HealthyGamerGG - I Watch Your Videos But Never Change My Life

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about how people actually change, stages of change, changing without doing, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And then people get really frustrated with themselves. Because even though they know logically that they should change, they're not really addressing their internal conflict. Me watching Healthy Gamer Gigi knowing damn well I'm not doing anything to improve my life. So sometimes there is content on the internet designed to help you improve your life. And do you know who makes content designed to help you improve your life? We do. and you watch the content and you even see other people who will post on things like

subreddit with wins and other people will say, I'm making progress. We had a great post the other day where people were like, does anyone actually like who works on themselves? Does anyone actually found a partner? And people were like, yes, yes, we have. So there are people out there like, so you're watching the content that's designed to help your life. And there are people out there that are actually doing.

doing stuff about it. But all you're doing is just watching and you're not doing anything about it. And so then you're kind of like, now what? Like, it's one thing to start watching the right content. It's another thing to actually change your life. So this is kind of interesting because you may think that my response to this is going to be, okay, cool, awesome. Dr. K is now going to teach me how to not just watch.

things and do stuff instead, right? Because that's what I need. What I really need is to learn how to do stuff instead of just watching stuff. Not going to do that. Nope, nope, nope, nope. What I'm going to teach you today is even better than that. It's how to change your life without doing anything, without doing a damn thing. How to just watch and do nothing. and still improve your life. Now, you may think to yourself, this is insane. But we're going to explain this to you all. And what this comes down to is the science of learning and the science of change.

So let's take a big, big step back. Okay, big step back. How do people change? If you want to change, let's start by understanding how people change. And does doing stuff, is doing stuff how? people change. Hold on a second. Let's think about that, right? So doing stuff is not how people change. It's what it looks like after you change. Do you all get that? The doing stuff comes after the change, not before the change. So this is really great because if you're just a watcher, you can actually

change and then you can start doing stuff, but all you have to do is watch. And so let's understand this a little bit, okay? It's cool because we actually have really great science on this. So let's first start by understanding what do we mean by the word change? What does it mean to change? So what I'm going to do is make sort of a leap, which I think is a fair leap to make. I'm going to substitute the word change with the word learn. So if we look at like fundamentally in our brain, what parts of our brain govern changing? It's the same parts of our brain that govern learning, right? So I'll give you a simple example. Let's say that I burn my hand on a hot stove. Next time around, do I burn my hand again? No, I've changed my behavior. What circuits in the

brain govern that kind of change? The learning circuits of the brain. Right? So we'll sort of like, and we're going to take a step back also and look at another sort of dimension, which is this concept of the stages of change model, which we use in addiction treatment. So what tends to happen is if someone's struggling with an addiction, they'll try to go sober. Right. So they make an attempt at a change and it doesn't work. They relapse. Then they try again and it doesn't work. Try again.

It doesn't work. And then one day, if you talk to them, this is actually what they'll say. I woke up on Monday morning and I was like, enough is enough. I'm done with this forever. No more. And then they get rid of all their alcohol and they never have another drink again. There's a little bit more to it than that. But if you actually talk to people who have become sober, this is the way that.

they will describe their sobriety. Not everyone, but it absolutely happens. So if you even think about your own life, that's something that you started doing that you didn't used to do before. So maybe it's like drinking water instead of soda. Maybe it's like waking up on time. Maybe it's doing yoga.

Maybe it's like installing a meditation app. Maybe it's like setting a boundary with your friends. Maybe it's like uninstalling a particular video game. like each and every one of us has made some kind of change in our lives. And if you really think about it, how did that happen? And chances are you were just sort of like, one day I kind of woke up and was like, okay, I'm done with this. And then you change.

But what the hell? Like, how does that work? And so this is where it's kind of interesting. But there's a lot of like subconscious processing that needs to go on. And that's essentially the process of learning. So you relapse once and you don't learn your lesson. You relapse again, you don't learn your lesson. You relapse the third time you don't learn your lesson.

The fourth time around, you relapse and you learn your lesson and then your behavior changes. Even in our vocabulary, we have, I didn't learn my lesson. What does that mean? That means I didn't change. Those two statements are synonymous. Do you all get that? He never learns his lesson. She never learns her lesson.

They never learn their lesson. So changing and learning are 100% synonymous. Okay. So there are a couple things. We're going to talk about changing first, then we're going to talk about learning. So in the stages of change, what we sort of realize is that in order to enact behavioral change, to actually change your behavior, there are a set of cognitive stages that you have to go through. This is almost like the Kubler-Ross, you know, stages of grief, like denial and anger and bargaining. So like, are we have a cognitive process that we kind of go through. So the first stage is pre-contemplative. Pre-contemplative means I'm not even thinking about it. I'm not aware that there is a problem. Okay? So this is like, I never realized that drinking alcohol is bad or playing video games are bad or whatever.

I'm going to use addiction sort of as a backdrop for this, okay, context. But stages of change applies to everything from eating healthy to exercising, any kind of change that you want to make. So like, we don't even know it's a problem. So what's the solution? how do you work on someone who disagrees or is not aware that there's a problem? Do you give them a plan? Do you give them an advice?

Do you say, here's five things you can do to improve your life? And then do they do those things? No, because they don't have the motivation because they're not actually like they don't even think it's a problem. So sort of like in denial or it's really lack of awareness, but it can sometimes be denial. So what is the solution for someone who is pre-contemplative? Like, not really even sure what the problem is. it's to challenge their assumptions. How do you challenge their assumptions through questions and information?

So that's part of what we do. Right? So we'll sort of say, like, even at the beginning of this video, we were like, oh, great, Dr. K's going to teach me how to change. No, we're not going to teach you how to change. We're going to challenge your assumptions of how change happens. We're not going to get you to act at all. We're just going to explain something else.

We're going to give you information. The interesting thing, the really cool thing, is that when you take pre-contemplative people, and it's not just information, it's really challenging assumptions. I can't give you research benefits of, okay, here are all the reasons you can change. That's not effective. It's to get people to challenge and understand their own thought process, to start thinking in a different way. Once you do that, once you start to challenge people's assumptions, which you can do through watching a video on the internet, by the way, then you move on to contemplative. And contemplative is where a lot of people get tripped up, because now you've realized that there's a problem.

But the key hallmark of the contemplative phase is ambivalence or internal conflict. I recognize now that video games cause problems in my life. But I really love playing them. But I don't know what else to do with my life. But I'm still unemployed and I don't know how to fill my days. But this. And then people get really frustrated with themselves. Because even though they know logically that they should change, they're not really

addressing their internal conflict. So that's a whole different thing. And then once you work through that internal conflict, then you can change. Then you can actually start to act because you know, I know I need to stop playing video games, but there's this other part of me that doesn't want to. So then I wake up every day, what do I actually do? I don't change. I'm one of these people who's just sitting here watching and not actually quitting something or starting something or changing. that's actually okay too. It takes time to get through that ambivalent conflict. Right?

You don't just like logically snap out of it. It's like you have to work through that. It's almost like, I don't know if you all have ever looked at a menu and it's like, do I want this or do I want this? It's not like you suddenly snap to it. It's a very short abbreviated time, but it'll be 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Well, what if I like this? What if I don't like this? You go through this little mental process in about a minute or two or maybe five minutes where you're struggling to

decide what you want because there's conflict within you. And then you resolve that in some way and you pick something. So even in a menu and ordering something off a menu, you can understand ambivalence a little bit. Okay? Once you get through ambivalence, then you can start to act. My point here, though, is that the first two stages of the stages of change model are completely internal. You don't have to do a damn thing.

It's in here. This is where change happens. So watching is actually okay. Now what we're going to do is teach you a little bit about learning. So if I'm watching a video, at the end of the video, there's a cool concept got me to question my assumptions. But I don't actually change. I haven't like learned my lesson. So how do you learn your lesson?

How do you incorporate the stuff from the video? So I'm going to ask all a question. Okay. What's the most effective way to study? right? Because we know this. Like we can look at different options to understand literally how our brain learns. So let's say I've got 10 hours that I'm going to prepare for a test. Option number one, I read the textbook for 10 hours. Option number two, I read the textbook for five hours and I do practice questions for five hours. Which one is going to result in a better test score on average?

Option two, hands down. So this is a really important to understand. We have a part of our brain called the hippocampus. Hi, hippocampus is what takes short-term memory and compounds it into long-term memory. Once it's in long-term memory, we can access it and utilize it. So when something is in short-term memory, it doesn't really change our behavior. It really has to be like baked into us. And that happens in the hippocampus. By the way, it also happens during sleep, okay, is when we compound short-term memory into long-term memory. But the other key thing is that learning something involves practicing recall,

not putting it in over and over and over and over and over again. So if you don't want to do anything to change, you actually don't need to. But if you want to change without doing a damn thing, which is actually, ironically, where most of the change happens, most of the change happens without action. right? Because who are you fighting against? You're fighting with yourself. You're fighting with your motivation. You're fighting with your lack of motivation. Your laziness, your discipline. All the stuff is in here. So here are three things. Really simple. If you don't want to do a damn thing, three things you can do completely on your ass without doing anything. The first is don't chain watch informational content or

motivational videos. So when you chain watch something, nothing ever gets put into long-term memory. Because you have a certain amount of RAM. And whenever you have like a certain amount of RAM, what starts happening is stuff starts getting overwritten. So we'll even like, I'll call this out explicitly in my interviews and I also do this with patients. But what I've learned is when I teach someone something or like in an interview, like, why do we have interviews at about two hours instead of three hours, it's because by the third hour, most people forget what happened in the first hour. And we don't want people to forget what happened in the first hour

because it's not like what happened in the third hour is better than what happened in the first hour. So one of my favorite phrases from a spiritual guru is enough for today. Enough for today. You have only a certain amount of RAM. And if you really want to learn your lesson, you can't keep learning new stuff.

You have to like give it time to sing. in. So don't chain watch informational videos or motivational videos or whatever. The more you replace your RAM, the less you're going to learn. So it's actually watch less stuff. Like, you don't have to do anything, but just, so if you watch something that you really think, oh, wow, this could actually help me a lot. Pause. Don't keep watching stuff. Okay. So don't chain watch. Don't overwrite your RAM. Let it go down into the hard drive. Second thing you've got to do, is reflect. It's not a damn thing. It's not doing a damn thing. Reflect. What does that mean? We're going to mirror this process of, okay, I can read the textbook for 10 hours, or I can read the

textbook and I can do practice questions. What is the equivalent of practice questions for changing? It's actually just reflection. So instead of chain watching videos, what you're going to do is watch one video and you're going to go sit somewhere and you're not going to distract your mind with anything else, you're going to reflect on what you watched. Not going to do anything. Just reflect. Practice recall. Okay, what did the video say?

What do I think about that? What's right about the video? What's wrong about the video? Play with the information. So this is the other thing that we sort of know is that mastery within the human mind comes through experimentation. You can follow recipes as much as you want to, and you'll learn how to be a decent cook. but to be a chef that creates dishes, you have to play around with stuff.

So if you want to change, you've got to play around with it in your mind. Okay, what about this do I accept? What about this do I not accept? The more that you recall that information out of your mind, the more it solidifies into learning and the more that change happens. So we see this principle playing around with the information is also what we do, for example, in coaching or in therapy. We challenge people's assumptions.

in coaching. So it's not about treating a diagnosis or anything like that. If someone says, I'm stuck in this bad job and there's no way I can get out, we want to challenge those assumptions and we get people to reflect on their life. And as people challenge their assumptions and reflect on their life, I kid you not. And if you have worked with a coach, you can ask your coach this question. A lot of coaches will come in and will say, we're like this person, they're talking about this thing, they're talking about this thing, but they just don't do it.

they just don't do it. And I want to push him. I want to push him. I want to push him. And what do we tell our coaches at that time? Should you push them? No, absolutely not. And inevitably what happens is the coach feels I'm doing a bad job, bad job.

Week five, they're not making progress. Week six, they're not making progress. Weeks seven, coach shows up and they're like, I don't know what the hell happened. They did it all. And seriously, if you all have a coach, ask your coach if they've experienced this before. 99% chance they'll say yes. This is how change happens. It's like the iceberg where most of that subconscious change happens underneath.

The interesting thing is if your coach pushes you, what happens when you get pushed? A lot of people will dig their heels in. But when you create that vacuum of space, the client will step forward and do it. Right? Beautiful. So chat got it. So it's really hard to do the reflection work and to think about this kind of stuff. But that's actually all, you don't have to do anything.

Right? So, like, this is where, like, when we designed our coaching program, we looked at the science of change and the science of learning. And now we're sharing it with you right now. You can do this on your own. May not be quite as effective because they won't, you can't challenge your assumptions quite in the way that they can. But if you're just watching information, that's okay, right?

Just watch it. Don't chain watch it. Reflect on it. Play around with it. Sit on a park bunch somewhere and think about it. Why is this so hard for me? What works for me? What doesn't work for me?

And that process of reflection is actually going to engage the same circuits as like the recall. And once we start recalling it, we start to get mastery over it. Once we have mastery over it, then it's in our tool belt. Third thing, you've got to do or not do, which should be really easy because the whole point here is that you're not going to do anything. So what do we call someone who doesn't do anything? What do we call someone who doesn't act? People are saying lazy, lazy, bum, lazy. Incorrect, slacker.

We call that person patient. What does it mean to be patient? What is someone who is impatient do? Anything. Everything. What does it mean to be impatient? It means that I can't wait. I have to act.

Third thing is be patient. And for those of you don't want to do a damn thing, patience should actually come easily for you. It won't. Right? So if you want to change your life without acting, these are the three things. Be patient. Don't override your ram and reflect. That's where change really happens.

So what tends to happen when people, People get impatient. They haven't done the requisite work underneath. And so they're launching an expedition that is doomed to failure. Be patient with yourself. Don't beat yourself up. It doesn't help. Recognize that change happens slowly.

Just as an example, people are like, how slowly? So I basically failed my first year of college, right? Had like a 1.6 GPA or whatever. nine years later, I got into medical school. You're like, oh my God, nine years? That's a long time. Does that mean that it's going to take me nine years? I don't think so.

So the good news is with help, you can see change much more rapidly. Right? We don't have people come into our coaching program. All right, here's your nine year plan. We start to see change within six to eight weeks and that really solidifies around 12 weeks, 16 weeks. Right. So there's a process that you can speed it up. Also, in terms of therapy, if you look at like, you know, standard trials for psychotherapy

or looking at changes at the eight-week mark, 12-week mark, things like that. So with help, you can do it faster. But be patient with yourself. Recognize that change takes time. And if you're not ready to act, because what happens when you force yourself to act? When you act impatiently, you just doom yourself to failure. As you doom yourself to failure, your hope decreases. It becomes harder to act.

Right? If I apply for five different jobs without spending the time and energy to build a good resume, and I become more and more impatient, like, what's going to happen? I'm going to lose hope in the job application process, and I'm going to start to think, okay, there's no way I'm ever going to get a job. So be patient with yourself. So if you want to change your life without lifting a finger, it's fine to watch stuff. Just don't chain watch.

give that stuff an opportunity to sink in literally let your short-term memory compound into the hippocampus is long-term memory and then what happens when something is long-term memory it bubbles up right when i ask you what's two plus two the answer bubbles up why does it bubble up because it's been solidified within you and what do people struggle with they struggle with the fact that the right thoughts don't bubble up how do you get the right thoughts to bubble up you let them solidify So don't chain watch informational or motivational videos. Number two, reflect. Practice the process of bubbling up. Bubbling up is natural, but you can recall it.

So reflect. After you watch a video, go and sit somewhere and do nothing. And think about it. Okay, what applies to me? Does this apply to me? Does this not apply to me? Do I disagree with it? Do I not disagree with it? Why does this feel so bad? What do I notice within myself? Wow, this is kind of weird. Like the more I'm reflecting, the more I'm sort of starting to feel guilty. but what am I even feeling guilty about? What do I have to feel guilty about? Oh, interesting.

What I feel guilty about is that I've known this all along, but I haven't been able to do it. Third thing is be patient. Don't act. Give it time. If you do these three things, you will be well along your road to change. Can you take notes during the reflective period?

Absolutely. All right, Dr. Kay, it's time to go apply. Goodbye. As much as you're meming, honestly, like, that's probably not a bad idea. Right? So, like, I just think about it. Like, as you're meming, right? So, like, on Twitter, you're like, all right, I'm piecing out.

If you're on YouTube, you're looking at the suggested playlist and there's not an idea. Like, actually, like, I know it's a meme, but that's recall. You all get that. Gigonomics is applying the information, right? And so this is going to be kind of weird where it's sort of like, I guess if you really want to have this drive home, then leave. And I want you all to just think about that for a second because even if we go over, let's say, like we cover three or four concepts today, at the end of it, the other reason if I'm trying

to get y'all to stay, right, is notice what happened. So notice how you felt over the course the last 10 minutes, right? And then like, what's going to happen to that feeling or the revelation or what you've understood as I cover the next thing and the next thing and the next thing? You're going to forget. It'll fade away. It won't sink in. Right?

Step one was, don't chain watch stuff. Because you're going to overwrite your RAM. So just Alo is saying ban them so they apply what they learn? No. See, that's the opposite. They have to leave. We can't ban them. Do you understand that?

It's the same thing as a coach, not pushing you. Because if we ban them, they're like, screw you. So one of the most rewarding experiences I one time had was someone who came into my office, you know, super generic scenario happened more than once, but I'm thinking about one person in particular. Who's anxious about getting fired. And a year later, after doing a lot of internal work, they quit. There's a huge difference between when life does something to you and you choose to do it, even if it's the same thing.

me choosing to break up with a partner is different from the partner dumping me, even though the end result is like sort of the same. So y'all have to act. The more that we try to force you to act, the worse it's going to go. And so we're actually going to go all the way out there's like, you don't even act at all. Because the truth of the matter is the way that we learn, the way that we change is actually not through action. It's up here.