Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Victim, Survivor: Make 2026 Great Again! (Compilation)

1. 00:01 Happiness comes naturally from the inside. It is a slow and steady and safe unfolding. It is not the ephemeral pyrochnics of fireworks. Happiness never depends on anything external. Never depends even on anyone. Happiness cannot be bought. Happiness
2. 00:28 therefore can never be sold. It is a state of mind, not a state of affairs. Happiness is self-love and self-acceptance without the narcissism. Happiness flowers in the least expected moments and it brings to life the moriband, refreshes the stale,
3. 00:51 infuses everything with color. Happiness is being and nothingness at the same time. We all pursue happiness in the wrong ways. Nothing is more sad and lonely than having casual sex in order to feel less sad and lonely. Nothing is more deceitful than brutal honesty because
4. 01:21 brutal honesty pretends to offer empathy and sakur but it is merely camouflage sadism and hatred. Nothing is more vain glorious than false modesty and pseudo humility. Nothing is more hateful than the inelectable expiry of love. And nothing is more wrong, nothing is more wrong
5. 01:48 than being right all the time. Nothing is faster than life. And nothing is slower than dying. And we spend life dying. Nothing is more attractive [clears throat] than the self-sufficient. Nothing is more attractive than those who don’t need you. They are
6. 02:09 self-sufficient. And nothing is more repellent than the clinging. and the needy don’t be one. Nothing is more corrupt than conformity. Nothing is more noble than being oneself in splendid isolation. Nothing is more dignified than honoring others. And nothing is more awful than
7. 02:33 what we already have. Nothing is more blind than merely observing. And nothing is more deaf than merely hearing. hearing, merely observing and merely hearing. These are disabilities. Nothing is more present than the past. Nothing is less certain than the future.
8. 02:59 No gift is greater than a smile and no harm is more debitterious than rejection. No risk is grander and no reward is more substantial than to live life to its fullest. Only the craven and the foolish extol and recommend death or aestheticism as bravery or wisdom. They are not.
9. 03:28 reality is in our mind alone and what is out there is solely what we make of it. Go forth to this new year, to this new world, to this new new normal and be brave. Make them love you. The way out is your only entrance. Your exit strategy is the only strategy.
10. 03:56 Exit the world not physically, not foolishly, exit the world mentally so that you can experience yourself above all else. What did life teach me? I’m 60 years old and I have left led the combined lives of 10 people at least. I have learned that life doesn’t always accommodate
11. 04:24 your plans and wishes, but it always turns out to be far better than your fears. If you just let life happen, life takes care of you. We have only limited information. Life has a lot more. Events that look like disasters are usually agents of positive change. Trust
12. 04:47 life. Do not fight life. Plan flexibly. Execute wisely. Retreat
13. 04:56 smartly. Advance promptly. Invariably celebrate all these steps on the path that is who you are. Your being. Assume the worst. I am no poliana. Assume the worst but expect the best. Settle for the real. Even when you’re stuck, you’re carried forward at blinding speed.
14. 05:26 Love the in innumerable gifts that you had been given. Life first and foremost amongst them. Cliches are golden truths forged by experience. Setbacks are opportunities. Raw gold never glitters. The grass is green and every cloud has silver. Tunnels always end in light. These are
15. 05:55 all truths. [snorts] Be positive and not gullible. Positive but not gullible. Assured but not grandio. Happy but never euphoric. Some emotions are bad advisers. Others indispensable counselors know which is which. And yes, change what you can, but only what you can. Do
16. 06:24 not aim for the stars. Let the stars aim for you who are made of stardust. Remember this dream you’re in. It ends one day. It ends one day. We all wake up to our mortality. The only things we take with us are sepia memories and they are the only thing we live behind.
17. 06:50 Work on having a life worth remembering by both yourself and others. And if you are the victim of mistreatment and abuse, resolve resolutions are notoriously fragile and ephemeral, but you can’t afford this cavalier attit attitude. Your mental, your physical health
18. 07:17 depends on strictly observing at least some promises to yourself. I will treat myself with dignity and I will demand respect from others. I will not allow anyone to disrespect me. I will set clear boundaries. I will make known to others what I regard as permissible and
19. 07:35 acceptable behavior and what is out of bounds. I will not tolerate abuse and aggression in any form or guise. I will seek to terminate such misconduct instantly and unequivocally. I will be assertive and unambiguous about my needs, my wishes, my expectations from
20. 07:53 others. I will not be arrogant, but I will be confident. I will not be selfish and narcissistic, but I will love and care for myself. I will get to know myself better. I will treat others as I want them to treat me. I will try to lead by way of self-example.
21. 08:11 If I’m habitually disrespected, abused, or if my boundaries are ignored and breached, I will terminate the relationship with the abuser. Fourth with zero tolerance, no second chance would be my maxims of self-preservation.
22. 08:30 The world is changing because the world has always changed. Change is the way of the world. This is the new normal. Make it yours. Make it yours by focusing on the only thing that matters in this world. You. on the only one that matters to you yourself. Nothingness
23. 08:54 is not about rejecting life. It’s about embracing life. Nothingness is not about ego death. It’s about reality testing which is the hallmark of a healthy ego. Nothingness above all is distilling the wisdom of the ages and leveraging this wisdom to finally maybe experience
24. 09:22 happiness. Good luck in 2021.
25. 09:31 The narcissist abscon with your identity, steals your essence, implants in your mind a self-disparaging, harshly critical voice. You find yourself laboring under a regime of internal slavery.
26. 09:55 You feel as if there is no way back to yourself. As if you have become someone else. You feel estranged, alienated, disoriented. Is there a way back? Is there a formula for regaining yourself, for resurrecting? This is the topic of today’s video, the
27. 10:24 nine principle path to resurrection after narcissistic abuse. My name is Sam Vaknney. I’m the author of the first book ever about narcissistic abuse, malignant self- loveve, narcissism revisited, and I’m a a professor of clinical psychology. Nine principles to resurrection. And
28. 10:46 yes, the prognosis is good. You will recover. You will fully heal. Do not confuse change with healing. You will be a changed person. We are all changed and transformed by our experiences, positive and beneficial as well as adverse. And so you will have changed, but you
29. 11:14 will be fully recovered, utterly and totally functional. happy again or at the very least content. You can go back mentally, emotionally, psychologically, cognitively. You can go back to the point before you have met the narcissist. You will of course carry with you
30. 11:36 forever the traumatic memories and the pain. The pain of having been objectified, having been commodified and commoditized, having been rendered an insignificant other. That is a pain that will never go away. It’s a form of grief and mourning which is prolonged.
31. 12:00 But all the rest can be reconstructed. You can renovate yourself using these nine principles. And they are divided into three groups. The body, the mind, and functionality. Let’s start with the body. You need you need your body. You need your body as a
32. 12:23 collaborator in your process of healing. And there are three principles. attendant or pertinent to your body. Attention, regulation, and protection. Let’s review these principles one by one. Attention. Pay attention to your body. Be aware. Monitor your breathing, your pulse, your
33. 12:55 perspiration, your exertions, your muscles. Be attuned to your body. Gradually develop a friendship and intimacy with every fiber and every tissue that comprise this magnificent receptacle that is your body. It’s a form of self-mpathy coupled with self soothing and self-coming.
34. 13:23 Make your body your ally by getting to know it to perfection. Number two, regulation. Control. Control your bodily processes. Breathe in, breathe out. Regulate to the best of your ability your pulse and your breathing. Think positive thoughts if need be. Fantasize and daydream if
35. 13:50 necessary. But focus on maintaining a strict regime of self-control and self-regulation. Become your body’s master, not your body’s slave. It is a relationship of a parent and a child. There’s a lot of love. There’s a lot of recognition. There’s a lot of
36. 14:17 intimate knowledge of each other, but you’re still you’re still the parental figure in this relationship. Pay attention to your body, every message it is sending you, every signal it is conveying, every information it is trying to share with you directly and indirectly.
37. 14:38 But at the same time, put limits, place boundaries, maintain mastery over the processes, the physiological [clears throat] and physical processes that make up your daily your daily behavior. And finally, protection. Protect your body. Protect your body. It is in need of
38. 15:03 protection. It has been assailed and assaulted by the narcissist. Narcissistic abuse causes multiple multiple physiological, medical and biological disruptions, some of which last very long. Your body needs a friend. Your body needs a doctor, a medical doctor inhouse. Your
39. 15:30 doctor needs your pre your your body needs your presence. Needs your presence to protect it. Eat well. Exercise. Do not overexert yourself. Do not punish your body. Do not be self-destructive. Do not hate your body, reject it, and loathe it. Do not blame your body for
40. 15:50 anything. It is doing its best under the circumstances. Remember, your mind is in charge. Your mind is in charge. Your body is merely a reflection of psychological processes in your mind. So place your mind above your body and together the mind body complex make it work for you.
41. 16:15 Think of it as raising a child. You have a plan. You have principles. You have boundaries. You have rules. Apply them. Apply them rigorously but with a lot of love, compassionately, affectionately. At the end of the day, your body is all you have and your mind resides in it.
42. 16:41 It’s not much good to have a healthy mind in an unhealthy body as the Romans knew. So this is this is the first module. The three principles of your body, attention, regulation, protection. Let’s move on to your mind. Your mind is compromised. Your mind is infected.
43. 17:04 Narcissism, pathological narcissism is contagious. There’s a contagion. There’s a vector of transmission between the narcissist and you. Your mind has been invaded by a Trojan horse. It is full with the narcissist’s voice, the narcissist’s intermittent reinforcement,
44. 17:24 the narcissist fears and phobias attendant upon the narcissist’s presence in your life and his misbehavior. Your mind has been co-opted by the narcissist and he turned it against you for very long stretches of time. You felt that both your mind and your body
45. 17:45 have betrayed you. and you began to be angry at them, even aggressive. You didn’t recognize yourself anymore. You were terrified by the rapid dwindling of who you used to be and the emergence of a of a chimera, the emergence of some monster that you felt
46. 18:08 no affinity with and yet was still you. And so it’s time to regain your mind and retake it. It’s been subject to a hostile takeover. It’s time to reverse the process. And there are three principles here as well. Authenticity, positivity, mindfulness.
47. 18:30 Let’s review this principle one by one. Authenticity. Whenever you listen to your inner voices, or whenever you are conducting a dialogue with yourself, or whenever you’re listening to a television show, reading something on the internet, or a book,
48. 18:51 whenever you’re exposed to content, whether generated internally or generated externally, stop. Stop. Do not absorb the content until you’ve asked yourself, is this me? Does this reflect who I am? Or even does this reflect who I should be, who I want to be?
49. 19:16 And then if the answer is maybe, reject the content. If the answer is no, of course, delete, erase the content as if it has never existed. It never existed. If the answer is yes, tread carefully. Messaging from the inside, your internal voices and from the outside.
50. 19:41 Things people say to you, even good friends, even family are suspect. Are suspect. Remember, you’re the world’s leading expert on yourself. No one knows you better than you do. Even if you think that you’re not self-aware, even if you think that you’re not very
51. 20:02 good at recognizing yourself and not very good at being your own best friend and having your back, even if you mistrust and distrust yourself, because the experience of life has proven that you’re not your best friend, perhaps you’re your own worst enemy. Even then
52. 20:20 there is a degree of intimacy and acquaintance and knowledge that no one else possesses. So ask yourself time and again is this me? Is this voice inside my head that’s telling me what to do, criticizing me, negating me? Is this my voice? Is this person who is saying these
53. 20:44 things to me? Is he representative of who I am? Does it resonate with me in the appropriate manner? Gradually, as you begin to be a lot more discriminating about internally generated content and externally generated content, you will reemerge. You will reemerge from the sludge of
54. 21:11 narcissistic abuse. Suddenly your contours will be visible again. Day in and day out you will feel more of you, more like you. Suddenly suddenly snippets of recognition memories will emerge and you’ll be able to put them together in a coherent and cohesive framework
55. 21:39 which will amount ultimately to your core identity rediscovered. The authenticity filtering, the requirement, the principle of asking all the time, is this me? Is this really me? Or is it what society expects of me? Is it the voice of my father, the voice
56. 22:02 of my mother? Is this harshly critical, negating, visiating voice mine or the narcissist? what my friends are telling me, my family um cajol me. Are these voices I should listen to? Do they resonate with my quidity, with my essence, or are they
57. 22:25 perceived as alien, somehow artificial or superficial, even superilious? Are these voices motivating or are these voices depressive? Do these voices put me down or let me soar and thrive? Here’s a simple principle. Here’s a simple rule of thumb actually heristic.
58. 22:52 How can you tell if a bit of information, an internal voice, an external voice are authentic or or not? How can you tell if you should embrace the content of the information that you’re exposed to? If it is loving, if it treats you with compassion and consideration,
59. 23:17 if it is not self-rejecting and not self-loathing and not harshly self-critical and not sadistic, it’s a voice that is probably authentic. If the voice you’re exposed to internally or externally seeks to drag you down, to put you down, to reduce you, to
60. 23:40 diminish you, to degrade you, to humiliate you, to shame you, to guilt trip you. That’s not an authentic voice. What do you do with nonauthentic voices? You shut them [clears throat] off. You shut them out. You do not listen to them actively. Not listening
61. 24:00 is an active predisposition or disposition. Exactly like listening. You should put an effort into not listening to these voices, negating them. If necessary, verbalize this. Say aloud, “I am not listening to you. You’re not my friend. You do not seek my well-being. You do
62. 24:22 not want me to thrive and flourish. You do not want me to be happy.” And so go away. You know in the middle ages in rights of exorcism the priest would say go away Satan. Go away demon. It’s the same essentially. Essentially it’s the same. Verbalize this rejection.
63. 24:47 Verbalize it. Do not listen to these voices. Gradually, as you fend them off and shut them out, these voices will recede and ultimately will be no more. And what will be left behind are the authentic messages and signals and information and data and knowledge
64. 25:11 that comprise who you are, your true essence, your authentic self. So this is principle number one, authenticity. Number two, positivity. Positivity is not naivity. Positivity is not gullibility. Positivity is not stupidity. Positivity doesn’t mean that you have to
65. 25:34 be a sucker. Positivity doesn’t mean that you have to lie to yourself, deceive yourself into optimism. That’s not positivity. That’s stupidity. That’s being dumb. Positivity means that you accept and realize that everything and everyone in life in
66. 25:54 reality in the universe [clears throat] has a positive aspect and a negative aspect. No one is all good. No one is all bad. Nothing is all right. Nothing is all wrong. No situation or circumstance or environment are all good and none of them are all evil. This is
67. 26:20 splitting. It’s an infantile primitive misleading defense mechanism. Don’t do that. When I say positivity, I mean seek out the positive aspects and dimensions and elements and ingredients and components of everything and everyone around you. Don’t ignore the negativity.
68. 26:42 Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t deceive yourself. That’s not the aim here. Don’t become polish. But do not on the other hand regard the world cynically, negatively, hatefully. Do not convince yourself that the world is a hostile, dangerous, hateful place.
69. 27:08 acquire or reacquire some balance or at least semblance of balance. Whenever you’re down, whenever you’re depressed, ask yourself, have I overlooked, have I ignored some positive aspects or elements of my situation? Whenever you come across someone and the
70. 27:33 interaction, the interpersonal interaction is less than pleasant, discomforting, maybe even threatening, ask yourself, have I overlooked or ignored some positive aspects in that person. You could you could spread positivity and by spreading positivity, you’re
71. 27:52 likely to get it back 10fold. Spreading positivity is just being civil. It’s just about being civil. Being kind without being self-sacrificial, being compassionate without being selfharming. It’s possible to do this. This balance is attainable. And when you become more attuned
72. 28:25 to the interplay between positivity and negativity in the universe, the yin and yang, when you begin to accept the gray zones and nuances and subtleties of existence, you will have self-medicated in a way. you will have healed yourself. The ability to realize
73. 28:55 that nothing is totally negative, nothing is absolutely evil, nothing is irredeemable, no one is beyond absolution and redemption and and recovery. The re the realization this realization makes the world more habitable more makes life more tolerable makes existence less burdensome
74. 29:21 more bearable. Again this is not naivity. Psychopaths and narcissists are mostly evil or at least act in ways which are mostly evil. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. There are some people who are mostly evil, but there are many people who are
75. 29:44 mostly good. Actually, the vast majority of people are mostly good. Inject positivity into your life as an exercise, as an assignment, as a task.
76. 29:58 Whenever you find yourself gravitating towards a splitting mechanism, decotonous thinking, black and white thinking, stop, go back, observe yourself and say, “I am watching the world through the wrong tinted glasses. Glasses that distort reality, provide me the wrong
77. 30:23 information. I’m going to now reacquaint myself with the world, explore it, discover it in a way that is far more balanced. The third element is mindfulness. If you’re stuck in the past or if you’re stuck in the future, you’re doomed. you’re doomed because the past is full
78. 30:49 of regrets and mistakes and remorse and negative effectivity, negative effects such as sadness and so on. The past will drag you down. When we recall the past, we tend to naturally gravitate towards nostalgia and depression and so on. Past orientation is debilitating, paralyzing.
79. 31:10 Similarly, if you’re a habitual fantasist, if you reside in fantasy and daydreaming, daydreaming involves planning, so it’s more healthy, but fantasy, then your divorce from reality. The future you inhabit has its roots in your actions in the present.
80. 31:35 If you’re stuck in the future and and you’re ignoring the present, you will never get there. You will never get into the future. So both past orientation and future orientation are not good for you. They are dysfunctional. Focus on the present. Remember the three principles of the
81. 31:54 body. These three principles ground you in the presence. In the present. If you have to listen to your breathing, if you have to be aware of the pulse of blood coursing through your entire body, if you regulate your body functions, if you then you are grounded in the here and
82. 32:17 now, you’re grounded in the present. Mindfulness is about being grounded in the present, in your present body, in your present mind, in your present circumstances with the people who are present in your life. And it is from this from this groundedness
83. 32:39 from this immersion [clears throat] in present tense that you can then launch yourself into the future and even revisit the past. But the the present is your foundation. It’s your anchor in the stormy sea of your life. It is a present that keeps you tethered
84. 33:05 to this globe and to yourself more importantly. Do not allow yourself to drift or to float away. Remain grounded. So a brief recap. The three principles of the body, attention, regulation and protection. The three principles of the mind, authenticity, positivity and
85. 33:28 mindfulness. And there are three functions. So this is the nine principle puff. The nine principal puff, three body functions, three mind functions and three systemic functions, body and mind. And the three functions are these. Vigilant observer, shielding sensor,
86. 33:50 reality sentinel. Let’s review them but one by one. vigilant observer. Always observe. Observe yourself. Observe others. Observe reality and do it vigilantly. Not hyper vigilantly. Do not be a paranoid. Do not be suspicious. Do not be cynical
87. 34:13 but vigilant in the sense that be ready for surprises. Be be prepared for transformations. Observe not passively but proactively. Observe via curiosity and investigation. It’s another way of saying be the scientist of your life. Regard your life as a research topic and you are the
88. 34:41 scientists creating theories, testing them and then creating better theories according to the outcomes. Observe, investigate, explore, discover. Be an active participant in your own life. Do not let your life slide by as a kind of background noise or someone else’s
89. 35:04 theater production or movie. Do not enter anyone’s fantasy, anyone’s reality. Stick stick to yourself. Stand your ground. mindfulness and then observe and observe with alertness, intelligence, acumen, astuteness. Don’t be a passive receptacle or
90. 35:34 recipient or container of data. Process it, make sense of it, and then investigate further. The scientific method, the shielding sensor, you need to filter out the kinds of inputs from the inside and from the outside that are harmful to you. Certain voices inside you
91. 36:03 are your enemies. They don’t want you to be happy. These voices, they don’t want you to thrive. They are not they are not um interested in your well-being. They want to take you down. They want to punish you. They want to punish you. These are known
92. 36:20 collectively as the internalized bed object. Censor them. Censorship. Do not allow them to express themselves. Definitely not freely. certain voices from the outside, people masquerading as true friends, um betrayal. Don’t let any of this get to you. Do not
93. 36:45 attribute a truth value and do not give power, do not empower any such voices, any such input, any such feedback, any such information. censorship internal and external. The shielding sensor, your sensor should have your best interest in mind. Your
94. 37:08 sensor should seek to maximize your well-being. Your sensor should be able to provide an environment that is free of sensoriousness, free of harsh criticism, free of sadistic putdowns, free of self-loathing, [clears throat] free of self-rejection, free of
95. 37:27 self-rashing, free of self harm, free of self-defeat, definitely free of self-destructiveness. These are the roles of the sensor. The sensor is like a firewall, internal and external. And the aim of the sensor is to shield you. Not to shield you from
96. 37:46 life itself. Not to shield you from reality. to shield you from the pollutants and the contamination and the affluence of those who wish you ill. Those who
97. 38:06 consider you um target for their frustration, aggression, envy, hatred, anger. The sensor simply keeps out in a kind of
98. 38:22 benevolent confirmation bias [snorts] uh does not allow the sensor does not allow entry to anything that could degrade your internal environment and your mind. And finally, the reality sentinel. It is very easy for the victim of narcissistic abuse to drift away from reality.
99. 38:47 If you have if you ended up being a victim of narcissistic abuse, it means you’re prone to fantasy. You’re reminble to the charms of fantasy. You find fantasy irresistible and you find reality less than tolerable, undesirable, boring. And so you need a reality sentinel. You
100. 39:09 need a guardian, a custodian, an internal voice who would tell you you’re drifting away. You’re floating. You’re again fantasizing. You’re again being I don’t know grandios or on the very contrary self degrading. You’re not grounded. You’re not grounded. Your reality
101. 39:33 testing is getting impaired. Stop. Stop, observe, absorb the information
102. 39:44 and process it. Reality is there. The reality sentinel, the reality guardian, the role of this function is to maintain your reality testing at all times to remind you that you cannot fully trust your grasp of reality. that you do need to reestablish the
103. 40:09 bridge to reality and the bridge to the world and the bridge to your own life. You need to rebuild these bridges day in and day out. And you need to maintain them and you need to cross them to visit the realms, the territories that they connect to.
104. 40:24 You need to visit reality. You need to visit life. You need to visit the universe and you need to visit your internal landscape. You need to be grounded in reality and you need an advisor, a consultant, an inner voice in charge of your reality
105. 40:41 testing. And you need to listen to this voice. It’s easier. It’s easy to accomplish. Actually, it sounds as if it is easier said than done, but it’s it’s possible to do this. It’s a com. You can accomplish this. You can attain. can create this reality sentinel. Initially,
106. 41:05 you may need to obtain feedback from, for example, mental health practitioners and professionals or very good friends who you trust or family members who love you. Their feedback, their input will gradually help you to construct and design and put together the reality
107. 41:24 sentinel. But at some some stage some point you can do this on your own whenever you feel that there is some conflict whenever you feel uneasy between the way you think the way you imagine the way you emote internal processes and reality. Whenever you feel there’s a
108. 41:51 discrepancy, there’s a there’s daylight between reality and what’s going on inside your mind, trust reality. Your mind should be subordinate to input which is objective or input from reality. Whenever reality contradicts your mind, whenever reality conflicts
109. 42:11 with your mind, whenever reality undermines, challenges, even sabotages your mind, you should opt for reality. Remember, reality is always a composite, always an elomeration of positive and negative. If you are getting information from the outside which is wholly
110. 42:33 negative, completely negative, it’s not real. It’s a fantasy. If you’re getting information from the outside that is completely positive, it’s not real. It’s a It’s a rose tinted glass fantasy.
111. 42:50 Reject reject information. Reject data. Reject signals. Reject talk speech acts. Reject anything that’s coming from the inside from the outside and anything that’s coming from the inside which is wholly negative or wholly positive. what’s left is reality. And then if
112. 43:09 what’s left conflicts or contradicts or undermines or challenges, any element of your mind, your mind is wrong because reality is always right. Sticking to reality, being grounded in the present, filtering out information that is fantastic. These are the building blocks of mental
113. 43:36 health. So the three functions are a vigilant observer, a shielding sensor, and a reality sentiment. Let me summarize everything for you. It’s the mind path, nine principal paths, the three body principles, attention, regulation, protection, the
114. 43:58 three mind principles, authenticity, positivity, and mindfulness. and the three systemic functions, vigilant observer, shielding sensor, and reality sentinel. Good luck. I hope someone takes this video and converts it into a course or a book or something with much more in a
115. 44:22 much more elaborate manner. Take care. The new year is upon us and as has become a tradition on this channel, here is a video full of tips and advice as to how to reboot your life and render it richer, more productive, and all around more contented if not happy. You can
116. 44:54 find the previous videos in the life’s wisdom playlist on this channel, Life’s Wisdom. The link is in the description and the playlist contains dozens of videos with tips, advice, insights, directions, and generally the wisdom of the ages and my own added to it [laughter]
117. 45:18 for whatever it’s worth. And I advise you to listen to one video a night before you go to sleep. Okay. My name is San Baknin. I’m the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of psychology. And today a few insights,
118. 45:40 a few observations which may appear to you to be counterintuitive. But if you wish to go deeper, if you wish to do a thorough work of revamping yourself, giving yourself a chance, then you would do well to listen to what I have to say in this video. We start with the fact
119. 46:03 that you need to take care of you because no one else will. There are no saviors, no angels, no loved ones, no nearest and no dearest. Forget all this. Not your children, not your spouse, not your lovers, not your boyfriends, not your girlfriends, not
120. 46:24 your neighbors, not your friends. No one is coming to save you from yourself. You need to take care of you because you are the only one you’ve got. And so in a way we are all alone.
121. 46:43 In a way we all solistic. In a way we are all isolated. In crucial moments in our life from birth to death we are completely on our own. No one can reach out to us even if they want to and very few want to. So you take care of you. A sign of self love is the wish to change
122. 47:13 to transform oneself. Now you could say I don’t love myself. I hate myself. I’m self-destructive. But that’s also a form of attention. You’re paying attention to yourself. The attention could be negative. The attention could be self-destructive and
123. 47:31 self-defeating and self harming and self trashing and self-injurious and all this is true. But you are still paying attention to yourself. We’re all invested in ourselves affected. We’re all emotionally invested in us. It’s it’s wrong to say that there
124. 47:47 is someone who is utterly uninterested in himself or in herself because as I said self-destruction requires a lot of effort, a lot of investment, a lot of thinking and premeditation, a lot of planning. And so the first prerequisite is to be honest with yourself.
125. 48:11 There’s nothing worse than selfdeception. But honesty is not the same as self-hatred, self-loathing, harsh self-criticism. That’s not honesty. That is aggression. Honesty is about having a balanced view of yourself. The pros and the cons, the
126. 48:34 negative and the positive, the black and the white. In other words, the ability to integrate all facets and dimensions of yourself, not to split yourself, not to consider yourself one day all bad, one day all good, or permanently all bad. Be honest with yourself.
127. 48:53 Think of yourself as a journalist. Your role is to describe the facts and the events in an even-handed, neutral way.
128. 49:05 When you inject into yourself in observation, when you inject into your introspection judgment, then it’s a slippery slope that may yield finally to self- negation and selfish. Leave the judgment to others. Do not judge yourself. Appraise yourself, evaluate yourself, gauge
129. 49:30 yourself. Yes. But do not appropriate the internal voices, the introjects that want to take you down. The introjects that are hostile, your enemies, harsh, critical. These voices are not yours. They have been implanted in you by a succession of people.
130. 49:51 You need to revert to your authenticity.
131. 49:57 You need to be honest. Honesty goes hand inhand with assertiveness, but people often confuse assertiveness with aggression. They’re not the same. Assertiveness is a form of entitlement. Absolutely. You’re entitled to respect. You’re entitled to be respected. Aggression
132. 50:23 is entitlement to have power over other people. They’re not the same. Assertiveness is not aggression. You’re entitled to respect, but you are not entitled to have power over others.
133. 50:39 When you attempt to introspect, when you attempt to form a view of yourself that is devoid of isolated from the voices inside you, the introjects that seeks to seek to destroy you. The first thing you need to do is write a story about yourself. By the way, just do it. Take a
134. 51:03 piece of paper, take a smartphone, and write a story about yourself. This story, this piece of fact and fiction, this narrative is the glue that holds you together. You need it. You need it not only because it has an organizing capacity, but because it imbuss your
135. 51:26 life with meaning and significance, provide you with a sense of direction and purpose. It is the narrative that should order and structure your existence. You need to write a story about yourself. It allows you to see yourself from the outside and then by
136. 51:46 internalizing the story, it affords you a sense of calm navigation and calibration. Recall yourself. Remember your self. This core inside you. This identity that gives you a sense of continuity no matter what and no matter who. Never betray or deny yourself.
137. 52:12 Only you can abuse yourself. So never hand this power over to another person. The only thing you’re entitled to is respect. And the only thing you’re entitled to from yourself is selflove. Remember this. You’re entitled to respect from others and you’re entitled to self-love from
138. 52:36 yourself. You need to parent yourself not necessarily as an inner child but as a love object. You need to feel lovable at all times because you are never mind how obnoxious you are. There is a person out there who would find you lovable. So recall
139. 52:58 who you are through the narrative. Recall your self. Regain a sense of continuity. Realize what is your authentic voice and which other voices are not yours. And then never deny your authentic voice. Never betray your authentic voice. Never repress, never suppress, never silence
140. 53:23 your authentic voice. Be authentic. Be yourself. It would make it far easier for others to love you, to like you, to work with you, to remain in your orbit and ambit and to finally form with you long-term committed rel interpersonal relationships. [clears throat]
141. 53:47 There is always a balance of noises, external noises and internal noises. There is a cacophony of voices from the inside coupled with voices from the outside. You need to balance these voices. You can’t, even if you try very hard, you can’t completely silence your inner
142. 54:10 voices. They’re going to erupt from time to time. They’re going to reemerge, resurface, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you’re triggered. Sometimes you’re traumatized. Sometimes you’re afraid. Sometimes you’re you’re emotionally disregulated. There are
143. 54:26 moments in life where these voices reassert themselves and regain control. There’s no way to silence them completely. Although you should try very hard to silence all the voices except your authentic one. But still internal voices are a reality
144. 54:44 in the vast majority of cases. And the external noise tends to amplify and magnify these voices to uphold them and butress them and support them and afford evidence. You need to balance the external voices with the internal voices because once you do this results in existential
145. 55:08 silence, a calm and tranquility which are anxolytic. They reduce anxiety. But how do you accomplish these balance, talk less, listen more, opine never? Remember these three maxims. Talk less, listen way more, and do not impose your opinions and judgments and pre
146. 55:38 prejudices and biases and predelections and proclivities on reality. Doing so drives you further away not only from reality but from yourself. It impairs your reality testing. We have lost the capacity to listen. Narcissistically, megalomaniacally,
147. 55:58 egotistically and grandiosely. We seek to talk. Each one of us is a social media account or 10. And we constantly talk. We never listen. We never listen. We are opinionated. We know best. We are the experts, self-styled often. And so we talk and we talk and we talk. And if
148. 56:21 we have the right personality, we create around us a mini cult or a mega cult or a ma cult. And so you need to step back from this edge of the cliff, from the abyss. step back. By talking endlessly and ceaselessly, you’re amplifying not only the internal
149. 56:47 voices, but also the noise outside. It is a noise of your own making admittedly, but it re reverberates within the echo chamber that your life had become and then you drowned. There’s noise pollution. The only remedy is to to remain silent to withdraw into the desert of your
150. 57:11 life. Desert in a good sense, a clean surface, unpolluted, uninterrupted. And there you can listen more. People have been reporting that when they withdraw to the desert, they hear the voice of God. It’s an internal voice really. It’s the authentic voice.
151. 57:36 Talk less and listen more. Opine never and you will end up confronting yourself in a good sense. You will end up meeting yourself. You will end up encountering yourself this authentic voice that has been drowned and decimated by all this noise. By doing so,
152. 58:00 by talking less and listening more, you’re establishing a boundary. But you need to boundary not only other people, but you need to boundary yourself. I would say that much more importantly, you need to boundary yourself. You can and should of course communicate your
153. 58:22 boundaries to other people safeguard them and if necessary take measures to prevent a breach of your boundaries and to punish such violations. This is all true but while you’re busy imposing boundaries on others you yourself you are not boundared. You fail to impose boundaries on
154. 58:49 yourself. Freud was aware of that. The interplay between urges and drives and instincts and reality mediated in his theory via the ego. So imposing self boundaries is much more critical than imposing boundaries on others because other people rarely breach or violate
155. 59:14 boundaries. They are not sufficiently interested in you. You’re not that important. You communicate your wishes and your boundaries and they mostly comply. Maybe they lose interest. Maybe they walk away and maybe they adopt themselves. This is the vast majority of
156. 59:34 cases. Where boundaries fail is in self-imposition. Where boundaries fail is in your your interaction with yourself. Where boundaries fail, it’s when a variety of mental health issues and constructs interact to wiretrip you, to fail you, to defeat you, and in extreme
157. 60:00 cases to destroy you. Establishing firm boundaries inside oneself, that’s the only protection against self-deeat and self-destruction. You need to embark on this enterprise next year if you haven’t already done so. You need to define yourself. What
158. 60:21 are the red lines which you would never cross? Which actions, decisions, and choices you would never adopt because of their adverse consequences. Which types of self-destructiveness and self-deeat and self-loathing and self-hatred and self-rejection you would never engage
159. 60:36 in? and how to foster the alternative. Colloally known as self-love, self-acceptance, healthy self-enhancement, a realistic view of oneself, shortcomings and limitations on the one hand, strengths on the other, a SWAT analysis and boundaries emerge naturally from knowledge,
160. 61:00 self-nowledge and knowledge of the environment, of reality, of other people. Knowledge is about boundaries. If you delve into the construct of knowledge, what is information? Information tells you what is true and what is false. And isn’t that a boundary?
161. 61:25 It’s exactly that. The self, what used to be called the ego core identity, they are a form of boundary. And so you need to dedicate a lot of thought and effort to this. One way of establishing boundaries, self boundaries, is by seeing yourself through other people’s eyes.
162. 61:47 You can learn a lot about yourself by observing the way people interact with you. Some of them verbalize uh many others don’t. You need to be attuned to body language, facial expressions, micro expressions. You need to be alert. You need to be on your toes
163. 62:05 when you interact with other people. Not because of some kind of paranoid ideiation or suspiciousness or hypervigilance, but because there’s a lot to learn from them. It’s a form of crowdsourcing. See yourself through other people’s eyes, but never allow them to define
164. 62:22 you. Never be defined through other people’s gaze. There is dependence. There is narcissism. There is no wisdom in the crowd that you don’t already have access to. But the crowd is a dumb mirror. So you need to look into this mirror to learn a lot more about yourself.
165. 62:53 This is an act of wisdom. And generally in your life, you need to pursue wisdom. You need to be wise, not right. If you’re emotionally invested in being right, you are antagonistic. You’re conflict prone and you’re likely to end badly. So don’t seek to be right.
166. 63:18 Attempt to be wise. Don’t get consumed by abstract concepts such as closure or justice. Don’t ruminate. Don’t get obsessed. Don’t become compulsive. Wisdom is about flexibility. Wisdom is about adaptability. And yes, wisdom is about learning from your
167. 63:44 mistakes, about being wrong, about losses. Wisdom emerges from friction with reality. If you bend reality to your needs and wishes and dreams and fantasies, you will learn nothing ever. There will be there will be no process of learning. You will be trapped in a silo, an echo
168. 64:06 chamber, a a stray jacket. You need to let go. You need to lose control. You need to exit your comfort zone. You need to fail. You need to be shamed and humiliated from time to time. That is wisdom. The wise men or woman render themselves vulnerable. And so
169. 64:30 wisdom is a form of love. Love for whom? Love for yourself. When you’re wise rather than right, many opportunities and vistas open up because wisdom is about reality. It’s reality grounded. Wisdom emanates and emerges from a correct appraisal and gauging of
170. 65:02 your environment and people in it. And sometimes as a result of this evaluation you may reach a conclusion that being alone is preferable to being with others. Choose solitude or choose companionship but not as states of being as states of mind. If you choose solitude for a while
171. 65:29 make it your state of mind not your state of being. If you choose companionship, make it your state of mind, not your state of being. What is the difference? Your state of mind is about you. It comes from the inside. It infuses you and imbuss you internally.
172. 65:49 Your state of being is relational. It depends on other people. And other people are fickle. They’re unpredictable. They inject uncertainty and indeterminacy into your life. Some of them are hostile and malicious. Never construct your life to depend on
173. 66:08 other people. And if companionship in your case is such dependence, you’re in bad shape and you need to let it go. And if solitude in this case is a reaction formation, is a kind of rejection of other people. then your solitude is not real because it depends on the existence
174. 66:29 of other people to be rejected. You need to choose solitude regardless of other people. You need to choose companionship regardless of other people as internal states not externally determined or controlled. Solitude and companionship are always new. They’re new states.
175. 66:59 Even if you’ve experienced solitude, solitude 100 times before, you have never been the same. You’re changing all the time. You’re in flux. You are a river, not a lake, not a pond. So, as you change, every experience of solitude is different. Companionship is the same.
176. 67:17 It’s a new state, new condition, new environment, new people. Even if you’re with the same person, that person changes. And if you’re not, then definitely each experience of companionship is different. In other words, both solitude and companionship are dynamic
177. 67:36 and they demand of you to experience the new. Experiencing the new for its own sake is honistic and wrong. it leads nowhere. Never confuse excitement and arousal with happiness and contentment. They’re not the same. They’re sometimes very often actually mutually exclusive. So
178. 67:59 when you experience the new for the sake of novelty, maybe for the sake of risk-taking and thrillseeking, you will never ever be gratified. It’s a black hole. It’s a bottomless pit. But you need to experience the new as a form of continuity as a natural extension and derivative
179. 68:22 and outcome of the old. It is the old that should lead to the new. Similarly, you need to reexperience the old through your new dimensions, through the new existence. New and old should combine in synergy. They should feed each other in a good
180. 68:46 way. They should nourish, nourish each other. They should integrate. Do not split time itself. This is the past. This is the future. This is the present. Don’t do these. These are artificial distinctions. your your old existence, your old experiences, your old mental states,
181. 69:09 old people who have existed in your in previous periods in your life, old possessions, old memories, they all should segue into your new being, into your new state, into your new environment and into the new people in your life. Only when you have
182. 69:29 accomplished integration of old and new will you be a whole person capable of intimacy, love and happiness. Often by rejecting the old and embracing the new as a principle of life as a an ideology we impoverish ourselves. We renders our we render ourselves incapable of
183. 69:55 self-love and the happiness and contentment that come with it. So by all means exit your comfort zone, take risks and embrace your losses. Your losses are the engines of personal growth and development. You should welcome losses. You should welcome
184. 70:14 [clears throat] pain and hurt. There are no greater teachers out there. And yet even if you even as you are experimenting always link it somehow to to the old to
185. 70:31 the previous to the ancient previous experiences previous memories previous people in your life previous. Link the new to the old. Even when it appears as if you’re making a clean break, as if the transformation is so enormous that your identity is changing.
186. 70:56 Even as you exit your comfort zone and risk failure, even if as you assume risks, even as you as new people in in your life are the exact opposite and anathema amount of previous relationships, even then never lose sight of your continuity. Always organize everything
187. 71:16 via this construct, the self. Explain everything to yourself. Give meaning to what is happening. Make sense of your reality by linking the previous you with the current you. As you do all these things, remember to verify first and trust second. That
188. 71:42 is not a paranoid piece of advice. That is not hypervigilance. That is not suspiciousness. That is simply a good rule of thumb. Verify then trust. Do not trust then verify. When you embrace the new, including new people, don’t trust yourself initially. Don’t
189. 72:11 trust other people initially. Don’t trust the new environment initially. Don’t trust your new experiences and you and your new memories initially. Do not trust the new initially. It is by linking the new to the old, by establishing continuity, by imposing
190. 72:28 standards and criteria from the past on your new experiences that you are able to verify the new as an integral part of you as authentic as real as reflective of who you are. So use the old to verify the new and only then give your trust.
191. 72:57 One rule that I found difficult especially in my case but useful surround yourself with your superiors. Make sure your environment includes a number of people you could look up to and learn from. Your inferiors will be envious of you. They will try to
192. 73:21 drag you down to their level. Your superiors will become your mentors. They will en enrich your life. They will let you evolve and develop and grow because they wouldn’t feel threatened. And if you have sufficient humility to recognize the disparity between you and
193. 73:46 your superiors, superiors in every way, intellectually otherwise, then you are open to learning. Open-mindedness is crucial and learning is the only guarantee for survival. You’re also likely to be seen by your superiors in ways which are benign and beneficial to
194. 74:13 you. Whereas your inferiors are likely to notice you and observe you and pay attention to you and monitor you with ill intent. very likely it is your very presence that grates upon your inferiors and motivates your superiors to help you. So surround yourself with your superiors,
195. 74:39 but that applies to people and it applies less to other circumstances in life because you see, don’t aim for the best. Don’t seek to attain or accomplish the best. Don’t be a perfectionist. The best is the enemy of the good. Aim for the good enough, not for the best.
196. 75:07 Winnot said about motherhood that mothers should be good enough, not perfect. Perfection paralyzes. Don’t let yourself be subjugated by perfection. Don’t enslave yourself to perfection. Don’t seek to accomplish the impossible. Don’t set up standards which set you up for failure.
197. 75:34 Seek the good enough. Compromise with reality. Make things happen. Trigger dynamics. Accomplish things. The only way to do this is to be imperfect and to accept your imperfection as an engine. Live every day as if it is your first and live every day as if it is your last.
198. 76:02 your first day. Cur wideeyed curiosity, the wonder of reality, the amazement at other people, their richness, their depth, the profoundity of the human mind. Live every day as if it is your first. Encounter the world as a child would with awe
199. 76:25 and the will or the wish to explore and discover. And at the same time, live every day as if it were your last. Make sure your priorities are straight. Engage only with the important things. Abandon, ignore trivialities and petty
200. 76:50 concerns and conflicts and let the path choose you. Let the journey define who you are. Let the day seize you. Do not seize the day, but let the day sees you. The environment is vastly stronger than you are. All the information you need is out there already incorporated into the
201. 77:17 fabric of reality. Let go. Abandon yourself. Surrender yourself. Don’t become submissive, but become open, widely open. Let go of your defenses for a while. Experience reality directly. And remember, fantasy is the abdication from reality. It is giving up on
202. 77:45 reality. It reduces efficacy. Daydreaming is not fantasy. It is the precursor of planning and attainment. So dream, do not fantasize. Other people’s dreams often end up being your fantasy. And so avoid these fantasies. Dream your own dreams. Do not adopt other people’s dreams.
203. 78:11 Do not play into their shared fantasies. Dreaming is a great way of relating to reality, molding it, shaping it to fit you, shaping yourself to fit the world. Life is a dreamscape in many ways, but it is not a fantasy. And so you put all these things together
204. 78:40 and you would be able to reboot your life this coming year. Not to become a different person but finally to become yourself.