[Music] yeah the funny thing is if you're trying to stop drinking you need something better than alcohol and alcohol is pretty good yeah so you better find something a lot better man yeah and it is then esteemable people do esteemable things it's like yeah well you want to figure out you want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing up yeah part of the reason people drink alcohol is to get rid of their responsibility i mean that's what you know you hear people drink because they have problems it's like yeah yeah no some people drink because they're anxious and alcoholics drink because they're in withdrawal but young people drink because they're sick and tired of being responsible because it's annoying it's like so i'll drink enough i won't care about the medium to long-term consequences because alcohol that's exactly what alcohol does it doesn't make you ignorant of the medium to long-term consequences but it makes you not care about them you know you might say well why do people drink too much it's like if you like alcohol that's a stupid question right it's like why do people drink too much well because it's great you know it's like okay so why stop well you do stupid things when you're drunk you hurt yourself you compromise your health it's really hard on the people around you you tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life yeah it's like yeah but it's pretty fun yeah well it is but you need something better than that and what's better isn't being straight and and and not making mistakes it's like that's all prohibition in some sense what's better is no you need an adventure man you need to get out there and have something to do yeah and and something worth waking up for and you need that's the substitute for the addiction actually the addiction is the substitute for that if truth be known [Music] if you are an effective writer and speaker and communicator you you have all the authority and competence that there is the best thing you can do is read and write every day a couple of hours every day write about things you find important and see if you can see if you can discover what you believe to be true and that'll build you a foundation and it's unbelievably practical like if you look at people who are phenomenally successful across life there's various reasons but one of them is is that they're unbelievably good at articulating what they what they're aiming at and strategizing and negotiating and and and and enticing people with a vision forward it's like get your words together man that's that makes you unstoppable get your words together make yourself an articulate creature and then you're you're deadly in the best possible way read great books really man and you've got these unbelievable libraries that are full of the writings of people who are who are intelligent and articulate beyond comprehension and you know and and you can go there and you can learn all this and you might think well why should you learn it there's nothing more powerful than someone who is articulate and who can think and speak it's power and i mean power of the best sort it's authority and influence and respectability and competence and your highest skill is to be found in articulated speech and if you're if you're if you're a master at formulating your arguments you win everything and better than that when you win everything everyone around you wins too because to transform yourself into let's consider consider your transformation into something approximating the logos it means you shine a light on the whole world well there's nothing more exciting to do than that there's nothing better you can possibly do you transform yourself into something that's articulated and sensible and grounded in history and knowledgeable and wise man you can do anything you want and hopefully anything you want for good because if you have any sense everything you want to do would be for the good because there's nothing more compelling or meaningful or or useful in combating the tragedy of life than to then to struggle with all your soul on behalf of the good [Music] you know i really seen the benefits for example for weightlifting because i've watched people because i'm 58 50 how old am i 56 i really noticed the difference between people and when they age between people who laid down a good physiological platform when they were young and those who didn't because by the if you haven't worked out weights particularly i would say you start to get pretty soft in your 30s and your cardiovascular system starts to go and really early the other thing too is the best thing you can do to maintain cognitive ability isn't to do exercises like lumosity it's not brain exercises that keep you sharp it's exercise so if you're 50 both cardiovascular and weightlifting if you're 50 you can restore your cognitive function to the level of a 30 year old through exercise you're through physical activity yeah well your brain is a very demanding organ and if your cardiovascular system is compromised then you get stupid and so yeah it's really exciting because as you move and the bigger you get the more stupid you become yeah well you compromise you compromise its function because the brain is it's it's it's the organ that uses more it's very metabolically demanding and so if you're not in phys good physical shape then one of the things that suffers most greatly is your cognitive function [Music] no one can live without a routine you just forget that if you guys don't have a routine i would recommend like you get one going because you cannot be mentally healthy without a routine you need to pick a time to get up whatever time you want but pick one and stick to it because otherwise you dis-regulate your circadian rhythms and they regulate your mood i've told people to learn to use a schedule and people often hate schedules because they act as their own tyrants right they say we have to do this unpleasant thing and then here's another unpleasant thing you have to do and then you have to do this unpleasant thing and you do that for about three days and you think tail with this i'm not doing that you know and you fall off the wagon that isn't what you're supposed to do with the schedule you're supposed to use it to design the days that you would like to have if you were taking care of yourself you wake up in the morning and you think here's five things i have to do that if i don't do my life will be worse it's like paying bills for example or or or taking out the garbage it's like you have to do those because otherwise things degenerate so you got to put some of those in the schedule because otherwise tomorrow is worse than today and that's a bad trajectory but you also want to build in things you know you've got to act in some sense like you're dealing with a relatively recalcitrant nine-year-old it's like so well here's some things you have to do but here's some things that if you do you could reward yourself with and if you get the balance there between obligation and reward right then you'll find that you're motivated to do the things and and that's what you want to do you want to do that so it's sustainable across days and weeks and months and so you got to you got to treat yourself like a good boss would treat a valued employee and not like a tyrant would treat a slave make friends with a calendar like google calendar or something like that and i can tell you some tricks about that because really it is important like i'm not kidding around about this so here's one way of thinking about making use of a schedule often people are afraid of schedules because they think of them as a trap you know you make a schedule and it's like this little prison that you have to live inside and you know and all you're doing in your schedule is putting down things you have to do or should do and so you know there's not a lot of fun in that and so not only is it a trap or a prison but it's kind of an unpleasant one but a way to work with the schedule in a lot more sophisticated way is just to think well i'm going to plan the next week say because you plan it day by day but we'll take the week as the unit level of analysis and think well i'd like to plan a week i'd like to have and then your schedule all of a sudden becomes a tool for increasing the quality of your life and that's a whole different issue [Music] you