HealthyGamerGG - Analysis Paralysis Is Holding You Back

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

In today's episode, Dr K discusses the phenomenon of "Analysis Paralysis", and dives into how an aversion to loss cvan prevent you from making choices in life, and in turn make you feel stuck. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip-hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Craft Mac and Cheese, best thing ever. Today, we're going to talk about analysis paralysis. As a psychiatrist, I've worked with a ton of people who get paralyzed with over-analysis. So they're trying to solve problems in their life, really important problems, like what should I major in in college? Should I stay in this relationship? Should I quit this job? pursue my dreams or should I do something that gives me a stable income? And as we're faced with all of these problems, our mind starts logicking through things. It makes calculations. It says, okay, we could do this, we could do this. Here are the benefits. Here are the cons. And at the end of the day, though,

the mind ends up warning us because what if things go wrong? What if you break up with this person and you can't find someone else? What if you choose to study this in college, but then you can't find a job? So in all of these situations of analysis paralysis, we make calculations and that our mind warns us of the consequences. And no matter how many times we think through things, we can't seem to find an answer that prompts us to action. And the reason for that is because our brain is making intentional miscalculations about the future that end up paralyzing us. And this is the science of loss aversion. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health.

It combines over two decades of my experience of both being a monk and a psychiatrist and distills all of the most important things I've learned into a choose-your-own-adventure format. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. So this is super cool because this research comes out of the field of neuroeconomics. This is part of the reason why no one really understands this, because this is an emerging field. See, we used to have psychology, which started with people like Sigmund, Freud, and Jung, and stuff like that. And now we have things like psychotherapy, and we have therapists who understand all of these things about human behavior. And then we have stuff like neuroscience. We started doing brain scans, but the people who are doing brain scans aren't actually helping human beings change their behavior.

And then we have the field of economics, which is about how human beings, make choices. And so something really cool has happened, which is that in the last decade or so, these three fields have merged into something called neuro-economics. And the revelations from neuro-economics are fascinating. And one of the most important things that we've discovered, which a lot of therapists don't understand, we're not trained in this stuff, is about loss aversion. So if we want to understand how to overcome analysis paralysis, it turns out that neuro-economics gives us a really good insight into how our brain makes decisions and how there are certain parts of the brain that will keep you paralyzed because they are afraid of the consequences.

The crazy thing is that these parts of the brain actually make incorrect calculations, which is part of the reason why when you do something that's really difficult, right? Oftentimes you'll have this experience of like, oh, it wasn't that bad after all. And if you stop and think about it for a second, how is it that you feel? thought it was going to be so bad and it turns out to not be that bad after all. That's because your brain is making an intentional miscalculation. So let's start by understanding the basic circuitry of loss aversion. And once we understand this, we'll understand why we end up in analysis paralysis and what to do about it.

So let's take a quick look at the circuits of the brain that are involved in loss aversion. So the first is the ventral tegmental area, which is also governed by dopamine. So this is our dopaminergic circuit of the brain. This provides motivation, reward, and behavioral reinforcement. All right? So this is the part of our brain that tells us to do it. But when we make a decision down here, we also have another part of our brain. We have our amygdala, our limbic system.

This one is also noradrenergic, and this will become important later. But this is what gives us fear or predicts losses. Okay? So what ends up happening is this circuit of the brain and this circuit of the brain each generate a response that then combine together into some kind of calculation in the striatum. And then this results in some kind of decision. So let's just think through this, okay? Anytime we're trying to think about the decision, we think about the reward.

We think about what's the advantage of doing this. This is done by the VTA. And then we also think about the consequence. Okay, like should I break up with this person? or not. Well, let's see, like, if I break up with this person, maybe I'll feel alone. Maybe I won't find someone. Will I be able to find someone? There's a lot of uncertainty here. And then what happens is we sort of end up over here. And unless this decision is made in the right way or unless this calculation is in the right way, we end up not making a decision. So this seems super simple,

right? We think about the potential advantages. We think about the potential consequences. And then we result in the decision. And the reason that I'm paralyzed is because I don't have enough information to make the appropriate calculation. So it feels like in my brain I'm spinning my wheels. I think through the same stuff over and over and over again. But this remains a question mark. There's no decision to be made because I need more information. Turns out that the reason that you can't make a decision is because this guy over here is

intentionally divorced from reality. And this is insane. And if we want to overcome analysis paralysis, what we actually need to do is rein in this circuit of the brain to be more commensurate with reality. And once it is more commensurate with reality, our ability to act will become easier. So let me just give you all a simple example of this, right? So anytime you have analysis paralysis, what it boils down to is you can't act because what if something goes wrong, right? That's the essence of it.

So your brain is worried about a potential loss, all of this. effort without some kind of gain? What if I put in all of this effort, resources, time, energy, and what if it doesn't work out? So your mind is predicting the loss. And if you sort of think about it, that's why you can't act, right? Because there could be a potential loss. There could be something that goes wrong, and then all my effort is wasted. So if you really look at what paralyzes you, it's not the calculation. It's that there's a chance that something could go wrong. If I could eliminate the chance that something could go wrong or reduce the chance that something could go wrong, would it be easier for you to act? And if the answer to that question is,

yes, we're going to show you exactly how to do that. So this is where we get to a couple of experiments about neuro-economics. And this is what's really weird. Okay? So a lot of this stuff isn't going to make logical sense because it's not logical because our brain works in an illogical way. So the first principle that we understand is that if I have $5 and I have an object that is worth $5, these are not worth the same in my mind. Literally what my brain does is any time I'm thinking about purchasing something, okay, so I have the $5 in my hand, I want to buy a $5 object. What my brain does is thinks about all of the possibilities of the $5, right?

I could do this with $5, I could buy that, I could get a coffee, I could get a digital cosmetic, I could order a book on sale. I could do all of these things with $5. Oh my God, imagine all the stuff I could do with $5. And then what happens is we think about the object itself. And what does the object do? It can only do one thing. So then my brain decides, okay, even though these two things are technically worth the same,

my brain values the $5 more. Now, that may make perfect sense, but now this is when things get weird. So let's say I have an object with $5, worth $5, sorry. And I'm thinking about selling the object. So then what happens is my brain does the opposite. It actually thinks to myself, oh my God, I have this $5 coffee mug. This is the best coffee mug. I enjoy this coffee mug every single day.

It's really crazy, but like, man, I love this coffee mug so much. And if I sold it, I wouldn't be able to, you know, use this coffee mug anymore. And so now what we sort of think about is the value of the object. And then we end up thinking a little bit about the value of $5. So I know that's kind of weird, but like there's very little value in the $5 if we all. already own the object. So this is what's kind of weird, but the science of loss aversion teaches us that that which you already own is worth more to you than a possibility of something else. Now, this may sound kind of weird, but I want you all to just think about this for a second,

okay? So anytime you're thinking about, let's say, should I major in this particular thing in college, should I study this in college? So if you sort of think about it, in that moment, what you own is a lot of free time, right? So this is your time. You haven't committed to a major. What you own in this moment is the possibility of choosing the right thing. There are a lot of sort of things that you own already. I know it sounds kind of weird, but this is how it works. And then the moment that you commit to something, it's either it works out or it doesn't work out. But right now, before you make a choice, you have all of these possibilities available. This is like having the $5. And then the other thing that's really weird about this is that the

duration of ownership matters. So the longer that you hold the $5 or the longer that you own the object, the more it is worth to you. And this explains why this is really confusing, but a lot of people I work with will, let's say, waste their life playing video games. So they say, I've been playing video games for 10 years. And oh my God, people think that logically, if you've been wasting your life for 10 years, then that you should be more motivated to do something with it, right? So if it's like, okay, I wasted a day, like not that big of a deal, but once I waste a month, I'll be more motivated. If I waste a year, I'll be more motivated because I have all this catching up to do. But the science of loss aversion teaches us that the longer that

you hold in a particular pattern, the longer that you engage in this dopaminergic activity, the more it matters to you, the more that you become attached to it. And the harder it is to give up. So we literally value things that we've been doing and things that we own for a longer period of time. So the value of that which you own is worth more to you than a potential possibility. And this explains some of our analysis paralysis. Because if I'm in a relationship, let's say, and the relationship isn't very good, let's say it's only a two out of ten. And I look at the rest of the world and I think to myself, okay, there's a lot of people out there that I can I have a five out of ten relationship with. The problem is that once you already own this relationship,

your brain amplifies this by two to three times. Literally, we sort of know what the number is. And this also changes with the duration of the ownership. So the longer that you've been in a relationship, the more that your brain values it, even if objectively, it is not worth very much. Okay? So now we begin to see one calculation and this will fit in more, but that the duration of ownership and what you own actually increases the value of something in your mind, even if it is it objectively worth less. We'll talk about how to deal with that information or how to use it more applicably. But this is the first bias that we need to understand. The second thing that we need to understand is a temporal bias. Now, this is going to sound kind of confusing like a lot of stuff

in this video, because a lot of stuff is not logical because it's actually divorced from reality. So let's understand the temporal bias. Okay. So remember, we have the ventral area, which gives us dopamine, which gives us our experience of a reward. And then we have our amygdala, which gives us our fear, which gives us our projection of loss. So here I am trying to make a decision about the future. So I don't know if this makes sense, but when we make a decision about the future, when we're worrying about the future, the pain of a future loss can be experienced today. But the dopamine reward from a future of a future of the future. And the pain of accomplishment cannot be experienced today. This is screwed up. So anytime you sort of look at something

that you're doing, right, let's say I'm picking a major in college. So the exhilaration of graduating four years from now with a degree doesn't give me any dopamine. It's just a possibility. It doesn't activate this part of my brain. Thinking about the future, thinking about how much fun a game is going to be does not release a surge of dopamine. The thing that is screwed up, about our brain is that a future loss can be experienced today. So literally, if you are stuck in analysis paralysis and you're thinking about the benefits and you're thinking about the losses, the pain of the loss can be experienced in the present moment even if you haven't lost anything. And it is that pain of loss, right, that you experience over here. This, you get this signal.

We get this one. Right. So this one actually comes in to our brain is like, Ouch, this hurts. But we don't get any of the prospective pleasure. This remains empty. And what this results in is it keeps us stuck. And if only things were that easy. It turns out that things are actually even worse than this. So it isn't just that you can experience a future loss in the present,

which will paralyze you from acting because it hurts so much. It's that the amount of loss that you experience is two times what it actually is. Okay? So this is literally what we know. So when our brain makes a calculation about the future, it cuts the reward in 50% or one half, and it actually doubles the size of the loss. So let's take a quick look at a paper that sort of illustrates how screwed up this is. So while potential loss had a significantly greater effect on choice than potential gain in both adolescents and adults, this is looking at specifically adolescence. But the key thing here to understand is that we value losses more than we value gains by a factor of about two. So I know that sounds

kind of bizarre, but what that literally means is anytime you are faced with some kind of analysis paralysis, your brain is actually doubling the cost of what you're trying to do and cutting in half the benefit of what you're trying to do. And if you've got to gone through life, you've sort of noticed this, right? You've noticed that, okay, you're really worried about something going wrong and your brain is like, this could go wrong and this could grow wrong and everything could fall apart. And then you end up doing it and you're like, you know what? It wasn't that bad after all. I see this a lot, even in children who are getting vaccines or getting injections, where it's like, okay, the kid is terrified of the shot. Oh my God, the shot is going to hurt so much. But you get the

shot, it lasts like less than five seconds and then you kind of feel fine and everything is okay. And so it turns out that because of evolutionary reasons, our brain has learned how to amplify prospective losses in order to protect us from making mistakes. But the world that we live in now has changed drastically from when we were like primates living in the wilderness and we were like trying to figure out whether we should try to hunt down this deer when we also see tiger tracks.

So this is the problem. The world that we live in today has a lot of uncertainty. And in all of this uncertainty, there are a lot of possible losses that you could experience. The challenge is that in your brain, all of those possible losses literally activate your loss experience in the brain. They activate your fear response center. They activate your amygdala. And those things decrease your motivation. They make it hard for you to act. So not only is this temporal component where we can experience the losses of the future in the present, and we can't experience the gains, but also there is an amplification of this signal. So now the question becomes, what on earth do we do about it?

And this is where there's good news, because in the same way that our brain is kind of screwed up, there are other revelations that we have that can help us almost trick the brain into overcoming analysis paralysis and acting. The first thing that we need to talk about is order of operations. So I don't know if you all remember this, but if we kind of go back up here, we remember that that which we own already is worth more than a prospective gain, right? So if we kind of go back to this idea of the $5 in our hand versus the $5 object, this is worth more. So in our brain, literally the order of our thoughts matters. And I'll give you a very, very simple example of this.

So you wake up in the morning and you say, I want to play video games. and then your brain says, but I should work. I want to game, but I should dot, dot, dot. And if you pay attention to your thoughts in the analysis paralysis, what you will find is some combination of this structure all the time, right? This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start a CarMax.

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I really do want to be in this relationship, but I have feelings for this other person. So we have all of these kinds of initial thought followed by but dot, dot, dot. So this is where once again neuroeconomics teaches us something really interesting. Whatever thought you think first is worth way more in your decision making than the thought afterward. The first thought is more likely to be what you go with than the second thought. And I've seen this in my work as an addiction psychiatrist. So what I've noticed when I sort of read this paper, it sort of clicked with me because when I work people who are addicted to stuff, what I noticed is that the order of their thoughts changes.

Hey, I really want to have a drink today, but I shouldn't. And then eventually what starts to happen is they wake up in the morning, they say, wow, I really need to take care of X, Y, and Z today. I have this to do. I have this to do. Man, it would be really nice to have a drink. So what starts to happen is the temporal order of their thoughts changes. And what neuro-economics teaches us is whichever thought you think first is going to have a stronger motivational impact. So if you are trying to do something, I know this sounds kind of weird, but what we really want you to do is think in the direction that you naturally want to go first, right? So if you're trying to struggle with gaming addiction, wake up first thing in the morning

and think to yourself, this is what I really need to accomplish today. Right? So start immediately thinking about the direction that you want to move in, and then your mind will come up with other reasons, but I want a game. And I'm not saying that this is going to work 100%. There's more to it, but we actually know from studies of neuroeconomics that if you can change the order of your thinking, it will start to result in a motivational change and can potentially move you in the right direction. The second thing that we're going to talk about is intermixed losses. This one is huge. So here's what we know. Imagine for a moment that you are playing one game of your favorite, whatever, MoBA, FPS, whatever. You're queuing up for one round of something. If that game is a loss,

how much does it hurt? Right? If you play one game a day and you lose, it hurts a lot. And in fact, if you're like me, you never just play one game a day, right? If you only could play one game a day, and there are times in your life where you could queue up for one round, you actually don't. Because what if the game goes bad? You don't want to do it. You don't want to just play one game. You don't just play one game and lose, but if you have 10 hours to play, you're going to queue up 10 times, you can afford to lose the first game. It's not that big of a deal. So if we look at these two scenarios, they're literally the same, right? So I've played one game and I've lost that one game. But in one scenario, this is okay. Let's just cue up and play another. In the other scenario,

this hurts a lot because things have ended. So this is another thing that we understand about loss aversion. When we set a particular endpoint, the possibility of a loss hurts way more. But if we have intermixed losses and gains, which means we have some wins and some losses, each of those losses hurts way less. So what this practically means is if you're thinking about picking a particular major in college, you sort of pick your endpoint in your mind at four years. And you think to yourself, at the end of four years, what if I've made a mistake? Oh my God, I don't know what to do. What if I picked the wrong thing? And then I can't find a job because that's our particular endpoint. So the way that we frame the end determines how much the loss hurts. And remember, the more that the loss hurts, the more it activates our amygdala and the more paralyzed it keeps us. So let me give you all a different scenario. Let's say I said, okay, you've got 10 years to figure out what you're going to do with your life. You've got 10 years to sort out your career. Are you willing to spend,

four out of your 10 years to go to college and get a particular degree. Now, just think about how different that feels, right? Picking a major that will determine the rest of your life versus you've got 10 years to figure it out. University or college is an option. You can spend four years doing that, and you've got six years left if things don't work out. Just notice how different that feels mentally. And this is because we are now utilizing intermixed losses and gains. So what we want to practically do is if you are paralyzed with some kind of analysis, chances are you are looking at an end point.

And that end point, if you extend it further out, instead of saying, is this the right person for me or not? Should I break up with this person or not break up with this person? Try to add more time to the end of it. Try to really think about things in terms of intermixed losses and gains. This may actually particularly go wrong. That may happen. There's no way we can't predict. We don't know that things aren't going to go wrong.

But the more time that we add to the end of our mental equation, the easier it is to act. Now, remember that the goal of this video is not to say that you should act or shouldn't act. It's to help you overcome analysis paralysis. And one of the most powerful things that keeps us paralyzed is a particular conception of endpoint. As you extend that endpoint out, it will be easier to act. And now we get to the third thing. So the third thing is actually going to be a combination of a couple of things. And what we're going to do is go back to our core structure, because we know that there are multiple things that modify this core structure.

Okay, so we've got dopamine, we've got noradrenergic transmission over here, and now this is going to become important. So remember, I said that there's a box over here, and then we end up with a decision. So now we're going to learn about how to fix this system and what's in the box. Okay. So the first thing is remember that this side gets amplified by 2x and this side gets cut in half. Okay. So the first thing that we can do is sort of cognitively recognize that, right? So recognize, just notice that your mind is making things twice as bad as they should be.

And that the gains are going to be half as much as what you expect. Unless you're on Wall Street bets, in which case it's all screwed up, which is why it's a beautiful corner of the internet. Okay. So now let's understand a couple of things. the more that you can engage in emotional regulation, the easier this equation will be. So this is a problem that we run into with analysis paralysis. We turn to logic or calculations, right? We think about a lot of variables, A plus B, plus C, minus, and here's the loss ofversion stuff.

But this could go wrong, this could go wrong, this could go wrong, and then we don't know what to do. So the cool thing is that we tend to think that if we logically think through this equation over and over and over again, like we're some math professor, right, who's working on some famous equation that eventually will figure it out. That's not what we need to do. If we literally engage in emotional regulation techniques, we will diminish the size of these variables and it will be easier to act. We've talked a lot in our channel about different ways to regulate emotions and the lexothymie and all this kind of stuff. But literally if you have analysis paralysis, you don't need more information. You don't need to spend more time calculating.

You need to calm down your amygdala so at least you can go from a 2x to a 1x estimation, which is literally what we know from the science of neuroeconomics and loss aversion. If you can employ emotional regulation strategies, it will be easier to make a decision because your amygdala will not be controlling you. Okay? And remember also that this is a rigged game because you don't get any benefit of dopamine from a hypothetical, but you do suffer from a potential loss, a hypothetical loss in the present, which is completely screwed up. Okay? The next thing that we can do is reduce our noradrenergic

transmission. So let's take a quick look at a paper that sort of illustrates this. Loss aversion might rely on a similar amygdala stridal noradrenergic circuit in humans. Supporting this hypothesis, positron emission tomography, assays of noradrenergic activity. have found that individuals with lower adrenergic transporter density, presumably leading to, this is the key thing, greater nor adrenergic transmission are more loss averse. This is the sentence that we're looking at, okay? So I know it's kind of like weird because I just read a bunch of crap. But I've deciphered this stuff for you. Here's the takeaway. The more adrenergic transmission you have, the more power loss aversion will have over you. So I want you all to really think about this too, okay, because this is a weird. So when you think something is going to go wrong, what I want y'all to understand is that the way that your brain calculates what goes wrong is not based on reality. It depends on the level of your noradrenergic transmission. So then the question becomes, how can we reduce noradrenergic transmission? And this is huge. So stress, fatigue, inability to sleep, all of these things.

increase your noradrenergic transmission, right? So what we literally know is that when you are stressed out in some way, your cortisol levels increase, your adrenaline levels increase. And then related to adrenaline is also noradrenaline. So like we have epinephrine, we have nor epinephrine. So all of these kinds of stress hormones will literally amplify the pain of a potential loss. As we amplify the pain of a potential loss, it becomes difficult for you to act.

So let's kind of come back to our example. Should I major in this thing? And if you look at people in college, you'll notice that some of them, you're like, how the hell do these people do this? They just pick a major, and they seem to be excited in life. But I am not able to be excited.

I am so worried. And you look at those people and they're happy-go-lucky. They're chilling. They're viving. They're able to enjoy things. And that's because they're adrenergic, their noradrenergic level is low.

They are less stressed out. And we seem to think that, okay, they have figured everything out, which is why they are so carefree. We think that once I figure everything out, then I will be carefree. The beauty of what neuroeconomics teaches us is it's literally the other way around. You be carefree first, and then it will be very easy to make decision. And you may say to yourself, but Dr. Kay, that's not going to work because I can't be carefree until I make this decision. And this is exactly the intervention

that we need to talk about. That is factually incorrect. What we know from yogic principles of detachment and Vairagya and all of these other things is that you literally, if you decrease your stress level by yoga or meditation,

or even sleeping a full night, or reducing your caffeine intake, or reducing your substance use intake, is that your stress level will objectively go down. Anything that you can do to decrease your noradrenergic transmission will make you more carefree,

The more carefree you are, the easier it is to make a decision. And then we come to the last thing, which is where we are the most screwed, especially in this community. So the last variable to consider is interoception. So the more interoceptive you are, the more loss aversion will hurt. So what does interoception mean? So generally speaking, if we look at human beings, they pay attention to two different things. Some people pay attention to the outside world. and some people pay attention to the inside world.

So if you know people who pay attention to the outside world, they can be a little bit more materialistic, right? They're not so aware of what's going on in here. They're not focused on how the bag that they purchased, let's say I purchased some designer bag. And then that bag makes me happy. So some people are like, wow, this bag is really great. And then there are people like me and probably like you,

because you're here, you pay attention to in here. Wow, look at this happiness that I feel from this bag. Our focus is not in the outside world. Our focus is in our internal environment. And the more interoceptive you are, the more vulnerable you are to loss aversion, and the amygdala kind of gets hyperactivated. So people in our community especially pay a lot of attention to themselves, right? They're thinking a lot internally.

They're feeling a lot internally. They're paying attention to their internal signals. It makes you awesome. It's a big advantage in spiritual growth. because the more interoceptive you are, the easier it is or the more tuned you are to your internal environment. The problem is that, generally speaking, if we kind of think about it, right, spiritual growth and worldly success tend to be viewed in some ways is opposite ends of the spectrum. And so as our interoception increases, as we pay attention to more internal signals, and these can be our thoughts, they can be the logical ways that we calculate through things, they can be our internal emotional environment, the more vulnerable we are to all of this loss ofversion. circuitry. So the solution there is to externalize your attention. And the very practical way to

think about this is to simply just do things that move your attention outside of your head. So if you are struggling with analysis paralysis, where is the focus of your attention? Logic, calculation, fear. Instead, what you need to do is have conversations. Collect data. And data is not reading random crap on the internet. Right. Go and talk to people. Explore things. Take a look at actual data if you can, right? So the more that you can externalize your attention, you can even do things like talk with other human beings about other things. You can go for a walk, you can play with a dog, you can go to a yoga studio,

you can go out for a cup of coffee, whatever it is. You can smell the roses, right? Like, whatever you want to do. The more that you externalize your attention, literally what happens is this amygdala loss ofversion circuitry in your brain starts to become less powerful. As that loss aversion circuitry becomes like, less powerful, it becomes easier to act. So let's summarize. So a lot of people today

struggle with analysis paralysis. We have all kinds of problems around gender dynamics and dating and professional careers and inflation. We have all of these problems of the world is filled with uncertainty. So when our brain is filled with this, and anytime we think about acting, we think about the pros and we think about the cons, the problem is that anytime we think about the cons, it activates our negative emotional circuitry. As we activate our negative emotional circuitry, we feel the pain of a hypothetical loss in the present. In that pain of the hypothetical loss, because it cannot be balanced by the pleasure of a hypothetical gain, right?

So I can think about what it feels like to get dumped by my girlfriend or boyfriend, but I cannot experience the pleasure of a hypothetical orgasm if I do not get dumped. This is a fundamental mismatch with the way that our brain exists. experiences potential gains and potential losses. And since we have this imbalance, it biases us towards the loss. And so literally, our brain experiences more loss than gain when we're making a calculation. So what do we do about this? So our brain is kind of weird, but there are a couple things we can take advantage of.

The first is that the first thought that we have is worth more in terms of motivation and action than the second thought we have. So literally rearrange your thinking as best. as you can. The second thing to consider is intermixed losses and gains. If we pick a particular endpoint, that will hurt so much more. So instead, what we want to do is extend our time scale and give ourselves more time for wins and losses. Because if you really think about analysis, paralysis, what is it that paralyzes you? It's this concept of if there is a setback, it's all over, right? If I break up with this person, it's all over. I'll never find anyone ever again.

So really pay attention to where is the end point in your mind? And the third thing is really looking at sort of the neuroscience of that circuit. And there are three things that we can do. Emotionally reduce our fear and loss aversion will get better. Secondly, we can reduce our stress level, which affects our noradrenergic circuitry, which means that if you are stuck in analysis paralysis, the most important thing that you can do is to get a good night's sleep. Remember that it's not making the right decision that makes you chill.

is becoming chill first that allows you to make the right decision. And this is also where people get so stuck, right? Because so many people I've worked with assume that their mental well-being is a consequence of the right decision. That's why you're so fucking paralyzed. Because if you make the wrong decision, then your life is ruined. So it becomes so important, you're so stressed out about it. It's literally the other way around.

Become stress-free first. Bayragia, detachment. Check out our guides. check out our other videos. We have lots of resources on that. And decisions will become easy. The last thing is, y'all, like me, have an advantage and disadvantage. During the character creation screen, we picked interoceptive. Interoceptive means you're thoughtful, you're careful, you're spiritual, but you also amplify the negative signals of loss aversion. So the more that you can externalize your attention, the better off you'll be. So I love it. If you all could give this stuff a

shot and let me know how it works for you. Hey, Dr. Kay, how do I get my kid to put down the game without it being a fight every single time? The problem with gaming is that it tricks our brain into being a substitute for life. Once we start to get our psychological needs met through the game, that's when we become addicted. How to Raise a Healthy Gamer combines the latest in neuroscience research along with a decade of clinical practice. Check it out anywhere books are sold.