Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

I saw a video recently, speaking of being on my device, but I saw a video talking about a guy who's probably in his 40s,

probably around my age with, I don't know, eight, nine,

10 year old son having a conversation. And he said, you know what our punishment used to be growing up, you know, back on the 80s and 90s, was staying inside. I know. Not being able to go outside was our punishment. And the son was like, what do you mean? I know. like I want to be a punishment for me because I want to be on my phone or on computer or on like video games all day. We're living the punishment voluntarily. Here's the weird thing about it. Here's what's crazy about when you're living in the wrong side of your brain because you're living in the matrix. You're living in the simulation of ordinary life. your great-grandfather, like great-grandpa house, never came home and said to great-grandma,

I had a panic attack behind a mule today.

It's laughable because his brain was working the way it's supposed to work.

They might have had hard days and stress, but not this type of stress.

And here's the weirder part. His moment- moment life was actually pretty boring because he was behind that mule. But his life wasn't boring. A lot of young people today who are living in the Matrix, living in the left hemispheres of their brains, moment to moment, they have zero boredom, but their life is grindingly boring yeah see that's the

thing there's the micro boredom and the metabortem interesting and that's the way to think about it

to say have I eradicated boredom for my life but my life is actually boring then you know you're

on the wrong side and you'll never find meaning until you can break out of that because no one's

actually bored anymore is what I'm hearing you say because we solve the can find, you know, all day along getting a dopamine hit on something, watching something entertaining or funny or what's next or gambling or whatever might be, some type of hit that they don't allow for space to listen to what they're meant to do. I have a colleague at Harvard, a guy named Danilbert you ever had dan gilbert on the show i haven't but i know that you know him right

he's the world's leading expert on bored of he's a visionary social psychologist he's the best in the

business and he's done these experiments where you bring people into the lab young people like

undergraduates they do anything for 20 bucks right yeah yeah and and he makes them sit in in a room where there's

nothing on the walls nothing to do completely silent they have one choice besides sitting there quietly

with a little key fob with a button on it if you touch the button you self-administer a painful

electric shock i don't know how he got through this, this through the internal review board, right?

Right? That's all they can do because he wants to know whether they choose boredom or shocks,

boredom or pain. A quarter of the women shocked themselves. Wow. Two-thirds of the guys.

He's like, I can't take any more. Give me something to do. That's all you need to know, man and women. Right? But altogether, more than half of the people gave themselves pain over boredom. We solved the boredom problem. Your iPhone is the solution to your boredom problem, your device. The problem is that it makes your brain work wrong because when you're never bored, you don't use what's called the default mode networks that are structures in your brain, and you won't find meaning, you'll be in the wrong side of your brain all day long. And so if you wake up and the first thing is you're falling next to your bed, big mistake, and you'll get your phone, then your brain is programmed to that for the rest of the day. And so you're looking at it while you're having your coffee and breakfast. And then you go to work, which is in your guest room, which is a Zoom screen. And then

you're going to date by swiping right, right? And then your friends are a lot of them, mostly on social

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