3480 Why Mindset Matters | Mike Cernovich and Stefan Molyneux
Mindset allows you how to take control of your thoughts and emotions and live life on your terms. Mike Cernovich joins Stefan Molyneux to discuss the importance of mindset, including the techniques and strategies you need to succeed at life, even when it seems hopeless.Mike Cernovich is the bestselling author of Gorilla Mindset. He is a lawyer, a journalist who has broken several news stories of international interest, and the producer of the film documentary Silenced.Follow Mike on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CernovichRead Danger and Play: http://www.dangerandplay.comFollow Mike on Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv/CernovichOrder Gorilla Mindset: http://www.fdrurl.com/gorilla-mindsetOrder MAGA Mindset: http://www.fdrurl.com/MAGAFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Mullen from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope you're doing well here with a good friend Mike Cernovich, a lawyer and the author of Guerrilla Mindset, How to Control Your Thoughts and Emotions to Live Life on Your Terms and Not Get Shot by Zookeepers, MAGA Mindset, as well as his new book, Making You in America Great Again.
You can follow Mike on Twitter, like approximately a third of the rest of the planet, at twitter.com slash cernovich.
That's CERN, like the nuclear collider reactor thing, C-E-R-N-O-V-I-C-H. You can read his Mike, great to chat with you again.
How are you doing?
And soon they'll be able to hear the audio book read by Stefan Molyneux.
That's right.
You know, I have to read out loud.
It turns out somebody was just recording me, so that's the kind of passion we're putting into this.
But no, it's a fantastic book, and it really lent itself to an impassioned reading, and I was very happy to have the opportunity to do it, and that is going to be available on audible.com at some point in the near future.
How is the book?
Let's get some marketing numbers out there.
How is the book doing, Mr.
Mike?
I think, if I remember rightly, quite well is the way you'd put it.
Yeah, so we opened in the top 20 of all nonfiction on Amazon.
So I think we hit 17 was in all nonfiction, Kindle, all of Amazon.
And we hit 213 in all of the Kindle store.
So to put those numbers in perspective, whenever these so-called big-name pundits or whatever have a book release, very rarely, very rarely do you make the top 1,000 in all of the Kindle store because there are millions of books on Amazon.
You're competing with Fifty Shades of Grey and...
And we destroyed Hillary Clinton, of course.
We deliberately, Vox, Dave, my publisher, and I, we put the book in the same category as Stronger Together, because always be trolling, right?
Yep.
Right.
And, you know, as long as you're pulling ahead of Michelle Fields, I feel that the publishing world is content with that kind of performance.
The reviews have been great.
I don't want to ask you to run through the thesis of the book because, of course, people should read the book or listen to the book.
It's not hugely long, very passionately written, very, very informative.
Welcome to my show!
Yeah, mindset is your operating system.
It is the software of your brain.
It is your beliefs, your values, your attitudes about the world and the way you interact with the world.
And we all have a mindset without realizing it.
We all have these beliefs about the world that were programmed inside of us by society, by culture.
There was a quote, I can't remember who said it, but culture is your operating system, and you think about the influence that culture has, and if all we do is live in a world, we're going to be conformists, and we're going to conform to whatever mass media, television, the hoaxing journalists tell us what to think.
So with mindset, you realize, okay, I have this software in my brain, and I actually have the power to control the software in the brain, which...
In itself, it's a mindset view, because a lot of people think that how you feel isn't a choice.
A lot of people say, well, I'm just...
Here's what they say.
I'm just not that kind of person, right?
We've all heard people say that.
Maybe we've said it from time to time.
Well, I'm just not the kind of guy who does...
I used to be the same way I would say.
You know, I'm just an introverted guy.
I'm an introverted guy, and being around other people tires me out, so I'm just not going to talk to other people.
Well, now I jabber on the internet for like five hours a day, which...
I never in the world could have believed what happened five years ago, but now I'm like, oh, I've done four periscopes today.
I did a periscope session of like four hours, which previously to me would have been impossible, but I realized that I was essentially brainwashing myself into believing negative things about myself.
Well, why am I that kind of person?
Why can't I fix it?
Why can't I improve that?
Well, and society is more than willing to offer you up labels of self-definition that is convenient to society as a whole.
Oh, you're this kind of person, you're that kind of person.
And what happens is, I found, most people let what they call their personality happen to them.
Like, their personality is the last domino to fall down on a whole series of dominoes, whether it comes from religion or it comes from government schools or it comes from the media or wherever it is.
Don't let your personality just happen to you, because then you're just like a shadow rather than something that has substance.
And the effort to will yourself into rejecting the definitions that have accidentally been imprinted upon you is really, really a fundamental and powerful thing around what they call individuation, that you must decide for yourself what your values are, because your personality is your deepest expression of those values.
And don't let life happen to you, but go and make life happen for you and for those around you.
You see, we could analyze what you said sentence by sentence and actually talk about mindset.
Well, your personality is about individuation and your expression of your values, but here's a question I always ask people.
What class did you ever take in your 25 years of education where they said, okay, today we're going to sit down and we're going to find out what your core values are?
That's not rhetorical.
Did you ever take that class in school?
I never took that class in school.
When I was in talk therapy, I definitely worked at that realm.
And in philosophy, in terms of my pursuit of self-knowledge.
But no, when I was taking classes on economics or philosophy or history or any of those things, the idea that you would look deep into the mirror of yourself and figure out what your values were was never brought up.
And what that means is that the values that are automatically imprinted in you are very convenient for the powers that be.
So let's not mess up the machine that is working for the hierarchy.
Exactly.
We're owned by our culture.
Man is a product of his culture.
Interestingly, I always tell people, the young people especially listening, read Me Too when you're in college, and you'll think you'll understand it, but you really won't.
You'll be like, yeah, 10, 20 years ago, that's when you realize how deep of a thinker he was, where things like man is a product of his culture.
I remember when I read that when I was younger, I thought, yeah, you're right, man is a product of his culture.
Well, you could think about the implications of that all day.
We are the conditioning of this is what you have to believe.
White guilt is a cultural creation.
You feel guilty for being a man.
That is a cultural creation.
I even used to have a little bit of those white male guilt things.
And then you start to think, well, why do I have white male guilt?
Well, because that is what the culture imprints upon our brains.
And because of that, that becomes our mindset.
And then we feel bad about things that we shouldn't feel bad about.
And then our lives...
Start to suck for a lot of people.
One of my favorite Nietzsche quotes is, Vanity is the fear of appearing original.
And I've always really liked that, that they break us, and then they give us puppet strings to hold us up, and then they think they have fixed us.
And the idea of not being broken by culture, not being told you're bad because of your race or your gender, particularly white males, or because of original sin, or because you're successful and therefore you're an exploiter of others.
Become negative towards yourself.
Because then when you're negative towards yourself, what happens is people will sell you freedom from that negativity.
Ah, okay, well, you're a cisgendered, privileged white male, but if you give up this power, if you give us this money, if you give us this deference, if you give us this affirmative action, if you give us all this stuff, we will wave the magic wand and make your sin, which we have created in you, disappear for a short amount of time until we come back for more. disappear for a short amount of time until we come
It's kind of like a self-prickly emotional shakedown that is inflicted upon others, and it requires that you participate as an adult, at least voluntarily, because there's many ways to say no to that, to the betterment of everyone.
Yeah, the churches even used to sell those indulgences, so if you would send or whatever, you could make a donation to your local bishop, and then they would take away those sins with the money, and then...
It's the same principle.
There is a battle for the mind, and I tell people this every day.
There is a war for your mind.
And when you figure out, well, that seems weird.
No, everything you look is trying to impress upon you that you are weak or that you're vulnerable or that you are not liked by other people.
And then, of course, advertisers are happy to sell you a solution.
And because the media makes its money through advertising, a lot of things people don't talk about as it relates to mindset is that The media is perfectly happy to tell you that you have all these problems because the advertisers who support those media companies are always there to sell you a solution.
Yeah, and I think on the left in particular, they have, you know, the free market doesn't work.
Capitalism doesn't work.
Even the family doesn't work.
I mean, what is government-run education other than a massive spit in the face of family functionality?
Well, you see, if it wasn't for the government forcing children to go to school, parents just would let their children lay about and eat dust bunnies off the floor and wouldn't care about them getting educated.
And this constant idea that that which is natural to human beings is somehow disastrous and is going to lead to the destruction of the society, which is why you need to surrender your freedoms as a bad person to people who are going to order you to be good.
Look at Obamacare.
Well, you see, people just aren't going to care enough about each other when it comes to health care, and people aren't going to save for their retirement.
So we need old age pensions, and people aren't going to save for their unemployment.
So we need unemployment insurance.
And there's just all of this massive distrust.
If they can get you to distrust yourself, to distrust your community, to distrust horizontally your fellow tax serfs, then they have a perfect solution for duology.
Just surrender to us and we'll make all of your evil go away by planning your life and controlling you as we see fit.
I mean, it's working.
The whole idea of higher education was created to train people to work in factories, get people used to sitting in the eight-hour shift and nine-hour shift.
There's nothing natural about...
Education, especially with children.
They're indoctrinated.
They're taught to be bored.
They're taught to be conformist.
They're taught to all stare at the wall.
I enjoyed college because it was nonconformist.
I hated school.
I didn't perform well at all in school because it was mindless conformity.
So that is the mindset.
The mindset that we learn is conformity.
And if you think about it, if you or I were designing – imagine that we are sociopaths rather than You know, people who want limited to no government.
Well, you would design society exactly how it's designed.
You would want people to not think for themselves.
You would want to get people fired from a job because maybe they tweeted something that goes against what people think.
You would want to ruin the life of somebody like Ken Bone because maybe he said that he didn't think it was illegal for Jordan Zimmerman to shoot Trayvon Martin.
You would want to ruin the lives of everybody who doesn't conform.
So right now...
We have the mindset of conformity.
The greatest example of that is the whole Apple, here's to the crazy ones commercial.
Here's to the crazy ones who buy – and I own an Apple, so it isn't that I'm a sheep in my own way because I like the phone.
But I don't think that I'm a wild, crazy man because I bought an iPhone and because I have a Mac.
They're just computers that work well for what I need them to do.
So the advertising industry is like, boy, if you want to express your individuality, Please buy our highly marked-up corporate products.
Right.
I said this years ago, and I've repeated it, but it's been a while, so we'll consider it a new song.
But my basic principle from the beginning of what I've been doing for the last 10 years, Mike, is that there is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
You can't get ripped enough.
You can't get rich enough.
You can't get pretty enough.
You can't get consumerist enough.
You can't get successful enough.
To take away all of that.
And we've seen all of this.
You know, I mean, if money, fame, good looks, glamour, and talent was enough, then Marilyn Monroe wouldn't have died like a dog in her own filth with drugs.
There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity, although people will often try and tell you that there is, especially if it's those same people who've provoked that insecurity in you.
And that self-confrontation of what are my deepest values, what do I need to examine and confront in myself, what is inflicted upon me and what is mine?
Like, what is the scar tissue that social, quote, values have inflicted on me and what is my genuine flesh and organs underneath?
That is...
A great challenge, and it's been known, you know, in Socrates' first commandment, know thyself, because if you don't know yourself, you can't know the world, you can't know truth, and you can't know others, is a real challenge, and it used to be quite common.
I think in the religious aspect, they did have this to go for, the religious mindset, which was, you know, you need to examine yourself, your frailties, your strengths, your weaknesses.
But this looking inward aspect is something that's really, I think, been de-emphasized over the past couple of decades, And I think that the consequences have been pretty dire.
Yeah, there's people, they don't know anything about themselves, and it is a mindless conformity.
So the Apple example was just a way to say that even when you're an individual, it's within these safe structures of conformity.
And that is the message that everybody is taught to, is be a conformist.
And what people start to realize is that Yeah, mindset really is a choice, and that is what I talk about in Gorilla Mindset and I talk about MAGA Mindset.
It always cracks me up when people who haven't read Gorilla Mindset say, oh yeah, Mike just wrote another book on how to be like an alpha male.
And of course, there's nothing in Gorilla Mindset about being an alpha male or being anything, but the idiots haven't even read the book.
The whole book is premised on the idea that just live life on your terms, but you have to find out what those terms are.
You have to find out how you're going to allow people to treat you.
Another example that you and I agree on is I've written about a lot of times you've got to cut off people in your family.
How dare you?
How dare you say that you shouldn't talk to your family?
And I go, well, being part of the family for a lot of people is an accident of birth.
That can cause a lot of drama into your life.
So if your family is bringing you drama and destroying your life, then you have to move on and find other people.
When I tell people that, they think that I'm crazy and they have a visceral angry reaction.
And I go, why are you having that reaction?
And when you ask people that, they can't even give you an answer.
Well, of course, people have very little issue with divorce, and divorce is when a relationship catastrophically doesn't work out, and that's someone you chose.
You know, you had a big, wide playing field.
You got to choose.
You got to date that person.
You got engaged.
You had lots of opportunities to say yes or no to them over the years, and then people get married, and significant proportions of marriages, as you know, end in divorce.
And so for me, it was like, okay, well, if you say, well, I have to spend the rest of my life with the family I never chose, that I was accidentally born into, that I may or may not have things in common with, who may or may not have treated me well.
Of course, if your family treats you well, then you owe them the justice of love and respect and so on.
But this idea that you must stay with your biological family of origin forever and ever and ever, if people believe that, then they also have to be in favor of making divorce illegal.
Because if you can't voluntarily choose to leave relationships you never chose to enter, then you sure as hell can't voluntarily choose to leave relationships you did choose to enter.
But it is a challenge, of course, although I think that bringing voluntarism to every relationship makes it better.
Families improve when people are there by choice.
And who the hell would want someone coming over out of a sense of grim, desperate, defeated obligation rather than for the joy of your company?
A lot of people unfortunately do.
That's another thing about when you have a toxic mindset is a lot of people feed off of negativity and toxicity because that's the only way they know how to give and receive love, as sick as it sounds.
A lot of people, it's like Munchauser.
Yeah, Munchausen by proxy, yeah.
Yeah, where the mother will make the child sick so that she can heal the child.
A lot of people have that in their own relationships where they want to create drama and bring drama into people and their family, and then they want to have that drama become resolved and they become addicted to that high and that low of the drama and toxicity.
So another aspect of mindset too, and that's where the family stuff comes in, is shame and guilt.
I always tell people you've got to find ways to eliminate Shame and guilt.
And people go, well, that is crazy.
How could you not want to feel shame, and how could you not want to feel guilt?
And I go, well, where do your feelings come from?
I always say, where do your feelings of shame come from?
Well, I feel them inside myself.
No, you don't.
Because in different cultures, you feel shame in different ways.
As you know, if you've traveled, in Japan it's perfectly acceptable for people to...
Rather than blow their nose, they sniffle up very loudly.
Now, if you did that in America, you would feel shame because those go against the cultural rules.
So most of what we identify and feel as shame, we feel that because society has told us not to feel that way.
And then you have to ask yourself, well, why did society want us to feel that way?
Well, a lot of ways is to keep us held down, to keep us all to be conformist because when you eliminate feelings of shame, you're finally living life how you want to live.
And if you're living life how you want to live, that might be different than the way the corporate overlords and the bankers want you to live.
Yeah, and people make the mistake of thinking, well, if they eliminate shame, they eliminate self-criticism.
But shame is not self-criticism, any more than some sort of aversion therapy by hitting you with a wiffle bat is the same as reasoning you into some better position or some more rational position.
Guilt, shame, these are all just emotional self-attacks designed to train you to avoid particular situations and circumstances.
Self-criticism is a different matter, where you say, well, you know, I did this, I could have done it better here, I'm going to improve, like what you talk about with the A-B testing.
Figuring out how to improve things is a rational process of self-evaluation of your ideals compared to your outcomes.
It's not just using this cheese grater of guilt to shred your heart into a fine...
Parmesan-type dust of self-reproach.
That doesn't teach you anything.
All it does is teach you to avoid particular situations, which inhibits you rather than expands your potential.
Right.
Classic examples of what you and I do for a living.
The academic would say, you're going to be a philosopher on YouTube.
You can't do that.
You're not a real philosopher.
You always hear these terms like, you're not a real ex.
Well, that's a shame-based attack.
People say, well, Mike, you're not a real journalist, or you're not a real author because you self-published, or you're not a real this, or I don't like the way you look, I don't like the way you sound, I don't like...
Those are shame mechanisms, and what are they designed to do?
To stop us from doing what we actually want to do and what we're successful at.
That's why I tell people, especially, I go, look, all those shame-based attacks are designed to keep you from doing what you want to do.
It has nothing to do with morality.
There's nothing immoral.
Without getting too far into the morality aspect, there's nothing more about, I want to write, so therefore I self-published books.
But people try to shame me and humiliate me because it's all published.
Meanwhile, I'm laughing all the way to the success.
But that holds a lot of people back.
Even Shawna, for example, said, well, I don't want to start a YouTube.
And I go, why?
She goes, well, people make fun of me.
So her concern with shame, idiots on the internet, is holding her back from how she wanted to live her life.
And she's gotten better.
But that is, again, mindset training.
You have to learn how to deal with haters and negativity, the shame-based attacks.
But when you do it, that's when you're finally living free.
Oh, yeah.
No, that's an excellent point, this question of what is a real philosopher.
That, of course, is a philosophical question anyway.
And it always struck me when I was taking these courses in school, Mike.
It just blew my mind.
And I'm going to just blow everyone's mind by mentioning this.
So all of the academics taught philosophers who were almost never themselves.
And I think that if everyone you study is not doing what you're doing, how on earth can you claim what a real philosopher is?
Well, that's something that you're doing.
Socrates, not an academic.
I guess you could say Plato and Aristotle to some degree.
But Nietzsche himself, you know, was a philologist for a little bit and then fled university for a variety of reasons.
I think a lot to do with creativity and inhibitment and so on.
And so if you're teaching all of these people who never tried to get that approval, that doctorate, and so on, then what you're saying is that a philosopher is the opposite of all the philosophers that we're studying.
And the idea that a philosopher is someone who conforms to someone's judgment, who is paid and protected by the state, and as soon as they get that person's approval, then they're suddenly, magically, a philosopher, not because they've come up with original thoughts or arguments or ideas or perspectives,
but But because they've got the seal of approval of a government bureaucrat, and academics are government bureaucrats, the idea that that's what makes you a philosopher, is the stamp of approval from a government bureaucrat for your conformity to norms of a bureaucracy, I mean,
that is so far from what a philosopher ever has been, that anybody who says that, again, it's such a transparently, ooh, I'm just going to get him to stay quiet and self-attack, and, you know, if you don't, these arrows, if you don't believe in them, they're just little doves that float around delighting your day.
Yeah, and the mindset basis of that is, again, you have to reprogram your mindset.
And that's what Gorilla Mindset does and kind of like MAGA Mindset.
So people who watch you and listen to me are more a thinking type.
So I've done the whole Tony Robbins thing, and it didn't get much value out of it.
Well, why not?
Because like, yeah, you know, screaming and jumping around, that really...
That doesn't work for me.
I've tried it.
I've tried that mechanism.
For me, what works for me is more logical appeals like you said.
You would go, well, if my mindset is I can't be Stefan Molyneux, a philosopher, because I don't have a certificate, then logically you would say, well, Aristotle was not a We're good to go.
A couple of other names, aesthetic philosophers.
I don't think Epicurus was trained as a philosopher.
I think that Descartes started as a mathematician, if I'm not mistaken.
But again, those are logical appeals, and when you use those logical appeals, you're literally reprogramming your mindset.
So then you're saying, well, yeah, wow, I never thought of it that way, and because I'm thinking about it this way, you're reprogramming your mindset.
And that is also a form of self-talk.
Right, and the idea that a stamp of approval is needed to think originally and creatively and make reasoned arguments from evidence using logic, the idea that that is somehow impossible or illegitimate unless you have a particular certificate from a government bureaucrat, It's an argument from authority.
Well, if you have this PhD in philosophy from XYZ College, then I'll accept what you have to say.
That is the exact opposite of philosophy.
The argument from authority, the reason why there is philosophy, you know, I think as Richard Feynman, the great physicist, used to say, all science is founded on skepticism of authority and experts.
All philosophy is necessary because experts and authorities are so often wrong.
So anyone who says, well, in order to be a philosopher or a thinker, you need to have a stamp of approval from somebody on authority, that's the exact opposite of philosophy.
And, you know, we know that there's no life after death because Socrates would be coming back, walking dead style, stalking the horns of academia, and head-butting.
These empty-headed authoritarian idiots for doing the opposite of what he, 2500 years ago, emphasized, which is bring reason and evidence and passion to the masses and you can ignite the fires of wisdom and knowledge in all you come across rather than locking them away in some dead ivory tower and having them genuflect before bureaucrats until they get a stamp which proves they're the opposite of what they claim.
And that's true of everything.
And again, the mindset shift is fundamental.
That is true of, well, people say, Mike, I want to do more journalism.
How can I do journalism?
Go outside.
Look around.
Take pictures.
Talk to people.
Take an Uber driver.
I told people you could write a book on conversations with your Uber drivers.
Because Uber drivers, some of them are immigrants.
Some of them are college kids who can't find jobs.
Some of them are men who can't afford their alimony and child support, so now they're driving Ubers.
Some of them are software engineers, but things went south.
I've had great conversations with my Uber drivers.
Well, that's journalism.
People go, I want to write a book.
Write a book.
Nothing is stopping you.
But it's that mindset that you have to have legitimacy.
You have to have these stamps of approval from all these other people.
And that controls so much of what people do.
And when you deprogram yourself, you realize how – I mean I'll give you an example.
I mean there's many.
I used to be the guy like I was really – I was big, great body, you know.
I was like, man, I'm small.
I need to get bigger.
She thought I looked like a monster.
She was like, I can't believe what is wrong with you.
I'm actually happiest with my body now.
I looked the worst that I probably looked in five years because I realized that when you read muscle magazines, even if you're at my age, unconsciously you start to think, well, yeah, what do I have here?
You compare yourself to these idealized norms that aren't even actually true, and you understand that most of what we read is propaganda, and it's propaganda to get us to change our behavior in a way that they want us to.
I always say you're doing what they want you to, and they is often like a mysterious sort of catch-all.
But when you read advertising, you read magazines, outside magazines, I'll read outside magazines.
I don't read any magazines now.
People go, why?
Because what I do is I'm like, I need this Bear Grylls knife and I need this.
No, I don't need any of that stuff.
But when you put that into your mind every day, you begin to think, well, yeah, that looks good.
That's part of human nature.
So a lot of mindset, too, is avoiding the propaganda.
Right.
There are people and situations and ideas that energize you, and then there are those that drain you.
And keeping track of your personal motivation and your personal energy is really essential.
You know, we've all had those conversations where we just, we walk out and it's like, oh man, I need a nap.
I've been battling demons or the deadly, dusty distraction of other people and Find the people with whom you exchange energy and increase energy, feed off each other.
And this is why these conversations with you and the other people I chat with in the show are so fantastic for me and fortunately great for the world as a whole because people see us exchanging energy and positivity and enthusiasm.
They can then bring it to their lives and they can find out who feeds that in themselves.
Now let's talk a little bit because you have, of course, a whole book about it.
Donald Trump's mindset is, to me, nothing short of extraordinary.
It is a force of nature.
And people who've not been in the public eye don't know just how many slings and arrows and acid baths people are constantly hurling at you.
And, I mean, this man, by confronting a power base that controls most of Western civilization, controls untold trillions of dollars, controls the lives of hundreds of millions of people...
One man standing up and confronting that, the combined weight of the Democrats, the media, the establishment, the rhinos, the academics, the newspapers.
I mean, it is an astonishing feat to see a man stand that tall and that firm and not falter.
I mean, I've been watching him for a long time.
I've not seen him falter once.
once doesn't mean he's never made mistakes and we all do that is a force of nature that really should give people pause who are having trouble getting motivated and focused in their own life you know what one man can do another man can do another woman can do what do you think is the basis of it is it instinctual do you think he knows what he's doing how does it work for him do you think yeah just to put what you put um said in context
people always say, Donald Trump has a fragile ego, and I tell people, you've obviously never been attacked, because if you have a fragile ego, even the kind of so-called abuse I take, I take it hard every day, and when I first started taking it a couple years ago as my profile went, you feel kind of like crappy.
That's why Gorilla Mindset and MAGA Mindset isn't just a book that I made up.
I dealt with everything, the trolls, the haters, the media attacking you, the media lying about you, and with Trump, It is part instinctual, part trained.
He went to church as a kid.
Believe it or not, going to church worked out well for him.
He went to, I think Norman Peale was his name, but he had been a pastor on the art of positive thinking.
And Trump, as a young kid, his parents would take him there, and they would just spend hours on the power of positivity, the power of having a positive outlook on life.
So he was grown up into that mindset training of think positive thoughts.
Don't dwell on the negative.
Focus on how you can improve in your life.
Even when you're in a negative situation, focus on how – because we all have hurt in our life and we all have problems sometimes.
But rather than say, oh my god, I have a problem.
My life is over.
The positive aspect of that is, okay, I have a problem.
When I solve this problem, my brain is going to be so much more resilient and so much more resourceful.
And then when life is going good for me, I'm going to have more energy to make life happen for me in better ways.
Well, that is all sort of positive thinking and that is what Trump learned from a very young age and he just took it to an extreme level.
Yeah, a problem solved is a wonderful thing because it's an area in your life you need not fear again, right?
So, you know, when you're first attacked by the media, yeah, maybe it's like, oh man, this is bad, you know, this is, oh my goodness, right?
And then you survive, you flourish, you continue, and it's like, oh, okay, so now attacks by the media I don't have to be afraid of anymore.
Every successful vanquishing of a challenge, of an attack, of an underminer, of a hater, of a troll is one thing you don't have to be scared of.
You're not succumbing to problems.
You are eliminating fear in the future.
And if you have that approach to things, it gives the kind of strength that looks almost superhuman to other people.
But it's not an act of willpower.
It's an act of accepting the reality that overcoming problems is building a strong basis for the future.
Yeah.
And that is a mindset methodology.
It's a mindset choice you make in the moment.
Wherever you feel freaked out or rushed or hurried or anxious, You tend to hit these negative cycles where, oh my god, I have a problem and I'm going to dwell on that problem, which makes the problem appear bigger because we zoom in on our problems like a microscope.
And then suddenly the entire totality of our existence becomes this little problem.
And then with the right mindset techniques, the tactics, you zoom out of the problem.
You zoom out and then you have a more global viewpoint.
And then finally you actually have solutions or you feel different about it.
And then you're able to take that Resilience and resourcefulness, you can apply that to other areas of your life.
But again, you don't learn that in school.
At all.
You're not going to do that.
And what do you think has been happening?
I was just chatting with Vox recently about this.
The right, or I guess you could say the alt-right now, seems to have finally figured out that the left isn't going to compromise, that making nice isn't going to work, that trying to get them to avoid getting mad at you by virtue signaling and cozying up to them isn't going to work.
What do you think switched in the mindset?
It has a lot to do with Donald Trump.
You could really say he's the primogenitor derivative.
Fundamentally, what do you think has switched in the mindset of conservatives to the point where they are going out and employing the tactics of the left in a far more civilized fashion?
What has switched over in their mindset that has given them the kind of assertiveness that I think has a real chance to turn things around?
The zeitgeist has kind of changed and the reason is because courage is contagious.
So you're watching people For years, we were kind of isolated.
People like you, me, Vox, Roosh, other people.
Roosh had a whole country try to take that guy down.
Talk about somebody who's really been through a lot based on an article that they lied about him.
So what happens though is people have watched him and been like, wow, they have taken on us for years.
That gives them a little bit more courage.
But then Trump is us times a thousand.
So every day when people watch the media go after Trump and they see him pushing through, they don't see him apologizing.
That makes a massive shift in the culture for the people who have a kind of more passive mindset.
So in a way, Trump is changing the culture.
I still want people to have an active mindset.
But people who have a passive mindset are kind of saying, hey, Trump is doing this.
He's having fun.
I want to go have fun too.
That's why they say courage is contagious and so is cowardice.
Every day I try to express courage on the internet.
People might say, oh, that's not real courage.
People can hate all they want to hate, but the kind of stuff that I deal with are things that most people wouldn't be able to withstand without extensive training.
So every day you've got to show courage.
Every day Trump is showing courage, and as you know from your Aristotle, how do you learn the virtues?
You learn the virtues by watching exemplars of virtues.
So Trump embodies courage, so other people now are having courage.
And I think that is something that shouldn't be underestimated.
And all the people who say what you and I do is easy, well, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Because there's so many fantastic upsides to what we do.
I mean, we get to work for ourselves.
We're not dependent upon a power structure that is, you know, you're not being captained by fools, which is mostly when you join a larger organization.
You get to set your own hours, your own priorities.
Everybody would be doing what we're doing if it were easy to do.
But it's not.
I mean, because you do have to be consistently pushing the envelope.
Courage, like mastery, is not, well, I'm really good at chopsticks, so next stop, Carnegie Hall.
Well, courage is something where you have to continue to push yourself and your audience into new areas and new challenges because courage is something that is supposed to be continually pushing forward.
You know, like it's like you're an icebreaker.
I mean, if you're not moving forward, you're getting stuck in the ice and becoming immobile.
And so it's not a one-time thing.
Ah, I have achieved courage.
You know, it's like health.
It's a constant maintenance of particular habits.
And you have to get more used to being the sort of the icebreaker of particular conversations in terms of like plowing through the ice.
It is not a one-time thing.
It is a continual process.
It's like a muscle.
All the virtues are like muscles.
If you don't exercise them, they tend to atrophy.
If you're not doing something courageous every day, you're becoming less courageous every day.
Yeah, the work is never done, and a lot of people find that demoralizing, but I find that inspiring.
It's great to know that – I like to look at people who are kind of older than me.
I'm 39.
Scott Adams is 59.
Hey, Scott Adams has a cool life, man.
So instead of thinking, oh, man, I'm getting older.
Boy, my life is over.
Scott Adams is having fun.
Trump is 70.
Trump is 70.
He's having a great life.
So a lot of people think, well, the work is never done.
And I go, well, right, the work is never done because time isn't going to wait on you.
But as you flow through space and time, when you put the work in, you're going to be like, wow, I'm 39.
If you'd have told me at 19, at 19 I thought 39 was old.
I'd feel fantastic.
I get up and I have so much joy and fulfillment and I love what I do.
You're a few years older than me.
You love what you do.
Scott Adams is a few years older than us.
He loves it.
Trump is older than all of us.
He loves it.
I find it inspirational that the work isn't done and that, moreover, if you do put the work in every day, your life will be great no matter how old you are.
Well, you don't become a doctor because you hope the world's going to run out of sick people.
I mean, if you're a doctor, there's always someone to help, and that's what makes it fulfilling and exciting.
So, Mike, let's turn to the question of how you go from mindset to action.
Is it a matter of you prepare, prepare, prepare your mindset, then one day you wake up and you find out that action is easy and you just go and do it?
Or do you prepare in your mindset and then you still have to do this sweaty-faced...
Willpower to make things happen?
Because once you step out of that sort of hamlet room of rumination into the room of emphatic and sometimes dangerous action, that is a huge step for a lot of people.
Is it willpower or is it preparation that makes it easier?
Okay, I'm going to give you a sentence and then I'm going to ask you a question that's not rhetorical.
Think big, start small.
What was your first podcast like?
My first podcast was reading an article that I had submitted to a libertarian website.
And, you know, I remember watching, oh, look, someone listened to it.
Oh, look, someone else listened to it.
And the first donation on the website was, I think, $4.
So let's just say it was not big.
Right.
And I tell people, go watch Joe Rogan podcast number one.
It's Joe and Red Band in front of a Mac, smoking weed.
It's the dumbest thing in the world you'll ever see.
Of course it is!
Of course it is!
Of course!
I started a blog,.wordpress.com.
I didn't even know how to have Cernovich.com as a blog.
I didn't even know how to install WordPress into a blog.
I was just like, oh, okay, it's dangerandplay.wordpress.com.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
It looked like trash.
Five hours for me to figure out how to edit my first XML feed.
I had no idea what I was doing.
Right.
But you're thinking big, but you've got to start small.
The mistake people make is, and a lot of this is due to the whole, the Tony Robbins type of people where they say, you've got to take massive action in your life to change.
No, it's actually the opposite.
You have to take minimal action to change.
Get on YouTube.
Just start a video.
It is going to suck.
Nobody's going to watch it.
You're going to get one view.
Just learn how to make money.
I tell this story all the time.
I was more excited the first month I made $19 off Amazon affiliate income on Danger and Play than I was last month where I made considerably more because it was just like, whoa, people can make money on the internet?
Like, wow, I had no idea.
This is incredible because once I realized, once I made $19 in a month, I realized that I could make an infinite amount.
I just would have to learn how to scale it.
So the key that I tell people is whatever area of your life is, you can't think, well, I'm broke.
I'm going to make a million dollars a year.
No, you're broke and maybe you'll make $10 this month or $20 this month or $100 this month.
But what you start to do is your mindset thinking changes and then you begin to see opportunities that you didn't ever see opportunities.
That's where you go from To abundance.
Once you're abundant, you go, oh, okay.
So I'm Stefan Mauling you and I started a YouTube.
You could just say, oh, I read an article and I got 100 views.
This is dumb.
I'm going to quit.
Or you could say, wow, before it was just me ranting to friends and now I have 100 people watching me.
Beautiful.
Now I'm going to have a million people watching me.
So you think big, but to bridge that divide, you don't have to act big.
Act small.
Well, you know, here's an example of mindset from my own experience.
So back in the day when I first started out on YouTube, I was probably, I don't know, like YouTuber number five or something like that.
But I put out a video and it got 300 views.
Now, I know my videos are regularly getting 100,000 or 200,000 views plus, you know, 100 to 300,000 podcast downloads.
So, you know, half a million a show in total is good.
But, you know, you start with 300 views.
And I remember somebody saying to me, oh, 300 views, that's really bad.
And I said, no, no, no.
Like, imagine if I went to go and give a speech somewhere and 300 people showed up to watch me.
That would be amazing.
That would be fantastic if I'm relatively unknown.
And here, I have a speech.
300 people have watched it, and more and more and more are going to watch it.
It's going to be embedded in the human psyche from here to eternity, and we've only just begun.
And that, of course, you know, somebody's saying, well, that's low views designed to deflate you, but I'm looking and saying, well, no.
I've just spoke to 300 people.
How much work would I have to do in my life to get a speech as an unknown where 300 people would come and see me, let alone all the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands who are going to see that down the road?
And that's just an example of mindset.
And people will try and squelch your ambitions a lot of times because if you succeed, your courage is going to be contagious to them and they're going to have to confront their own smallness, which is another way of saying they're going to have to Accept their own potential for greatness.
And a lot of people will try and keep you down so that your example of flourishing and of thriving and of achieving success and influence in the world challenges their smallness, which makes them uncomfortable.
Yeah, it's the reflection.
So things, the magic mirror, oftentimes you reflect inadequacy.
So an example I always give to people is people like to make fun of the way I talk.
And my answer to that is, well, I have a big podcast.
A lot of people listen to my podcast.
A lot of people watch my Periscopes.
The reason they try to make fun of me is because they realize, well, this guy isn't letting these things stop him.
He's doing whatever he wants to do.
Oh, well, then I'm not doing what I'm...
What's your excuse, right?
If I can have a podcast and a big Periscope and everything else, that reflects back onto other people, and they go, oh, man, this is uncomfortable because I'm not living up to my own potential.
So that is where actually...
And that is another mindset thing you learn to deal with the haters and everybody else, is that they don't actually hate you, but when they look at you, their own inadequacies are being reflected back at them.
And that makes them feel vulnerable, and rather than improve themselves, they want to bring you down to make you feel the way they feel.
So the way I always put it is, all of us, you want people to feel a certain way.
I want people to feel like me.
I want people to wake up and think, you know what?
We're going to have problems today, but we're going to make it happen.
We're going to have a great day every day.
You wake up, you want people to be enlightened.
You want people to be rational.
That's human nature.
We want to impose our wills in a good way on the universe, right?
Well, the same is true of negative people.
People who wake up feeling like trash and with hatred in their heart and negativity, they want other people to feel that way, too.
And that is why mindset is, of course, there are multiple aspects.
One is, you know, guerrilla mindset, there's a chapter, mindset is a lifestyle.
As strong as my mindset is, if you put me around negative, toxic people, then my mindset would be decreased because they're imprinting their thoughts and their will onto me.
So I want only people who want to impose a positive will on me in my life.
You know, if there was someone in your life who had some nasty communicable disease, you know, that they'd sneeze on you, you'd want them to wear a mask, you'd wear a mask, but how is it any different if they take that mask off and say ugly things to you designed to bring you down?
How is that any different from a communicable disease?
It just happens to be one of verbal abuse or undermining or sarcasm or snarkiness or whatever it is, eye-rolling, all the stuff that's designed to make you feel small...
You know, this smallness is a socially transmitted disease, and it's transmitted verbally rather than through mucus.
And this, to me, was one of the great challenges of growth.
I always knew, Mike, that I was going to do something fantastic with my life, and I've always been planning and plotting to do it.
I've written like 30 plays, hundreds of poems, like a half dozen novels, and it took forever.
It took forever for me to be ready to do what it is I finally started doing 10 years ago, and then it took a long time To become as, you know, a quarter of a billion downloads and views, to become as big as I am now.
It took forever.
Now, along the way, there were people that I had to keep my ambitions hidden from.
You know, like a precious plant, like hoarding the last scrap of food in a city of evil people.
You know, I had to just keep it hidden under the bushel, right?
And then when I began to finally have a platform, and I tried going through regular platforms in art worlds, in the academic world, the business world, and all that, and publishing worlds.
Eh, you know, they didn't want to know.
When I finally had that platform, Mike, and I began to really grow, and I recognized that the rubber was hitting the road and there was really no limit to what it is I'd be able to achieve, and I still consider myself in the infancy of my potential.
There were people I couldn't share it with.
There were people I tried to share it with.
And then there were people who just wanted to...
And that is a very, very challenging moment because you really...
I don't think fundamentally you can be bigger than the people around you let you be.
Because the people whose companions you choose...
The companions you choose are the definition of what you think your potential is.
And I really believe the people in my life who think I can achieve anything are right.
The people in my life, if they think I can't achieve anything, I think they turn out to be right as well.
And this vulnerability to the mindset of those around us is something I think a lot of people don't understand because we all want to be like these Randian heroes.
We're so secure in our own mind.
It doesn't matter what anyone else says.
No, we're social animals.
We're not cats.
We're dogs.
We're herd animals.
The opinions of those around us matters to us whether we like it or not, whether we say we care about it or not.
It has a huge effect.
There's no individual mind.
I'm not saying we're a Borg, but we are very dependent on the enthusiasms or the contempt of those around us.
And recognizing that fact means that your ambitions are tied to your horizontal social environment, and you can't be bigger or more powerful than people around you want you to be.
And I think when people understand that, they understand that success is a mindset that includes the mindset of those around you.
Sorry for that long speech, but I hope that makes some kind of sense.
No, you're right.
It goes back to philosophy of identity.
One of the best books I've read in college was The Mind's Eye.
What is I? What is the self?
The self is socially constructed, and the self is constantly being constructed.
There is a – what's the parable?
The idea that if you're riding a boat across the ocean and you're changing a plank here, you're changing a pole here, by the time the voyage is concluded, you're a completely different boat.
Well, the same is true of ourselves, our consciousness, our identity.
We are socially constructed beings.
There is no lone wolf.
Aristotle has said, if you are, man is a social animal, he who isn't is a beast or a god.
You're either a Ted Kaczynski living in the wilderness or you're a god and I haven't met any gods in my life.
So we are social animals and because of that, our consciousness and our identity is socially constructed.
Yes, we can take an active approach to it.
But we have to be careful about who we're around.
And you only want to be around people who are inspirational.
And that's why when I tell people to do this, a lot of people brace with the idea.
But I go, every time you're with somebody, I want you to rate them from one to five.
One is you feel like, wow, that was like, when I leave this podcast, I'll have ideas in my head.
I'm going to go write.
I'll be nicer to Shauna because I'll have more dopamine.
I'll be like, oh, baby, I love you.
Our life is so great.
It's a one.
Okay?
Okay.
Three is just like, oh, okay, that was a nice chat.
That person's okay.
And then five is like, oh, God, okay, I got to get my head right.
I'm in a bad mood.
And when you do that, you start to realize a couple things.
One is that you spend more time with the fives than the ones because the ones have so much going on in our lives that we just don't want to jibber-jabber all day.
I always tell people when we're done with this conversation, we're not on Skype here for 30 minutes jibber-jabbering about life.
You're back to editing, and I'm back to work, and we're back to writing.
So you realize that you have to start consciously seeking out the ones, and what does that make you do?
Well, then you realize I want to be the kind of person who inspires other people, so I have to up my game because that is the only way that I'm going to get to stay in the room with the people who up my game.
And then your self becomes reconstructed.
But instead of it being reconstructed by negative people, it's only positive, high-achieving people.
And then suddenly, look at how big your year has been, my year, Paul Joseph Watson, Vox Day, Milo, Gateway Punnett, Scott Adams.
There are so many of us who have, even though we're doing our own things and we're not necessarily working together in a sense, but All of us are rising up together because you're looking around and being like, ah, you know, Paul Joseph Watson has a good YouTube.
You know, maybe I need to do some of that.
And a lot of people see my Twitter and they think, oh yeah, the Twitter's good.
And people watch your stuff and they realize, yeah, you can actually have a big philosophy YouTube channel.
Isn't that really cool?
And Scott Adams, you can be 59 and post a selfie of yourself with a shirt off.
And that's actually kind of funny, you know?
It's cool.
So people begin to realize that there are more possibilities than they ever believed.
And then everybody's game is up.
Now let's end up, Mike, with the hard sell for the guerrilla mindset, for the mega mindset.
Because everyone, when they contemplate breaking out of historical limitations and the mindset that is inherited rather than created, they feel that fear.
And this word is overused, but it is an existential fear.
And I remember it myself.
Who am I going to be?
Without limitations.
Who am I going to be if I can achieve anything that I want to achieve?
Who am I going to be as a being of pure will and desire and drive?
I don't know.
Because so much about our life is inherited where that is not what you're supposed to do.
It's considered dangerous.
It's considered extreme.
It's considered nasty.
It's considered whatever, right?
So everybody knows that fear.
It's like you say, on the other side of this fence is the promised land.
But this fence is electrified, and it can jump up at you, and it's got spikes, and so on.
So everybody sees the fence.
Give them a sense, if you don't mind.
What does it look like on the other side when you've broken through?
And that first step is hell.
After that, it becomes progressively easier to the point where now stuff that used to terrify me, I barely even notice anymore.
What is it like for people?
What can they look forward to when they finally do break out of limitations?
Your life becomes like a dream.
It is not an exaggeration for me to say that I think that I'm living in a dream life.
Because every day I'm doing exactly what I want to do, when I want to do it, Work doesn't feel like work.
The hours I put in doesn't feel like hours I'm putting in.
So what most people have never developed is a vision for their life.
Where do I want to be?
Where do I want to wake up?
What do I want my life to be like?
And the reason is because when you have no vision, the people are going to perish.
When you have no vision, your life is going to perish.
So you focus on these immediate things.
But when you focus on your life vision...
Hard doesn't feel hard anymore because you realize you are working towards something.
It's kind of like if there's an expression, a dead-end job.
If you're in a job and you're making $12 an hour and that is all you think you're ever going to make in that job, that is going to impact how you feel every minute of every day of that job for the rest of your life.
But if you feel like I'm working towards something bigger than myself, I'm working towards a bigger project, then everything just becomes like a minor annoyance.
It doesn't become painful.
You have this Wile E. Coyote moment where you're running and don't look down because everything that you thought was true about the world is now not under you anymore and you feel like you're going to fall.
Don't look down towards the problems.
When you look closer to your vision, you don't feel pain the way you used to feel.
You certainly don't feel depressed.
You certainly don't feel anxiety.
I used to feel anxiety.
I used to feel depression.
Now I have way more stress than I've ever had in my life.
You know this.
When you're growing...
The only worst thing than growing not fast enough is you're growing too fast.
So I have a mixed stress every day of my life that would have crushed me five years ago, but now I don't even register to stress.
I just register it as more opportunity.
So even negative feelings don't feel negative anymore because now you know you're working towards your vision and your dream.
Right, right.
Very, very well put.
And we'll close it off here.
Just wanted to remind people, of course, two great books, Guerrilla Mindset and Maga Mindset.
We'll put links to those below.
Just click and get them.
It's a small financial investment.
It will completely pale in effect to what you can achieve in life.
Like I dropped $20,000 on therapy.
It was the very best investment I ever made in my life.
But you can get a huge amount of value out of Mike's books for substantially less than that.
So you can, of course, check the links below.
Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com slash Cernovich.
Dangerandplay.com is Mike's website, like myself.
He gives most of the stuff away for free.
And then you can help support him by consuming his work.
Periscope.tv slash Cernovich.
I'm sure we'll chat maybe one more time before...
The crossroads of Western civilization known as the U.S. election, but thanks so much for your time.
Thanks, of course, for all of your work, and I look forward to talking again.
