 You know what will massively improve your mental health and it's something that I'm still working on on a daily basis is to quit wasting time and energy arguing with idiots. What's up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about mental health and what we try to do here is try to learn together different ways to improve our own mental and emotional well-being so if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and if you're not yet follow me over on instagram and twitter at the Rewired Soul all right so yeah like like I said like this this is something major okay like I will tell you this I would not be alive today if I did not figure out how to take criticism like I was in my drug addiction for almost a decade and it was because I refused to change nobody could tell me what to do I felt like I knew what was best right like you don't know me I know me right why am I gonna do this this this this this this this this right and you know when I finally got to this point of surrender we often call it the gift of desperation I finally just threw my hands up in the air and said I have no clue what I'm doing please help me figure out how to do this and how to live right so it's so important that we take in different thoughts ideas criticisms and everything like that but at a certain point we have to separate what is you know uh meant to be constructive and help us become better people and what is people just being dicks or talking trash or they have no solution because like here's what we all have to realize there are people out there and I hate to break it to you this might be a little known secret but there are people out there who are just doing nothing but whining and complaining and have no solutions so anyways I want to start this video out with a little bit of a story I just finished this great book called moral tribes right and there's a story in there um I forgot who uh the professor was right but it's this like great professor intellectual I think he you know does debates and writes you know papers and everything like that and some jackass was challenging him to a debate and this jackass was a holocaust denier all right one of those people who denies that the holocaust happened and he kept trying to get this guy to debate him right he kept trying to get the professor to debate him and he's writing him letters and he's like what you scared you scared why don't you debate me you're mr smart science man why don't you debate me let's debate and argue the holocaust right so finally the professor gets back to him and he says I'll make you a deal all right he says I will debate with you about whether or not the holocaust happened if we do a series of three debates all right the first debate we're gonna do is over the existence of santa claus the second debate that we're gonna do is whether or not the earth is flat after that we'll debate whether or not the holocaust actually happened and what ended up happening was the jackass the holocaust denier ended up backing off and leaving him alone and do you know why that strategy worked because the professor was basically making a statement and saying I'm not gonna waste my time arguing with you over something that is stupid and a waste of my time and this is something that I think all of us can learn from because like how much time do we waste on these things and this is something that I'm trying to learn as well so I can make this channel better and provide more value to you like I in my video where I talked about I wasted the last six months of my life like I wasted six months of my life just trying to change people's opinions who who will never change right this waste of time and energy and so many of us do this but what actually inspired this video this morning was um there's there's a channel called optimus and no hate towards uh towards him like I this is more of a criticism if you will um but I was you know watching his stuff because recently there was some stuff going on in the youtube community about these things called pscores because youtube kind of you're not as transparent as it could be with us creators but anyways I was checking out this guy optimus's channel and he uh you know he he makes a lot of different videos and does a lot of commentary and stuff but anyways one of his most popular videos was about game theory the channel run by matpat right and like I I'm on the fence about matpat I don't love him or hate him like I think he's a cool dude and stuff but I haven't been like following him for years like other people have so anyways one of the the most viewed videos on optimus's channel was like game theory you know something like criticizing him right and the video started off pretty good I was interested to see where it was going like I was like okay because since I don't follow you know game theory or film theory forever like I want to see what other people have seen like through the transition right so it started out good and I was talking about something that a lot of creators do which is you know with uh the way monetization works and everything like that they try to stretch videos to 10 minutes and the video started off very strong great arguments great criticisms right where it was basically saying that he felt like game theory was trying to stretch their videos to 10 minutes just to hit that mark you know what I mean but it also helps with the algorithm and increase in watch time and all these other things right like it started off as a strong video but then I got to this part and let me play the full clip to give you some context may I add that matpat was also criticized during an ask me anything he did over on reddit and when this happened no matter how many upvotes it had no matter how popular the response was to matpat's questions if you criticized matpat he was not going to respond to you he basically just acted like your question didn't exist even though you could ask him anything if you asked him say why he was such a sellout which somebody actually did and it ended up being the most upvoted post on the entire AMA he just wasn't going to respond to you that's how he responds to criticism and I'm sitting there and I'm just like what like like seriously um that's that's not a criticism and this is something that we all need to acknowledge like the question why are you such a sellout that is not a criticism you know what I mean and the more we kind of sell the idea that something like that is a criticism the more people like me and you are gonna waste our time like here here's a good rule of thumb for criticisms all right like I said his video started off strong like hey I think that you're kind of like adding on to this video some unnecessary things uh like I do uh writing and sometimes we call that fluff you know and just kind of things that don't really add to the content like it started off good but a rule of thumb for criticism all right is do they offer a solution or could they offer a solution right so go back to that comment why are you such a sellout like there's no solution in there and if you look at it what do they mean what what solution could I even infer from why are you such a sellout right like what does that mean does it mean that you should still you know be independent and not like work with big brands or get as popular should you stay under these things you know and whatever like should you not you know progress and make money like what is it what is it or is a person you know making goofy content or have they like sort of censoring their stuff more like what does that mean but just the the the question why are you such a sellout that is not a criticism so why does this matter to you why does this matter to you the viewer well it is currently October 30th we have entered holiday season all right coming up you're gonna have Thanksgiving you're gonna have Christmas and you're gonna be around family members some of us have crazy family members right and you're gonna have people who are sitting there around the Thanksgiving table or whatever and they're gonna be criticizing you and if you get upset they're gonna talk about how you can't take criticism right but we need to look at this and say are they actually criticizing you like if they say Stephanie you know you're like all you do is date idiots right like if they're just talking shit to you they're not criticizing you or they tell you that you're wasting your life because they think that the job you picked isn't the right one like is that a criticism or is that an opinion right but there are many other examples so here's another example okay so my beautiful girlfriend Tristan over here just sitting there looking amazing she is an artist right now she does amazing art here's some of her art now imagine if somebody came up to her and was like you know what Tristan you shouldn't be drawing this stuff you should be drawing a pizza jumping out of an airplane on its 24th birthday that's what you should do and what if Tristan was like well I don't want to do that then imagine that person saying you just can't take criticism like do you know how silly that sounds right or maybe you're in an industry where you know you're creative in another way like picture like a chef all right a chef brings out a dish to two people okay and one person says huh this is good but I can do it could use some more salt right criticism solution right and then the other person says your face looks stupid you see the difference between those two so in order to improve and grow we need to take a look at what information is coming in and is that something we should be paying attention to or is it just a colossal waste of our time right because like I said especially when it comes to the internet but this is in life in general right there are people out there who are miserable and all they do is complain and they offer no solutions like I used to be that person I used to be such a miserable ass and all I did was whine and complain like one of the reasons I start every video with we talk about the problem but focus on the solution is because I used to just sit in the problem that's all I used to do and I would just sit there whining and complaining this should be this way this should be this way because I was miserable so I see other people who are like how I used to be and I'm like you are not offering a solution and I empathize with them I empathize and I'm just like okay right like because something that I used to do was I used to just think the whole world should be exactly the way I wanted it to right I just thought everything should be the way I like it my preferences my opinions are all that matters you know what I mean and then I was like wait I'm kind of a self-centered dick the whole world doesn't revolve around me you know what I mean like if I dislike something and it's not changing right and it's just my preference or it's my opinion I'm not gonna keep trying to force this thing to change I'm gonna walk away and leave so you know what like this video we just we gave you double the value so the first lesson is don't argue with idiots the second one is if you're like how I used to be like learn what your own criticisms are or are they opinions or are they preferences you know what I mean like I don't like seafood well I'm actually a vegetarian now but anyways like could you imagine me just keep telling a restaurant to stop serving seafood because I don't like it like what you know what I'm saying so anyways I want to do more videos like this with just little topics little tidbits little little sprinkles of little mental health advice like I said in my video yesterday I plan I plan on dedicating every day in November to a writing challenge and writing blogs and everything like that but I'm gonna try to do videos like this where I just hop in do some mental health advice things that I'm working on things that I think that might be able to benefit you and things like that these videos don't get as many views that's cool like those of you who watch this and you get some benefit like maybe maybe today you needed to hear to quit wasting your time arguing with idiots you know what I mean but I'm here for you baby that's how I roll all right but anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on patreon or buy my mental health books or merch all that good stuff all right thanks again for watching I'll see you next time