In the previous episode, I talked about how to instantly change someone else's behavior with a few tactics and the way that I came across that epiphany is a really interesting story. It's a little dark. Um it's something that people definitely wouldn't just vocalize in a public atmosphere and it's something people probably wouldn't even share with other friends. So I've never shared this with anyone until now.

 And this epiphany was actually from an online quiz, so to give you a little bit more context, this online quiz that I took, this was like before online quizzes were a thing. And for this online quiz, it was what religion were you? And when I say before online quizzes with a thing, I mean like the internet was still relatively new, right? We were still dialing in with 56 K. modems that made that noise so you can see how new the internet was. So for this online quiz it was what kind of religion are you? And the way the questions were, the questions it really just asked about your values, so what do you value, how, what would you do in these different types of situations, what's important to you? etcetera. And the results that I got from this online quiz, they were very surprising, and the results were that the religion that closest that aligns closest to me was satanism, and this was actually a little scary. 

So um I was born muslim, my parents there, my mom is fairly religious. My dad, um he's pretty much an atheist, I would say by now, but I was born a muslim and I was raised with Islam, but kind of two different views. My mom was a lot more conservative, my dad was a lot more liberal and with my religious upbringing, like I've had kind of like a weird relationship with religion. So I would say that I was actually pretty religious at one point when I was younger, I mean my, my parents, it's not like a prayer household or you know, we don't go to church or mosque or anything like that. But when I was five years old I saw some penguins on tv, it was like a National Geographic show where they were getting eaten by some killer whales and I was like, oh no, like this cannot happen, we cannot have these penguins die. And I wanted to do something. So I asked my dad, what can we do? And my dad said, well we can pray. And I was like, how do you do that? So that was like the first time that they taught me how to pray again. We're not from like a prayer household. But I think my dad was just kind of doing it because he was like, you know, part of the duties as a father is like we should teach this one ritual, right? So that's where I was with religion. 

Then. Fast forward when I was going to high school in Kuwait, if you are muslim, it is mandatory for you to take religion classes. So these are pretty much like, I don't know, they just go over religious history and stuff like that. But if you are muslim you have to take these Islam religion classes. And after my first semester experience in one of those classes I was like this is bullshit, I don't want to be here. So what I did is on my school application form, I changed my religion from islam to Christianity and I got away with this for about a year and a half until someone figured it out. Um and then they put me back into a religion religion class. So that's kind of like my relationship with religion. 

Then fast forward a little bit more. When I was in the Marine corps, it was really difficult for me to kind of like hold on to any type of stability. So actually did turn to religion and I would lead these prayer groups in boot camp and I've actually proselytized um the religion where I was able to convert to different people into Islam. And then after that fast forward, maybe a decade later where I was pretty much like religion is bullshit. Um the way that I came across this thought I was actually in China for a language exchange with the local Chinese college students. 

So this was when I was telling my undergrad and we were in China and talking to these local chinese students, the people that were in the program with me, the people in my class, we had a group of highly religious people. So these are like Chinese people that are catholic and they're very religious. And when we went they were asking the local students what religion are you? And there was this one girl, she was like a very young girl, she was like "religion, what do you mean?" And the person started explaining, he's like "yeah you know there's like different religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam and stuff like that." And then the chinese girl, the way she responded, she was like, "oh you mean superstitions, I don't have any of those." And that response to me, I was like, oh my god, that's it. Like all of this stuff is just superstitions, much of it never made sense to me, especially when my parents would use religion against me, I guess to make sure that they can control me. 

Um, for example, at a very young age, I would have to finish my food because if I didn't finish my food, every single piece of every grain of rice would turn into a snake in hell and would be biting me. Um, I guess indefinitely in for infinity. Right? So this is how religion was kind of used against me. And then I've had this like crazy relationship where I was not religious, religious and then definitely not religious right now. And one of the, one of the things why I'm also mentioning this is what I've learned about 6% entrepreneurs. Well, a lot of them are very religious. So when you are hypomanic and you believe you are destined for greatness. There's a lot of people that actually do subscribe to religion and them listening to this podcast episode right now, they are definitely going to unsubscribe and then they're going to be like bye Robin, this is not for me, and that's okay. But there is this big group of hypomanic entrepreneurs that are very religious. 

So back to the story on how I kind of came across as epiphany when I was taking this online quiz and it suggested satanism as the as the religion. That's right for me. I was like, okay, that's really weird. But here was this like thing, you know? that told me that this is what I was, so in order for me to learn more about myself, I started learning a little bit more, right? So I started digging into um what satanism is and etcetera. And then my interpretation of it, at least the person who wrote um and this was such a long time ago that I can't even remember all the documents and things like that. But whoever wrote this document was a troll. And if you're a troll, you'll immediately pick up on, by the way, I'm a troll, but you'll immediately pick up on other trolls and like what they're trying to do. And it's just a big joke and it's just like really funny, right? 

So me looking at this whole satanism thing, like I can definitely see why my values are line because it's this troll that just made all this bullshit up. And if you get it, um you can see the humor in it and if you don't then you're probably going to get yourself into some trouble. But yeah, so to me satanism was this troll kind of religion that just made fun of religion on its end. And one of the things that they will have you do, and it's not even a religion, I don't even know what I'm saying, religion, but one of the things that they have you do for this organization is you have to accept Satan into your heart, right? So this is like the same thing as Jesus Christ and to me this is hilarious because if you, well it's hilarious now, back then it was actually a very scary thing to do, but I see the positive benefits of doing it now because when you grow up religious, trying to actually like defy God and go towards Satan, that's like a huge thing, right? Like you're basically changing alliances, but if you kind of look at it in a way where none of that's real God or Satan or anything like that, changing that alliance gets you to kind of take that proverbial red pill and get woke and be like, oh God, Satan like none of that matters is probably the same entity anyway, if you believe in some kind of higher order. 

Um yeah, so that was kind of the exercise, but that was the epiphany and the epiphany was this online quiz, told me that I was this type of person and I just accepted it and I was like, you know what, I am, this type of person now and this is my life right now. And after that epiphany, I was like, oh my God, we are so malleable that if someone just suggests a trait to us will immediately want to adopt it because we're on this search for who we are and yeah, if you go back and listen to the previous episode on how to change someone else's poor behavior. Well, this is where that epiphany came from and this is Robin Copernicus, thank you for allowing me to share some of my deepest and darkest thoughts that I've never shared with anyone until now, Boom bam, I'm out