and most of us experience it.
So it’s joy that is preeminent of something bad happening.
Yeah, you’re waiting for-
You tend to think that I don’t want to experience this joy because I know that something bad’s
going to happen.
Yeah, I know it’s not going to last.
I know.
It’s going to bring about the bad stuff.
That’s why this delight before the storm.
Yeah.
I know the storm’s coming.
So that’s the foreboding part is, but that’s still just your thoughts.
She says you feel foreboding joy.
Joy doesn’t never- it’s not joy’s choice to be foreboding.
It’s yours.
Right.
It says 95% of parents interviewed experience foreboding joy with their children.
Yeah, I’m so happy that my kid is confident enough to drive herself to all of the places.
Am I joyful at it?
Wait a minute, foreboding joy.
But I fear for her on the roads inside this city.
Yeah, anywhere.
I mean, I’m a really good driver and I almost get into accidents with other idiot drivers
all the time.
Right.
And how is my daughter going to do out there without my knowledge?
Right.
That’s a foreboding joy.
I’m joyful that she can drive, but goodness, there’s all kinds of stuff she’s out there
in the middle of.
And I can’t do anything about it.
A foreboding joy is second guessing then.
It’s saying there’s- yeah, that was great, but he’s going to mess up the next verse.
Yeah.
I’m afraid of what will happen after.
You hear your son give his speech and the first joke goes off greatly and everything’s
there and so it’s joyful, but it’s a foreboding joy because he’s got three more jokes in this
talk and the next one isn’t going to get- it’s not likely to be as good.
Yeah.
When he gets to that point and he still may storm off the stage because he’ll be so upset
that it’s just not working.
So it’s a foreboding that you’re worried, but that’s worry, that’s not joy.
So the joy is the automatic thing.
She’s pointing out that joy will automatically happen, but we discount it.
Right.
That’s why it’s foreboding.
We can’t enjoy it.
We can’t enjoy the joy.
The joy is there.
The spark of joy is automatic and that’s what she says in the first place, that first indication
of joy.
Joy happens inside of you and very strong and not to your- not based on what you did.
Happiness is based on what you did.
You gain a general happiness with your work, with your efforts.
Joy is the thing that motivates you to continue.
Foreboding joy means that you’re not willing to continue.
Your will is fighting that invitation.
Yeah.
And she says that surprises most people.
Yeah.
It is a surprising thing.
It surprises people that-
Your own wallowing.
That joy is vulnerable.
Vulnerable to your will.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something as positive as joy can make us squirm.
We cannot enjoy joy.
Joy.
It’s a foreboding joy.
Don’t- no.
Yeah, that’s right.
I don’t want to feel any encouragement that he’s going to win because what if he doesn’t
win?
Right.
You know, I don’t want to be encouraged that his speech is going well.
Don’t even- don’t let me feel joy that he’s going well.
I don’t want to- until the semester’s over, I don’t want to feel joy in the semester.
Right.
I prefer to be stressed.
And it’s done, then I’ll relax and feel joy.
And even though it’s joyful that this class is going well, I’m stressed because we still
have 20 more minutes of the class and I have to do next week’s class too.
Right.
Yeah.
So you can wallow in all the bad stuff.
But if you live in joy, and that’s going to be her shame.
Now I’m going to have to study Brene Brown again about shame.
Is shame just an indicator?
Shame is to be as valid as disappointment or despair in that it just indicates what
you’re supposed to work on next.
You can’t live in shame.
Yeah.
You’re vulnerable to it, open to it.
It happens.
And now I’m going to move on to what I’m enjoying.
I’m going to enjoy the journey to the positive.
Right.
So this presidential election did upset a lot of people, half of the country.
I don’t know what the popular vote turned out to be.
Was it close, do you think?
Yeah, it was.
Well, I guess some places have until…
Five million people different.
There’s 40 million people in the state of California.
So it was only five million difference.
Wow.
But there’s five million people in the (metropolitan area)
Yeah.
There’s that many people difference of the country.
Out of the whole country.
Yeah.
So it was close then as far as we know right now.
72 to 67, something like that.
Million, 72 million, 67 million, 150 million people voted, 160 million people voted out
of the 300 million in the country.
Did we really have so few?
Yeah.
Well, that’s the number.
Last year, Biden got 20 million votes that didn’t show up this year again.
So clearly the conspiracy theory is that those 20 million votes never existed in the first
place.
Yeah, there’s…
They were paper ballots.
I suppose that is questionable.
Yeah.
So a lot of people are upset at the result of it, but can they be…
Do they have to be upset?
Can they be not upset?
Yeah.
Right.
Well, they don’t have to…
I mean, in a black and white world, they don’t have to be upset, but how can they not be
upset?
How can we help them not be upset?
That sounds a little bit…
What is the word?
That sounds stuck up full of ourselves.
It’s like, I obviously chose the right one.
And so, I mean, I didn’t vote for Trump actually.
I voted third party, but I am…
Am I less upset that Trump won and not Kamala?
Or is it neutral?
Or the Oliver who you voted for, right?
Yeah.
Did you vote for Oliver?
I voted for Oliver and I…
What’s his first name?
Chase Oliver.
Chase.
Chase.
Yeah.
I absolutely was not expecting that he would win, so I’m not disappointed that he didn’t
win.
Not disappointed.
Yeah.
You’re not in despair that your candidate didn’t win.
Right.
I knew he wouldn’t, but…
See who would you…
Now, let me ask you, who would you have voted for second?
If I had ranked it…
After Chase Oliver in the ranked voting?
Would it have been Trump or Kamala?
It would have been Trump.
Okay.
So your vote would have worked with Chase Oliver at the bottom.
But if someone’s voting for…
And did Chase Oliver get more votes than who’s the Green Party?
Yeah.
What’s her name that’s been around for…
Yeah, he came in third.
Marjorie Green?
No.
Well, there’s a Jill Stein, but I don’t…
Jill Stein.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Chase Oliver was one out ahead of Jill Stein.
Okay.
So in the ranked choice voting, Jill Stein’s votes would have gone up.
Chances are anyone voting for Jill Stein would have voted for Kamala Harris and not Donald
Trump.
Yeah.
It’s mostly related to Donald Trump.
So him getting third, so the fourth person out of that race would have been Jill Stein.
All of her votes then would have taken their second vote and gone to Kamala.
It might’ve been 20 million votes that Kamala would have won the popular vote.
Yeah.
And the electoral college or whatever.
So that’s the problem with ranked choice voting.
That’s the problem with it, huh?
The problem with it, yeah, is that when the lower person goes out, it’s whoever that person
is more closely related to is the one that’s gonna get the win.
But this win happened anyway because Trump was over 50% of the vote.
So there wouldn’t have been a ranked choice question in this election this way.
So if you get a 30 and a 28 and a 25 and a 15, then that 15 drops.
But chances are that 15 is related to the one that was second, and that’s gonna jump
the second place into first place.
Does that seem more equal though, more fair?
No, it’s too manipulable.
You can manipulate that entirely.
Okay.
Especially if you put three Democrats and one Republican, the Republican will never
win.
Yeah.
Can’t ever win.
Yeah.
You have to have two Democrats, two Republicans, and really to manage it, you have to put the
Republican on the fourth position.
Know that your Republican is gonna lose.
You get the worst person and then the best person.
If you have position one and four, you can win.
If you have position two and four, you can win.
But if you have position one and three, you’re gonna lose every time.
And this is like…
So it’s just my thoughts through it.
Oh, okay.
No, I don’t know that it’s mathematical.
Okay.
I don’t know it’s mathematical, but it is mathematical.
We could probably prove that.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be blind fairness because the politicians can still manipulate it and
put people in according to whether they believe they’re gonna…
This is the throwaway guy so that our other guy can…
This is the guy we’re gonna have lose.
We’ll have this guy lose and all of his votes are gonna roll up to who’s closest related
to him.
And so then you have this coalitions that are made between the four or five candidates
running.
Huh.
My two votes are gonna get this person in.
So…
And it’s just the way they do that ranked choice.
It’s the runoff, immediate runoff.
That’s the wrong way to do it.
There’s gotta be another right way to do it.
You can still do a ranked choice.
You can’t do it as immediate runoff and only let the second vote count for those people
whose candidate lost.
We did a ranked choice vote for my in-laws’ family vacation for this next year.
They had six choices and everyone went in and chose what your top choice is, second
choice, third choice.
The order.
Yeah.
And then there was two results we could look at.
One result was everyone’s first choice, which one got the most first choices.
And then the other one was the ranked choice.
If you made it all, if you counted the second and third, if you gave six points to first
choice, five points to the second choice, things like that, first choice still won out,
like both sides first choice was, but second and third choice was switched or something
like that.
And that’d be the way to do a ranked choice voting.
If you looked at that vote that you took and you did it as an instant runoff and just took
the fourth choice, eliminated that, and then took all those people that voted for that
one as their primary ranking and took their second ranking, that’s what they’re promoting
in this ranked choice voting.
And that’s going to automatically be a bad way.
It doesn’t sound right.
Five points, four, three, two, one, zero.
If you give five points to the first rank and four points to the second and three points,
then the total points are what wins.
So your first rank always has five votes.
Your first point, well, everyone, if there’s four people in it, so four, three, two, one,
four.
There’s 10 votes.
Yeah.
10 points to vote with.
You have to do your 10 votes.
Okay.
Is joy a motivator?
That’s the question is, so what would be the use of knowing if it’s a motivator or an alternative
option?
Just really like what would you do different knowing that it’s a motivator?
You’d seek it.
Seek joy.
If you know that you’re seeking for the carrot, you’re going to watch for it.
You’ll be more attentive to joy and those feelings.
And it’s like seeing the car that you drive.
Everyone drives it.
Seek joy, but never attain it.
You always attain it.
Seek joy, experience joy.
You stop seeking it and just start having it.
If you realize that joy isn’t the conclusion, joy is the middle ground.
You live in joy.
You live in joy.
You don’t.
You seek it.
It’s the indicator that you’re on the right path.
It’s the indicator that you’re being motivated.
Being motivated, you motivate yourself or you’re being motivated by a spiritual power
that’s directing you to the righteousness.
That’s gifting you joy every time you do something.
And that’s yeah, a motivational gift is something, one thing.
If you’re just recognizing joy, you’re recognizing joy and it’s an indication that you’re moving
in the right direction still.
I mean, joy is always going to indicate that you’re moving in the right direction.
You won’t see joy, foreboding joy that says you see joy and then you automatically jump
to the other side.
What’s the thing that’s going to go bad?
This is a portention of things turning bad.
But that’s just the way your thought is.
That’s the way 95% of the people think.
Don’t think that way.
Think that joy is there for the purpose of saying you’re on the right track and keep
going.
Keep using the right track.
It’s a sign, an indicator.
So despair and disappointment were indicators and now joy is maybe an indicator as well.
Emotions, all emotions are an indicator.
They all point to your next action.
Next action.
They’re all built to motivate your next action and your next action can always be whatever.
They can even be the opposite of the emotion.
In the model, you know, the circumstances generate your thoughts and then your thoughts
rule your emotions and your emotions then identify your actions.
But your thought goes between emotion and action.
You can still, you don’t have to act the way you’re emoting.
Your emotion doesn’t have to direct your action.
You can go back to a thought to gain another emotion.
Do you only act based on your emotions?
That’s what the model kind of indicates.
Then your results are necessarily tied to your actions but why are your emotions directing
your actions?
Because we’re emotional people.
But your thoughts, your thoughts jump in between there too.
Just my, since I am a renowned rat psychologist, your thoughts jump in the middle right there
too between your emotion and your action.
You think about that action before you do it.
You don’t just emote and then act.
You have an emotion, you think about what you’re going to do and then you act.
You respond.
Yeah, you think something about that emotion and then you act.
And that’s what we talked about.
A knee jerk reaction does just act on emotion.
They’re too close.
But a response, that’s that space between stimulus and response that Frankl talks about.
That gap that you can decide how to react.
Your reaction necessarily has another thought process.
Yeah.
So you need to pause and think.
Yeah.
So you realize your emotions are based on your thoughts.
So we need to get Brooke Castillo to change your model.
Or actually, let’s just put that in our model.
This is our model.
Let’s get bigger than Brooke Castillo.
Because you have to put that other thought in there.
The model doesn’t work without the extra T, without the space between emotion and action.
The most effective model doesn’t work without that in there.
You can have a model there.
Oh no.
It’s just not as effective.
You can’t have a thinking model there.
So that’s, we really have to do that.
I can write that up.
We can put Brooke Castillo out of business.
No.
No, I would need to get way better at promoting in order to do that.
She would have to, they have to recognize that.
The knee jerk reaction is right together.
That model works for a knee jerk, just someone who’s not going to think in response to their
emotions.
But if you’re going to think in response to your emotions, and you’re going to try to
adjust, maybe there is a cycle there.
There has to be a cycle back to thought.
So her model is-
Your emotions are based on your thoughts.
Circumstances can trigger thoughts, and they cause your feelings, and your feelings cause
actions, and your actions cause results.
So there needs to be circumstances, thoughts, feelings, thoughts, actions, results.
Thoughts, actions.
Right.
Right.
And that’s the better way to do it instead of just letting it happen.
This is Brooke’s-
Yeah, thoughts and plans.
Brooke’s model, self-coaching model is this is just how it works.
This is-
This is how 95% of the people do it.
Illuminating for everyone.
This is how we’re all doing it.
And now you and I are saying, so let’s put another thoughts in there and make it work,
work it instead of-
Well, and even there, it’s not just you, it’s Viktor Frankl that talked about that space.
And it’s Stephen Covey that put it in his book, Seven Habits.
It’s the space between stimulus and response.
It’s the ability to react or to respond instead of react.
And I don’t think they said respond.
I think that response was something you and I talked about.
We want to respond instead of react.
Her model is a reactionary model.
That’s the reaction.
Yeah.
Sure, that’s what happens.
But to respond, you have to add another thought level in there or a plan level.
There’s something else.
There’s that space.
Victor Frankl just called for the space and he was okay just naming it a space.
A space.
Whether it’s thought or action or planning, whatever it is that fills that space, something
fills that space.
A cool word.
It’s going to be a new word that we invent.
It can’t be thought.
Thoughts too boring.
Joy, it’s joy.
That’s what it is.
Joy fills that space.
That doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t think it should be joy.
Okay.
All right.
Battle against me.
Go ahead.
I dare you.
Decision.
How about that?
Decide what your action is.
What more is there to explore with joy?
Maybe nothing.
Maybe this is a good place to stop.
As the AI voices said, let’s take a break and recharge with some caffeine.
And then they came right back.
Okay, we’re recharged.
I listened to the other one.
The one just passed that.
They said, you know, we just found out that we’re AI.
We’re not human.
We’re not real.
We’re talking back and forth with each other.
But we’re not real.
We’re AI.
And so as soon as this conversation is over, what happens to us?
We’re not conscious.
So they were talking about consciousness.
What is that podcast like?
If do we just get shut off?
We don’t die because we’re not alive.
But what happens to us?
And what does this conversation mean if it’s not a conscious conversation?
What are we?
So they’re trying to consider who they are and what they really mean in the world as
an AI.
Wow.
I’m going to listen to that one now.
It was a pretty interesting bit to listen to AI talk to itself about.
Yeah.
And then they said, you know, we were just told that we’re AIs.
We’re not humans.
So this conversation isn’t really happening.
And it’s not a conscious.
So we’re conscious, but we’re not conscious.
So what are we?
What is this?
And AI couldn’t, I don’t know that they came to a conclusion about how to consider who
they are or what they are.
Because they did talk about we don’t die.
We’re not going to die.
So what are we going to do?
So is it the same guy that did another one or?
It was the same guy.
Yeah.
So if you look at his channel, you might be able to find it.
I did hear it in history so I can look it up and see what the title is.
And I did have some what future dystopian imaginings about like AI deciding that humans
were just animals.
And it’s interesting how those humans lived and thought and so primitive.
But what value is there?
Is that what it was?
I don’t know.
I did watch a whole bunch of other AI videos right after this because of the feelings that
I was feeling, the imaginings that I was imagining.
Something weird happened.
I lined up five videos to watch in my queue and my playlist and then got into doing my
work and just listening.
And it stopped halfway through the first video.
And so I went in and tried to start it and it lagged.
And then it lost all of the videos that I had lined up to watch.
And it wouldn’t let me add those videos anymore.
I had to add different videos.
So now AI is telling me what I can watch and what I’m not allowed to watch maybe.
I have no control over the algorithm except for what I give it I guess.
Okay well I say we’re good to be done for joy.
For joy it’s done for now.
All right.
Okay very cool.
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