Speaker A
All right, we're going to talk about—hold on. Oh God, are you over-controlling things?
Exploring stoicism and control through the lens of INFJ Derren Brown's lead Ni, focusing on anxiety, over-control, and self-training to find tranquility.
Key Takeaways
- Anxiety often stems from trying to control uncontrollable external events.
- Stoicism teaches that controlling only thoughts and actions leads to tranquility.
- INFJs must self-train to reduce over-planning and excessive need for certainty.
- Balancing cognitive functions supports healthier mental states and less anxiety.
- Accepting uncertainty is key to avoiding unnecessary emotional disturbance.
What the video covers
- The video discusses the concept of observers and skepticism about their existence.
- It explores stoicism's core idea that problems arise from our reactions, not external events.
- Only thoughts and actions are controllable; trying to control the uncontrollable causes anxiety.
- INFJs and IJs tend to over-plan and over-control, fueling anxiety and stress.
- The lead Ni function is described metaphorically as a tumor demanding excessive control.
- Self-training through stoicism and Zen helps reduce the need for control and anxiety.
- Balancing the first and fourth cognitive functions can improve mental resilience.
- Effort should focus on what one can control, not on outcomes beyond one's influence.
- Analogies like tennis and RC helicopter hovering illustrate managing control and emotional balance.
- The journey involves moving from overdrive control to a neutral, peaceful state of acceptance.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and topic overview
- 00:39Clarifying confusion and focus on observers
- 01:07Stoicism: Reactions cause problems, not events
- 01:40Happiness as tranquility and control limits
- 02:14INFJ/IJ over-planning and anxiety
- 02:44Lead Ni as a metaphorical tumor of control
- 03:52Self-training and letting go through stoicism
- 04:41Balancing cognitive functions for control
- 05:07Ongoing struggle with anxiety and acceptance
- 05:47Controlling effort vs. outcomes and analogies
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
No, I'm doing slaps.
Speaker A
Oh, okay. Right, so today we're going to talk about observers. I—um, what I thought we were talking about was blast.
Speaker A
Last am in confusion.
Speaker A
All right, we're gonna talk about observers. I still am dumbfounded by observers. I don't believe in them. I don't believe that there is a thing about observers. So let's get into some clips of Darren and see what he's
Speaker A
going through as a lead Ni. What stoicism says: there's still a couple of things. One is a familiar idea to us still, that it isn't events in the world that cause our problems, but it's our reactions to those events, the stories we form about
Speaker A
them, our judgments about those events. That's where our problems come from. And we know that to be true because if something is really upsetting us, we can always imagine someone we know who would react to that thing differently. And as
Speaker A
long as we can always do that, that's like a big clue that it's our reaction that's causing the problem, not the thing itself. Once you've got your head around that, the other big, um, building block of it is—and I think this
Speaker A
is where its building blocks are supremely useful—is that we can only control certain things in life. If we try and control things we can't, we are going to frustrate ourselves and become anxious. Um, the old idea of happiness that the
Speaker A
stoics sort of, uh, enjoyed was that happiness was a sort of tranquility. So this is really all about a recipe for avoiding, um, unnecessary disturbance and anxiety. So you don't try and control things that you can't. Now, the only things you can control are your
Speaker A
thoughts and your actions, and that is it. That's it. If you accept the idea that everything outside of your thoughts and actions are in the middle, they're fine as they are, and you let that idea really sort of
Speaker A
drip into your soul, then you have a very good template for avoiding unnecessary disturbance and anxiety—the anxiety, the observer pump of negative chemicals. Right? Okay, so can you understand what he was saying? Okay, so can you give, like, a
Speaker A
kind of a short from your own perspective of how much this makes sense to you? The, the damn IJs, it's, it's the over-planning, the over-structure. I've got to know what's coming, and that just is the thing that's just pumping the
Speaker A
chemicals, right? And that's so much what it is, and it's like what he's talking about, and following him for many years and learning from him and watching him and, like, getting free myself from following a lot of the stuff
Speaker A
that he's been saying all these years, right? It's like the discovery for the IJ is a, it's like an Ed Mylett-style self-training method of I'm allowed to let go of that Ni and that extreme need for
Speaker A
control and what's coming next. You know, especially Ni's like, "I got to know what's coming next."
Speaker A
Yeah, I know you [expletive] don't, right? That's, that's like a, it's like a, um, like it's like a tumor like growing out of control like in your
Speaker A
in your, in your, in your—I want to eat something gland.
Speaker A
Yeah, I need to eat all the time.
Speaker A
Like, no, you don't. No, you don't. You have a [expletive] tumor. You don't need to eat all the time. That, that Ni is out of
Speaker A
control. You don't need that much control. That's definitely how I see the first function, right? It's just a tumor out of control on a gland saying more, more, and more, more. It's like, no, you don't need [expletive] more, weirdo. But
Speaker A
then, like, because that thing is so overgrown, like, it's not gonna ever stop. It's not gonna go away. I keep telling people that, like, going through, I'm like, "Hey, dummy, you're never gonna not have your fears and your desire to have that
Speaker A
all the time. It's not going away. Like, you've got a tumor there. It's not stopping." But, like, so it's all gonna be self-training, self-training. So Darren officially turning it off?
Speaker A
Yeah, Darren has found through stoicism, same with me, like Zen and stuff like that. Stoicism, same deal, same, same Ni. I'm sure Daniel will agree. And, uh, of being able to train yourself to let go, right? And then, you know, kind of like stacking here, like if you then
Speaker A
plan on that, that—because that is what I see you doing.
Speaker A
Yes, yes, because now you get the first and fourth function together to work together. Because if you're trying to grow your fourth function but the first function is still on drugs, overdrive, it's going to just eat and devour the little one. But if the big one, if the Ni, if the control is seeing the best way to get control is to focus on what I can control, like if the plan is
Speaker A
to not plan 90% of the time, you win. After you actually laugh at that for a while, they're like, "Wait, that's actually kind of a good idea." That's [expletive] clever.
Speaker A
Yeah, but then, like, every morning, gotta get up just like him. Like, you gotta get up and do it all over again. Like, look at his face. Like, he doesn't look—he looks tired. It doesn't look like this comes easy for him. Looks like he still has anxiety he's got to
Speaker A
constantly deal with, right?
Speaker A
Um, there are grey areas that immediately pop up, like, what if you—what about social injustice? What if you really want to change the world? That's outside of my thoughts and actions, but it sort of isn't. Um, what is outside of
Speaker A
your thoughts and actions is an outcome that you can't control, but what you're still within your thoughts and your actions is how much effort you put into changing the world. So you can still spend your life trying to create change,
Speaker A
but your impetus is to do the very best that you can, the best that you can do. But you're sort of, you're not committing yourself to an outcome that is out of your control. And then, of course, you
Speaker A
avoid—you just need to do a better job because you're not, you're not getting caught up in bitterness and frustration and anxiety. It's like if you're playing a game of tennis, if you're trying to win, well, you're going to get anxious if the
Speaker A
other person's beating you. Because if you're playing from a point of "I'll play as well as I possibly can," you're more likely to succeed, become less anxious, you're going to play a better game. And a tennis player will tell you that that's
Speaker A
true. I have a couple analogies of that. Can I, can I write some more?
Speaker A
Please do so.
Speaker A
Uh, two analogies, and I think you might be talking about this next or whatever, but, like, it talks about not, not
Speaker A
controlling stuff. So, like, with, with Zen and stoicism, you let go. So you start off as an IJ and you're just like all out on the attack or whatever type you are, desire to control the outcome, right? Or
Speaker A
if you're EJ, you know, get everybody else to be nice to you, whatever the [expletive] is, whatever your [expletive] type is, gather all the [expletive], you know, right? And then eventually you get broken
Speaker A
down where you get to this neutral Zen point where you find a place of no pain where you're like, "Okay, if I don't get too negative, I don't have pain. If I don't get too positive, I don't have pain."
Speaker A
Yeah, but then you end up kind of floating in the space. You cornered her?
Speaker A
Yeah, and like a, a visual that I have, like, it's an actual visual. I know, a big deal, a big, big [expletive] deal for me, right?
Speaker A
But, like, coming from an RC airplane background, the way I look at it from my own self is like, "Okay, the helicopter, put it in a dead hover," because I used to have my helicopter. My life was just like
Speaker A
a tilt like this where I'm just like ramming forward, plowing, just knocking over people, cities, cuddling so much because I'm like, "Right, I'm gonna change the world and I'm on a mission and I'm gonna do all this [expletive]." And you're like
Speaker A
taking so much damn, everybody, like, sees you and they just shoot the [expletive] out of you and you're [expletive] dead. And then you get into, like, neutral and you find like, "Okay, if I don't move at all, nobody can
Speaker A
see me."
Topics:INFJDerren BrownObjective Personalitystoicismlead Nianxietyself-controlcognitive functionsmental healthZen
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