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[Music] there's an isomorphism or similarity that i've noticed between modern branding strategies and abusive intimate relationships especially ones that women tend to fall into so this is just a short little insight for you that might make a few things click in your mind all right so here's how this works so what do i mean by modern branding a lot of people unless you've actually studied some marketing don't realize what's really going on in sort of the marketing ecosystem these days marketing has evolved quite a lot in the last 50 years and it's gotten pretty advanced and sophisticated to the point where there are like entire ais and teams of of pr people who are crafting these various marketing campaigns and different brands and so basically in in the modern business and marketing world everything is about branding it's all about creating a brand whether you're selling a service or a product you got to create a brand and this brand is not just about having a logo but it's creating a sort of an identity then marketing this identity making it popular amongst people creating fans and subscribers to this identity whatever it is might be an apple identity it might be a tesla identity it might be a video game franchise like call of duty or league of legends or or halo or elder scrolls or it might be a movie franchise like star wars or lords of the ring or game of thrones or basically anything it might be a brand of toothpaste crest toothpaste uh and so the point is to create this brand the brand is supposed to be a marker for the quality of this product relative to its competitors in the industry so when you see a nintendo logo at the store on a video game you expect something from that more than just some generic studio you've come to expect quality a certain quality from nintendo most of nintendo's games you can reliably trust they're gonna be high quality nintendo's doesn't really release buggy games that are incomplete with bunch of gimmicks and loot boxes and things like that to scam you and that if they keep doing that they maintain the quality of their brand and then you like that because other products and lesser brands in the industry that are that they're competing with they're lower quality they don't have that same level of integrity they try to scam you rip you off in various ways sell you defective products they don't honor their warranties or their refund policies or the the product is incomplete when you buy it something's wrong with it you're unhappy with it etc right you've been burned by bad branded products sometimes you buy a product with no brand on it and it's okay it's no different than one with a brand and it makes you even wonder why you even care about brands but then sometimes you buy a no brand product and it's garbage and then you realize oh yeah i should have spent a little bit more for the brand because that product would have lasted me for a lifetime but this garbage i have to replace it next year so this is a real thing notice yourself encountering this in your life with cars games movies websites and so on and so really modern businesses is about building a brand developing a brand launching the brand popularizing the brand and then ensuring the integrity of that brand but you see what's the connection here what's the isomorphism between that and intimate relationships toxic relationships well you see there's really a trick that these companies are playing on you the name of the game for most these companies is to build this brand get you to become a fan of this brand to fall in love with this brand and then once you're hooked and once you fall in love now they're going to exploit your love they're going to milk you dry and the quality of the brand will get diminished more and more and more and more and more but because you're in love with it you fell in love with its original state that it was in slowly you end up being boiled alive like a frog the proverbial frog in the boiling water you don't even notice that this is happening and in fact for many companies this is a a deliberate strategy that they have whether consciously or unconsciously they're using this strategy to extract as much money from you as possible and this is very much what happens with abusive relationships because when a woman and i mean men can also get into abusive relationships but more common with women when a woman gets into an abusive intimate relationship it doesn't start out abusive it starts out romantic and beautiful and the two of them are in love in all of this but then over time once she fully falls in love with him after sleeping with him a dozen times she fully falls in love she commits to him and then he uses this against her because he starts to sense that oh well this woman is weak she has low self-esteem she's attached to me now i can get away with stuff now i don't have to treat her as well i can insult her and be abusive to her and she'll still stick around she'll justify it in her mind as uh as just all that you know that's just how he is i have to accept him as he is i have to be more loving i'm not being loving and accepting enough and so he keeps pushing it and pushing it and pushing it and how far he can push it is directly proportional to her level of self-esteem and her boundaries and her respect for herself because you see a woman with high self-esteem and high boundaries and high self-respect as soon as you do that to her once she'll tell you about it and she'll call you out on it and as soon as you do it two times she says if you do it again i'm leaving and if you do a third time she actually leaves and the man he senses that he senses how serious she is and how willing she is to enforce her boundaries in a relationship he sort of tests the boundaries to see what he can get away with how selfish he can be and if she lets him he keeps he keeps uh being more and more selfish and she keeps being more and more of a doormat and then this can become very very toxic in its most extreme forms so notice the similarity here what's really happening is that the man is exploiting her love and attachment to him in this situation and the the company or the brand is also exploiting their customers loyalty and love and attachment for the product or the brand to to also be as selfish as they can get away with so these brands are going to try to be as selfish as they can because they're most these companies are trying to maximize profits up to the point where your cust their their customers will allow it and tolerate it so let's give an example because this is still very abstract so let's say a really good example this is like with with disney and star wars so the star wars fan base is one of the most loyal fan bases in the world which is why it's such a good example like star wars fans the true hardcore fans they are so deeply in love with star wars because of the original high quality of the star wars brand stemming back from you know the original episodes with george lucas sort of the vision behind them the originality the novelty of them the execution the special effects like it was groundbreaking visionary genius type of cinema work back in the 70s and 80s um and then it's it's kind of gone downhill from there but but the fans they're living for that nostalgia and so now george lucas has sold the brand off to to disney for a couple billion dollars now disney owns it um and of course doesn't it does disney really have a vision first for for star wars do they really care about the star wars universe per se no nobody no ceo at disney gives a [ __ ] about the star wars universe and he doesn't give a [ __ ] about the fans either he cares about the money he cares about extracting maximum money and so do the stockholders and so do most of the advertising and pr people that work for disney they don't give a [ __ ] about the actual brand or the quality or the stories or han solo they don't care all right um but you as the fan if you're a hardcore star wars fans you really care you're like you're invested in the story you're invested so much you're willing to cry over it it it pulls on your heartstrings just like with with a woman in an intimate relationship when she falls in love right she's not thinking logically or rationally about the relationship she's not sitting there and doing a kind of a cost-benefit analysis a cold starch logical left-brained analysis of like well does this guy treat me well could i find a better guy who's maybe going to treat me better and be nicer to me and blah blah blah no like no she she's fallen in love and she has a sense of uniqueness and scarcity about this guy she feels like well but he's the he's my one true love and i won't be able to find a replacement no other guy is as good as this guy those other guys have their problems they're inferior to this guy this sort of fantasy is built up in your mind when you fall in love this sort of illusion of uniqueness well the same thing happens when you're a star wars fan you also start to rationalize yourself like well yeah the the latest star wars you know movies they're not they're not very good but hey you know it's it's better than watching star trek or something else and you know maybe maybe i have hope i i hope that um that some creative visionary they'll disney will hire some creative visionary that will come along and we'll revitalize the star wars universe and we'll bring it back to its glory days and recapture some of that nostalgia and this nostalgia is this love really it's like a drug you're addicted to it like a drug you've literally as a star wars fan you've become a drug addict and the drug is star wars and disney knows this and they are the drug dealer and they're going to keep they're going to keep supplying you and tempting you with little bits here and there but the drugs that they're giving you are these the purest highest quality drugs no they're cutting these drugs with fentanyl and other garbage because hey that gives them more drug gives them more money and ultimately they don't care about you they care about the prophets because they're selfish and they were never in it to begin with for the love they were in it for the money their love has been corrupted by money what they love is money not the art see what you want them to love as a fan is you want them to love the art of the story of the universe and so forth but the people running these companies are not artists they're not even creatives these are business people these are mbas who have been taught how to extract and milk money through modern marketing methods see so you see this also like for example in the games industry latest example of that would be cyberpunk the launch of cyberpunk a really really good example because the cdpr the studio who made cyberpunk um fan base you know comes from the witcher series and people people loved the last witch or witcher 3 and so you know they sell millions and millions of copies of this and and then people just sort of developed this fantasy of cdpr is this this this non-sell non-sellout high integrity company that is willing to make the game that's you know the best for the players and they don't care about money they're not like ea they're not like blizzard some of these other companies who have you know gone corrupt these the cdpr you know these are like one of the last bastions of you know of studios for the gamer and then of course they they publish cyberpunk and everybody is shocked and surprised but of course it's not shocking or surprising at all this is exactly what you would expect them to do as they grow bigger they lose track of the original passion and love that they had and it becomes just about profits and just success for the sake of success numbers for the sake of sales numbers and then the brand loses its original quality and value but if you're a loyal cdpr fan and you're uh you know you're thirsting you're just thirsty for any kind of deep sci-fi rpg like you see that trailer for a sci-fi rpg and then you see keanu reeves and you're just oh you're a matrix fan and all this and you're just you're in love you see you're hooked to it like a drug that's what attachment is that's what neediness is when you're needy whether with star wars or with sci-fi or with a certain movie franchise or with even a certain brand of food or in an intimate relationship usually what ends up happening is that the other party senses this and exploits it for his own advantage it's only natural because the human psyche is wired to extract value and to be as selfish as it can possibly get away with and so if if you're not willing to stand for your own values and principles and if you don't have a spine against exploitation you will get exploited in life that's how life works so it might seem here that we're talking about trivial stuff like star wars and cyberpunk you might say leo what is this got to do with with spirituality or personal development um but it's got everything to do with it it's attachment we're really talking about attachment and how companies are using this to exploit and abuse you just like some men might use this to exploit interviews just like some women some women can use this against men to exploit and abuse men see like if you're a man who's deeply insecure about his physical appearance and other things about yourself that you don't like and you struggle with attracting women but you have money let's say you have a good job like you're a programmer or something you're earning low six figures or high five figures and uh you find some woman and she knows your weaknesses and she starts exploiting them and she starts asking you for gifts and for vacations and for fancy restaurants and she knows you'll pay because you're so socially inept that you you feel just lucky to have her and uh and so she'll exploit you that way and she'll keep exploiting you that way and in general women will keep exploiting you that way until you develop some standards some self-respect you cure your insecurities and attachments and then you become detached and then when you become detached that's when you become powerful that's when the situation reverses so really this is a lesson about attachment versus detachment um neediness versus an abundance mindset you see if you want to keep your favorite brands honest and high quality you have to be willing to leave as soon as they start cutting corners when bethesda publishes fallout 76 you leave you don't be a desperate little [ __ ] and keep buying their stuff and keep talking about how you love the elder scrolls and you're going to buy the next elder scrolls no you need to have a level of detachment where you say [ __ ] bethesda and [ __ ] fallout and [ __ ] elder scrolls let's say let's see how their next release does without my investment i'm gonna go play other games now that's difficult to do because many of you gamers that i know i'm a gamer i've been a gamer i've probably played more games and studied games more than most of you have i was a professional game developer for a while so i know how this works and i know that i know the passion that games um inspire in people and you know many of you listening to me right now you know you're you're saying oh my god leo but but the next elder scrolls i want it so badly i've been waiting for it for a decade since skyrim where's my next elder scrolls i'm gonna buy that thing i'm gonna pre-order that thing well that's exactly what's gonna make the next elder scrolls terrible probably when bethesda knows that they have 30 million loyal fans that will buy their next elder scrolls no matter what is in it can you really be surprised when you get disappointed by it when it comes with loot boxes and gambling mechanics and advertisements and in-store purchases and upsells and skins that cost 20 a piece and other sorts of nonsense like this that is just dumbed down where the actual soul of elder scrolls it's the soul of elder scrolls has been lost years ago these are some of the trade-offs and costs of mass success and the bigger the corporation becomes the more uh they chase after mass success and then the spirit of the art and the work that you as a fan fell in love with is lost this is sort of the tragedy of the success of many companies is that they do their best work when they are starving and barely on the edge of survival when they get too comfortable and fat and lazy they stop doing good work because they don't need to anymore now they've got an established brand they've got millions of customers that will buy anything and kiss their ass and so of course they can be lazy now they can cut corners and the tendency of the human psyche is to always optimize for energy conservation and to basically be as efficient as possible so if your mind thinks you can get away with being lazy in life it will be lazy and this happens in relationships too you get into a comfortable groove in a relationship and then you start to become lazy you stop shaving you stop putting on makeup for the other person you stop putting on perfume you stop taking your loved one to dinner the way you used to you stop giving her gifts she stops giving you blow jobs and it just and then it deteriorates more and more and more until eventually it's like you you are both locked in this laziness spiral each one outlasting the other not putting any effort anymore into the relationship and then is there any wonder that you're disappointed with it so one of the keys to life is first of all develop detachment don't let anyone have anything over you which means don't need anything too badly if you need a video game too badly if you need a movie series too badly if you need a certain brand of food too badly you've already screwed up if you need a job too badly you've already screwed up if you need a girl or a relationship or sex too badly you've already screwed up if you need a man too badly if you need a marriage too badly you've screwed up if you go into a business negotiation or you're negotiating with an employer for a salary the one who loses the negotiation or if you're buying a house or you're selling a business the one who loses the negotiation is the one who's most attached to closing the deal and the one who wins the deal and gets the best value is the one who is willing to walk away without any worry of losing anything that's real power learn that lesson and cultivate it across your whole life become independent don't hinge your happiness or your feelings of love on any external source because as you do that source will then you'll become a slave to that source whether it's a drug or alcohol or food or desserts or soft drinks or cigarettes or video games you're going to become a slave to that thing maintain your poise detachment and independence and to do that you need to all of those attachments into something deeper within yourself and that's what spirituality is about you see spirituality is a very practical thing if you're deeply grounded in your own consciousness and you're able to love yourself and you're able to love the world without attachments to various things and various biases this leaves you in a perfectly poised centered place from which you can act maintaining your own integrity enforcing your own values having a high sense of self-esteem and you're able to be very effective in dealing with people and when people cross your boundaries you quickly enforce them and you put them in their place and then you don't get exploited and abused by people not by salespeople not by family members not by lovers not by your children people need to know that you're serious people need to know that you've got values and standards and you're not going to compromise people need to know that if they cross you once you they'll get a warning if they cross you twice they'll get a serious warning and if they com if they cross you a third time that's it three strikes they're out you cut them out of your life you're not going to be giving them fourth and fifth and sixth and tenth chances to redeem themselves you're you're a busy person you got a life to live you got a life purpose you got you got something going on in in your life you got values that you're trying to live by and people need to sense that that's what makes you strong and powerful and then people will look up to you because they'll see you like this rock or this anchor this is what makes you a powerful leader and it's difficult to do that because a lot of times we fall into this notion of sort of a false feminine compassion where we are just compassionate to everybody even when they are abusive to us no that's not what love means there is a higher love the higher love is what i'm talking about is maintaining your poise at integrity and sometimes that means putting someone in their place cutting them out of your life not shopping with a certain brand or company anymore because they've crossed the line and not taking [ __ ] from people not being a doormat that is a higher love that is a love and an honoring of your own highest self allowing you to maintain your autonomy and power which you need to live the highest most loving way in your life you think you're being maximally loving by letting all of these people exploit you and walk all over you no that is not the highest love and it's also not serving them because when you put them in their place when they cross you when you enforce boundaries this actually wakes them up because they realize ah i can't keep acting like a selfish [ __ ] i can't keep exploiting people it's not an effective strategy and then that forces them to rethink their ways whereas if if you're going to be bending over backwards for this person that's not going to help them to wake up that's not going to help them to find love within themselves that's just going to make them exploit you in lazy ways make sense contemplate this and think about all the ramifications this has across your life this goes way beyond star wars or game of thrones or whatever favorite franchise you have this is some this is some deep stuff and this will save you lots of money this will save you heartbreak this will save you from terrible divorces and abuse and current artists exploiting you there are a lot of people who have had their lives completely ruined because all they did was just naively tolerate others gradually exploiting them more and more and more and more whether it was their lovers or their family even their family members even your family members can do this to you or within business within finance or your employer can do this to you how do you get a good salary and a good position with your employer you have to have some backbone you have to be willing to negotiate and challenge them on your true worth how much does your employer really value you or are they lowballing you and trying to pay you as little as possible and give you as little as possible while you're slaving for them like a dog see and this takes courage and this is difficult i know because by my nature i'm a very non-confrontational person i really don't like confrontation if i'm given the choice between a confrontation and just walking the other way i'll just walk the other way and i was that way for a long time in my life [Music] but also you live that way and you start to realize the the downsides of that and that sometimes confrontation is important and if you're not willing to ever get into a bit of a confrontation then really what that shows you is that you're too much of a coward you're too scared what others think of you how others judge you you're too fearful of standing up to authority or to others who are stronger than you and when you do that people don't respect you and they exploit you even further and then you stop respecting yourself too and then you start to feel bad about yourself and you start to feel unworthy so this is about raising your standards and pushing yourself growing yourself if right now you're sort of a people-pleaser person and you've been very non-confrontational in your life what would really help you to grow is to get into a few confrontations now of course you have to be careful about how you do that i am not giving you a license to be an [ __ ] or to abuse others because you can certainly swing it in that direction you got to do it carefully with certain restraint and moderation but sometimes the confrontation is what's necessary that's not a license for violence or for name calling just the ability to confront somebody on their [ __ ] or on them exploiting you or manipulating you without being just completely triggered and angry flying off the handle in a rage but just in a sort of a calm grounded way calling someone out on their [ __ ] is a very powerful and important life skill and it's difficult to develop that if you're a non-confrontational person by your nature just by your personality type or whatever the way you were raised you were taught to be polite and so forth um but think of how much this is holding you back in your life and so really the most important reason that you should actually start to get a little bit more confrontational play around with it test it out is because actually this is something that is missing in the core of your personality this is something you have to develop you have to be willing to stand up for your values for your highest ideals for what you know is right for your intuitions and don't let others [ __ ] you or bully you or fool you with their stories and excuses because that's what will happen a lot of times is that people always make excuses and rationalizations for their behaviors and then you start to buy into it because sometimes you're you're actually a decent person and you want to give somebody the benefit of the doubt you want to be merciful but then they exploit your mercy and your kindness so by all means be kind be merciful these are these are actually very powerful qualities they're going to become all the more important as you grow spiritually but don't be so naive about them that you think that love and kindness and goodness and mercy means that people just do anything and you put up with it that's not what love means there is a higher love a more nuanced a more complicated love such that like for example with with children you know you might think well if my child wants some candy the most loving thing to do is just to give him candy all the time but that's you know you know that's not the most loving thing to do if you really love your child then sometimes you gotta deny him the candy and he might cry and get angry at you but you got to be strong enough in your conviction that you got to be able to hold that poise and hold what you know to be right and true now of course you could be wrong in certain situations and so how do you know if if you're doing it out of an arrogance and stubbornness or you're doing out of a genuine integrity well that's very difficult to to make that distinction for that you need to really be deeply grounded in in your own values and you got to be wise and mature and you got to do a lot of spiritual work personal development work as well to make those distinctions and you could still be wrong so there's also a fine balancing act you got to do between enforcing your boundaries and also being too perfectionistic and too dogmatic so the balance is very important you have to you have to allow people their imperfections and you have to allow people to make mistakes so you can't expect everyone to to always live up to your standards too that that also becomes a problem in a different way but but in this episode we're specifically concerned about those situations where people are abusing and exploiting you see and then really the biggest payoff you get out of this out of all this if you if you work on this and you actualize it is that you get a strong sense of self-esteem and a sort of a security in life you feel secure because you know that even if something bad happens you'll be able to face that challenge whereas if you fall into a sort of a cycle of always avoiding and avoiding and avoiding and avoiding confrontation that makes you more and more fearful it makes you feel weaker and less and less effective and more like a victim and this can get very very bad where you can really spiral into a into a deep black hole of victim mentality and learned helplessness and then you lose your agency and sovereignty in the world and you're not able to build and to create your life the way you want you're not able to express yourself the way you want and by doing that you sell out your soul and then you become a zombie and then your life doesn't go so good then you get depressed then you start wondering why life is so bad and unfair well you got to take responsibility for this stuff right and it all comes back to taking responsibility for your own weaknesses the reason this is happening to you is because there are weaknesses inside of your psyche that you refuse to confront and take responsibility for and to correct and life is giving you signals as to where you're weak you're weak in relationships you're weak when confronting people you're weak when you're being sold to by some marketer on the phone and you're too afraid to tell him to [ __ ] off and so like a sheep you just listen to him and listen to him and then eventually you buy his product that you know you don't even want but you just buy it anyways just to be nice just to get them off the phone so one of the biggest misconceptions about spirituality is people people construe spirituality as just like the turning of the other cheek all the time and being very meek and letting others have their way with you the problem though is that when you let others have their way with you really what you're allowing is you're allowing the flourishing of unconsciousness and devilry in the world if you don't stand up to the devils in the world who will is that really aligned with the highest love spirituality requires courage and strength a lot of courage and strength is required against the opportunism and conveniences of pure pragmatic material survival in your life there will be forces pulling you in 10 different directions trying to corrupt you within business within art if you're an artist within school within the education system within academia within the nonprofit world within relationships within your family there will be corrupting forces pulling on you these forces will be beckoning you and luring you with sweet promises of easy money sex and love and pleasure and comfort and convenience and if you're not deeply grounded in yourself and in consciousness and in wisdom and in truth you're going to be tempted into all of these sorts of shortcuts we might say these are shortcuts to happiness hey just take this drug or hey just let's let's scam our customers a little bit next month or like let's cheat on our taxes or let's uh let's uh let's cut the quality of our product switch to a lower cost supplier the customer won't know but this catches up with you eventually the customers catch on eventually your partner catches on they leave you they stop doing business with you it ruins your reputation and ultimately you've debased yourself you've lost your poise and now you can't even respect yourself it's very easy because we're such social creatures to get tugged in all these different directions by peer pressure your responsibility is to be grounded in yourself and to maintain your poise grounded in truth and consciousness and love independent of what other humans are doing around you because the majority of humans around you are going to be doing devilry of various forms they're going to be engaged in group think and ideology and mob mentality and every fiber of your being is going to is gonna beckon you to jump on the bandwagon onto some new stupid trend whether it's some new cryptocurrency that everybody is hyping up and buying or some ponzi scheme that somebody is selling or some get rich quick scheme and you got to be wise enough to see that none of these things are the genuine deal these are fakes these are houses of cards they're lies they're deceits designed by the ego mind to perpetuate itself and that you are going to commit to grounding yourself in something deeper and then you live from that place and then this is what makes you a remarkable human being because almost no human being actualizes this in their life because they're just living down the path of least resistance you