The Art Of Unlocking Your Inner Peace - Yung Pueblo - #915

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
I was saying to you before we got started, I really have noticed in myself as I've spent more time creating content and talking about challenges in life. I've started to gravitate toward the people that I listen to, or the sorts of topics that I used to consume when I very, very first started. These are people like yourself, Oliver Berkman, Alain de Botton from The School of Life. People that really see the human condition with all of its challenges, all of its shortcomings, all of its foibles and the very unashamed, unabashed self-reflection of luck. We're irrational, we're shaven chimps on a rock, we didn't ask to be here, we don't know how to be here. We're living in an environment that's hopelessly mismatched with the genetics and the biological predisposition that we were given. We've got technology that's moving way quicker than even our brains can keep up, let alone our evolution. It's tough and it's okay, and maybe this comforting sentence will help. That's the center of where I'm at at the moment. I think you slot very nicely into that.

**Yung Pueblo** (1:12)
Yeah, thank you. I mean, you broke it down really beautifully. And it's like, hopefully this sentence builds a little bit of self-awareness, right? Because we're highly imperfect. We're bound to make mistakes. But the reality is that in the process of accepting how imperfect you are, it's almost like you take your power back and you're like, okay, well, I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm not good at. So let me try to build some new, you know, some new skills along the way.

**Chris Williamson** (1:40)
Yeah, I think there's a few different ways that you can do it. Maybe people that are more disposed towards positive affect or extraversion or like high energy, perhaps they would default to kind of laughing it off. You know, they make a joke out of it. It's not so big of a deal. Isn't it silly? Like, look at the way that my brain works.
And then there's different horses for courses. I think if you've got the level of self-reflection of someone like Oliver Berkman, laughing at the absurdity of your own thoughts is probably a little bit harder to do. So, you know, he works through it kind of more methodically. He takes it sort of step by step. He understands, okay, well, this is because of this and this is because of this and this because of this. And then with this very large view, we actually get to, we get some perspective and we step back from being caught up in the torrent of our own thoughts.

**Yung Pueblo** (2:30)
Oh, that's really interesting. You know, it's, it's, I think what's really worked for me is sort of just honestly realizing how flimsy thoughts are, like flimsy and like insubstantial. So to me, when I find myself getting caught up in a thought stream or some narrative that's just building tension, I have to like pull myself back and I'm like, wait, like, why am I hanging on to this thing that's so incredibly impermanent? Like, why am I just, you know, allowing anxiety and tension and heaviness to just continue bubbling up in my mind when you, you know, I'm the one causing this tension. So let me let it go.

**Chris Williamson** (3:04)
It's wild to think how much stress and suffering we have caused ourselves.

**Yung Pueblo** (3:10)
Yeah. And I think that's like the key medicine, right? It's really hard to accept the fact that like the person who hurt you can't heal you. And ultimately your perception and your reaction, all of this of which is happening inside your own mind, that's where the real trouble lies. You know, when you understand that your perception is coded heavily by the past and that it's influencing the way you're seeing things in the present moment and you're not actually seeing them clearly. You're just seeing them through this like heavy coded lens of old pain, old sort of inclinations, sort of defensive, like survivalist mode of living. It makes it really hard to engage with something genuinely.
Honestly, when people ask me, how do you become happy? Well, you have to embrace mental training. You have to train the mind.

**Chris Williamson** (3:58)
Yeah. It's an unruly steed to have between your ears in the same way as a bad horse might be between your legs.
I feel like I have to put this caveat on the internet for the edge cases of people. There are certainly some people for whom the world has mistreated them consistently from when they were a baby until when they were an adult. For those people, I feel bad for you. That being said, the vast majority of the bell curve, with that caveat out of the way, we are the ultimate source of most of our own suffering. We know exactly where our fears lie. We know where our shame is hidden, and we're able to pick at that scab over and over again. We almost get this strange sense of satisfaction when we do that. When we go back over a familiar but painful loop, that we moved through, you did this thing, and you did that thing, and it's going to make this happen, and you didn't do that thing before. You know the path. It's like going on a walk. It's like a little mental walk that you take yourself on, and you turn right when you get to this tree, and you turn left when you get to that stream. When you realize, holy fuck, sure, stuff happens outside, but largely that's just these little sparks. The palisades fire that comes from that is me, perpetuating it, pouring kerosene on it.