HealthyGamerGG - How to Study Lecture

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

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So here's what we mean by the study DLC. So we've asked people, so people have asked for like more in-depth content. And so I'm going to try to break down how to study. So in order to break down how to study, we first have to start with understanding how the mind works. So I want you guys to start with this very simple example. Okay. So let's say that I want to study like a textbook. So I open up the textbook.

I read what's on the page. And what happens after I read what's on the page? Do I learn it? Right. So like some people are saying yes. some people are saying no, some people are saying you forget. So like, let's just pause there. Okay?

So let's start by understanding that when I read something on the page, what can we learn from that? Because we're getting a thousand different answers. The first thing to understand is that there are variable responses or outcomes to reading something on a page. That in and of itself is a very important data point, right? That like when you read a page, essentially you're rolling the dice. And sometimes you learn what's more.

on the page. Sometimes you don't learn it's on the page. That in and of itself is like really weird. So what happens is like, why is it that sometimes you read something in a textbook and you understand it and other times you don't? Right. So we're going to dig into that. So second thing to think about is, you know, we have this perception. Like if I read something, if I read a page of a textbook and then I don't understand what's on it, what happens next? Like what do I do next? right? So yeah, so once again, a lot of different answers. So one is you just keep reading, like you just move on, right? So you're just like, okay, like I'm just going to read the next page. Like one is you reread it. The other thing is you panic, you get distracted, whatever. Fine. So like all

those things are also very important answers. So then the interesting thing is that, you know, when you read something and then you read it again and you read it again and you read it again, like so people sometimes think about, you know, learning is like a linear process where like with the first time I read it, I get 20%. The second time I read it, I'm up to 40%. The third time, 60%, 80%. And then I have to read it five times before I understand it. And that's the way that we approach study, right?

Like we sit down and we say, like, I just need to read this over and over and over again until I understand it. But that's like a really bad way to study. Because the main thing that I want to dig into today with you guys is like, how is it that sometimes you can read like a page of a textbook and you can understand it and other times you don't. Like you guys have to understand that there's a role of the dice. And I think the best way to study is to recognize what influences the outcome of that diary. You know, what influences whether you actually digest the material or don't digest the material. And that's the interesting thing.

It's like the information is not really, it's not just in the textbook. there's a process of digestion of material which can be worked on. And no one ever teaches you that. And the main thing about the study DLC that I want to teach you guys today is about how to digest material efficient. Keep going. Okay. So this is what I want you all to think about for a second.

So when I read a piece of page, what influences whether I understand the material or I don't understand the material? So let me ask you guys this way. if I'm studying and I'm studying in a building that's burning down, how likely do you think I am, how likely am I to understand the material? Not likely, right? So I want you guys to think about it this way. So when the mind, so the mind has different levels of activity. Okay. So let's say here's an active mind. And here's a calm mind. And so the more active your mind is, the harder it is for information to sink in. So this, like, actually is not going to happen. Whereas when the mind is

calm, it's easy for information to sink in. Okay. So the first thing to understand about studying is that, like, the more calm or tranquil your mind, the more receptive it is to information. And so you really have to think a little bit about what are the circumstances that lead to a calm mind. Because if you have a calm mind, you're much more likely to learn. So the big backdrop to this is that when I was in med school, I basically only studied for two hours a day. And I had many colleagues who studied for like six hours or eight hours or like, you know, just tons and tons of studying a day. And what I really found is that like studying more was not as good as studying better. And that if my mind was in the right state of mind, that when I read something, it would kind of sink in. And I realized

the same thing that you guys did, which is that like sometimes when I read a piece, like sometimes when I read something, I understand it. And sometimes when I don't read something, I understand it. And sometimes when I don't read something. I don't understand it. I mean, sometimes when I read something I understand and sometimes when I read something I don't understand it, which is like a weird observation. And then the first thing that I thought is, oh, it must have to do with the difficulty of the material. And the harder the material is to understand, the more I have to read it, which is sort of true. But then I also realize that sometimes there can be easy material that I still don't absorb. Right? Like, that's kind of weird, because if you really stop and you think about, you know, what you're doing, there are many times where you can read the simplest thing and it still doesn't sink in. And the main thing that I discovered was actually like this, this kind of principle

here, that there's, you know, there's a calm mind and there is a not calm mind. So then the question becomes, what are the ways in which to calm your mind? So the simplest thing to do if you want to study efficiently is the first thing I'd say is you study first thing in the morning. And there's a reason for that. Okay, so number one. Study first thing in a.m. Okay, so there are going to be counterpoints to this, which we'll get to. So the reason is because, like, when you, when you start your day, you tend to be like this. Right. And then if you think about it, like, the more that your day goes on, like, you're going to get like this. So as your mind has various experiences, as you have conversations with people, as you start, playing games as you like open up Twitter, your mind like is going to become more and more active

and it's going to be like less tranquil as you start thinking about stuff. And the more that you think about stuff like the harder it is to come back to this mindset. And so some people say, oh, I study well in the evening or whatever. Like that's that's fine. I mean, we're going to talk about that later. But generally speaking, the mind gets wound up through the day. And this is why for most people's sleep is refreshing. Right. So like why does sleep help us? What does sleep do? So as our brain, you know, thinks throughout the day, we accumulate a chemical in our brain called adenosine. And adenosine is a byproduct or sort of the end, like the end product of ATP, which is like energy. So essentially what happens is we like go through our day is our day, our brain starts out with the day with like a high amount of ATP and a low amount of adenosine.

and as our brain is active throughout the day, our adenosine builds up and our ATP decreases. And if any of you guys have like any sort of understanding of biology or cellular biology, you know what ATP is. And so the interesting thing is what does sleep do. What sleep does is it turns adenosine back into ATP, clears out adenosine from the brain. And what we know is that like one of the ways in which sleep refreshes us is by like refreshing our ATP. So what sort of does is fills up our manabar. And so that what you want to do is to study most efficient. you want to study with a brain full of ATP, not a brain full of adenosine.

And so study first thing in the morning. There are a couple of other reasons for that. So number one is ATP versus adenosine. Okay. Number two is circadian rhythm. So this is going to be challenging because a lot of us don't have regular schedules. And some people feel like they're night owls or whatever and they don't like really function that well in the morning. So our body has an evolutionarily conserved circadian rhythm that is like common across mammals.

So if you look at mammals anywhere, or not, I mean, not anywhere, but most places, most mammals tend to be most active at dawn and dusk. And it's kind of interesting because like part of the reason that sunset and sunrise are so beautiful is because our eyes are actually evolved to have the highest degree of visual acuity during sunrise and sunset. that's why colors seem so vivid. It's not like colors are magically more vivid during that time of the day. It's because our organs of perception are designed for maximum acuity in or maximum receptivity of the environment during those times. And that's not just with our visual system. Our bodies are designed to be active or our minds are most designed to be active during like

dawn and dusk. And so you see that kind of conserved across mammals if you look at like lions, if you look at monkeys, if you look at all the apes, they tend to be like the most active around dawn and dusk. So if you think about like, you know, biologically, most people, most humans have evolved to be active during dawn and dusk. So any kind of mental activity that you do around dawn and dusk are going to be on average for most human beings in the population, there are caveats to this, which we're going to get to, is going to be most efficient during that time. So what I would do is, is wake up at 4.30. I'd study, I do like yoga for like half an hour and meditate.

And then I'd study from 5 to 7 a.m. And then what I would do is like I'd, you know, get ready. And then I'd like go to class around 8. Class starts around 9. You know, get ready. And then something cool would happen, which is like at 9 a.m. I would go to class, but I would have, yeah, you guys say you're out. Just stay with me.

Okay. So, you know, at 9 a.m., like I would have already read everything. And I would like understood, I would have understood things. I sat down, I kind of studied it. It was like super high quality studying. And so you guys know how like you wish you would have like revised things or reviewed more? Like my class would actually be the review. So I would, it was like I did my review like the first time I sat in class because I'm kind of reviewing the material. And then when I actually studied for the test, that would be like the third review. Right. So it's like the third time I'm going over the material. So study first thing in the

morning for reasons of ATP because your mind is kind of fresh for reasons of circadian rhythm. Now let's talk about the caveat to this, right? So but dot dot, dot. So some people say I'm not a morning person, I'm a night person where it's hard for me to wake up. Fine. So I think that, you know, when people say that they're not a morning person, a couple of caveats to this. One is that if you're a teenager, your circadian rhythm is not geared to start at 4.30 in the morning. It's actually geared to start somewhat later. So teenagers especially, there's good evidence that suggests that you guys mentally become active around like maybe 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. So that's an important caveat to consider. So I don't know if that means, you know, you should wake up at 9 a.m. and then like study from 9 to 11.

that could be hard because of school and stuff like that. But there are biological counterpoints to the argument that I'm making. So let's run over those. The first is that if you're a teenager, you need more sleep and that your mental faculties may be primed later in the day than 4.30. Second caveat is I'm a night person. Like there are night owls and their morning larks or whatever. So in my experience, most night owls have become night owls and have adapted to being a night owl, but are not intrinsically that way. So if you look at like the way that most night owls are born, it usually starts sometime

in teen years where people stay up really late like doing things that they find kind of engaging or fun or dopaminergic. Like they text people, they play video games, they like spend time on you. YouTube or whatever. And so spend time on Twitch. And so essentially, like, don't confuse your brain and body's ability to adapt circadian rhythm to evolutionarily what a human being is designed for. So humans are also evolutionarily very, very adaptable.

So when you're like a physician and you work nights, your body kind of gets into the rhythm of being active and awake and functioning at night. Okay? that's fine but don't confuse your ability to adapt with like biologically what you're geared for. So in my experience

a lot of the people who claim to be night owls when I actually work with them for some amount of time and recalibrate their their like night owleness they actually do better during the day than they did at night. So that's kind of an interesting caveat if you think you're a night owl. So the third reason to study first thing in the morning

is sort of psychological stuff. And what I mean by that is, you know, so I asked you guys, can you study well if you are in a burning building? No. So if we think about it, like what are the other things that are going to take a mind like this and turn it into this? So these are, this is going to be like psychological insults for lack of a better term, right? So if you're walking down the street, like let's say at noon, you go out with a friend of yours and like your friend says, you're, you're a dumb ass, I hate you, you suck at life. Or let's say that you play a video game and you, you like tilt because you lost and these guys are noobs or whatever. Like if you wake up first thing in the morning, like most people don't wake up tilted, although we'll talk about that in a second, right? But like, you know, as you tilt and as stressful stuff happens to you throughout the day, it becomes harder to study because you're moving from here to here. This is what tilt does. So tilt disturbs the tranquility of your mind and makes it hard to study. So the more experiences you have throughout the day, the more psychological crap builds up.

And the harder it's going to be for you to study because your studying is going to be less efficient. Then what you have to do is essentially spend willpower or mana. Let's just call willpower mana. Right. So you have to expend willpower or mana to go to this. Right? So if you're tilted and you sit down to study, you guys can see this.

Like, you have to like, it takes like effort to do. just sit there because your mind doesn't want to concentrate on that because you're like tilted. And then what happens is like a chunk of your ATP, right? So 50% of your ATP gets reduced in going from this state to this state. So you're starting out, like you're starting out with like half of your manabar already spent. If you play games before you study, your mind is going to be thinking about the game. It's going to be thinking about tilt. It's going to be thinking about this strategy, oh, you want to do this, let me do this, let me do this. And then you actively have to restrain it to kind of come back to square one.

Whereas if you start in the morning, you're at like 100% mana right here. Right. And then the other interesting thing is that like when you actually tilt, even this state actually costs you like 50% of your mana bar. And then going back from your like this state to this state cost you the other 50%. And then you're left with like nothing. You're like out of mana before you even start to study. And you're here.

This is like your oom. with no study. And so it's hard. Like it sucks. And then what happens is you're trying to like read this stuff, right? And then it kind of goes here. And then sometimes it sinks in. And sometimes it bounces off.

Right? That's what happens. And you're kind of, you're kind of screwed. Like it's just going to be super inefficient. So clarity of mind leads to good studying. And specifically the things that you want to avoid are like any kinds of emotional experiences, any kind of conflicts, any kind of tilting, any kind of distraction. So the earlier you start, like the fewer experiences you have before you pack the book, the better off you're going to be. Ideally, you can also take advantage of a couple of things like circadian rhythm and stuff like that because your mind is primed.

The other interesting thing is that if you look at religious traditions, they have things like Matins or Brahmurta. right so in Islam you have like the five times prayers and like why do they start so like these these are three religious traditions so you have Islam Catholicism and Hinduism or Buddhism and all three of them basically say that like meditation or prayer is like a really good time for meditation or prayer is at like 5 a.m. And that's kind of interesting right. So like you could argue that because Islam and Catholicism share a common root. They share a common ancestor. Therefore, there should be similarities between those two religions. But Hinduism and Buddhism were sort of essentially independently developed as religions. And they all came to the same conclusion, which is like,

this is the best time to pray or this time is conducive to mental activity. And that's the time around 5 a.m. So if you guys ever go to like a yoga or meditation retreat, like they start early. And like, why do they start early? It's because it's actually like, it's easy to meditate. First thing in the morning, it's hard to meditate at noon. So there's actually, you know, some evidence of this in other ways to, whether you call that evidence or not is, you know, that's questionable, but it's kind of interesting, right? So it's an interesting observation at the least. So study first thing in the morning and a tranquil mind leads to more efficient studying. Think about how you spend your mana. Okay. So now the next thing to think about. Okay. So now let's talk a little bit about how knowledge

works. So this is going to be hard. Okay, so I want to teach you guys how the mind works, okay? So this is how your mind works. So this is the conscious mind. Okay, this is unconscious. So what I want you guys to think about is like, so I have a thought, right? So someone in chat said, I wake up thinking about video games. Great.

So let's like let's understand like how does that work. So where do your thoughts come from? Right? So like you have thoughts in your conscious mind. So where do they come from? from. So like that's kind of weird, right? Like, so if I have a thought about a video game, like, like, so here's like, um, so what's like, let's think about, um, yeah, so Valerant. So I want to play this character in Valorant. Okay. Where does that thought come from? Okay, whatever,

CSGO, whatever. See, mood, instinct, memory, stimulus. desire, experience. So the first thing, I want you guys to just think about what Twitch chat is saying. So do you guys get that like no one has a clue? Like everyone sort of thinks they have an answer, but like let's just pause and appreciate for a moment

that as a population, we don't know where thoughts come from. Right? Like we're living life, not knowing where the thoughts in your head come from. And like, no wonder life is hard because we don't know where this kind of crap comes from. Like, imagine if you could have a thought,

I really want to learn geometry. Man rhomboids R-O-P. Right? Like, imagine if you woke up every day and you had thoughts like this instead of thoughts like this. Right? like imagine how much easier your life would be right so like this is what i want you all to understand so what we struggle with is that we fight against our own thoughts right so when you wake

up and you think about fine c s go is better than baller or whatever you pick your game animal crossing right so can anybody truly hate on animal crossing maybe we'll see but so like like you wake up in your mind starts thinking about that about like animal crossing and then the is like this process of moving from this top to this thought thought requires manna. Right? Because manna is blue. And so like, where does this thought come from? And is there any way for this column to be our natural thought instead of this column? So imagine how easy your life would be if this was the default. Because that's what you guys want, right? Like, and the problem is that we spend too much time thinking about video games. And like, we want to be thinking about like you want to be able to study.

Like you don't want to fight to be able to study. Okay. So where does thought come from? Right? So people are generally right. So the thought sort of bubbles up from here. Okay? And then it sort of forms a bubble, thought bubble.

And what I want you all to understand is that when you learn something, something, it's kind of the conscious mind. So let's say like, you know, pi equals, sorry, 3.14, let's say like other random thoughts, like, you know, pi r squared is like the area of a circle, right? So in our conscious mind, when we're studying, what we're trying to do is essentially implant these thoughts. right? So here's the border of conscious to unconscious, and it bounces off. Bounced off. And so depending on whether our mind is palm or not, like it'll actually sink in. And this is what learning is.

So learning is when this thought that is conscious, which is actively in your mind, gets planted into your unconscious and then can be called up. And so once pi r squared lives down here, then it can bubble up on its own. You guys see that? But the weird thing is that, like, we don't know how to plant thoughts into our unconscious. So now we get to some of the mental health stuff, right? So, okay. So show a hands who thinks that they're a piece of shit and they suck at life?

Right? Okay. So, like, think about this. Where does that live? And then it bubbles up across the border and then it feels bad man all day. It's weird, right? like this thing lives in your subconscious. Like the perceptions that you have about yourself live in your subconscious and they bubble up and they tell you that you're a bad person.

So let's say you're going to say like, okay, I should really study for this test. And then like this thought bubbles up that's like, yeah, but like you waited too long and you're not going to get an A. So you might you might as well not study because if you can't get an A, there's no point. Like that's kind of weird. right so let's forget let's just assume that that's true for a second but what i want you guys to appreciate is like when you try to do something in life these weird thoughts bubble up in your head from we don't even nowhere it's like how does that even work like when you're trying to do something good for yourself and there's a there's an interesting interview that we did with this guy named

cruclusive, like back when we were like a tiny stream that I encourage you guys to watch. But I want you guys to realize that like these thoughts bubble up and like they're not, they're not necessarily real. They just kind of bubble up. They're like a formula that you learned that was sort of wrong and it sort of just bubbles up. And then as we have experiences, so these are some scars, right? So like, let's say you get bullied or like, let's think about it this way. So let's say that you procrastinated and you didn't study well enough.

Then what happens is, I'm lazy, is a conscious thought to begin with. And then what do you do with the conscious thought of you're lazy? You plant it down here. And then it lives down here. And then what it starts to do is bubble up. Right. So there are times in your life where you have learned or concluded that you're lazy. and then that thought that gets planted into your subconscious

and then it's like this laziness generating machine that bubbles up, it's like this bubble generating machine that's telling you like, oh, you're lazy, you're lazy. Like, oh, like, you need to get a job, but you're lazy. Oh, like you do this, but I'm lazy. Like I can't exercise because I'm lazy. And so it's kind of weird, but like, like, you know, at some point your mind starts working against you

because the unconscious starts to bubble up all kinds of weird things and learning is the process of taking what's in the conscious and putting into the unconscious. That's what understanding is. You don't have to hold it in your head. It can be triggered automatically. That's what learning is. And the thoughts that we have come from where.

So let me put it to you guys this way. I'll ask again. Okay. Conscious. Where do our unconscious thoughts come from? Where are they born? Exactly. They're born from the conscious.

Okay? So this is what happens, right? So like thought starts here and then gets moved down here. Right? So it went in this way. And then it starts to bubble up. This is the process of learning. Learning is this arrow right here.

So if we think about like when I study something, right? Like I have to hold it in my head. Just think about the prospect of studying. When you're learning something, you're literally holding something in your conscious mind. And if it, unless it gets, until it gets planted into your unconscious, you can lose it and you won't learn it, right? Like, you can hold a thought in your conscious mind. Like, if I tell you to remember a string of numbers, 7259, you're holding them in your conscious, 7259, 7259, 7259. And what you're doing is essentially, as you repeat it,

you're, you know, the 7259 is being bounced in, bounced in, or, bounced out, sorry. And then at one point, finally, it sinks in. 7259. Oh, God. My handwriting is so bad. And at some point, oh, okay. And then it lives there. And now you can recall. Right. So now the 7259 can come out. But in order to get it in there, it takes some time. Or, and the other interesting thing is that if I ask you to remember something and you're paying attention, then you can learn it more easily. And what paying attention is, is, you know, this whole, back to this thing. This is not paying attention. This is paying attention. This is complete attention. It has to do with the calmness of your mind. So now we're going to try to tie things together. So do you guys

understand like this is what learning is? Learning is the process of taking conscious thoughts, which you can only hold on to for a limited amount of time before they disappear and you lose them. Because that's what happens in the contrast. mind, right? The conscious mind actually loses things. And that's why, like, you can think about Valorant or, like, whatever, like, Animal Crossing or, like, Breath of the Wild or whatever. You can think about it for a little while, and then the thought, like, trickles off and trails away, and it's gone. If it gets planted into your unconscious, then it becomes learned. And once it lives in your unconscious, it starts to bubble up. So then the question becomes, how can you control what goes

into your unconscious. So I'm talking about, okay, you guys are answering my question, but I asked them. So if I wanted a particular thing to be in my unconscious, what is my strategy for putting it into my unconscious? Okay, so people are talking about repetition and reinforcement. So let's think about that, right? So you guys are right, but I think there's a very important implication there, which I'm not sure that you all have grasped.

Maybe you guys do. Okay. So one way is for repetition. So 7259. 7259. 7259. Okay. So that's repetition.

So like each one is, let's say, a 30% chance to bounce in. So now let's think about this. The other way that I want you guys to think about it is, so some person says let it take over. So I want you guys to let me ask you a question. in a different way. If I spend most of my day thinking about a particular thing, what is the likelihood that that thing will sink into my unconscious? Okay. So now let me ask you guys something. What do you spend most of your day thinking about? So just think about what thoughts are in your mind throughout the day. And therein lies your problem and your solution. Right? Because

what bubbles up for you is going to be what you spend time thinking about. So you think about what this is, and that's going to be what automatically bubbles up. So everyone's asking about motivation, right? But if you spend most of your time thinking about games, your mind is going to give you thoughts about games. And then if you try to study, it's going to be hard because this is what's being generated. I want you guys to think about each thought that you have in your mind is like a little factory in your subconscious. And what happens is all of these factories are going to be producing

thoughts for you, which are going to steer you in a particular direction. And so if we look at issues of like low self-worth or self-confidence, right? Those people spend time, if you actually ask them, how do you spend your day? They spend time thinking thoughts that they're bad people. And here's the real damnedest thing, right? So the more time I spend time thinking about games, this is creating more factories.

And then each of these factories is going to think thoughts about games. And this is what addiction stuck, no purpose. I don't do anything useful in my life. This is why. Because you have a game-producing factory in your unconscious that thinks thoughts about games. You reinforce that thought.

by playing a video game, by talking to your friends about video games, and the more time that your mind spends occupied on this, just like if we were to spend 24 hours a day thinking about 7259, that's all that would be in our mind. And if you think negative thoughts about yourself, that too is reinforcing that's what's occupied in your mind, and your unconscious is learning how to generate negative thoughts about yourself. You guys get that?

This is the problem. in a nutshell, is each thought that you think plants a seed in your mind, and that seed is going to turn into a tree. And so if you control your thoughts and you're careful about how you plant your thoughts, then you'll be able to change what you automatically think. And this is what all of you guys want, right? So now I'm going to ask you guys, what is lazy? What is lazy? What does that word mean? absolutely so some people are getting it it's wrong thoughts right so this is what you guys want

lazy thoughts so these are the thoughts of a lazy person and they live down here and for you guys they bottle up right these are the like call them whatever you want to oh i don't feel like doing this oh it's not going to be good enough people won't like it there's no point in trying unless i'm sure it's going to work there's no point in studying unless i can get an a i'll apply to college when i can get a 4.0 and show everyone how smart I am, all of those thoughts. And what you guys want, because you look at other people, right? You look at other people. And those are the people that say, that have thoughts like,

I'm going to try my best. These are the not lazy people, right? They have these kinds of thoughts, which you guys just don't have. You can try to force yourself into thinking that, but you just can't think it. They're the ones that say, It's about the journey, not destination. They have all these kinds of thoughts, like these positive thoughts that tryhards have.

And you're like, I wish. And the thing is that you recognize, like, and you guys know this, right? Because you say, I'm lazy and they're not. You're not saying it's something that they do differently. You're saying that that person is fundamentally different from the way that I am. and that's why I can't change. And the weird thing is you're right. And what you guys are picking up on

is that they have not lazy down here. So here's the crazy thing. Okay? Let me just think about how to say this. It is actually way harder for you to do the same thing than a not lazy person. A not lazy person to clean their room is easy.

For you to clean your room is actually harder. For a not lazy person, person to clean their room requires 10% of their man a bar. For a lazy person to clean their room requires 90% of their manabar. And you guys are actually right about that. You're not wrong, that you guys are at a disadvantage. And the reason that you're at a disadvantage is because of your thought generating machines. This is what motivation is. Motivation is the capacity to engage in a behavior intrinsically. Right? You say, I'm just not motivated. Those people are motivated. Where does internal motivation come from?

It comes from within. Where within? It comes from your unconscious. It comes from the thoughts that automatically bubble up into your head. And what's completely OP is to have positive thoughts down here instead of negative thoughts. Your life becomes so much easier when you have positive things. Like just think about when you try to do something, right? Like when I apply for a job and I don't get an interview, there are two thoughts that can come up in my mind.

One thought is, you see, you suck at life, no one's ever going to give you an interview. That's one thought that you can natural, do you guys see how that just, that shit just appears in your head? It doesn't come from anywhere. It's just like, you're walking right, you open the, you open the letter, you see the rejection, we're sorry, we're going to go with someone else. And that thought pops in, you see, there's no point in trying. Do you guys see how that thought's just like completely automatic just comes from nowhere? And then there's the other people, right? That's the you. That's the us. Then there's the other people. They open the rejection. They're like, oh, man, things didn't work out.

I should probably apply again. That's the other people. That thought, too, just pops up. It just pops up. It's not like they sit and they think about it. Do you guys see this? There's a certain automaticity of thoughts. They don't like sit and they ponder.

You can sit and ponder. And pondering allows you to go from the first thought to the second thought. That requires mana, right? For them. Okay, so job rejection. Thought number one. I shouldn't. have bothered.

Thought number two, I should try again. This, both of these are automatic. Okay? And so this, moving from here to here, requires mana. And what's O.P. about not being a lazy person

is that without spending any mana, just think about how O.P. this is. Some people get to be here without spending any mana. Like, how broken is that? That's cheating. Right? And so then the question is like, how do you, it's not about this. It's about moving from here to here, right? So that you go down this arrow in the first place. So broken. It's about having a mind and this is what y'all want, right? You want a mind that actually, instead of keeping you from doing things that you should do, prompts you to do things that you should do, helps you to do things that you should do, motivates you to do the things that you can do. You know, it's good for you, you even enjoy it, but you still don't do it. Why not? It's because you run down this track. So now the question is, absolutely, what do you do about it? Right? So now I'm going to

ask you guys, what do you do about it? Where does this automatic thought versus this automatic thought? Where do the thoughts in our unconscious mind come from? You already know the answer. say mana, just kill ourselves, brute force it. Brut force it is using mana. Manapots? Sure, we can talk about manapots. The active mind, yeah. Right? So once again, we get a bunch of answers. Some people, I think, have the right answer.

And it's hard. But this is where the thoughts in our unconscious come from, right? Where does 7259? How do you guys remember 7259? Because you consciously spend time thinking about it. Right? So the, and like, this is not rocket science, because here's the thing. Like, you guys, so think about whatever game you're thinking about now, right?

Like, if you wake up to the dude who said, I woke up and I think about games. How does your mind know which game to think about when it wakes up in the morning? Were you thinking about the same game 10 years ago? Of course not. Maybe you were. Maybe if it's Dota. You've been thinking about Dota every morning for the last decade. Right?

So where does the thoughts about a particular game? Where does that come from? It comes from your conscious mind. because your mind spent conscious time thinking about that game. And then since it spends conscious time thinking about that game, thoughts about that game dig into your subconscious. And then they start generating thought. It's a thought generating machine about that game.

And they start bubbling up. That's how it works. So literally, if you control or influence the kinds of thoughts that you spend your time thinking, then you will change the person that you are and you will change what your mind generates. So then people say, okay, but the problem with that is just think different thoughts. That shit doesn't work, right?

So let's think about how do you just think different thoughts? So I'll give you guys an example. So therapy is a good example. So what happens in therapy? Okay. So what happens in therapy is you come to a therapist with a particular pile of thoughts. Right? Let's just call them negative self-worth.

Okay, this is the pile. This is the bundle of thoughts that you have. That's supposed to be a bow tie or some shit. And then what the therapist does is you guys sit with those thoughts and then you like re-examine them. And then literally in your mind, you consciously reframe. So if you look at something like CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, it involves like cognitively reframing the way that you look at things. and then what happens is you end up with less negative self-worth. And what I mean by end up with less negative self-worth,

you start to think about yourself in a slightly different way. And that's why CBT works because it changes what's in the unconscious by re-examining it through the conscious. This is what our coaches try to do with you too. We don't do CBT, but we help you think about things in a different way. Right? And then the other thing, so like, how else can you change, like, the person that, like, if you have low self-worth, like, what are the other ways? One is to consciously re-examine.

The second is, like, environment, for lack of a better term. Right. Like, if you hang around with people that sort of like, so if you think about, you know, where does negative self-worth come from? It comes from, let's say, like, abusive parents or, like, bullies at school or take your pay. So let's say you get bullied at school. And that's why, like, so just think about how does bullying at school make you feel like you have low self-worth? it's because when you get bullied in your conscious mind, there are low thoughts that you're a piece of crap.

And then since you get bullied every day, and we kind of can see this too, right? So here's the conscious, unconscious mind. You suck. And if a bully tells you that once, NBD. But when a bully tells you that Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday, you fight it. Friday it goes in.

Saturday it goes in. And then it's the weekend and it's social media. and you ignore Twitter. And then, oh, look at all those low self-worth generating thought machines, right? Complex PTSD. So then how do you combat that by changing your environment, right? Hey, O.P. You are great at Breath of the Wild. Hey, O.P. I love you, man.

that can bounce off too. Right? No, no, no. So people are saying, do I have to quit games? No, so just think about this. The reason that you guys play games is because on your friends list

are the people that give you positivity. Why would you quit that shit, man? Like, positivity comes from your gaming buds, right? Like, when you school those nobs, when you carry those shitties in your MOBA game of choice, like Loll or Dota or whatever, like when you carry those shitties

and you, like, 5, you won them, Like, yeah, man, you're awesome, bro. That's great. Do you guys get it? So your environment is really important because the people that you hang around with, think about why do you think about a particular game? It's because that's the game that you've been playing or the people that you've been hanging out with all talk about that game.

So then you start playing that game and then, like, your minds become thought-generating machines when they like about that particular game. So anything that you spend time thinking about is going to become a thought-generating machine. So then the question is like, how should you structure your time so that you start generating the right kind of thoughts? So now we come back to study. So bad. So. Okay.

So what is studying? Studying is spending time, conscious time, with particular thoughts, right? So like E equals MC squared. Y equals MX plus B. F-G equals G-M-M over R-squared. Right, if you spend time with those thoughts, they're going to sync in and you'll learn. Right, studying.

So other things that you can think about is like meditations by Marcus Aurelius, right? There's the Healthy Gamer Discord. And if you just spend time in places where you're like thinking about this stuff and thinking about this stuff. Like, just let's look at this for a second. Like, people watch this stream and it helps them in life. Like, how does that work? I'm not disputing that it does or you can question how much it helps or how much it doesn't

work. What I'm asking you guys is there are people on our Discord and there are people who, like, posts on our subreddit and stuff, and there are people who are like in our community who say that this helps. Like, how? What is the mechanism through which watching a, YouTube video helps you, right? Like, how? Am I like, so someone's saying cult power? Sure, let's consider that. There's a differential diagnosis or a series of possibilities through which

our content helps people. One is my cult-like charisma travels through the internet across space and time, literally, this sounds pretty cool, and then, you know, changes you as a human being. Like, that doesn't make any fucking sense, man. That's not how it. it works. Like that doesn't, cult charisma doesn't travel through space time to affect human beings in Europe when I'm sitting here in Texas. It's just not how it works.

The reason it helps is because when people literally watch our YouTube videos, their conscious mind is thinking new shit. And the more that they think about this kind of stuff, like the big advantage is not what I'm teaching you guys,

but just the fact that you guys are thinking about how you function as a human being, now what's going to happen is how do I work. This is how our stream helps because this thought gets planted and then it bubbles up.

And then when you have to do the dishes, when you have to shower, when you need to work or study, instead of the gaming, bubbling thoughts, now this is bubbling thoughts, and there's a war. And now you have to spend a little bit less

mana to do this thing, right? So just think about that. Okay, so that is, so let's go back to studying. So the last thing to kind of understand about studying are all kind of sum up, right? And the first thing is that you should study first thing in the morning, if it all possible.

and sometimes even people who study super late at night, like they actually cross over into that morning's circadian rhythm. So if you can't wake up in the morning, that's fine. I would still say you should study first thing while your mind is calm or clear. A couple of other things to think about is that, you know, generally speaking, as you go throughout your day, you're going to accumulate experiences that are going to lead to a disturbed or non-tranqual mind. So, you know, as you, you know, this is how you start out.

so this is how you start out and this is how you'll end the day. So the earlier you do it, the better off it's going to be. You can also reference things like ATP and circadian rhythm and psychological insults and stuff like that. You guys sort of understand, I think everyone sort of understands if you play video games and you tilt, it's like really hard to be focused on studying. If you play video games and you have fun,

it's really hard to be focused on studying because your mind is just getting more wound up with positive and negative energy and it's just not going to be like calm or tranquil. So study first. thing in the morning. Morning is better than whenever, you know, other times of the day, but study first thing when you wake up or with a minimum of mentally stimulating activity. So like Reddit, Twitter, whatever, like first thing in the morning before you study is death. So just stay away from all of that social media stuff.

If you need to eat something, shower, use the bathroom, brush your teeth, whatever. If you want to meditate or exercise, that's fine. But don't mentally engage. Like just imagine that you have this beautiful manabar. and you also have a buff that if you're above 80% mana, whatever you spend your mind on gets 20% better. So the first 20 points of mana actually have the highest yield in terms of what you learn.

So first thing you should do is study. Second thing is recognize that your studying is a process like this, right? This is how studying actually works. that what you should do is it's like a roll of the dice with like certain thoughts sinking and other thoughts not sinking

and the more emotionally activated you are the harder it's going to be to study and so there are a couple of other things like if you're in the right environment someone talked about a library absolutely so like in a library the whole point behind a library is that

or studying sometimes in groups right it depends on the person or the group that you're in. But like, you know, if you have a mind that's like this, so what a library is going to do is turn it into this, right? And then if you study with a group, hopefully that'll even become like this. And then if you meditate, you'll end up like this.

Hopefully. So, sure, it's concentration, it's attention. But your concentration and attention are influenced by your emotions in your environment. So like, I study in the same place every single time. So when I was in med school, I literally had two desks side by side. I only had one computer, which was a laptop. Like literally what I would do is I take my laptop and I'd move it from my playing desk

where I would play games to like I'd pick up my laptop and I mean the power cord was between them. So I'd pick up my laptop and I'd move it to my studying desk and I'd open it up. I'd grab my books. I'd study there. And then when I was ready to goof off, I'd move my laptop to the other desk. And I'd move it like three feet away. Even now, this is going to be kind of weird, right? So look, you guys ready?

Even today. So here's my setup. So here's setup number one. Look at that. It's a second computer right next to my first computer. So here's my first computer. Right? So like I've got some books over there, some junk.

But like I said, I used to just have one. And now like that computer's old, but I do different things on different computers. okay so control your environment control your circumstances control your thoughts the thoughts that go in are the thoughts that are going to come out and so set yourself up for the right kind of thoughts and set yourself up for the right kind of thoughts to go in when you're ready to go in and then studying's going to be way easier right so you don't need two computers like you can so one dude says I made a second PC profile perfect

For years, I just had one computer. But, you know, have the right kind of set up for the right sort of thing and don't play where you work and don't work where you play and don't eat where you eat where you shit. So like separate those things in your mind and studying will get better. Okay? Okay. So let's take a quick break.

Hopefully that was just have self-control. No, for the person who says just have self-control, I'm saying the exact opposite. remember self-control is expending mana. What I'm trying to tell you guys, because I don't believe, like, I don't think self-control is a good idea. I don't know if you guys got this or not. The lazy person doesn't actually have more self-control.

They've got thought-generating machines that are working for them. This is not more self-control. If you think that my answer is just to have more self-control, you're missing the entire point of this lecture. my point is that what you plant down here reduces the need for self-control. Remember, this diagram says this is self-control right here. This is willpower. It's mana.

The goal is not to do this. The goal is to go down this track automatically. It's about automatically thinking in the right way. Does that make sense? It's not just to have self-control, dude. It's the entire fucking opposite. So there are times where you can see. spend mana to create a positive thought environment for yourself. But like, that's fine. Like,

you can use self-control to transform a negative thought into a positive thought in the moment and spend a large amount of mana doing that. And that can be good because then the positive thought will also become a thought generating machine in your unconscious. But that's not like a sustainable way to do it. That's why therapy is good. Right. That's why spending time with other people who uplift you is good. That's why spending time literally thinking about things that are not the things that keep you stuck is good. If you literally, so I tell people, so people ask, how do you build self-confidence? And my best answer is you spend time with nature. Because when you spend time with nature, all of the things that reinforce your lack of confidence are further away.

It's just you. Like, people don't judge you. Like, the reason that nature helps with self-confidence, is because when you are around other people, if you have social anxiety, your mind is going to be swimming in self-judgmental and socially anxious thoughts. The more it swims in the socially anxious thoughts, the further they get planted down, the more thoughts they generate. This is why people with social anxiety feel stuck because if they spend time with people, it gets worse. If they don't spend time with people, it doesn't get better. Like, they don't even know what to do. They're just screwed any way you try it. Spend time with nature because nature doesn't care who you are. Nature can't care who you are. And for a while, you'll have those thought generating machines that generate

the negative thoughts about you. But unless you have the reinforcement of other people generating those thoughts and fueling them, it's not that the people even reinforce what you believe. They can tell you the opposite, but just even their presence causes you to generate the thoughts. It's not about what they say. It's about the thoughts that get generated in your mind. You just can't generate thoughts about how you're wearing the wrong clothing when you're surrounded by trees. Like, you can do it for a little while. You can be like, man, I look like an idiot wearing this, you know, hiking gear. And you're going to think that for a few days. But if there are people around, like, you just can't keep on thinking that. Like, you literally just can't keep on thinking

it. It just doesn't make sense. You just can't do it. So structure your environment so that it propagates the right kind of thoughts. Play A good. Absolutely. Becumable. It's true. It always amazes me how good you guys. are twisting anything that I try to say into something absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, man, I'm going to switch classes from, you know, being like an IT professional to homeless druid because that's what Dr. Kay told me to do. I'm going to be a homeless druid because that's what he said. Yeah, man. Okay, so we're going to take a quick break. I'll answer one quick question about Vatha bittengafa. It's a cool question. Someone asked, what are the best

studying methods for vata, pita, and kaffa. So it has to do with the number of breaks that you take. So vattas need, have intense periods of study with frequent breaks. Pithas can study for like longer amounts of time and kaffas probably need to study for longer at a stretch because it takes them a little while to get going. So during my two hours of studying, I would like, you know, study four or five different subjects. I'd spend like 30 minutes on, you know, each. and I'd switch frequently. And so, you know, for Pitta, you may need to study more than two hours, Gaffas, you may want to study more to stretch.

It just kind of depends.