Joe Rogan on Oprah & The Secret

I love Oprah. Don't get me wrong. I think she's a wonderful woman. I think she's a powerful force of good and positive energy. But she ain't no Eli. But she also brought us Dr. Oz and the Secret. We have to remember what this lady has done. She has to be held accountable. I forgive her, but I mean cut the shit. The Secret is a particularly egregious offense. What? You don't you just you don't believe you don't believe believe believe. You I want to be rich. I am rich. I imagine myself flying. I can fly. I will beat my wings until I take off. What's up? Yeah, it was one of the more just confused. I want to say disturbing, but it was confusing when that was taking hold with people. I had friends that were telling me that the secret is real and that they imagine they were going to fulfill these childhood dreams that they had had about whatever. Being a fucking astronaut, whatever, whatever it would be. There's a couple people that I knew that were trying to tell me that the secret was going to be the thing and that they had a vision board and they had photographs. They put pictures up of the things that they wanted like them in front of large crowds and shit. Oh boy. They're in front of large crowds. This is so not how it works. Yeah, but there is a kernel of it that works. Yep. Positive thinking you wanting something, you envisioning it. But that's a little component in just how you live your life. It's not just sitting in your place and wishing it so. It's like saying I am going to be a bodybuilder because I drink water. Yeah. It's like no you. Okay. Where do I start? You should drink water and it will help you if you want to be a bodybuilder. But I've talked to all these bodybuilders and the one thing they have in common is they all drank water and they knew that if they drank water they would be giant. They'd be giant huge people. That's all you got to do. Okay, but did they also perform reps to failure? Did they also take steroids? Did they also do these exercises? Squats, deadlifts, curls? Did they do all that stuff too? Yes, but the water. Why aren't you a believer? This is what it's like. It's because they're saying like these people, they believe that they can do these things. They had this vision and they focused on this vision and it came to fruition. Okay, you know what they also did? They also busted their fucking ass and got lucky and were in a business or career that they had some talent in and figured out what that career is and figured out how to navigate the very weird waters of social interaction and skill acquisition and success and failure and how to learn from your failure. And luck. And luck. That's the big problem is you're dealing with complete sampling bias. You're only asking people that are in the mansions, Tom Papa, how did you do it? I mean, I see you here. You have this place. It's as big as the White House. You have a giant lawn. Did you always know this is going to be your reality? I saw it and I just put it on my vision board. And obviously it doesn't stick around. It became a fad because all these people at some point had to take the board down. Well, and unfortunately some people died because there was a story I was reading about Oprah, unfortunately, where this woman had terminal cancer and she had stage three breast cancer and just decided that through the secret she was going to imagine herself a healthy person. And she eventually wound up dying from it because she didn't get treatment. Yeah, I know. I mean, she stopped traditional, she stopped conventional medical treatment. But what part of, so how far do you go with positive thinking? Because I see you as a fellow that has goals and I would think positive thinking plays into your life. Well, what does that even mean, really? Do I think positive? I think in a positive way. I try to be positive. But when you're trying to accomplish something, whether you're trying to get better at something, like say if you're playing a game, like what if you, let's say golf, like say you take up golf and you want to be a really good golfer. Like you start thinking about golf, like how do I get better at golf? You have to learn. You have to pay attention to instructional videos. You have to maybe seek out coaching. You have to play some games and lose. You have to choke under pressure. You have to examine the mental game. Like what is wrong with my mental process when I approach a shot? What is wrong with this? What is wrong with that? And then become obsessed with the idea of succeeding in that. And I think that can apply to everything. So yeah, I mean, I certainly believe in positive thinking, but that was like mystic nonsense. No, that tips over and it discounts all the other stuff that you have to do. Do something to the law of attraction, but it is one component to this gigantic sort of spectrum of factors that have to be taken into consideration when you're trying to succeed at something. Positive thinking is one of them, but it's also the understanding of how to eliminate laziness, how to discipline yourself, how to write down goals, how to make incremental steps towards improvement, how to recognize failure is not just the end of all your hard work, but in fact, the beginning of a new breakthrough because you understand how to never do this wrong the wrong way again and the consequences of doing things wrong. It's like there's a lot of factors in getting better and succeeding at things. And they boiled it down to the easiest one, which is dreaming. Right, exactly. And that's why it's sold, but Oprah sold it. I mean, she was one of the big ones, man. She was all in. She was fucking 50 years old at the time. I mean, this is not a young woman who was selling this. How old is Oprah now? 75? 89? No, she just ran a marathon in four hours. Did she really? She's 67? 63. So she ran a marathon? Yeah, so let's think of when The Secret came out. I want to say that was like 2006-ish. 2004. 2006, okay. Nice. So 12 years ago, she was 50 years old. How the fuck did you not know when you're 50 years old that worth a billion dollars that that's not how it works? That it's Hocus Pocus. Yeah, it's not Hocus Pocus. Yeah. And to sell that to people is crazy. And that's a book that sold, I think I was reading it, sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million copies. Wow. Is that what it says? Jeez. That's crazy. Well, you want an easy way. You want something that's easy. Everybody wants you're in trouble, you're feeling whatever, and they want something to come, something come and help me. I mean, it's where religion comes from. It's just, please. There's that thing inside of us is like, I want to believe. If I believe, is that enough? It is a lot like that, yeah. There was – one of Trump's spiritual advisors was – he's got some spiritual advisor, some woman who was telling people to send her money. There was – send her money for January. There was some whole article about it. But it's basically essentially the same thing. It's like the idea is that – what is she saying? Donald Trump's spiritual advisor, Paula White, suggests people send her their January salary or face consequences from God. No. Is that true? She's attractive too. It's interesting. Is that true? Yeah. Look at her. Bam. I'll give you money. What do I got to do? All right. I'll do it. What do I got to do, Paula? How much do you need? I don't know if that's a good picture. Maybe she just looks good when she's screaming. Yeah, she looks good. But that's – Yeah, I would love for some really – I would love for the day where there's some real powerful spiritual individual who doesn't ask for money. Well, that's not a real powerful or spiritual individual. That's a huckster. I know. That's what I mean.