HealthyGamerGG - Overcoming Powerlessness

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Overcoming Powerlessness 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

Here I am telling you how to get control of your mind and what does your mind do. Quick, quick, bring out the memes. Don't listen to what he's saying. Distract everyone. Start counting. Start counting. Oh my God. Oh my God.

We have to count. Count. Count anything but listening to this. Oh my God. Okay. So currently writing how to overcome escapism. So currently writing this on a break at my job, but I desperately need help. I've been watching Dr. Kay for the past year now.

and every video has been super helpful and eye-opening for me. I've taken it all in and understood, but I'm here facing my problems once again, and I want to run away again. My problem is ever since I began working at an early age, I've had difficulty holding a job as I got older, it got far worse, and I'm worried about being a burden and not being able to take care of myself. I'm currently 26.

Before I used to work full day shifts every day I was scheduled and be able to buy the things I wanted and take care of myself. Fast forward to now, I'm deep in debt and can barely stay on the job for more than an hour and quit because my brain just can't handle it. It assigns too much value to gaming and sleeping and hanging with friends on Discord or watching anime. I feel like every time I confront this major issue, I always run away. Thankfully with Amazon, I can quit whenever and join whenever, but I can't keep doing this.

I need to start paying my own insurance among myself and I want to get out of debt. my mind seems to spiral out of control and I want to run home and be comfortable in my bubble. I managed to survive day one yesterday, but I fear I won't last much longer. All of Dr. Kay's videos just out my brain and when I get here. Help. Okay. So this is unfortunately a pretty common problem, right? So I'm going to try to summarize what I hear, what I'm sort of picking up from this. So sometimes in life, we feel paralyzed by our minds. So we know that there are things that we have to do. We know we need to like get our stuff in order, right? But despite the fact that like there are things that we know

we need to be doing, our mind wants nothing more than to run away from our problems. And so what a lot of people may think is that, okay, if I like, if my mind, if I want to run away from my problems, like how do I find the root cause of this, right? So a lot of people, I mean, not, this is the, what we've advocated. So here at H.E., what we've advocated is that, you know, if you're struggling to overcome escapism in your life, that you do a lot of introspective work, you dig down really deep and you find the root of it. Are you afraid of failure?

Are you afraid of commitment? Like, what's the deep rooted fear that you can kind of fix to overcome this escapism? And so I think that's really useful. But I think that sometimes if you're in this situation, the best thing to do is not actually to try to overcome the emotional root of a escapism. escapism, but the best thing to do is actually learn how to train your mind. So let's take a quick look at this, okay? So what I want you all to like first start by looking at is, you know, and this happens to everyone, right? So our mind doesn't always work for us. And this is what

makes life really, really hard is that our mind isn't working for our benefit. It has its own goals and aspirations and desires. And then we can get super stuck because we have particular goals and desires and our mind has particular goals and desires and we're not working towards the same thing. So as long as our mind is not working for us, life is like super, super hard. You're kind of handicapped because there's a major, you know, component part of your body, your mind. There's a part of your being that is supposed to be used for your benefit, which is kind of often doing whatever it wants to. And like I said, sometimes the solution to that is to go into the mind and try to fix something on deep inside the mind so that the mind starts functioning properly. And sometimes the solution is actually not to

fix the mind, but to get control of the mind. So even if the mind is afraid of consequences, afraid of failure, wants to escape, we can actually control it and tell it to do what we want it to do. So I'm going to take a quick look at this post and we'll just sort of notice this, okay? So I've taken it all in and understood it, but here I am facing my problems once again. I want to run away. So my problem is that I've had difficulty holding a job, right? So that like, what does that exactly mean? Like, what's going on in your mind? I used to work full shifts and be able to buy the things that I wanted, but and take care of myself, but now I can't. I'm deep in debt. Can barely stay on the job for more than an hour and quit because my brain just can't handle it. This is a sign

of your mind or your brain controlling you as opposed to the other way around. And this person has even had some amount of insight, right? It assigns too much value to gaming and sleeping and hanging with friends on Discord or watching anime. So this is like where this person is noticing, and this is awesome because this is what we want from our community, right? We want you to notice what your mind is doing. But every time I confront this major issue, I always run away, right? And then this person goes on to say, thankfully, I can quit whenever I want to and join whenever, but I can't doing this. This is not something to be thankful for. Right? So you've found a job at Amazon, that can tailor to the desires of your escapist mind.

So you've even structured a life for yourself that allows you to be escapist, right? Because then you, what does your mind tell you? It says, oh, there's no real consequence of quitting this job, right? I can get it back whenever I want to. So we can just procrastinate today. You can just quit today. You could take a week off playing games and watching anime and things like this. And then I can just get the job next week.

And so in a weird way, this job is almost like enabling your escapist mentality. Right. So we have to be super careful about what we're grateful for. But of course, you're grateful for it because you're like, oh, like, now I don't actually have external consequences that force me to action. And if I don't have external consequences that force me to action, then I can continue like sort of being escapist and it's like not that big of a deal. Right.

And so my mind seems to spiral out of control and I want to run home and be comfortable in my bubble. So normally when I take this kind of, when I look at this kind of post, I would talk about things like, oh, you know, where is the source of your escapism? What's going on? We can maybe do that down the road. But what I really want to talk to you all, what I really want to talk to you about today is getting control of your mind. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but like we don't actually control our mind. So our mind kind of does what it wants to. Like for example, I have patients who have OCD, so obsessive compulsive disorder. And their mind will produce all. kinds of thoughts that they don't want. So our mind values particular things. It tells us to stay away from particular things. It does all kinds of stuff that, you know, like isn't necessarily under our control. And so one of the key things that I want to share with you all today is how to get control of your mind. And because this is something that it's kind of weird, but just in the same way that you can train your fingers to play piano, or you can train your palate to, you know, taste different things. or you can train your legs to be able to run

or your cardiovascular system to be able to run. You can even, there are people who are free divers, right, that will train their body to hold their breath for like 10 minutes at a time. So we can train all manner of different parts of ourselves. And one of the things that we really don't get taught how to train is our mind. So what I'm going to share with you guys today

is nothing about like sort of fixing the internal part of the mind. So let's say here's our mind. And in the mind, there's something bad in here. This is the fear of escape. down here. And so what a lot of times what we try to do at Healthy Gamer is we try to teach you, okay, how do I take that fear of escapism and kind of solve it within the mind so that I'm no longer controlled by that fear? Whereas instead, what we're going to work on today is we're not going to do anything inside the mind. We're going to learn how to control it from the outside,

right? So we're going to learn how to get our mind into shape. And it can think whatever it wants to on the inside. It can have OCD in here. It can have depression in here. It can have depression in here. It can have escapism in here. It can have whatever you want in here. And I know this sounds kind of weird, but like I've even had success with this, especially with psychosis and psychotic disorders. So these are people like, for example, with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and they're hallucinating, they're delusional. And what we've sort of discovered in psychiatry is you can't like really fix the delusion inside the mind, or it's very difficult to. So when I'm sort working with patients who have psychosis or are delusional, instead of trying to fix the thing

inside the mind, what I train them to do is get control of the mind as a whole. Okay? So then the question becomes, okay, how do you get control of the mind as a whole? And so this is something that I've steered a little bit clear of, but I honestly think it's like one of the most useful concepts that I've ever learned. The reason I've steered clear from it is because I don't have good scientific support for it. So I tend to steer clear of some of the more spiritual ideas that are not scientifically supported, but, you know, I think it's the best answer. So what I'm going to share with you all today is the idea of the guna's. So in the yogic conception of the world, there are three guna's or qualities.

And those are thamas, Rajas, and sathvas. It's kind of weird, but what they basically, what the yogis did in ancient India is basically classify all things into these three buckets. So these are the fundamental qualities. So thamas is that which is inert, slow, dull, okay? Rajas is that which is active, passionate, dynamic, and satvas is balanced, calm, kind of equilibrium. So I know it sounds kind of weird, but they just sort of said if you look at all manner of things, you can basically divide them into these three qualities. So they looked at things like food. So some foods will lead to inertness, slowness, or dullness. Some foods will be active, like engage passion, or will make you more dynamic. And some foods will

make your mind like calm and balanced and like sort of help you attain equilibrium. And so if you look at the diets of monks, so like the monk diet doesn't really matter where you are, right? So like you can look at Catholic monks, you can look at Buddhist monks, you can look at Hindu monks. Essentially all of them are going to have a more sativ diet. So there are foods that we can eat that will sort of encourage this kind of thing. But it's not just foods because you can look at like discussions on the internet, right? So there are going to be some communities which are going to push their, so let's talk about

communities. So there are some communities which are going to lead to inertness in your life, right? So like if you hang out with these people, they're going to make you feel kind of like dull and inert. Like your life is going to be like sort of a blur. There are some communities that will make you feel active and passionate, right? So like politically active communities, you know, regardless of what you kind of agree or disagree with, but like if you look at protesters, right? So protesters are not balanced and calm. They're like

very active and passionate and dynamic and, you know, things like that. So like there's some communities that will make you dull and inert. Some things will sort of activate you and sort of engage your passion. And some things will sort of calm you down and sort of like help you attain balance and equilibrium. Right. So there's like, it's kind of weird, but they sort of like looked at the world and they were like, okay, these are the three buckets of stuff. And so if you're someone who's kind of is stuck in your life, like can't get control of your mind, what we really want you to do is move from Thamas to Rajas first and Rajas to Satvas eventually. I'm not going to go into too much more detail, but this is sort of like the goal of what we're trying to do here, okay? So then the

question is, okay, so how do I get control of my mind? So now we're going to get to how to control it. Okay? So what we're going to do is kind of a linear process. We're going to start with one thing that will enable us to do the other thing, which will enable us to do the next thing. So the first thing is if you want to, your mind wants, so here's you, and here's your mind, and you guys fight, right? So, and this is something, in order to overcome your mind, you need something called willpower. So the first question is, how do I get willpower, right? Like, what's something that I can do to improve my willpower?

So I did a really interesting study, I don't remember the citation, where they looked at teenagers in high school and looked at their sugar consumption. And what they essentially found is that how unhealthy teenagers eat is influenced by lots of different things, right? So your environment and things like that. But there's one variable which is quickly changeable, which will almost instantly alter your dietary habits. Can anyone guess what's the one thing that you can do to eat healthier? Anyone know? It's not availability. Ah, very good. Sleep. Excellent. Okay. So willpower is a diminishing resource. That's number one. We know this. Okay. So if you guys have heard me talk about the beat versus cookie study. So I'll quickly explain this study. I won't go into too much detail. So a group of psychologists basically wanted to measure willpower. And what they did is they took two participants, so group number one and group number two. And in group number one, they were in a waiting room and they put a tray of boiled beets in front of them.

And in the other group, they put a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. And the people were given the explicit instruction, you are not allowed to eat this. This is for the people. There's like a party after we're done with this research study. So we're just like putting this stuff in the room. You cannot eat it, no eating, okay? So thankfully, no one, no one was a degenerate and ate it anyway. So everyone, no one, everyone followed the instructions, but then the real test came afterward.

So afterward they go into a room and they're faced with an impossible task. And they basically saw how long until people, like, gave up to, uh, uh, on the task. So like, when, like, you know, how much willpower could they exert to force themselves into the situation? And what they found is that the willpower was lower with the cookie group than it was with the beat group. Okay. And so what they sort of essentially concluded, and based on this, there have been other studies that have been done, is that like when you're resisting the cookies, you're actually burning your willpower resource. And then you kind of run out a willpower faster than other people. Okay. So where does willpower? How do we regenerate it? We regenerate it with sleep. So if you want to control your mind, the first thing, the most important thing that you can do is sleep.

Okay? So quick tips, we had a whole lecture on sleep recently. I think it was even like close to two hours or something. So definitely go watch that. But I would say, you know, the key thing to remember is waking up is easier than going to sleep. Because you can like, you can force yourself to wake up, right? And then you can have caffeine if you really need it. That's okay.

And then you kind of like, you know, spend your day just kind of chilling. or whatever, wait until you're exhausted at night and then, you know, you can fall asleep. So I like to also have a heavy meal before sleep. We're going to teach you guys a technique called shavasan today is meditation. And then the other thing that you can do before sleep is audiobook helps a lot. Right? There's other things like weighted blankets, et cetera. But the first thing that you've got to do is get your sleep under control.

And I don't mean sleep perfectly every single day. I mean that the more you can improve your sleep, the more willpower you're going to have. And the more willpower you're going to have, the easier it's going to be to do number two. So now you've slept, let's say, like you work on it for like three or four days. You're able to sleep one more hour per night that's like more restful. Like we're not saying you have to fix everything. But it's tough for like a couple days. You get into the routine.

So just start with sleep. Okay, that's number one. Number two is food. So what the yogi sort of discovered is that the simplest way to have a more balanced mind, a less thamsic mind. And by the way, giving into escapism is like a thom sick mind, right? So what do I mean by that? It means that the escapist mentality leads to dullness and inertness. It moves you to inaction.

So you're just sitting at home playing video games instead of working, right? So what we want to do is like remove thamas from our life. So if you're like, if you have motivational problems, the less. I'm sick you become, the better off you're going to be. Okay? I use this a lot in clinical practice, but there's not good science behind it. There's some good science, actually. There's some science, but it's, you know, it's a little bit of a stretch. So, adjust your food. Okay? So this is where, like, now that we have a little bit more willpower, hopefully what we can do is make, like, a couple of healthier choices. I'm not saying go paleo. I'm not saying go keto. You can do that

if you want to and you're able to. But there's a lot of stuff that we can do for food that will actually make our mind like much more light, airy, and like able to work. Okay. So here's just a couple of things. So move from cola to seltzer. So we don't need that added sugar and stuff. I'm not saying you can't have a cola from time to time, but in general, if you regularly consume soda, I'd say make the shift to seltzer. So what I found when trying to help people overcome like soda addiction, basically, is that the bubbles, so like anytime you're trying to overcome an addictive behavior, you have to understand that overcoming the addictive behavior involves multiple components. So when I'm trying to help people with smoking cessation, it turns out that

cigarettes are addictive for three reasons. Okay, number one is the nicotine. This everyone is aware of. But here's the problem. Here's where people trip up. They don't realize that nicotine or cigarettes are addicted for more reasons than nicotine, right? So the second thing is that it gives people a break. so people who smoke cigarettes will take like smoke bricks and this is a huge part of like why like cigarettes are so addictive is like you step out of your office like you step outside you like spend five minutes just like chilling relaxing kind of like having fun sometimes it's also a source of like socialization right so like you and your co-workers go out for a smoke break that's a huge part of the advantage of a cigarette the other thing that's kind of interesting is that there's like

what's this called? There's a tactile addiction to to cigarettes. It's kind of weird, but a big part of cigarettes is like fiddling with your hands. So what I found is that when people are like craving nicotine, right? So if you're like craving nicotine, it's interesting because you can give people gum that will like supplement the nicotine.

You can give them a patch that will supplement the nicotine. But that doesn't cure the cigarette, the smoking cessation, right? Instead, like actually what you what you kind of discover is that like, so replacing the nicotine, if we check this box, people still like relapse and continue smoking and why is that?

It's because smoking is doing more than just the nicotine. So there's the social aspect. There's the like taking a break, like once an hour, once every other hour to like go outside and like have a smoke. There's the tactile addiction. So oddly enough, if I want to help someone stop smoking, you know, I may give them nicotine gum, sure. But a real plan also involves sunflower seeds. Right? And like meditation breaks or walks.

and the most success I've had sort of helping people overcome these is to like target all of the aspects of the addiction. I know it sounds kind of bizarre, but what I found really works well is you tell people to carry around sunflower seeds. And what they do is they just like, like sunflower seeds are really tactile. Like you do something with your hands. So they'll lose every two hours,

they'll go outside with a handful of sunflower seeds. They'll crack them. It's sort of like this very like simple like mind-numbing kind of activity. And they'll like crack them. They'll eat the sunflower seeds. They'll spit out the shells and like something about, stepping outside of your office every two hours, chewing some nicotine gum, which tastes awful, and then, like, you know, you spit the sunflower seeds and all that kind of stuff out.

And somehow works. So in that same way, if we're trying to overcome cola addiction, what we want to do is actually, like, don't remove all the elements, right? So there's the sweetness. But then the carbonation is actually a big part of it. There's a, there's just like a, you burp afterward, and that kind of feels like good in some ways. and like you have it with food and it helps you burp, especially if you're eating unhealthy things.

So there's like weird kind of physiologic signals that you can sort of take advantage of. That's sort of a tangent in the like smoking association and stuff. The first thing is like replace cola with seltzer. Okay. The thing is just like try to eat healthy stuff. I know it sounds like so simple. And I know that we don't give you guys concrete solutions.

So we're going to kind of do that today. So another like example is just like apples and peanut butter. So I think the key to or another kind of nut butter. The key to like starting to eat a little bit more sativic or a little bit more like balancing or healthier. With kids around, me time runs out fast. Don't waste valuable child free minutes on a drink run. Instead, get Drizzly, the number one app for alcohol delivery. Drisley has the largest selection of beer, wine, and spirits delivered in under 60 minutes. Get date night rolling before your parents bring him back.

How about a living room sip and paint? They'll never know you steal their crayons. Download the Drizley app or go to your. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr.JLY.com today. It's to make small changes that are not, don't require a whole lot of willpower. Now you have a little bit more willpower from the sleep, but apples and Peter are like delicious. It'll like fill you up for a while.

It'll increase your satiety. It'll be healthy. I'm not saying you have to use the organic stuff to start, right? By all means, like get some peanut butter with salt in it. Like it's not that big of a deal. I've already talked about oatmeal before, but I think oatmeal is like one of the most opie meals that you. can eat that's quite sotovic.

Right? So oatmeal is going to be high in fiber. And you can make it taste delicious. Like with maple syrup, berries, cinnamon. Or you can go for a savory oatmeal, which I didn't, you know, this was a big discovery. Soy, green onion, tomato, and sesame oil. You'd be surprised. It's almost like a conji kind of thing.

So like this is where, you know, you just start to make like a couple of changes. And it's like what's your, what's your like alternative to this, right? It's like, like you're going to go get like a breakfast sandwich from like a fast food restaurant. That's going to be incredibly thom sick. I'm going to slow you down, make you sluggish and you're screwed for the rest of the day. Right? I know it's bizarre. The savory oatmeal really catches people like some people think that this is like you're insane if you do this.

But you don't always want to eat something sweet. And this is like this is delicious food. Okay. And I'm going to give you guys my last one. My last Satvik thing. Okay? That I haven't disclosed to you all before. Butternut squash soup.

This is the most op-like oatmeal and butternut squash soup, I think, are the most Opie meals that you can make. So like butternut squash soup is like, it's delicious. I kid you not. And maybe we'll do like a cooking stream or something one day. Basically, you just take a butternut squash, you chop it in half, you drizzle it with olive oil and salt, you stick it in the oven, you roast it. then what you do is you like scoop out all the squash which is now soft you stick it in a pot

actually before you stick it in a pot you take oil garlic onions right so you like fry that up for a little bit this is actually a little bit thomcic garlic and onions but you know we're getting there Rajs like a little bit it's healthy for your heart so there's good you know there's good advantages to it when you toss all that stuff in there you can put in whatever else you want to you can put in celery you can put in tomatoes I see it clear of things like potato, but you can stick some of that stuff in there. And you just cook it for a while. You can stick that stuff in the blender, and you can blend it up, and then you, like, season it, right?

So the cool thing about soup is, like, you can add all kinds of stuff. So I'll put a little bit of salt in there. Smoke paprika goes a long way. It's going to have a lot of natural sweetness from the squash and the onion, so you don't need any sugar. I don't put cream and crap like that. I know a lot of recipes will, like, add cream, but, like, no, you just like, it's like a vegetable soup that's just amazing. It's like, and then a squeeze of lime. If you want to go crazy, you can put some stuff like cumin or garam masala or things like that.

But I think just basically with this stuff, pepper, you can even stick a jalapino in there if you want to. Like, this is delicious. You can also freeze some of this stuff if you want to, right? So like you cook this stuff and it tastes amazing and you're getting like, you know, tons of nutrients and vegetables and stuff like that. And that will actually help you a lot. So to like clean out your mind. Okay. There's also a lot of stuff that we've talked about.

you can find out this all in Dr. K's guide about gut brain health, right? So when you start to eat some of these things, it forms healthy gut bacteria. And as you form healthy gut bacteria, they make neurotransmitter precursors. And as you make neurotransmitter precursors like tryptophan and stuff like that, it can actually theoretically boost your serotonin level and things like that. So like there's a lot of like science behind some of this stuff. But now that we have good sleep, we can eat good food. Once we start to eat good food and our mind becomes less thom sick from that,

angle, then what we're going to do is number three, get out of the house. Okay? Just get out of the house. Now, I know that weather permitting and depending on where you are, this may not, like, if you're in like Ontario or like Michigan or something, it may be hard to like get out of the house. But as best as you can, like literally get out of the house. So even if it's going to a store or like whatever, like you try, as best as you can, try to get out of the house or get out of your room or do whatever you can. If it's freezing outside, you can't do that. Maybe you can't do that now, but at least when it starts to warm up, do the best that you can. There's all kinds of important stuff that happens here that's like physiologic. We've talked about this before. So plant aerosols are really good for mood, particularly anxiety.

There's all kinds of other stuff like eye accommodation. So our eyes, if you think about the way that our eyes evolved, they did not evolve to look at things that were like three feet in front of me. all day long. So you actually have these things called your ciliary muscles, which cause your eyes to contract and, or well, the ciliary muscles contract. And so that alters the shape of your lens and your focal length, and then you kind of like are looking close by. So the default position for your eye is not like three feet away. It's actually like further away. So you want to relax your ciliary muscles by walking outside. That's like literally all it takes is then your eyes will naturally relax. They'll focus on far things. This can do.

all kinds of things like reduce headache. There's just all kinds of good stuff. There's some evidence that it actually improves vision over time, but that's a bit, it's like correlative evidence in cross-sectional. So we're not really sure about that. But get out of the house, right? So you'll get some fresh air and things like that.

You'll also get moving. So we don't want to be like sedentary. Okay. So the next thing that we're going to do, so now that we've gotten out of the house and we've gotten a little bit refreshed, we can actually deuce what most people are expecting, which is meditation and yoga. So what I'm going to recommend is 20 minutes

of meditation practice a day. And I'd start with alternate nostril breathing and then do oam chanting. Now, you can mix it up if you want to, but if you're coming from the internet and this is your first exposure to us, these are the two things that I would recommend. Once again, there's a whole module about this in Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. We teach you everything that you're going to need to know about meditation there. But these are the two things that I'd do, like 10 minutes each. next thing that I'm going to say is 10 minutes you can do more if you want to of suria namaskar

so this is a set of 10 yoga postures that'll like super balance you out right so at the end of the day like this all of this stuff is only like an hour or two a day like cooking a meal getting out of the house and doing 30 minutes of meditation and yoga is like an hour a day or sorry two hours a day let's say

and so the interesting thing here is like this is what it takes to get your get control of your mind and if we go back to like this post what we find is that um you know like there's a lot of stuff here where like i can quit and join i need to start doing this my mind seems to spiral out of control i want to run home and be comfortable in my bubble like all of these things like you're losing to your mind like sure we can try to fix whatever is inside the mind we can try to fix this if we want to but if we just get control of the mind as a whole, you don't have to even overcome your fear of escapism. There's a part of your mind that will want to escape and you'll just be like, yeah, we're not going to do that today. You don't even

have to fix it. You can just have it. You can still like want to escape. And it won't, like, you'll just, once you're in control of your mind, once your willpower is there, once you're more sativic and more balanced, you'll be able to resist your desires better. Now, on to a couple of advanced things. Okay. So for those of you, because now I understand there are a lot of people in our community that do this, right? Apparently we've got a bunch of oatmeal eaters in chat. So if you guys want more advanced stuff to discipline your mind, eventually you can absolutely go, you know, you can increase your meditation time and things like that, but I'm going to give you guys other practices. So obviously you can sleep better, you can eat more satic food.

You can cut out meat if you want to. Cut out, oh, by the way, marijuana and alcohol are both very, very thamsick. Liquor is actually a little bit more rajsick, but, you know, stimulates tend to be Rajshake, so you want to cut out all those substances too. Or the other way to put it is, if you are using those substances, it makes sense to me that you're going to have trouble getting control of your mind. So other things that you can do, if you really want to control your mind, other things you can do. We've talked about this before.

No devices in the toilet. Right? When you go to a number two, you're just going to go in with no devices. Okay. Number two, no devices while eating. Okay. All right. So let's talk about this for a second.

So notice, first of all, the rebellion, right? So what part of you is rebelling? What part of you is like, oh my God, I can eat oatmeal. I can go to sleep on time. I can do 30 minutes of yoga. But you're telling me to not use my phone when I'm taking a dump? Like, look at the. rebellion within you. Like, what are we talking about here? Right? Like, what's the real cost to, like,

not using your phone while you're in the bathroom? Or, like, not watching something while you eat. Like, just notice that. Like, that's really bizarre. I'm not asking you to, like, you know, go into debt. I'm not asking you to donate a kidney. I'm not asking you to, you know, adopt a child. I'm not like, there's no real, like, cost here, right? And this is why I pick this so specifically. because the only cost is like your mind rebelling. Like it's just your mind is like, oh no, we can't browse Reddit for like five minutes while I'm taking it down for 10 minutes.

It's like, oh my God, how cruel. So this is a really, really prime example of like who's in control. Is it your mind or is it you? Now be careful because if I say there's no cost, what your mind is going to do, it's going to be, but like look at all the productive stuff I can do. Look at all. I have so many, I have so much animator watch.

I have so many of these YouTube. lectures on motivation to watch while I eat. It's me being productive. It's me being productive. That's like the last hallmark of the addicted mind is like telling you some kind of good rationalization. So it's like, no, no, no, it will cost you something. No, the marijuana is good for my insomnia and my anxiety. No, no, we need it. We need it, bro. No, like, we don't need it. We're not like addicted, but like we need it. I'm sorry, we don't need it. But like, think about everything you're going to lose if you don't get it. That's what it is, right? That's the thought process. Right? We don't need it. I don't know, addicted, but it's just like, think about the efficiency, the loss in efficiency.

Oh, my God, we can't be inefficient. Oh, sure, like, we can play video games for eight hours a day, but, like, we've got to use those five minutes on the toilet to research jobs on LinkedIn, which is not what you do anyway, right? So, like, these are the two things that if you want to get control of your mind, just, like, don't do devices while eating. And this is the bizarre thing is once you, it feels really hard until you do it. And once you actually do it, like, if you sit down with, like, let's say a bowl of, like,

butter, not squash soup, and you just eat it without doing anything. It tastes amazing. Like, you're going to have a wonderful experience. You're actually going to enjoy it. You don't even need the device. It feels actually really good. Like, go grab some apples and peanut butter. It's kind of nice where I live, because I'm down south, like, in the southern United States. But, like, I'm going to step outside and have some apples and peanut butter and, like, you just sit outside in your backyard, and you're just kind of like enjoying yourself. Like, it's great. Right. So here are the advanced techniques. Because as it turns out, you know, there are a lot of advanced people in our community. So you can try these two things. These are really great willpower

building exercises. And generally speaking, we here at HG don't like, you know, emphasize the willpower route, but at the same time it is like a really important route. We sort of emphasize understanding. So if you guys want to get control of your mind, here's how you do it. Right? We can talk about the escapism and stuff like that. So questions. So, you know, people are asking about reading. So notice, notice the last bastion of the mind. When all devices are removed, Can I read? Can I read? So this is where like, sure, you can read. You know, I think it's okay. But like, why do you need to? Like, do you really need to read for that five or ten minutes? There's like 24 hours in a day. You're sleeping for, let's say, like, six to nine of them. And like you need the, it's like you poop maybe once a day. We're talking about like a five minute loss here. Right? But desperate to what? Like your mind. So notice that desperate. notice how much your mind craves stimulation. So this is the key thing to understand

is that when you give in to that mind, that's the same thing as like quitting your job and going home. It assigns too much value to gaming and sleeping and hanging. So like you don't want to give into that value. Like the more that you give in to what the mind wants, even in the smallest little way, you are creating a system where it's in control. So I'd say like, don't do any of it.

And then your mind is like, but then what am I going to do? and you're going to be bored for like five minutes. It's going to be 300 seconds. Count to 300 for me. And then your mind is like, eh. But if you literally want to know how do I get control of my mind, there are some things that it wants

and you tell it no. And then it winds and wheedles and tries to trick you. And if you let it trick you, you're not going to control it. It's going to control you. But if you, you know, if you do a good job, it'll listen.

And then over time, it'll start listening more. And then you're going to tell it like, it's going to be like, I want to play a video game. But now you've practiced, right? Now it's strange. So you're going to say, sorry, we're not going to play a video game right now. We're going to actually go exercise for an hour.

And then after we're done exercising, then we're going to play a video game. And then you will discover something miraculous, which is after you train your mind to listen to you. And then you play the video game after exercising. The video game is actually more fun than if you would have, like, once you, like, if you go work out and then you feel like kind of tired and exhausted, the numbers. If your mind is like tired from working out,

like the game is going to be more fun too. Okay? Counting game, yes. Look at how the mind latches onto that. So notice what's happening now, chat. Here I am telling you how to get control of your mind and what does your mind do. Quick, quick, bring out the memes. Bring out the memes.

Don't listen to what he's saying. Distract everyone. Start counting. Start counting. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. We have to count, count, count anything but listening to this. Oh, my God. Quickly, quickly, the memes. Let's say something funny. You see this? We're now counting numbers. Oh, my God. This is so funny. Let's, did we distract ourselves enough so that we have to stay? We can use the cell phone in the bathroom now? Did we distract ourselves? Did we forget what we were talking about? Did we, did it work?

Did it work? Quick, count more. Count more. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Let's be funny. And stop paying attention. Because that's what's happening, right?

You guys see that? You're like, oh, your mind is like, let's do this. It's going to be funny. I'm going to type three and two. So funny. So funny. So funny. So funny.

So funny. Now I'm going to type 33. Oh, my God. It's so much fun. And thus do we stop learning and start giving in to the, mind's desire to like meme and entertain itself. Right? Okay.

Questions. Yeah. So I'll summarize. So let's go ahead and kind of do a quick summary. Okay? So a lot of times when we're confronted with things like escapism, our goal is to fix the escapism on the inside of our mind, right? So people will say things like, oh, I'm, you know, I want to escape.

And then the next thing that sort of happens, we can have, we can be depressed, we can be anxious, whatever. Our solutions tend to be to try to fix the inside of the mind so that we no longer have to deal with it. But there's another pathway that we have, which is to not fix what's on the inside of the mind, but just get control of the mind as a whole. So the mind does what we want it to, whether it feels a particular way or not. So I'll give you guys kind of an example. If I'm anxious about going to a party, what I can do is just I can try to deal with my internal anxiety, so I'm no longer anxious going to the party. Or what I can do is just command my

mind and say, hey, we're going to go to the party anyway. It's okay if you're a little bit anxious, like not a big deal. We're going to do it anyway. And then the mind will be like super, super upset. But if we've trained our mind properly, it'll do it anyway. So we don't even need to be like, we don't have to fix the inside of our mind. We can just control it. So controlling our mind involves understanding this concept of the guna's, which is what a lot of this stuff is baked into, but this idea that different kinds of activities or exercises or foods that we engage in will make our mind more inert, dull, or slow, more active, passionate, or dynamic, or more balanced, calm, or in a state of equilibrium. And so how do we do that? It starts with sleep. Once we

sleep more or sleep healthier, we're going to have more willpower. And then we can start making some of the other changes that we need to make. So if I had started by saying, adjust your diet and you're not sleeping properly, like it's going to be hard to stick to a diet. Right? So now that we're sleeping properly, we can make easy adjustments to our diet. We don't want to eat like super untasty foods. We want to find light, healthy foods that also taste good. So the three things are moving to salsa, moving to apples and peanut butter, oatmeal, butternut squash soup.

These are just some examples. Okay. Now that we've eaten well, so our mind is going to be a little bit more compliant once it gets these kind of good, healthy light foods. So we're going to feel like, you know, because of something. sometimes you just don't like, I don't feel like getting out of the house. I just like feel, I don't feel like it. Right. And some of that sentiment, that feeling of not wanting to get out of the house actually has to do with diet. Because if you eat like crap, you don't feel like doing anything. But if you eat like healthy food, you're going to feel like more energetic.

So then get out of the house. And then once you're out of the house, you get a breath of fresh air, then you can start doing like meditation and yoga. You can do 20 minutes of meditation and 10 minutes of yoga. And then if you've done all that stuff, you've got the basics down, you've got a job, you do meditative. every day if you're like one of those chads. Then you want to move on to hard mode. Then you can do no devices in the toilet and no devices while eating. Like don't watch anything while you're eating. Just eat. Right. And then then everyone goes to like everyone's totally fine. Oh yeah. Like eating oatmeal. Like I can handle that. But asking me to give up my device. No, no, no, no. And then what we see is that the mind wants it. Right. Because what it wants to avoid is like, oh my God, like, I need it. I need it. The mind wants it so, so bad. So that's how you get control of your mind by doing limited

things that sort of make it easy for your mind to be more compliant, right? So this is going to shape, this stuff up here is going to shape the mind. And then as we move down to the advanced techniques, now that the mind is more pliable, you'll have set up a situation where it will require less willpower because you'll be sleeping well, eating well, things like that. Okay? Step three, become a buddh, absolutely. All right. So someone's asking you, How do you deal with hours of boredom when you're so used to stimulation? It's torture. So you don't start with hours.

You start with minutes, right? So, like, how do you deal with hours of boredom? I'm not sure. But here's the other thing. If you get, like, tons of stimulation through technology, for example, you're bored anyway. You're just stimulated and bored. And you're dull and bored. You're like, I'm sick and stimulated.

It's, like, terrible, right? So you start by, by, like, small amounts of calculated withdrawal. from like stimulating stuff. Start small. It's like, how do you lift 100 pounds? You start by lifting five. Same way you do anything in life. So is listening to music when leaving the house fine?

Yeah, sure. Listen to music. It's okay. Do that for a while and then, you know, try not listening to music and see which one you prefer. Okay. Okay. So if someone's saying, hi, doctor, I'm a neat. What do?

You do this. Start with this. Right? This is where like then your mind will be in a state to do the other things. Okay.