 when we look at principles and Elon is one of the best as well when it comes to first principles and we use that as our thesis to approach new things. What are things people can do today based on first principles to maybe understand themselves a little bit better? This is a great question. So before we even ask that question let's go even deeper. Let's understand how do you think in first principles? Because this is this is a question that doesn't get asked. Yes. We are never taught how to think in first principles. How do you think effectively? I see a lot of people trying to solve problems but they're thinking about it wrong and it's kind of like if you have a faulty windshield how are you gonna drive properly? Can you clean that shit up before you can even actually learn how to drive? So the first step is to understand what it feels like to come in come to terms and read first principle thinking. What does it feel like to read a book like Ray Dalio? How do you tell truth from fiction? How do you tell something that's fundamentally strong and based on something real? In physics the first principle is the term comes from some science from physics where all of science is built on a bedrock of first principles. Things you cannot falsify like the speed of light. It is a first principle. It is foundational to a lot of the physics formulas that are derived slowly over time. All of physics and science is derived directly from these fundamental principles. Yeah if that theory of speed of light breaks apart all of physics breaks apart. Exactly. In the same way recognizing being able to the first step is to learn for every human to recognize in themselves how do you know what a first principle is? How can you tell apart a first principle from a second order or a third order principle? That's important and to do that it's important to surround yourself with thinkers like Elon and Ray that frequently think from that standpoint, from that basis. So you have a taste. It's kind of like you're able to taste to get thinking because if most people have been living what you're thinking all their life you can't taste it and you don't even know what you're missing out on and so learning to surround yourself with good thinking and slowly understanding ah okay this makes sense. You start with that. You start there then you start to question some of the ways that you're thinking because thinking is essentially software right? It's a fancy way like we have we are a carbon-based life form right? So most computers are silicon-based machines but let's say we had silicon-based software we'd be able to update or thinking a lot faster. Sadly don't so we have carbon-based we're just going to take a lot longer to iterate. Journaling is a very good way of updating your software, updating your thinking, updating your decision making, analyzing what are the things you did, what are the things you will do, what was the thinking behind your decisions that were faulty right? Where was the fault in logic? Very similar to how you would debug a program. You just like you got an output you didn't want okay what happened and it's it's it's not a thing where you necessarily need to take it personally. Your code it's not moving the way you want it to so how do we figure this out in a way that makes sense. When you put pen to paper you re-cognize it. Cognition means to understand to think to to process. You process the thinking again re-cognize right? You recognize your thoughts on paper and that changes and updates your thinking in almost real time right? So an idea becomes real for the first time when you put it on paper because it goes from like an an intangible thought to a tangible word on a page and as you start to do that your processing becomes better. Your processing becomes better and you're exposed to good thinking you cannot but help update the person you are the thinking that you're surrounding yourself with. That's a very effective way of being able to upgrade your own personality and and your thinking and therefore your actions and your results in life. So the almost like a it's hard to fuck up when you're exposing yourself to really great thinking that you know for sure is fundamentally strong and then slowly you start to apply it in your own life just like anything else. It's a process of osmosis. Okay so let's say people maybe whether they read Dalio's book or or they dive in deep into first principle thinking. Well by the way there's a there's a really good blog post by Tim Urban on the blog. It's called the chef the cook and the chef. The chef the cook the chef sorry the cook and the chef cook and the chef. Wait but why if you just google this it'll lead you to a long article all of wait but why is article usually long but they're very worth it and he talks about how Elon Musk thinks and he describes first principle thinking eloquently and beautifully with cartoons and shit it's really funny. So what's something people can do once let's say they read that. What's something they can do afterwards pen to paper are there questions they can ask themselves. Yeah so so what I would do is I would take I would read principles by Red Alio I would read section one like the there is there is a part about principles life principles read that section and then very similar to what I did with the seeking wisdom book which is go principle by principle and put pen to paper and ask yourself how does this apply in my life that's it understand a principle deeply and then put pen to paper ask yourself how does this principle apply in my life how can I apply it more effectively if you do that for that section I will tell you your your thinking is going to really significantly improve and that's it it's as easy and as hard as that and I'm guaranteeing you less than five percent of the people listening will do that it's hard work it's hard thinking work but if your thinking isn't in line then your life is going to suffer because the results cannot be as precise as your thinking is. Is there any advice you have or you've seen an experience for follow-through to actually do the thing or what is fall like for example let's say you start this process and you go one by one based on first principle thinking and you apply that to certain elements in your life and you write about it is there any mechanisms or systems in place that can give you a greater chance of success yes to follow through on that great question so the one I did that shared is accountability that's a really great one just find someone else who's just as hungry as you are or if more if not more hungry which is ideal um and work with them and say hey I want to do this do you want to do this too we can help each other out we can give each other feedback on each other's kind of thought processes and we can make it like kind of like a co-evolution experience that's fun that's a lot of fun because you got to go with someone doing anything with someone else who's also doing going the same same place it's a lot of fun what's the downside it's kind of like having a gym buddy for your mind right so so that for sure gotta get accountability find someone who is also interested in developing themselves in this way that's like probably my best tip um the second best tip is if you're doing that put some some money on the line whatever is meaningful to you it could be like 50 bucks it'd be a hundred bucks it could be a thousand bucks like whatever is meaningful and it will hurt if you if you lose it like that is your target that is your mark of okay I want to do this and that's it and then that's pretty if you have the right accountability if you have the right stakes and if you have the right rhythm maybe just one principle a week don't overdo it it'll take you maybe an hour or two that's good and and just constantly surround yourself with good thinking and people that are getting the results you want that's a really important one right so you look at dollyoni constantly talks about transcendental meditation and how valuable it's been for him and how consistent he is with his practice that's remarkable to me that's cool like all I I'm interested in this sliver of of his results but his thinking is just beautiful you know he's got these beautiful videos on on youtube right how the economic machine works yeah the macro micro you know exactly a nice 30 minute video that he produced that is like out of his wisdom it's beautiful it's very simple but accurate it's another video series you produce around this book principles right it's just like an animation there are examples of how the principles work in action and if you just constantly surround yourself with excellent thinking and people that are getting the results that you want making sure that you actually want those results a lot of people want a house and a car or really they don't want that right they've been they've been brainwashed by society and peers and advertisements and and instagram and things like that to want that it's just the first layer but if you put a pen to paper and you ask what do I really really really want I'll give you an example of of what it looks like to get what you really want is you're familiar with Anderson Silva obviously fighter exactly right extraordinary fighter first of all is a documentary man on him also really good but the the parts that I was most impressed with him was actually after he wins the title is like a six plus foot Brazilian man with a lot of pride right you know he gets on his knees and he starts sobbing when he wins the title every time that's a man he's got what he wants it's a powerful emotional experience man to like really get what you want and we all are capable of that emotion we all are capable of feeling powerfully vindicated by life for having pursued what you truly want to pursue but even knowing what that is takes digging because you gotta get through the house in the car and all this nonsense that's been programmed at you from birth pretty much right from your parents from your peers from instagram all this bullshit you have to get through this gunk down to the things that really matter to you like and that is a process that can only be done alone with yourself with your mind with your body with your heart with your being right other people can ask you questions but the true work is done is to be done alone in introspection you can you can get a therapist you can get a coach you can do all of these things but fundamentally the work is yours this is why a huge proponent of meditation exactly because meditation allows you to get in touch with your your being with who you are like allow the the thoughts and all the mental chatter to like subside so you can sit down with who the fuck you are you do two sessions a day yeah i wanted two sessions a day yeah my average is about one but i aim for about two yeah and what's like a easy starter pack for people to get into meditation headspace man headspace headspace yeah yeah yeah i'm not like i've i've been meditating for a long time but uh for all the people that i've actually seen make some progress headspace is actually pretty good um i've seen some people get on and off muse but headspace actually is is is more standard i think the way to approach it is to say a lot of people say oh i tried meditation once didn't work for me that's like saying i tried to exercise once it didn't work for me it's basically the same thing i view it meditation has exercise behind yeah but you can you can do a lot of things you can run you can lift yes you can swim you can play hockey and many forms of meditation exactly right so so when you want to someone wants to get into meditation a big thing i say is hey this is like saying i'm interested in mind exercise but you don't know which form of exercise you kind of like yet so don't give up after trying one or two there are many ranges of meditations there's tm there's headspace there's like meditation studios popping up over the city these days there's all kinds of vipassana there's insight there's a lot there's there's like different um yogic meditations condoling all kinds of stuff right figure it out like figure out what works for your disposition for your personality but dismissing like meditation based on like a few sessions isn't really sustainable it's not a good it's like going to the gym a couple of times and didn't work for me i got sore muscles right it's it's a process you commit to and and if you're doing it there's actually mindfulness based stress reduction mbsr which is like i think of a 12 week guided um program so where you go in every week and you're instructed and you have sessions at home that you're supposed to go back and do and over a 12 week period it almost kind of helps you build a habit uh and it's it's it's supposed to be a program that's like runs pretty much most most cities much major cities in the world if someone truly wants to build a habit it's pretty solid way to get started as well that's the thing most people like same thing with the gym people try to go in like an hour a day that's uh might be too much of a mental struggle at the beginning to build that neural pathway as a habit it's like i for example i use a ideally basis i use my sorry calm calm right yeah calm is calm that's basically 15 minutes i was like a 15 minute session absolutely trying to quiet spot turn it on and go at it the best part is like a minute is better than zero yes five is better than one yes right like one is definitely better than zero one is like exponentially better than zero because you were applying effort into it and so zero is your enemy all right zero is your enemy should be a whole brand around all right uj put that in the journal zero is your enemy we'll start that tomorrow good stuff yeah man yeah meditations the benefits for it's just exponential there's like no downside to it yeah and and especially if you combine that with good thinking journaling um movement surrounding yourself with great inspiration surrounding yourself with excellent humans that that are similar in a value set and are working on themselves in a similar way like that's this is enjoyable right this is an enjoyable life this is worth like this is a life worth living because again back to the buffet and gates i think it's a they're great almost memes or ideas for like huh even people with significant resources aren't working on themselves the way i would imagine they would be working on themselves huh that's really interesting okay so this whole this whole industry of of improving yourself and the drive to improve yourself is not a super common thing fascinating it's a market yeah there's a market i think also people try to build room overnight they got to focus on one thing yeah you know same thing when you go to the gym no if you always tell people you have to go to gym like if you can do like 20 pushups a day there's your start exactly walk 20 minutes i don't know something what's the most minimal viable thing you can put in exactly so same thing when it goes to like improving yourself you know they try to do everything all at once simply with health right he's like oh i'm gonna clean diet then go to the gym and do some i'll look at the people like no it's not gonna work no again they don't understand the first principle it's not gonna work right they don't understand the first principle of habit change yeah right there is a setup cost there's a significant setup cost to any new habit or behavior that you're going to inject into your life and trying to work three things at the same time is not going to be effective because it's not going to stack right it's like lifting five bricks when you can only lift two mm-hmm going to get exhausted you're going to get dejected and you're going to fail you're not going to know why you failed correct and you're going to give up because now you don't have an actual rudder and understanding of how to move forward in a way that makes sense of course and this happens over and over and over again so there's a market yeah yeah i'm excited for the combination with psychedelics and sure mind improvement oh yeah oh yeah that's a whole new world too right see so the cool thing about psychedelics you add fuel to all this fire that already exists right you have you know you have the the meditation you have the movement you have the journaling you have the really smart people that you that they'll be of access to um and then you as psychedelics to that you get some magic right there because you already have a strong base the fundamentals are strong your ability to interface with life in a way that allows you to learn and grow on the daily and weekly basis is significant right your ability to your your the navigate life is strong and then you have things like psychedelics allow you to inject awareness into your life at a rate that was previously not possible now what they do is they they improve the rate that you can inject consciousness into yourself that's powerful because through all of these these these habits and through the through connections with therapists coaches etc you can stabilize the consciousness right you can inject this consciousness into yourself you know metaphorically obviously and and then you can start to allow that consciousness to settle into your day-to-day life so you can bring that love and that care and that attention and that drive to your work to your friends to your family your relationships that's a powerful thing because to me I think psychedelics obviously in last year or two have become quite popular quite popular and I see the indiscriminate use of this shit a lot man it's annoying and it's concerning because these are powerful things that cannot be used indiscriminately hopefully we'll see in the next couple of years legalization of release the mushrooms exactly psilocybin exactly that'd be nice um but something that gets often not talked about is the integration piece correct all right and the integration is super important to life forget psychedelics for a second like what is an integration skillset the integration skillset basically is the ability to to learn something like get an insight and to be able to apply it in life such that you've learned from it so let's say you get into anotomy b laxin because you ran a red light okay a very basic example of integration is learn what happened there you know were you drinking or you're driving what what how what caused you to to to move past the red light did you not look both ways did you not clearly realize there was a red light there what happened and the ability to to to apply that okay I didn't look or maybe I was ranking me whatever whatever the person has done the person starts to apply okay I'm not going to do this in the future basically that skillset amplified and refined is what you need so let's say every conversation you have is a conversation that you can learn about yourself the other person and slowly even just a slight layer of refinement to the next time you interact with them or the next time you interact with someone else it is a growth mindset it is the ability to pull information from the outside and allow yourself to refine every interaction every iteration of what you're doing taking that to psychedelics can be powerful because now you have such a strong injection influx of consciousness you're like wow this is cool you learn a shit ton about yourself in the universe at large and then you write that down and then you go okay how does this change my life and then you start to list it all out and you start to list it of the actions that you did take as a result of this experience bam and that fundamentally changes you in a way you would never have been able to change yourself because this access is a powerful thing so that that's what I'm excited for obviously the the the economy and the and that side of things is also quite interesting the investing around some of these startups is interesting the the ecosystem in Canada is really cool man it's growing because we have we have a few friends in the industry as well it's great to see the work they do yeah I'm excited I'm just gonna my hopes is legalization my hopes is all drugs are legalized yeah sure sure controlled we're legalized it's safer yeah it's better yeah because because I would I would not want them over the counter man um listen even over the counter stuff like Advil and aspirin is dangerous absolutely absolutely um my general philosophy is eliminate the black market um legalize all drugs make sure people want it they have the most purest cleanest form and another form even though I'm against taxes another form of tax revenue for the government that's fair you can look at Portugal in Portugal decriminalize most drugs and their statistics are good for people less time in jail yeah less addicts um and also a bit better educational curve as well um it's just safer like you're not going to stop people from doing what they want to do exactly give them the best and safe safest option as possible and you eliminate the black market which is which is huge for a lot of reasons also you eliminate the impurities and and just the lack of great material that people have access to because that costs a lot of debts and ods and this it's still all you know off tangent still befuddles me that prostitution is illegal I didn't know this yes okay especially when you take into the statistics of sex trafficking oh yeah and you're telling me you're not legalizing it and legalize it streamline it fucking remove like I think you really understood me how fucked up like how bad like the numbers of sex trafficking there is no it's like no joke it's obscene yeah um and one of the biggest markets for that is the illegal black market of prostitution oh yeah oh yeah yeah no there's a lot of stuff in the world that befuddles me man a lot of stuff oh yeah this is the world we live in and uh well that's why we change it day by day exactly exactly you know what I'm doing brazen we don't want to see what you can change well well in this podcast which how we started the podcast is I can't change the world but I can change myself exactly exactly one person at a time yeah the best we can do yeah man so we've covered a lot we have thank you for sharing all this pleasure man um guys um make sure you take don't take don't just passively listen to this you know just like any good podcast or audible or book re-listen to parts that resonate with you you know I'm a firm believer in any form of any medium of knowledge that you take in you view it as any relationship it's not just transactional it's multifactorial you know when I'm one book that I always recommend people to pick up is how to read a book by more and more Adler you know meta analysis or meta reading and today's time meta reading isn't just reading is absorbing information through podcasting like this or through youtube and so people assume they have to sit through a to z they don't find a section that you like and don't just listen to it like if you enjoyed what uj was talking about first principles or meditation take that section out and actually make a checklist for yourself you know what are action steps from here okay I'm going to go read Ray Dalio's first principle or read you know how to think clearly by role for etc and actually make a roadmap of actual steps you can take after this I think you know we touched on this is seldom that people do follow-up process in one ear out the other ear so less is more that's all I'm saying less is more yeah also recommend just pulling out a journal and a pen and paper and just like asking yourself the questions that matter yes you know start with how am I feeling right now and why and then start your search start to write about the thing that is on your mind we're all dealing with something right we all are and put it on paper yes and ask yourself the questions you know what's going on what do I know for a fact what am I struggling with how do I move through that and what do you learn from this podcast right and put it all down because if you do the chances of your follow through are going to be higher because it's hard to sit down with something write something have it stare you in the face not do too much about it uj it's always a pleasure when you come on I'm happy to be here thank you if people are looking to find more information about you what's the best resource the best way is find me on instagram okay on my website subscribe what's the instagram handle on uj ramdas okay twitter anything facebook twitter or just instagram just instagram okay uj ran the ramdas on instagram and guys if you're listening to this on itunes or google or wherever else please make sure to leave a review those always help and if you're watching this on youtube leave a comment below i check all the comments on a daily basis like share and don't forget subscribe till then guys this was another episode of a me or proved and i'll talk to you guys soon take care