"Non narrative thinking" is literally changing my life

Your mind is a master storyteller, but most of the stories it tells itself are complete lies. For example, you grew up poor, so financially you're always going to struggle. All of your relationships have ended badly, so you're going to remain alone forever. You're the quiet and introverted one, so taking the initiative to start new conversations with strangers is always going to end terribly for you. You're the lazy one in your family, so you'll always struggle to stick to the gym. Or you're 25 and you're behind everyone else your age and you will never be able to catch up.

Doesn't take a genius to realize that buying into such stories would hold anyone back in life from being the person they want to be, living the life they want, or building the confidence they want, and all that lovely stuff. So, here's the solution to all of this and the 30 secondond summary of this whole video.

When your brain spins a story, it is essentially saying, "This is who I am because of the past." It's using your past to determine what you're going to do now and what will become of your future. So the alternative of course because these stories are keeping you trapped in the past is instead of adopting narratives whereby you buy into this story and you see it as the only way of interpreting yourself or life, you instead see it as one perspective of many that you you could choose to adopt. When you adopt perspectives, you are essentially saying this is how I'm seeing and choosing right now.

To use three examples that we covered at the beginning of this video, a narrative would sound like, "Every relationship ends badly, so I'm destined to be alone." Turning that into a perspective would become, "From where I stand today, I've learned patterns that don't work for me. Next time, I can try a different way of showing up." "I grew up poor, so I'll always struggle financially." Becomes my background gives me a sharp awareness of value and resilience. That's an angle I can use to build wealth differently. "I'm shy. I've always been the quiet one" would finally become in this moment I feel hesitant to start a conversation but I can notice when curiosity pulls me to speak.

Do you notice how the perspectives are much more growth-oriented and present focused rather than almost continue in a spiral that your brain has spun. Now why would doing this be important? Well, it's because if you can stop buying into the narratives that your brain is continuously spinning, you will finally be free of your past and you will open your future up to an infinite number of new possibilities. So, that is the bottom line of this video. If that all makes sense, then feel free to click off the video right now.

But if you would like a deeper explanation into all of this, here's exactly what we're going to cover in the rest of this video. First of all, we're going to cover why your brain tells stories in the first place. We're going to introduce ourselves to something called cognitive script theory, which explains a lot. Then we're going to get into why this is problematic at a much deeper level. We're going to zoom out, consider the societal implications and the bigger implications for your life, even cover touching upon why this is problematic in therapy, for example. Then we'll get into the three most common scripts we all follow in order to raise our awareness of them. Then we will finalize with how to drop your scripts. We'll cover a tool you can use which is incredibly practical and life-changing called self anthropology. Then we will finally finalize by doing a further deep dive of non-narrative thinking. What we've just mentioned there. Let's go.

Point number one. Why your brain creates stories in the first place. Well, the bottom line is because life is very chaotic and uncertain. So, your brain uses stories in order to carve a path of certainty amongst all of this chaos and uncertainty. By telling stories, your brain can take four completely unrelated things and string them all together to give them functional relevance. To explain this one point further, think about which sentence you would remember more. This one. So, the king died and then the queen died. Or this one, the king died and then the queen died of grief. Information theory would tell us that it's the first sentence we would remember more because it's shorter. But that's just not how our brains work. You would remember the second sentence more because, oh, the queen died because of grief. Now there's meaning. There's a story. And both pieces of information about the king and the queen are now related. We will cover why that's problematic in the next part.

But just before we move on here, in or let's zoom out and consider the real bigger picture of why our brains create stories in the first place. And in order to do so, I'm going to have to take you back to the 90 1979 and introduce you to the cognitive scientists at the time who were doing groundbreaking research and who came up with a concept called cognitive script theory. I don't actually know the names of the cognit cognitive scientists so apologies on that. But what they did is a study in which they asked multiple people to describe the particular components of an experience, the characters involved and the actions that they would take. For example, going to the dentist or going to the doctors. And what they found is that no matter how many people they asked to describe the components of a particular scene or event, most people's answers were exactly the same. For example, well, you go to the doctors, you arrive there, you wait in the waiting room, the nurse calls your name, you then go to the doctor, and so forth. It would be a bit weird if you went to the doctor and went to him and said, "You know what, doc, I've got a terrible toothache." And he said, "Okay, pull your trousers down. Let's have a look at your ass." No, you have an idea of how things would unfold.

So, zooming back in to your life. Now, what this highlights is that there are thousands of scripts that you subconsciously follow in your life which give you a understanding of what you should do in given situations and how you should interpret specific experiences. But how would your brain do all of this? How does your brain do all of this? Let's cover this next. The simple answer is your brain does all of this by doing the following. Whenever it receives new information from the external world via its senses, it then tries to match that new information with a representation it already has of it in memory. And it does so by asking, you know, the last time I was in a similar situation. What did I do, think, and feel next? And then it gets you to do that action. In other words, then it gets you to repeat that cognitive script. An analogy to think about here is, well, one, your brain is always hallucinating. But another way to think about it is it's as if your brain is driving a car and it's moving, but it's always looking in the rear view mirror trying to see where it's been in order to use that as information for where to go next and what to do next.

If you're familiar with Lisa Feldman Barrett's work, then she terms this brain predictions, which is essentially another way of saying a cognitive script. Her work is brilliant. I've got one of her books here actually. She wrote how emotions are made. This is literally the Bible on understanding emotions. I'm reading it at the moment. It's awesome. And this is what she suggest. This is what she says. Our brain is a predict prediction making machine. It's always asking, you know, the last time I faced something similar, what did I then do next? But why would it do that? You know, and why would it follow subconscious cognitive scripts? It would clearly do so for a reason. And the reason is because it's very cost effective in terms of energy. Your brain needs to preserve all of the energy that it possibly can. So by repeating actions it's always done in the past, it doesn't have to continuously interpret information again and again and again. No, it can just subconsciously follow old patterns.

Now, before we move on and explain the problems of this, it's effective for your brain to do so for a few other reasons. Well, one, it makes life incredibly predictable. If your brain just can perform what it's done before, then the fear of uncertainty is now removed. Things become more certain. And finally, this gives you a lot of social confidence as well because a lot of the cognitive scripts we have, for example, going to the doctor are agreed upon socially. So if you act out of line with those cognitive scripts, for example, you go to the doctors naked, then there's going to be some problems. So it gives you social confidence in order well acting in line with the scripts provides you with social confidence. But of course, this doesn't come without problems.

Now, the first lens we're going to put on in our cognitive glasses in order to interpret why this is problematic is a philosophical lens. And we're actually going to cover the work of a French philosopher, Jean Paul Sat. I don't know how to pronounce his name, so if you're French, roast me in the comments. But what he argued in his book on being nothingness is well, he gave the example of a waiter. Now if you observe a waiter in a cafe or a restaurant sat argued that waiter will have tied their actions and identity to the narrative of being a waiter. But he went one step further and argued that this is an example of living in philosophical bad faith because if you're unaware of the cognitive scripts you're following, you're then not taking the responsibility to change them and actually live in line with your destiny. He said commenting on the waiter, "All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms. the one regulating the other. His gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms. He gives himself the quickness and pitiles rapidity of things. He is playing. He is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it. He is playing at being a waiter in a cafe." There is nothing there to surprise us. s argued the waiter is tied to that narrative and is therefore not free. Also, by being tied to that narrative, the waiter only has a limited understanding of himself and therefore is prevented from taking ownership of his life. If he were to drop that narrative, however, s argued the waiter would move closer to selfhood.

So now let's go even deeper and really really pick apart the problems with cognitive scripts and the brain telling stories. Okay, what we've covered so far is that cognitive scripts and the stories your brain tells itself, which by the way are the same things. We're using those terms interchangeably. They give you a feeling of safety because they're certain and they provide you with social approval because you likely follow the similar scripts that other people follow as well. But they limit what you think is possible. Essentially, they are like shackles confining you within artificial boundaries. Hence, I drew a cage with the door wide open. And this is really important because the narratives that you tell yourself shape your identities and the identities that you believe you have shape your future actions and interpretations of events. So by maintaining certain narratives in your life, you're maintaining certain identities, which means you're always going to act in a similar way.

Now, before we get into the solutions of how to change that, because we're going to be practical in this video, but we just got to talk about a few more problems with this before we move on. Let's really consider the implications of all of this to the present day. Now, I took you back to 1979 earlier in order to introduce you to cognitive script theory, which funnily enough was happening at the same time as something else in the therapeutic world of psychology. In the 1970s, a type of therapy was formed called narrative therapy in which patients were encouraged to not just randomly interpret the events of their life and uncover trauma but to make a story out of it. The idea went if you can connect the dots and suddenly understand ah that's why that terrible thing happened to me or oh that's why I have trauma because oh this happened in my childhood or x y and z then the idea went you stood a much better chance at becoming psychologically healthy. But of course the main problem with this is that not everything is connected or can be connected into a story. To go back to the example we gave earlier, narrative therapy is no different from the psychological fallacy of the king and queen story. The king died and then the queen died. The king died and then the queen died of grief. Ah, again, the queen died because of grief. That now makes so much sense. But in the words of the associate professor of philosophy at the Warick University, what's her name? Karen Simk Simek believe she might be Polish so I might have mispronounced that but she said swapping one script for another doesn't help someone see the full range of possibilities that lie in front of them including what it might mean to reject a narrative altogether. So it goes with all of us. We rest into a psychological aha moment of safety whenever we reflect on our past and try and connect the dots and create a meaningful story out of random events. All the while forgetting that sometimes things just happen and there's absolutely no meaning prescribed into any of it.

You know, just before we move on here, I had a very a brilliant interaction with a subscriber yesterday that just I just thought of he he came up to me and we were speaking for about 30 minutes and he told me that he's been really doing his best with going out and meeting new people and approaching people in his local gym. But he told me that he'd been struggling with something recently, which was at his local gym, he went up to two women he found attractive and just sparked up a normal conversation with them. But then over the following few days, he stopped seeing them at the gym. You know, they weren't training at their normal times. And he said, "Louis, I just can't help but feel I did something wrong." And my first thought was all of this, all of this content was in my mind. And I was just thinking there's no reason to believe that the event of you and speaking to this other person now them not going to the gym is connected. There's so many different factors at play. And really just to cover two more examples as to why this narrative therapy can be so dangerous for us is well to give you a quick fun example. Imagine a Martian. You know, an alien came down from another planet tomorrow and for the next week followed you in your everyday life. You know, you knew it was there, but you would just live your life normally and it was follow you around and just take notes of everything that you did. And at the end of the week, it would give you that list just to show you what you got up to. It was doing some fieldwork, you know, for his planet. What would you see on that list? Well, you might say, you might see, woke up in the morning, drank two coffees, one sugar each, booked a holiday to the Maldes, now out of money, stubbed toe, and swore like a pirate, laid on the floor and picked nose while looking at the ceiling. You would see that all of those activities would be completely random, and there would be no coherent meaning among any of them. They wouldn't be connected.

Another example of how journalists create stories to change our perceptions is let's say that a man drives over a bridge but then the bridge collapses and he falls down but then he survives and he's interviewed by the news the next day. We would find out nothing about the cause of the bridge collapsing, but we would find out everything about the man in terms of where he's from, where he was driving to, where he lives, what he does for a job in order to create a story out of it. Whereas we're the engineers would be left dumbfounded as to okay, why did the bridge collapse? Was there a weak point? Was it constructed badly? Just demonstrating this to show that, you know, things aren't always connected. What was the next point we're moving on to? Got a bit carried away there. Oh yeah, let's now get into the practical stuff. We need to get into the solutions of how we can break free from these cognitive scripts. And in order to do so, we're first going to cover the three main cognitive scripts that we all follow in order to raise our awareness of them so we can break them.

Okay, then let's cover the three most common scripts we all follow as highlighted by the neuroscientist an Lori Lumf in her brilliant book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World. Now, if that doesn't wet your appetite, I don't know what will. But the main thing, and by the way, that book is where I've got all this information for this part of the video from. But the main thing to know is each script narrows the field of what you imagine possible in your life. So, let's uncover what they are. And by the way, there's a lot of stuff on the board. Don't worry. I'm going to walk you through as we uncover the information.

The first script that most of us follow is the sequel script. And this is where you believe, well, I've always been this way, so let me continue to be this way. In the same way that film directors will use part one of their franchise to determine what happens in part two and part three and part four, so too, you do the same with your past. You use it to determine what will happen in your present and obviously what will come of your future. The analogy to think about here is think about it as if it's a well-worn path in front of you. You're you're on a horse and carriage. If you're traveling, then you're just going to continue down the well-worn path, aren't you? If you want to turn left, it's going to be hard. If you want to turn right onto the unworn path, it's also going to be hard. Psychologists call this continuation by bias. Economists call this path dependence and philosophers call it fatalism. But what we could describe it as is self-consistency fall. The self-consistency fallacy where you believe, well, I've always been this way, so let me let me continue to be this way. The biggest example of this is the sequels that we all follow that are prescribed to us from society, as we'll cover in the crowd-pleaser script. For example, finish school, go to uni, marry, settle down, then die. get to that. We'll uncover that in a bit more detail in a second. But zooming back into your life, this could explain why you maintain the same roles in your romantic relationships, why you remain the quiet one, or why you always try to repeat your past successes basically because you've already done so. And you've always done so. But as an highlights, this following this script limits our imagination by making us rehash old tales instead of facing the discomfort of a blank page. Brilliant. I love that. Facing the discomfort of a blank page. The reason why I like that wording is because don't know why I touch my ear. Maybe that's what I do when I read a good quote that I like. Clearly, the discomfort of a blank page highlights that dropping your scripts isn't just a walk in the park. It's not like, "Oh, now I've dropped my script. I can live freely." No, you now have to face the responsibility of choosing what you want to put on that blank page, which is daunting, but better than the alternative.

The second script that we all follow is the crowd-pleaser script. And the main thing to note here is unless you are a hermit that lives in the woods, you are and you will be influenced by other human beings. Why? Well, because you don't want to be excluded. Exclusion from the group for our ancestors would have meant death. Don't leave me in the woods all alone to potentially be eaten by a tiger. An interesting thing to note here that I learned from Anne's book is, and these aren't two eggs on the board, by the way. These are meant to be two brains with particular brain regions highlighted. Although looking at them now, they do look like look like two blue eggs. My apologies. Neuroiming studies have found that the same brain region that activates when you are engaging in conflict also activates when you make a decision that differs from the group. So your brain is almost hardwired to perceive a threat when you socially deviate. Interesting stuff. But of course, as we covered in the first script, the main way that we become crowd-pleasers is by following the milestones prescribed to us by society at large. What do we mean by society at large? Well, a big group of people who have gathered together to look in the same direction and decide, "Oh, yeah, that's valuable." For example, finish school, go uni, marry, settle, die. Now, this isn't a bad thing being a crowd-pleaser because, of course, you need to maintain some societal harmony, of course. And it can lead you to living a dream life if that's what you want. But whose dream is it? Is it your dream or is it someone else's? Is your ladder up against your your wall or someone else's? Another framing for this is, do you really want this thing or do you just want other people to see you have it?

Finally, the last script is the most deceiving one, largely because I've drawn it in green, which will make your brain think it's something positive, but we're going to highlight the negatives of it right now. The epic script is the last one. And this is where we are introduced to the P word, passion. Just follow your passion. Find what you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Yeah, what a load of crap that is. The the annoying thing with this script is it makes you believe that there is some ideal path out there that you just need to follow that is the complete opposite of what you're doing right now. And once you find that path, you'll be fine and life won't be hard anymore. And because you haven't found that path yet, you're a failure. But what the idea of following your passion doesn't account for especially in the context of career, right? Because that's how we largely speak about passion, find the thing that you love. What it doesn't account for is survivorship bias. Take the example of someone who wants to become a YouTuber or someone who wants to take the example of someone who wants to start their own podcast, right? They listen to Chris Williamson and they think, "Oh, I want to be big like him." or they listen to Steven Bartlett's podcast and think my podcast is going to be bigger than his. Or they listen to Joe Rogan and think, "Yep, that's how to do it. That's what my podcast is going to be like." They see all of the successful people, but fail to realize a huge cognitive bias, which is survivorship bias. For every successful person you see in a particular endeavor, there are thousands, if not millions of similar people who have tried but failed. Most people's podcasts don't make it past episode five, which means if you get past five episodes in your podcast, you're already in the top 1% of podcasters, by the way, which is an interesting thing to note. Also, the idea of just follow your passion doesn't account for the amount of luck and societal advantages other people have when they're when you depict them as following their passion, right? Because that's largely where this idea comes from. You see other people living their passion and showing their glamorous life on social media and you think, "Oh, I just need to be like them." But you fail to account that their life probably is miserable, you know, likely miserable or not as good as it is depicted to be, but you don't know how lucky they were in finding that path, for example.

Now, enough of the doom and gloom. Let's cover two more negative points. So staying on the doom and gloom. The second reason why following your passion is terrible advice is because it causes you to neglect other paths which might be helpful or interesting for you. Think about it. If look at this drawing. If this man is so narrowly narrowly focused on the path in front of him, he's going to be negligent of any other path that might open which might be fruitful for him to walk down. No, I have to follow my purpose. I have to follow my passion. Let me continue walking down this path. Path X, path Y, path Zed might still be as interesting or necessary for you to venture down. It prevents mental flexibility. In other words, but the final danger with following this script in the words of the brilliant researcher and psychologist Carol Dwek who woke wrote the brilliant book mindset all about growth mindset and the importance of having one instead of a fixed mindset. She said, "Uring people to find their passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket, but then drop that basket when it becomes too difficult to carry." In other words, following your passion makes you less resilient in life because it gives you the false under or the false belief that when you find it, everything should be easy. And if you discover anything along that path of your passion that is difficult, then you're on the wrong path. What a recipe for disaster. Hopefully you can see that by now.

Okay, that is enough doom and gloom for one segment of the video. And you might be thinking, "Well, Lewis, this is a lot of information we've covered so far in this video. How the bloody hell am I meant to deal with all of these scripts that my brain is continuously following?" Well, good news. You can drop these scripts. Here's how to do so.

Point number four, drop in your scripts. Now, we're getting into the tool of selfanthropology, which I bet you didn't think those two words would be put together at any point throughout your life. And to set the foundations here with a quick quote, we're from the futurist aan toffee who coined the term information overload. The new illiterate will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn rather than the illiterate being people who simply cannot read or write.

Before we cover what self anthropology is, three quick questions you can ask yourself to help you discover what script you might be in. Are you following your past or discovering your path? The sequel script. Are you following the crowd or discovering your tribe? The crowd-pleaser script. And are you following your passion or discovering your curiosity? The epic script.

Now what do we mean by this beautiful term of self anthropology as coined by an Aneli? What was her name? Anel Laurel. Well, selfanthropology. What what would an anthropologist do? They study the topic of being human. What does it mean to be human in this day and age? And what has it meant to be human in the past? and what could it mean to be human in the future. But when it comes to self anthropology, the topic of study is you. And what it involves is the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, recording astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess, which is a very poetic way of saying you are going to study yourself and then engage a process of self renewal. You're going to be pressing factory reset on your life basically. But here's how to play self anthropology. Thought that was delayed, wasn't it? Anyway, the way to play self anthropology is within three steps. Two of which are on the board and the third will be revealed after we go through point number two because there is not enough espasio on the board.

The first thing you do to drop your scripts and play this game is you open a blank document on your phone. Be it Google Docs or the note-taking app on your phone or you simply get a blank piece of paper and over the course of one week. Why one week? Well, because that will be enough time for you to gather solid insights. You simply note down insights, thoughts and experiences that you have which you deem interesting or of significance. And when you note those down, you simply put the time in which you noticed it or this thing happened to you and you write down some notes, anything that comes to mind or just simply you capture the thing that happened to you. But this is not a diary. You're not doing this in a journal format so that you can reflect on it at the end of the day. No, you're simply using a curiosity compass to simply capture things that happen to you and come to you throughout your days. There are four things you might like to pay attention to. The first thing is insights. As you're going about your day, your work, you're doing your workouts or you're going on a walk or whatever, just note down things you find curious or random ideas that come to you, new thoughts or questions that intrigue you. You might want to pay attention to your energy levels. Are there any major shifts that happen in your energy levels throughout the day? What boosts your energy or what drains it? You might like to pay attention to your mood during, before, and after certain experiences. Finally, you might might like to note encounters you have with other people either in your new or existing connections and just note down some insights that you gather from these relationships. Again, remember that example we gave of the alien coming down on Earth, just not following you around for a week. Well, this is what you're doing to yourself. You're just noting down certain things that happened to you. So, you do that over the course of a week. Keep that document with you. You just note down things as and when they come.

Then second of all, you digest your findings. After the week, you sit down with this blank. No, not blank. You sit down with this document and you just try and make a few connections between some things that you noted down. You notice what were some things that gave you joy? What were some things that drained you? What do you want more of? Or what would you want less of on your list? And you might like to answer these questions in the context of things that you've been learning, your relationships, or even your health. And what you might find, just as some examples of themes, is well, you've been experiencing a low mood before you go to work most mornings as you're sat there with your morning coffee. Or when you're at work, you actually get a big energy boost from doing group activities. Or maybe your mood be or your energy becomes drained after going on Instagram for an hour. Maybe you find that there's certain things that you can learn from or there's more interesting conversations you can have from particular people in your life, but with other people, you find that when you speak to them, your energy drains for whatever reason. Maybe you notice that your best ideas or most curious thoughts come to you when you're on a walk of an evening. Just some examples there. And once you've done those two things, you then go into step number three. By the way, oh, you might want to consider is there anything missing on your list as well as you're digesting it.

Then you go into step number three, which is hypothesizing. So now you've collected your field notes and digested them to notice any themes amongst them. Now you hypothesize by creating a table with three columns. In the first column you write down your observations. So what themes you noticed. In the second column you turn these themes into questions. And then in the third column, you hypothesize improvements that you could make in your life based on the first two columns. For example, an observation you might have noticed is I'm dreading giving presentations. Turn that into a question which is oriented towards growth. How could I become more confident? And then your hypothesis becomes improv classes could build my confidence. You might notice I feel anxious in the morning. Question. How could I feel more grounded before going to work? Hypothesis: breath work could help regulate my anxiety. Observation: I get excited when talking about renewable energy. Question: How could I learn more about renewable energy? Hypothesis, reading about it and attending open lectures could open some doors. Two more. Observation: I rarely have time to read. Question: How could I make reading part of my daily life? Hypothesis: Setting a specific reading time each day could help. Finally, observation. I enjoy graphic design and receive positive feedback on my work. Question, how could I do more graphic design work? Hypothesis, freelancing could build my portfolio. And there is a quote from an in which she highlights some particular characteristics of this common. I'm going to give you the quote now. Notice how each different question and its corresponding hypothesis are from linear goals. In the workrelated examples above, the ultimate aim is not to become a successful public speaker or graphic designer. Rather than attempt to reach a fixed destination, testing a hypothesis is an opportunity for growth. You are simply exploring your potential driven by genuine curiosity. Asking yourself, what might I find on that path? Once you have a hypothesis, you can design an experiment and turn your life into a giant laboratory for selfdiscovery. This will improve your life and it will help you drop your scripts.

Now, I know it's an exercise for you to do, so most people won't do it. But I guarantee you, as annoying as it might seem to, oh, get your notes out and have to do another exercise that some bold mustache British bloke is encouraging you to do on the internet, I genuinely guarantee this will not only raise your well, this will raise your awareness over your behavior. And in doing so, you will change. And as you change your life will become easier because it will feel as if you are working with yourself instead of acting in ways in which you don't understand. No, when you've been when you bring curiosity to to the table, which this whole exercise encourages you to do, you will develop such a better relationship with yourself. And when you want to change, you'll be able to because your awareness will have been heightened.

Okay? Now, let's finalize this video with one more suggestion I'm going to leave you with amongst all of this information in order for you to really drop these stories that your brain keeps spinning so you can step into new growth. By the way, thank you for making it this far into the video. I really appreciate it. As we covered in the bottom line of this video in the intro, the real alternative to telling yourself stories is choosing to live a narrative free life. In the words of Karen Seymichek, living in a non-narrative way means rejecting a particular identity and instead seeing life and meaning as a set of open choices. For the waiter, rejecting his narrative identity would mean acting in a way that reflects his choices and sense of self, not just the story. he tells about himself. At the heart of it, living this way involves the understanding that the stories you tell yourself don't exist out there in the world. They're not something tangible that you can touch and taste and wrestle with. No, they just exist in your mind. and they're your brain's way of helping you deal with an external world that is chaotic and scary. And they're related to events and facts, but they're not factual. In other words, your thoughts and stories are no different from how a finger pointing towards the moon isn't the moon.

But the key point here is you don't want to completely do away with stories because of course as we've covered your brain uses them for a reason and if they if your brain didn't tell stories then life would be a thousand times more chaotic and complex. So what you want to do in an ideal world is adopt perspectives instead of narratives. Here's what we mean by this. You see, a perspective isn't just a point of view. It's a way you engage with the world from a particular position. And your perspectives are created by your place in the world, your beliefs, your values, and what you think matters. Furthermore, your perspectives determine what your brain filters into its awareness. As the saying goes, where you choose to land is where you end up. And it's your perspectives that fuel your narratives. So the key takeaway here in order to be practical is in order to adopt perspectives rather than narratives and as we mentioned at the beginning of the video all you need to do is to is remember whenever you're buying into a particular story or you're thinking something which is very emotionally charged recognize that is just one perspective of many. In other words, that story you believe is true right now isn't. It's just one way your brain is choosing to engage with the world. And in fact, there are many different options and perspectives you could take. And the reason why doing that is important is because once you adopt go away fly once you adopt perspectives. Once you adopt perspectives rather than narratives your scripts from yesterday lose their grip over you and you can open yourself to many future possibilities.

And to really run this point home and to leave you with a real deep understanding of perspectives, let's take this one point further and use the example of poetry to explain this perspectival concept. You see, poems are perspectival unlike a written story. They combine words, images, thoughts, and feelings to express value by capturing a way of seeing things. They're not like a story which is linear and ordered in structure with events taking place. Take this poem as an example. Attachments. Attachments. Sweetheart, do you really want me to speak to you about all your attachments? when I can see so clearly you have built with so much care such a great brothel to house all of your pleasures. You have even surrounded the whole damn place with armed guards and vicious dogs to protect your desires so that you can sneak away from time to time and try to squeeze light into your parched being from a source as fruitful as a dried pit that even a bird is wise enough to spit out. You see, poems, unlike stories, are nonlinear. They bring experiences together without telling us how they're related. In the words of Karen Symmetric, and to apply this to your life, understanding ourselves in a nonlinear way means seeing how we relate to a complex and chaotic world in the present moment. Within that moment, we find significance without needing an ordered pattern.

So to finalize this part and to really emphasize the key point here, remember that when you adopt a narrative, you are saying this is who I am because of the past. But when you take a perspective, you're saying this is how I'm seeing and choosing right now. Just to give you four quick examples, a narrative in the context of relationship would sound like this. Every relationship ends badly, so I'm destined to be alone. A perspective would be from where I stand today, I've learned patterns that don't work for me. Next time I can try a different way of showing up. You see how it's much more present focused. It's growth-oriented and it's just one perspective of many. In the context of money, a narrative would be, I grew up poor, so I'll always struggle financially. This is who I am because of the past. Perspective. My background gives me a sharp awareness of value and resilience. I can use that to build wealth differently. Health. I'm the lazy one in the family. I can never stick to the gym. Today I feel resistance to go to the gym. That's just a state, not my identity. I can still do 5 minutes. Social anxiety. Finally, I'm shy. I've always been the quiet one. Right now, I feel hesitant to start conversations, but I can notice when my curiosity pulls me to speak.

Final quote from Karen. By living a life of perspective, we can adopt new orientations, find significance in new places, and even move toward the exciting unpredictability of shared perspectives. We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don't need better narratives. We need to expand and refine our perspectives. So, highlight the perspectives, fuel in your narratives, and you'll realize that the narrative will instantly lose its grip over you.

In summary, your brain tells itself stories in order to keep life certain, ordered, logical, and to prescribe meaning to random things that happen to it. Because if it didn't, then life would be so much more complex and chaotic. So the key isn't to completely get rid of narratives, but to instead adopt perspectives. Perspectives are positions you take in the present instead of linear plots. And they also fuel your narratives. They're like poetry. They're fragments that capture experience without forcing meaning. Thank you very much for your time and attention. Stay disciplined. Play Stay disciplined, playful, and dangerous. He will touch us.