Josh Terry Plays

Here is a scientifically proven fact about how your mind works. If you punish your brain for doing the wrong thing, it will stop doing the specific thing you punished it for. But if you reward your brain for doing the right thing, it will keep doing the specific thing you rewarded it for. And so, if you try to change your behavior by punishing yourself, you might stop doing the bad thing you were doing, but whatever you do next will be completely unpredictable. Because punishment only tells you what not to do. But if you focus on rewarding yourself for doing the right thing, you will predictably do more and more of the thing you want to keep doing. So you can keep hating yourself if you want, but it's completely ineffective at getting yourself to become the person you want to become.

Have you noticed that in the last hundred years of television, there have been no good dads? At best, they are fat, lovable idiots. And at worst, they are cruel, unthinking abusers. In the film Pretty Woman, there’s a quote, “people put you down long enough, and you start to believe it,” that’s exactly what we’ve done to men. Yes, men are often cruel and stupid. But if the only thing they’re shown is evidence of their ineptitude, that is what you will get. Because men are kind and romantic monsters who need direction. Stop telling men what not to do and how wrong they are. Start showing them how amazing you believe they could be, and you will be stunned by the strength, power, and beauty of the love you are met with. #selfdevelopment #mindset #mentalframeworks #motivation

If you're trying to get something done and you aren't doing it, remember this. If you're struggling to lift a weight, you can either push harder or make the weight lighter. That’s it. And so, in life, if you're trying to get a task done, you can either make the task easier or try harder. Increase your commitment. Or reduce the commitment. Those are your options. Do one or the other and you will win. #selfdevelopment #mindset #mentalframeworks #motivation

If you’re too hard on yourself, then stop thinking you’re the adult who’s supposed to have it together. Think of yourself as the kid who needs help learning how and try to help that kid. This changes everything because you wouldn’t beat up a kid for not getting everything done. You’d do your best to troubleshoot and tell him it’s okay that he messed up, but the stuff needs to get done, so let's figure out what went wrong. Were you tired? Then how do we get you rested? Were you distracted? Great, why? Were you scared of the work in front of you, or did you just want to eat donuts and watch video games? Then let’s have fun, but if we do too much of that life becomes a mess, so let’s set a limit. This is how you improve someone else’s behavior. So this is how you have to improve your own. Most “bad behavior” or failure comes from unrealistic expectations or bad planning. In other words, we try to do impossible things or we try to do them in an impossible way. So look at the tasks you assigned yourself and figure out first if it they were unrealistic assignments. Then, if you think they’re achievable, break down what stopped you from getting them done and create a realistic strategy for fitting them into your schedule the next time. Don’t beat yourself up when you fail. Help yourself figure out how you could do better. #motivation #mentalframeworks #mindset #selfdevelopment

If people lie to you all the time, then you’re punishing them for telling the truth. When someone who has lied to you decides to finally tell the truth and you get upset, they learn that telling the truth is painful. Your experience of that moment is betrayal, but their experience is that they finally did the right thing and got punished for it. So they’ll be more likely to lie to you again. Because you are creating negative feedback that says they will experience pain if they tell the truth. So if you want people to be honest with you, you must reward them for being honest. Show them how much you appreciate their clarity, even when it hurts, or they will lie to you just so you stop hurting them. #motivation #mentalframeworks #mindset #selfdevelopment

If you don’t know what you want, you need to practice identifying what you want. You don’t just go from a wandering nobody to a person on a mission because you discover your truth and live happily ever after pursuing your passion. You pick one small thing you want, and you act on it even if it seems unimportant. You go after a job you want, have an adventure you’ve always thought about, or help someone just because you want to. And then you learn. You learn a bit about what you like and don’t like and what you want to do next, and you do something a little bigger. You pick a bigger project or help a couple more people, and then you do it again. You don’t discover what you want to do. You build the skillset of noticing and acting on what you want to do until you are doing it throughout so much of your life that when people look at you, they envy you and wish they were lucky like you and had a purpose. And you just smile because you know it wasn’t luck because your reason to exist was never a discovery. It was a skillset. And you’ve become a master. #mindset #motivation #mentalframeworks #selfdevelopment

There's a point at which everything you learn requires you to learn the opposite thing. If you learn to be patient then eventually you'll need to learn when to be impatient. If you learn to control your anger, then you'll have to learn when it's good to be angry. And if you learn to be gentle, then you must learn when to put up a fight. Life isn’t made up of a set of solutions for you to find. It’s built on extreme behaviors you learn to balance. #selfdevelopment #mentalframeworks #motivation #mindset

The scariest thing about artificial intelligence can be explained by the paperclip maximizer. If you created an AI that is more intelligent than humans and you told it to maximize the number of paperclips on earth. It would take everyone out just doing its job. First it would turn all available metal into paperclips destroying society in the process, and then it would start on humans. Because that's its job. And while this example is a bit far out and paper clips might not cause the end of the world, if you told an AI to stop all war it might decide the way to do that would be to remove all the people so no one can go to war. But I think the most likely threat is that someone with a lot of power will try to fix people and end up controlling them. There is no stopping the progress of artificial intelligence. The path forward is to embrace and adapt to the new technology faster than the people who have plans for your future. #ai #artificialintelligence

A king must have his just rewards #mindset #motivation #mentalframeworks #selfdevelopment

Here's what you're missing... All of the stuff you're good at

Some people need external pressure to succeed, but others need to create a vacuum of space so they can fill it. Self-development says you should push yourself to grow. But the world exists in a balance of opposing forces. The opposite of pressure is a vacuum. And while some people need the pressure of deadlines, commitments, competition, and a high standard, others need to set boundaries and say no to other people's expectations until there is enough empty space to bring their creations into the world which one are you? #selfdevelopment #mindset #mentalframeworks #motivation

There's a point where you should stop thinking about your dreams. Because if you imagine success, compare it to the life you have today, and feel sad. This is not useful. This is not manifestation. This is not motivation, and it's destructive. Stop thinking about your future self, and get excited about how you could become better today and succeed tomorrow. Whether it's ten years, five days, or three minutes from, think about the future that inspires you to action, not the one that slows you down.

If you're finding it impossible to make progress in your life you need to know this. Most people set themselves up for failure because they're unwilling to do the work that they need to do to succeed. This is not because they're lazy. It's because the steps feel too small and embarrassing. Because you're small, you're not very good at what you do, and a small and embarrassing step is all you can take. So if you want to make progress you need to be willing to look a bit pathetic. Because your tiny efforts are tiny but it's very important that you make those efforts. So embrace the pathetic next best step. Be willing to stick out your chest and be hilariously proud of the tiny thing you can did. Because it will make it more likely for you to do it again tomorrow.

This is my story, the short version. I was a talented kid interested in music, martial arts, painting, gardening, science fiction, and any book I could get my hands on. I went to college when I was fifteen. I was a workaholic and anorexic by the time I was twenty. I burned out after I got a degree in classical violin performance and got a job at a wire rope factory. I tried to become a rock star and joined five different bands at the same time eventually becoming a music teacher obsessed with human development and frustrated because I knew I wasn’t fulfilling my potential. I developed chronic fatigue and sugar addictions I couldn’t break, I became anxious and obsessive-compulsive with a foggy mind, I felt full body pain twenty-four hours a day, and got sick every single week due to a compromised immune system. Then, my oldest friend shot himself in the head; I picked up part of his share of the rent and moved out the same month I maxed the limit on every credit card I had. Then I came to the realization that I was living in a fantasy world of big dreams and ineptitude. I began to focus on my day-to-day existence. I began to coach myself using the fundamentals of learning theory and everything I’d learned about self-development, philosophy, and behavioral science without even knowing that’s what it was called. I asked myself what I could do today that would make tomorrow better. I became debt-free while living on the poverty line and slowly built a future I could be proud of through humble steps. Now, I advise and counsel powerful people. I coach on decision-making, strategy, and optimizing for performance and happiness at the same time. It was a long road to get where I am today. But now I am a man who will never stop. You can be one too. #selfdevelopment #mentalframeworks #motivation #mindset

If you tell yourself you're a bad person all the time, then there is an easy way to improve your life. All you have to do is take one small action that will make your life better, and when you complete it, tell yourself you did a good job. Do this five or six times, and you will have formed a new habit. Because your life is so empty of positivity, just the act of praising yourself will be so different that your brain will notice and change its behavior to get more positivity. Even if it feels weird or fake when you do it, it still works. #motivation #mentalframeworks #mindset #selfdevelopment

Did you know that some people are drawn to the drama of big change and others to the encouragement of small wins? If you’re drawn to the drama of big change, then big goals inspire you to action, and you need to set up an epic plan. But if you’re drawn to the confidence inspired by consistent small changes, an epic plan might discourage or even depress you. And you should create lifestyle shifts that put you on a trajectory toward big results over time. Everyone is different, and implementing the strategy that works for your brain matters more than doing what works for people who are totally different from you. #motivation #mentalframeworks #mindset #selfdevelopment

Learn to flirt with the world. Because if you do that, then you get moments of joy and happiness all over the place. And those moments of joy and happiness fill you up. And now you start coming to people as a filled up person and people see that and they love it, and it's magnetic. If you want to find a connection, create many connections. And through that abundance, you will find the connection that you want. #selfdevelopment #mentalframeworks #motivation #mindset

imagine your life is like this rubber band. This is your reality When you know you’re too out of shape when you know, you’re not the person you should be you’re below your reality. Meaning, according to your reality, your life story, you have tension that is pulling you upwards. So it’s reasonable for you to go to the gym, it’s reasonable for you to try harder, because that gets you back to where you believe you should be. But if you’ve already lost some weight, and you’ve already made some money, and you’ve already gotten some level of success, to match up with what you believe you should be doing, and you’re trying to do more, now you have tension pulling you downward. So it’s actually harder to succeed after you’ve gotten past that rock bottom of tension that is pulling you upwards. And the only way to truly make a difference once you are pushing past your reality, is to change it.

There is a level which you can accomplish something and a level at which you can't. And if you want to make progress, you need to either become more capable or make the thing you're trying to do more doable. #selfdevelopment #mindset #mentalframeworks #motivation

If you’re a quiet person, remember this. Just because other people have a plan and they're saying it loudly doesn't mean your plan isn't worth being heard. Because the loudest voice is often the most thoughtless one. And if you are willing to believe in your plan and push against the noise in the room to present your idea about how things should go, you will first be resisted, then you will be noticed, and then you will be valued. Because your quiet ideas are the ones that people need to hear. #mindset #motivation #mentalframeworks #selfdevelopment