 Listen, we're going to talk about some hard things in this video here today. And it may seem like this has nothing to do with medicine or Chinese medicine. But I think that within human nature and human psychology are encoded very important tendencies towards illness or towards health. So in this video, let's talk about five things I learned about humanity in 2021. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, Doctor of Chinese Medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump into this video here today, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice to learn more right below this video. There's also a free guide for you there for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So first thing I learned this year is that if you tell people something over and over, eventually they come to believe it. There's a quote by Earl Nightingale, and he said that an interview was conducted with a psychologist I think in the late 1800s or early 1900s, and he said, when men are exposed to violence at first, they abhor it. After they're exposed to it enough, they tolerate it. And then eventually they participate in it. He was saying how so many people would rather commit crime, resort to crime than think. That thinking independently is so hard for humans that they would rather resort to crime than sit down and think about how they could improve their lot in life. Well, in this last year, I was thinking about a similar quote. And the quote supposedly is attributed to Hitler. And it says, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. And I've thought about this a lot. I spent a bit of time making sure this was the true attribution. But apparently it was in Hitler's biography. And the context for this is understanding how many of my friends and family and people that I know, rather than sitting down and seeing what have I gathered is the truth based on what I've seen, based on this person, based on that person, what I experience in daily life. What does it look like? The evidence is. But people get so much information from news or from social media that we've become a kind of culture where people think maybe even less than ever before and are even more reliant upon whatever information is being thrown at them. And it's a little bit scary. Realization number two, character reveals itself in adversity. I don't know who this quote is attributed to, but there are many quotes throughout history along the lines of adversity introduces a person to himself or herself or character reveals itself in adversity. I know many, many people, for example, let's talk about coronavirus, who are relatively brave, fearless people who were not sweating it so much. And then all of a sudden when the pandemic hits, the supposedly brave, fearless people didn't leave their home for a year. Despite evidence they would probably be okay if they got coronavirus. Very, very high percentage chance that they would be okay. And then some of these same people are the same people that maybe would have flipped their philosophy and would run out and do anything that an authority told them to do. And I'm not trying to throw people under the bus here, but it's just a great example of how most people, you'll never learn their character unless you see them under pressure. And I'm someone who doesn't really put much stock in what anyone says, including myself, because I believe that you see what people do indicates their true psychology and indicates their true state and indicates their bravery in a lot of different senses. But understanding that for us, reflecting back on this, there are many things we want to do and there are many things we might be afraid of. Maybe something that you're trying to do is related to your own healing journey. Maybe what you want to do is become a writer or an author or an entrepreneur and you're getting a lot of pushback from people in your life. And it's in that moment that you learn what you're made of. Because now when there's pressure, there's adversity, there's criticism, there's potential for loss. That is where you learn what you are made of. And that is where you find that which is indestructible within you. That is the exact most important time of your life to become who you have to become. Because like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face or punched in the mouth. That's a bit of a crude way of saying what I'm trying to say, but no one ever really knows what they would do until they're in that scenario. And just reminding oneself that now is the time where I'm under incredible pressure to prove to myself what I'm made of. Realization number three is that most of us take our cues from information and primarily mass information and not from thinking. I'll give you an example. When I ask people, what do you think Chinese medicine is? Their response is in a, let me see and think. It's, I read this article. Writers that said that Chinese medicine, you know, coronavirus came from bats in a wet market or they're killing penguins for their scales or shark fin soup. It's never, oh, I took some time to learn about this or I had this experience with this person or I was told about this or my friends this. It's, I saw a news article. Another example, when I ask what are your thoughts on, let's make it saucy, the vaccine or the unvaccinated? What do people respond? Oh, well, my doctor says, this news article says, oh, we'll CBS said, oh, we'll Fox said, oh, well, it's never, I took the time to sit down and think about this. And here's what I've come up with. It's almost always a mass media thing. People even reference my doctor said as one of the last things. So that's a mostly credible authority. But people rarely even reference that. It's what they flip through on their phone in the morning. One last thing when I ask, what do you think about Iran? Random, right? What do you think about Iran to Americans? What are they going to say? Something about the history of the war in the Middle East. And my friends who've been to Iran have said it's an incredibly beautiful country with beautiful, friendly, hospitable people. And my friends who live in Iran don't feel unsafe. Now, I'm just commenting that most of what humanity knows is not what humanity knows. It's what people hear from mass media. Realization number four, I'm going to keep it positive here. People are always trying their best. Okay. If those first three things sounded negative, I'm sorry, they are kind of negative, but they're real. I think one thing I've been working on is that the first half of the pandemic, if I can be candid here, I feel like I lost a lot of faith in humanity and people. I feel like I saw a lot of people's worst colors. I feel like I saw a lot of the majority of people I know making decisions based on fear and social pressure, not based on evidence. And that's not surprising because that's most of humans and how we live, right? Look, look who people marry. Look what jobs they keep. Look what people's, look what people's lives look like. People don't choose their lives based on what they want. They choose their lives based on what they're afraid of. So this wasn't that surprising to me, but I've been trying to embody what Lao Zi said in the Dao De Jing where he said, I have just three things to teach. Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. I'm terrible at all three, to be honest. And so I've been trying to develop this compassion for understanding that everyone is always doing their best. And sometimes it's hard to keep that in mind, right? When their best is pretty abysmal or when their best is hurting other people or when their best is violent and aggressive. But understanding that most human beings, most of us make our life decisions based on fear, right? We base it based on living in this small box because we don't want to go out of it and get hurt, right? It could be emotionally hurt, could be physically hurt. But just remembering that people are always trying their best is helpful sometimes. And the last thing, fifth realization for me is that man's character is his fate. I think this is by Heraclitus. And this idea of our character being our fate goes back to this idea of one only learns one's character in times of adversity. If you've not been under immense stress and adversity and pressure and criticism, you cannot know what you are made of because you learn that when you're under the furnace, right? You're in the heat. And I think what you do during difficult times determines the strength of your character. And that's important to remember because we all love to think that we are better than we really are. And it's sometimes hard pill to swallow when we learn what we're actually like. So I think whether it's depression or whether it's being a minority group or whether it's some family debate about the vaccine, whatever it is in the zeitgeist, right? It's not about one thing. It's about the concept. Whatever that is, being the other or the only is incredibly taxing for most people emotionally. And just remind yourself that in these times, this is where the immortal and strongest part of you comes from. It's like, I think her name is Pema Children, where she says, only by being exposed to that which destroys you can you find the indestructible immortal aspects of you. Just this idea that the part of you that can survive warfare or strife or disagreement or poverty or illness, every kind of adversity, that immortal part of you that is the strongest part of you, the most resilient part of you, you find it in these times and remembering that and being strong and being brave is what the world needs and is more of the kind of person that the world needs and remembering that this is what will give you strength for the rest of your life will help you stay strong. That's all I've got for today. Stay strong. It's a hard time. Just remember that everyone's doing their best and times of adversity breed the leaders of the future and at the very least, this is where you're going to find the strongest, most resilient part of yourself. If you can stay strong and stick to your guns and stand up for what you really believe in, remember that and don't cave to pressure and don't cave to fear. All right guys, a little bit of an off color man for me today, but extremely, extremely important in today's context. Catch you in the next week.