G'day listeners. In this episode we're discussing a concept that Guy had heard a little while ago,
I've just come across, and it's pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. So yeah, it's a bit of fun.
Enjoy. Why do it count backwards? Are they? We're now recording.
What? Hello Captain.
What do I say? Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away.
What are we going to talk about? I don't know. So leadership, life and everything else.
And we're live. Now we're recording.
About pronoia. Yeah. I love this concept. So we've all heard of paranoia. Paranoia is,
I guess, worrying that the universe is conspiring against you. But there's this brilliant book out
there written by? Rob Bresney. Rob Bresney. Rob Bresney. Pronoia. Yes. Where the concept is
similar to a motto that you and I both share, that the universe is conspiring to help you, to work
with you rather than against you. And what a brilliant concept. The universe has a crush on you.
Oh, I like that one. Oh, look at you, Michelle. Is it the universe? Yeah. Absolutely. But it all
ties into, you know, a lot of people, when I was first starting to study all of this sort of stuff,
30, 40 years ago, you know, they got sick of hearing, oh, positive thinking, positive thinking.
But it's so much deeper than just positive thinking, isn't it? So have we spoken about
the car park? I'm pretty sure we have. And I heard you say it in a workshop the other day,
and you drew it on the board and you said, here's a car park. So a person who is more the glass is
half empty person goes into the car park thinking there are no car parks. It's always hard to get a
car park and they'll drive around and they'll get to that one car park. And then they'll go,
oh, finally, it was so hard to get here. Now, we and others who have the same belief that,
you know, everything always works out for us. And we use, I use Kookaburra and my kids, we declare
Kookaburra and Kookaburra, we always find a car park. It's our belief. So we'll drive around in
that same car park on the same day, exactly the same time. And we will get to that same spot.
However, we'll be like, yeah, see, Kookaburra provided, we've got a car spot.
And your experience is very, very different. So that's when we heard about this book and Pro
Noya, we realized that that's what we're doing. We're of the belief that the universe is conspiring
to provide everything that we want and need and that everything will work out for us. So
I think Pro Noya was originally from, I don't know where I read this, but years ago,
I think I heard that it was the condition of being deluded that everyone fancies you sort of thing.
Maybe, oh, I don't know. It's scratching around in my memory somewhere, but forget about that.
But regardless, the concept is that if you have a firm belief that the universe is conspiring for
you, it helps you rewrite everything, such as adversity, challenging times, things that you
don't necessarily think are going your way when you eventually come through them at the other end.
If you have this Pro Noya mindset, when you get through the other end, you go, oh,
how cool. All of those obstacles I just had to jump over were there to get me to this point.
And I wouldn't be at this point if those obstacles weren't there.
When you said delusional, my mind went straight to, it's like a Mr. Bean movie.
He's got all these things happening around him, but he's just like happy, oblivious,
and like, oh, there's this, you know, something lands in his hand after the explosion that he
caused, you know, five scenes ago. And it's like, oh, thank you.
That's, yeah, it's to me a bit Inspector Cluesaw.
That's right.
So I guess we don't want to imply that you have to be ignorant and stupid for this to work for you,
because I don't think, I certainly don't think you're ignorant and stupid. And I hope I'm not,
Michelle. Well, I found that...
Reaffirm me here, please. You're not, you're not. Absolutely, you're not. No.
I found the title of the book. So it's, uh, Pro Noia is the antidote for paranoia,
how the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings by Rob Bresne.
Shower you with blessings. Because even the challenge, I know we harp on this,
but even the challenging moments in our life are blessings.
Yeah. So some, what I say in anti-fragility keynote is that not in spite of the hard times,
have you grown stronger? It's because of the hard times that you've grown stronger. So
that's, that's the obstacles, uh, the way, which, uh, Ryan, hold on.
The obstacle is the way.
That's right.
What is it? There's so many great books out there at the moment about this topic,
because I think it's about time that we started to go back to positive thinking.
Rather than the victim card. It's like, hang on, that's my superpower.
Isn't that being thrown around these days, the victim card. It's, it's like
everyone has been given permission to be a victim lately, which is fine. You're allowed to,
if you want to be a victim, by all means be a victim. I've been there, we've both been there,
but it's an awful state to be in that you're sitting there, uh, whinging about the state
of things and what is happening to you rather than for you and all that sort of stuff.
And there's been a shift over the last decade or so. We've moved, we've moved towards a very
much a victim mindset. The world isn't safe for me. The world isn't set up so that I can flourish.
And well, the world, the world isn't safe. No, it's never been safe.
No, that's right. And, and so, um, and you've said it before with, uh, again, in one of your
workshops, the expectation that we go out into traffic, for example, and we get frustrated
that there's traffic. So our initial expectation is that somehow there will be no traffic on
Victoria road ever. And so when we go to Victoria road and where there's traffic, we're frustrated.
It's like, there's, there's a bit of a mismatch between reality and expectation.
It is because you can't be stressed without an expectation. So when I'm the first move to Sydney,
I thought, oh, Sydney traffic is a nightmare. So I drive like an idiot, just like everyone else,
impatiently honking horns and stuff like that. And then had the realization that traffic's just
an opportunity to do something I enjoy. So I listened to podcasts, stand up comedians and
audio books, and I learn and laugh in traffic. And now I love traffic. Yeah. Because I'm getting
to do something that I enjoy doing and I need time to do it. And why not do it in the car? But yeah,
like you just said, the underlying expectation that was causing my frustration. So when I'm sitting
there thinking, oh, Sydney traffic is a nightmare. The underlying expectation is that there is no
traffic. And never will be every time you go out on the road. I can get into a car and go wherever
I want without traffic because I am a god. It's like, it's that sort of mindset. And it's pathetic
that we do this to ourselves. We create all of this stress in our heads because we have
expectations that we haven't really analyzed where they're coming from. It's like a kid not
cleaning up their room and we get stressed about it because the underlying expectation is that kids
walk into a messy room and aren't overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that's ahead of them.
You know, we have brains that can compartmentalize all things. Sometimes I can overwhelm by this.
Very true. We all do. But kids, it's even worse because they haven't learned the skills. So
the expectation is what's causing the stress. The expectation that a child can think and
perform tasks the way we do instead of having the beautiful patience of somebody that works
in a childcare centre. Like, have you met those people working childcare centres and how they
have this incredible patience for kids? They're the best parents. They are.
So pro noya, I think is the opposite. So again, it's a mindset, obviously, which I love mindsets.
But it's that I think we have an element of this already. We just haven't labelled it.
No. Well, now we've got a new term. I love this. Pro noya.
And if I'm slightly delusional, that's okay as well.
Well, I have no problem with being delusional if delusional improves your life and contributes
to you being a better person. Yeah, I used to think I was, you know, I've grown up with
karma. Karma will get them. Karma will get them. I always thought, oh, is that a, because karma's bad.
If karma comes at you, then karma's bad. But there's good karma as well.
And then I had this- What goes around comes around.
That's it. And then I had this thought, well, hang on, what if they're idiots and they don't
even know that there's, so who's the, it's me. So everyone's responsible for their own emotions
and what they take out of it. You can't expect the other person. My stepdad says, he always quotes
Confucius, it's on the internet, so it must be true, but about man who seeks revenge digs two
graves, not one. Yes. Or doesn't, anyway, yeah. Yeah. And it's true because if you expect, oh,
karma will come and get them, you know, if they've wronged you and then you expect that something bad
will happen to them because of their conscience. The thing is if they don't think it's bad, there's
no nothing, you know, and so, and it's then eating yourself up. You've actually just kind of hit,
not a nerve, it's not, that's the wrong term because that sounds like you've annoyed me.
You've reminded me of something that, that was, that every time I think about it and myself,
it hits my own, I'm hitting my own nerve, was my inability to forgive when I was young.
Ah, okay. Yeah. So I, I don't know why, I don't know why, but I had this inability to forgive
and that's exactly what your stepdad is saying, that I carried around, that was punishing me,
that, that inability to forgive. You know, people, you don't have to, when you, when you forgive,
you don't actually have to think, oh, what they did was okay. But it's just, it's just putting it
down. It's not carrying it around and, oh, I just kicked out our microphone stands. So it's, it's,
yeah, not, not carrying that stress around and forgiveness isn't for the other person,
forgiveness is for you. So if we can be a little bit Mr. Bean. Yeah. So what is it,
what, what someone thinks of you is none of your business. So if you let it go and, and
bring out your inner Mr. Bean and walk through like little bombs going off behind you.
I saw something hilarious before Rowan Atkinson and Mr. Bean. I was watching this video online
and it was Rowan Atkinson's voice. They had a little picture of his head at first
and, and then the life advice that was coming out of him was extraordinary. And, and it was all the
stuff that I, I've been hearing over the years, but it was said with his voice, Rowan Atkinson's,
Mr. Bean, wasn't it Mr. Bean's voice? Cause he doesn't have a voice. No, no, no, actually that's
right. And so I'm listening to Rowan Atkinson cause he, I adore him. I think he's, he's one of
the most talented individuals on our planet. And I'm sitting there really enjoying this life advice
from Rowan Atkinson that I noticed down the bottom of the video. This is all AI generated.
Wow. Oh, and it made me sad that, that, because I, I would think that Rowan Atkinson would have,
if he was in person and I was talking to him, he would have said those things. Cause that's
the sort of human, I've always seen him in interviews as I've always held him in high regard.
And so it, it matched, it matched the person that I perceive him to be. And so I'm listening
to all this beautiful life advice. And then when I saw AI, I went, ah, this is not fair. We can't
do this. We can't take beautiful sayings, beautiful quotes, then use AI to say it in somebody's voice
who didn't say it in the first place, ascribe it to them just so that we can get hits online.
It actually grated on me a little bit. Now I'm curious, was it more like Black Adder voice? No,
no, no, no, no. It was Rowan Atkinson's interview voice. I think it was imagine what I was imagining
because there wasn't a visual of him doing it. I imagined him at a university doing a commencement
speech or I imagined him giving some wise advice to an audience on stage. And I was in it because
his voice is just brilliant. Could you, could you rewire that, that, okay, annoying that it's AI,
however, it made you feel good. And you still felt respect for Rowan Atkinson. That's right.
You still felt respect. We still feel respect for Rowan Atkinson. So the messages themselves were
great. Rowan Atkinson is great. Put two great things together. Why am I annoyed? I guess I'm
annoyed because of an expectation that only the source of the knowledge can give me the knowledge.
Maybe that's it. That's a bit silly, isn't it? Because we quote, we quote other people. Badly
on my case. Yeah, in my case. But we pass on wisdom. A lot of people over the years have said,
Guy, what do you do? I said, I'm the conduit of other people's wisdom. Yeah. Just simply passing
on the wisdom that I've collected from other people along my journey. And so yeah, where's
the resistance to an AI generated bot using his voice to share the wisdom that will help people
in life? I think I need to adjust my mindset, Michelle. Okay.
Pronoia. Pronoia. So the thought that the universe is conspiring to help you for everything to work
out for you. What a better way to look at it. Because if you leave your front door in the morning
with pronoia and set that mindset, everything that's going to happen to me today is the universe
conspiring to help me. So you get in a traffic jam, right? This is one I've had before. I like
this one. So you get in a traffic jam and you think to yourself, your first reaction might be,
oh, I'm going to be late. But then if you have pronoia, your mind might run away. And mine has
run away before. It might run away to this. Well, if this traffic jam wasn't here and traffic was
flowing a bit more freely, I may have got onto the highway earlier. And then I might have been in the
right place at the right time for a truck that wasn't paying attention to hit me. And I might
have been in an accident. This is the universe slowing me down because there may have been
calamity. Now that's a weird thing to do, right? No, well, that's like the burnt toast theory.
What's the burnt toast theory? The same thing, a similar thing where you burn your toast in the
morning. So you've got to do it again, which has delayed you. But ultimately that has changed your
timeline. And so it's kept you out of harm's way because it slowed you down.
I like that. I've never heard that. Okay. So I've always used the traffic bus truck crash theory.
That's that. Well, that's, I didn't hear it or read it. That was created in my mind one day when
I let my mind run away. Cause I've always tried to let my mind run away if it's going to go down
positive paths. So you know how you sit there in your daydream and you do what ifs and all that
sort of stuff. If my mind is running down a path, which is a positive path, which I've tried to train
it over the years, I'll let it run. Cause I know what's happening is not necessarily reality,
but it is changing the way I feel. Whereas on the days where I've let my mind run away down negative
paths, again, it's creating an imaginary future where negatives are happening, which are making
me feel negative, but it's all a creation. So paranoia might contribute to us daydreaming
positive things and finding positivity in the negativity, finding positivity in the adversity.
So you said daydreaming. I've always imagined daydreaming to be positive.
Really? Yeah. I've never thought of daydreaming as a negative.
Yeah. Daydreaming to me is dreaming, is creativity. It's imagination running away,
right? See a bad daydream, that doesn't compute.
What do you call a bad daydream then? Going down a rabbit hole.
Yeah. Which is, well, what's your definition of daydreaming?
Imagination, but it's usually a positive. Well, that's because you're a positive person,
in a nutshell. But some people imagine negative. And so that's paranoia. That's anxiety. Anxiety
is essentially the creative part of your brain, creating negative events in the future.
Paranoia is believing that those negative things will happen. But if we can have pronoia,
then our daydreams will be more like yours. And if we've got paranoia, our daydreaming will be
the negative experience. Yeah.
Yeah. I like this concept, pronoia. Walk out your front door in the morning,
expecting, not expecting, believing that the universe is conspiring for you, not against you,
which is going to allow you to really appreciate the positive things that happen, but also maybe
rewrite the negative or the challenges that you'll face. And if you can rewrite them into
a lesson, something that you're overcoming or something that's stopping you from a worse
calamity, then your experience of life will be a happier one.
I like it. What was his name again? The author?
Rob Bresney. Rob Bresney. Thank you, Rob, for this concept. I'm going to be toying with this for a
while now. I'd like to get the book. I've only read excerpts. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's do that.
Yeah, we'll get the book. We have books arriving at this house,
constantly. Daily. The studio. Did I just let out that this studio is a house in which we do a
podcast? Yes. All right. Bose. Bollinger. Who's the other one? Blint. Where are you?
Pronoia. Think positive. No. Believe. It's not. The universe, the world has a crush on you.
The world, the universe, the universe has a crush on you. Yes. Just like we have a crush on all of
you listening. Take care of everyone. Bye. See you, Michelle. Bye. Well, that was fun. That was fun.
Such a clown. Lady. And who's going to listen to this? Maybe our moms. Thanks, mom.