The paradox of self-awareness. So,

everyone understands that actions are

more important than words, right? You

are what you do, not what you say you'll

do. And there's this line from Hamlet,

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us

all." I never read any Shakespeare. I

can barely remember even going through

it in school, but I came across this

line again and did a deep dive on what

it means. "Thus conscience does make

cowards of us all." This line comes from

Hamlet and it's usually misheard as an

insult. It's as if Shakespeare is sort

of sneering at morality, saying that um

ethics soften us, or thought drains

courage from the body.

I don't think that's what's happening.

Shakespeare isn't attacking goodness.

He's pointing at self-awareness and

naming its cost. It's in the to be or

not to be soliloquy, and Hamlet isn't

really weighing life versus death. He's

circling a more practical question.

Why do humans hesitate to act even when

action would clearly relieve their

suffering? Like why do we endure

situations we don't want? And why do we

tolerate lives that we could in theory

change?

Well, pain isn't the only obstacle.

Imagination is. And by conscience,

Shakespeare means something closer to

consciousness. It's the ability to think

ahead, to judge ourselves to simulate

futures before they arrive. It's to to

see the consequences coming and

experience them emotionally

in advance.

And unfortunately, that ability cuts

both ways, because the very capacity

that makes you reflective and ethical

and intelligent also makes you hesitant.

We imagine worst-case scenarios so

vividly

that we treat them as if they're already

real.

So, courage isn't defeated by fear.

It's defeated by simulation. We

rehearse embarrassment, loss, rejection,

and moral failure in advance, and then

our bodies respond as if those things

have already happened. Your heart rate

rises, your muscles tighten, avoidance

feels sensible, and inaction feels like

safety.

Hamlet describes what follows.

Thought, he says, puzzles the will.

Thought puzzles the will.

Reflection drains us, not because

thinking is bad, but because it

multiplies potential outcomes faster

than our actions can deal with them.

Right? I think that's so cool. Thinking

isn't bad itself, but it's able to

generate more realities than our actions

can solve.

Animals don't suffer this, right? They

just act when a

threshold is crossed.

Humans linger, and by the time that the

moment to move arrives,

we feel as if we've already lived

through its inevitable failure.

So, we wait.

This is the deeper psychological point

that I think Shakespeare is making. And

I'm aware that a guy that basically

didn't read Shakespeare is just

reverse-engineering what I think he

said, but I do think that this is a cool

interpretation, right? Our intelligence

doesn't just protect us.

It also inhibits us.

We learn quickly from mistakes that we

make,

but we almost never feel the cost of

mistakes that we avoid.

The humiliation of speaking and failing

leaves a scar,

but the decades-long erosion of never

speaking

leaves nothing that you can point to,

which explains why people stay in the

wrong job, the wrong relationship, the

wrong version of themselves for years,

not because they don't know better,

but because action demands stepping into

an un-rehearsed future.

Hamlet names the real enemy, which is

uncertainty. Right? Not pain or effort,

but just

the unknown.

Our minds would rather endure a familiar

misery

than gamble on an unfamiliar freedom.

Even suffering becomes tolerable once

it's predictable.

But people would rather spend years in

misery than risk a few days of pain.

And this is why modern life, despite

being safer than any previous era,

often feels more paralyzing.

Right? Because our nervous systems

evolved to avoid death and lions, and

now we use it to avoid embarrassment and

misjudgment and reputational damage and

identity fracture.

And here's the final uncomfortable

implication Shakespeare leaves hanging.

Self-awareness is not a pure good.

Right? Beyond a certain point,

self-awareness actually inhibits agency.

Less reflection can mean more peace.

Less certainty can mean more movement.

Less conscience can sometimes mean more

life.

Courage isn't about thinking clearly.

It's about moving while things are still

unclear.

You know, there's that famous line, "The

unexamined life is not worth living."

But a life can be deeply examined

and still never lived.

This

paradox of self-awareness, the fact that

the deeper you think, sometimes the less

you're able to act. If your mind is able

to generate realities more quickly than

you are able to come up with solutions

or move through them, you kind of have

this weird cost-

benefit imbalance. So, maybe like a

cost-profit your your your balance sheet

is offset, where the overheads are

higher than the revenue. And this sort

of puts you in a uh

negative equity in terms of your ability

to move forward and that can freeze you

in place. You don't want to do something

because you think

look at all the ways that could go

wrong. And the more ways it could go

wrong, the less ability I'm going to

have to act and

what if this thing occurs and that thing

occurs and over time conscience makes

cowards of us all.

Uh

it's weird because most people

probably need to be more thoughtful.

They need to spend more time, be less

rash, act less impulsively.

But there is a cohort of people that are

the opposite and

the

people like me and maybe you, too.

Another people who

think more than they should, talk

themselves out of more things than into

them and actually move more slowly. They

get less done in life due to their

thought than more. Now, they'll make way

fewer mistakes and that's great, but

again, the mistake of omission is

different to the mistake of commission.

So,

people make commission errors if they

don't think enough. People make omission

errors if they think too much. Like if

you overthink, decide not to go up and

speak to that girl that's been in the

cafeteria at work for 6 months, she gets

a boyfriend, she would have been the

perfect partner for you and you decide

to not make the move because you've

talked yourself into and out of it so

many times. Your mind's ability

to show you what could go wrong is

greater than your action's ability to

fix it in reality.

That is an omission error, but we don't

see it in the same way cuz it's not as

obvious. For instance, I chose to not

bring a number of guests on this podcast

in 2024.

And

it maybe that's leaked out of me in a

couple of

other vlogs or whatever, but I didn't

make a big song and dance about it. I

basically never spoke about it.

I'm never going to get credit for the

things that I didn't do.

And in the same way, you never pay a

cost for the things that you don't do. I

mean, look, if you leave a person to

bleed out on the side of the street

without calling the ambulance, that's a

kind of omission error, but it's it's

pretty obvious. A much more quiet

omission error is I was scared of

building the business because my mind

told me all of the different ways that

stuff could go wrong,

so I didn't do it.

And I'll never know the pain of not

fulfilling my dreams,

but I avoided the pain of failure.

And the pains of failure are much more

prevalent in our mind than the pain of

[ __ ] what if this doesn't go well? So,

um there's this great audiobook from

Tony Robbins. It's 30 years old. George

Mac sent it to me. I don't even know how

to find it. It's it I'll try and find it

and put it in the links, but it's

basically an hour and a half worksheet,

Awaken the Giant Within, but it's an

audiobook, and all he does it's

basically one long exercise to try and

front-load the pain

as much as possible. Look at what this

situation you're in now has cost you in

the past. Look at what it's costing you

right now, and look at what it will cost

you in the future.

And he tries to get you to sit in the

discomfort as much as possible. It's

horrible. It's awful exercise.

Uh it's like the the mental equivalent

of an ice bath. And then,

he gets you to try and do the opposite.

Look at what would have happened in the

past if you'd made the change that you

want to, that you think is right, if

you'd improved this thing. Look at what

would be happening now, and what Look at

what would happen in the future. And he

tries to sort of get you to use He calls

it the pain-pleasure principle.

Motivate your behavior through pain and

pleasure. And uh the type of pain

that you can front-load with look at

what not starting this thing is has cost

you in the past and now and in the

future. You have to be much more

conscious. Like the um commission errors

come naturally to us, but the omission

errors are much more hidden. So, you

need to kind of you need to do an

exercise. You need to consciously bring

omission errors in. Like, [ __ ] like

I've always wanted to be a stand-up

comedian. I've always just wanted to do

I I've always I I want to do a an open

mic. I just really want to do an open

mic and you've put it off for

decades. You never did it. You never

closed that loop. And you might hate it.

Here's the other thing. The thing that

you're putting off from doing, you might

absolutely hate.

But at least once you realize whether

you like it or you don't, you can go up

and speak to the girl in the the

cafeteria and find out she's got

horrible breath and she's an [ __ ]

There you go. Loop closed. You don't

need to think about it. But the what if

after the fact will kill you. But the

what if before the fact is really hard

to to determine. So, yeah. I think this

conscience does make cowards of us all.

That is my

uh

year seven

uh fourth grade

assessment of Shakespeare. Thank you for

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