HealthyGamerGG - Unlocking Your Motivation | Community Stream

Episode Date: July 17, 2021

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Y'all have successfully casted a summoning spell for Dr. K. A while Dr. Koeirth. Welcome to another healthy gamer Gigi stream. My name is Allo Kanoja. I'm a psychiatrist practicing in Boston. I'm enjoying not needing to be in formal attire during work. That's one of the benefits of working from home. Just a reminder that everything we discuss on stream today is intended to be for educational purposes

and nothing is intended to be medical advice. So if you all have a question, please go see a licensed professional. and, you know, ask them. So hope everyone's doing well. Thanks for the gifted subs, folks. I see that there's a hype train going on. Shampoo advertisement? Yeah, that'd be funny, right?

So I don't know if you guys get this. We don't really, we've got a lot of sponsorship requests, like a lot of, you know, and so far we've been, like, pretty careful about who we take. I think we have one or a couple of YouTube videos that were sponsored by Audible, because I actually use Audible. I really like audiobooks. Um, but yeah, it'd be funny to have, maybe it's Mabel. With all of the streamers out there, especially the, the female streamers who have amazing hair,

wouldn't it be wild if we actually wound up getting a sponsor from a, uh, uh, shampo company, sponsored by Coca-Cola? Yeah, so that, um, yeah, it's interesting. So I think we get a lot of, you know, interesting requests. from people. So just a couple. Let's talk about announcements and stuff, chat. So today, I don't know exactly what we're doing on Friday, but I think we're, you know, I think we should be around on Friday.

A couple of thoughts. So today we're going to be talking a little bit about motivation. So I'm going to share some of my perspectives on how to understand motivation. And more importantly, like a really important mistake a lot of people make when comes to motivation and basically help y'all define or share with you guys a hypothesis about what I think motivation truly is. Because I think a lot of times we talk about motivation, but we don't really know what it is. So we're going to start with that. And then we're going to we're going to do a subreddit review. So I think we've had a lot of good posts over the last,

you know, week or 10 days. And so we're going to share some interesting perspectives, try to answer some questions, stuff like that. It seems. like, you know, we're just always trying to think about what y'all want and need. And, you know, some of the things that you guys want, I don't know that we're so willing to do because my dignity means something to me still. But a lot of what appears to be helpful is instead of spending, you know, two hours with one person, like every time we stream, that it's actually helpful for, you know, five or six people to get an opportunity to ask question. And so, That's what we're, you know, we're trying to do at least once a week.

What's wrong with you? That's a good question, man. I don't know. Or woman. Zalbages. Yeah. So let's go ahead and get started. Okay.

So let's talk a little bit about motivation chat. So the first thing to understand is like when I ask y'all, you know, how do you get motivated? Or when I ask you, like, what is motivation? What do most people say? Right? So what most people will do is they'll like look at someone who they perceive is motivated and they'll be like, oh, that person is motivated. And if I ask them like, you know, what does that mean to be motivated? It means and then you'll get some kind of answer like they get up and they do it every day. You know, they get up. They'll use some kind of like, they'll say like, okay, they get up, they do it every day. They're dedicated. They're disciplined. They have Dharma. Have a goal and work towards it. Right. Like that's beautiful examples. Like they have a goal and they actually get up. up and they work towards it. So that's kind of interesting because if you think about it, what that really is is like you looking from the outside and observing a behavior, right? And you say that,

oh, motivation is a behavior. Because if we're observing from the outside, and this is sort of how Western science works, this is actually like a really interesting bias that our entire society has, is that when we look for answers to questions, we look from the outside and look in. So this is like in medicine, you know, we'll do an x-ray to figure out what's going to. going on in the lungs. We'll do a biopsy. We'll do a blood test. We'll try to get some sort of scientific external perspective. This is exactly what Freud did as well, right? So when he was developing his psychological theories, what he did is talk to other human beings from the outside, listen to their words, and make implications about what is going on on the inside. So when we talk about

motivation and we sort of start to think a little bit about what is motivation, the perspective that we take is from the outside looking at behavior. So therein lies like one of the biggest problems and why motivation is a huge challenge. And so if I ask people, what is motivation? I'm going to get 100 questions because it's like 100 people looking at the out of from the outside. And then when you try to duplicate a behavior, it falls apart.

And why does it fall apart is because motivation is nothing about your behavior. It has everything to do with about the mind. So if we really think about what is motivation, it's an internal thing. okay so like if I say like I'm motivated I don't say like I'm saying things that are very simple but motivation exists within the mind it's not it has nothing to do with behavior it sounds crazy it may result in behavior but if we look at actually what is motivation it is purely mental it is like within the mind and so this is where I think a lot of people fall short because when they try to figure out how to get motivated what they end up looking at is like people who are motivated and they try to

to like see their behaviors and duplicate their behaviors. And this is where we get to the just do it kind of stuff, right? Just study. Just go to the library. Just go to the gym. Just take a shower. Just start using deodorant. Just clean your room. Right? Because like, and this is the problem is like, that's all external stuff. It's all like behavioral stuff. It's not actually motivational stuff. And since our society is so good at looking from the outside in, that's what science basically is. We've sort of missed understanding what motivation is. And so then what we end up doing is like mimicking, we try to mimic like the outside behavior, right? So you look at someone like, oh, that dude is motivated.

They go to the gym every day. So let me go to the gym every day. And they just mimic the behavior. But this is where like if you just mimic the behavior without the internal component, you're destined to fail. And this is something that I see a lot in the spiritual community, right? You'll have someone who's like very spiritually detached and like, you know, like a monk or something like that. And like that person is relatively like not materialistic. Like they don't care what they wear.

They're never wearing jewelry. They don't wear watches. They don't care about what they drive and things like that. And then someone will look at that person. They'll say like, oh, if I want to be spiritual, I need to be non-material. And so they'll impose non-materialism on themselves. But they're completely missing. the point because the spiritual person isn't trying to be non-materialistic. They're just genuinely

attached. They don't care if they wear a watch or they don't wear a watch. But you're trying to impose non-materialism from the outside is like an example of mimicking a behavior instead of understanding what's inside the mind of the monk. And so the more that we try to copy what motivated people do without understanding what's on the inside, the more destined we are to fail, which is why we have a society of people who's struggling with motivation. I read an article recently about like young people in China who are doing something called laying flat, which means that they're just kind of chilling. Like they're not engaging in sort of like the rat race of society.

And so it's like they're sort of like embracing laziness. And they sort of seem kind of unmotivated or something like that. And it's kind of like it's this thing where there's something going on inside that person's mind that is resulting in a particular behavior. And the biggest mistake that we make is we try to duplicate the behavior instead of understanding what is in the mind of a motivated person. And so luckily enough, I've had some degree of personal experience and sort of discovering how to become motivated.

And I've also worked with a lot of like very successful motivated people, right? So I've worked with, you know, we do consulting for a lot of major tech companies. I've done a lot of like consulting and worked with like, you know, mental health startups, tech startups out of MIT and like Harvard incubators, things like that. I've worked with a couple of billionaires who have started successful companies and sort of here's what I've discovered. When I ask them, I don't observe from the outside what they've done. When I ask them, like, what does it mean to be motivated? What is actually going on inside your head? Then, like, the answer that I get is like really, really interesting, okay? And so if you ask people,

like, and before we get to that answer, like, I'll ask other people. Like, what do you think is in the mind of a motivated person? And so the common answer that we get is actually that, you know, people will say things like they want it more, right? So if I like ask, like, let's say I just ask a random person on the street, why is one person successful and one person not successful? A common answer that I get is because people want it more. And so this just simply isn't true. So I know it sounds kind of crazy, but like, you know, you know, know, as an addiction psychiatrist, like I work with people who are sober, hopefully, and I work with people who are not sober. And what I can tell you with a lot of confidence is that if you take someone who's one week sober versus someone who's not sober at all, the person who's one week sober wants the marijuana or alcohol way more than the person who's actively using. That how much they want it is actually like so much stronger in acute one week into sobriety. than like the person who's using it every day. So it isn't that some people want it more.

And we sort of see this sometimes within our community as well, right? Like if I'm like lonely, I want companionship and friends so much more than someone who like has friends. Like we see this sometimes like in places like the in-cell community, but let's just talk about our community as a whole. Like there's an epidemic of loneliness and everyone wants connection more than anything else. Right? So wanting it more is not.

motivation. That's the first thing to understand. Okay? And then sometimes we'll also get these answers like they're disciplined. But then if I ask someone, what does it mean to be disciplined in someone's mind? What does the mind of a disciplined person look like? Okay. And then they'll be like, they just get up and do it every day. Just. There's the just again. So when you ask people like, what is the origin of motivation? Like they'll give you these answers like, oh, they want it more. They're disciplined. But that's all like one is an external observation of behavior, which is not what motivation is because motivation is within our mind. We can see the outcomes of motivation, right, but we don't see the inside of it. We can see the effect of it, but we still don't know what it is.

And then the problem is if you chase the effect and you don't understand like the equation, then you're going to get stuck because you can't mimic it because you don't actually know what it is. So I would argue that motivation is actually something that's very simple. It is the ability to hold a thought steady in your mind for a prolonged period of time. That's all motivation. is. So I would say with all of my experience, the one conclusion I've come to about what motivation is is literally holding a thought in your mind for an extended period of time. Okay. So let's think about like a New Year's resolution for a second. When someone starts with a New Year's resolution, you ask them on day one, they're like, I'm going to lose 50 pounds this year. And I ask you,

on a scale of 1 to 10, how motivated are you? And they're like, I'm 11 out of 10. I want it. I'm motivated. I'm going to do it. It's going to be good. And if you, you actually like, you know, assess them, their motivation is super high. And then two weeks later, like, their motivation is still like pretty good. And then a month and two months go by and three months go by and like what changes in their mind? Like what actually, where does the motivation go? And what happens is they have a thought over here that gets bumped by another thought, right? It's like, oh, I need to go to the gym, but I want to stay in bed. And there's almost this like thought bumping process that destroys motivation. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but like we can also

understand this. Actually, there's a great example of this, which is sort of bizarre, which is procrastination. So if we think about procrastination, procrastination is your mind's ability to try to motivate you. Okay. So it's like, let's say I'm going about my day. Like, I'm going to chill today. I'm going to do some streaming. And then procrastination comes in. It's like, hey, we've got a test. And then I'm like, oh, screw that. Forget about that. Forget about test. And then here comes the thought again. Oh, we've got a test. Oh, no, forget about that. Let's play some legal legends. Oh, we've got a test. No, screw you. We don't have a test. Let me distract myself. So if you think about literally what procrastination is, it is your mind trying to put a

particular thought to be steady in your mind. And so one week away, you know, you kind of get bumped a little bit. Like here comes the thought, we just push it away. Forget you. We don't want to think about the test. We actively try to not think about the test. That's why we distract ourselves when we procrastinate. And there's that voice again. Here comes the thought. Here's the test. Here's the test.

Oh, no, no. Screw you. Go away. Okay, fine. And then what happens is the day before the test. Here it comes. And then we can't push it away. The ability to push the thought out of our head disappears.

And then our mind is dominated by the thought of the test. And then we start studying in last minute panic. Right? It's kind of fascinating because if you look at procrastination, it's like your mind's ability to try to motivate you. and get you to study. And we actively try to push it away. And what I find from people who are, you know, very, very actively motivated is that they're literally, they don't feel like they're disciplined. They don't feel like they're amazing. They don't wake up every day with like a fire in their

belly and like, it's not like these montages from movies. It's just they wake up. Like if you ask someone who goes to the gym every day, you just ask them like, what's in your head? They're like, I'm going to go to the gym. Got to go to the gym. Let's go to the gym. Let's go. go to the gym. That's it. They just hold that thought steady and it doesn't get bumped by anything else. So motivation is simply the ability to put something in the center of your mind and keep it there. Right. And if you guys look at your cases of motivation, like some of you all may have tried to go like pro in an e-sport or you tried to climb the ladder or something like that, right? Or you decided like what was in your head when you were like grinding out or whatever? thing. It's holding that thought steady. And so then you all may say like, okay, this is kind of

interesting, like, you know, but is there any science to back this up? And the answer is like overwhelmingly yes. Okay. So let's like take a quick look at the science that supports this theory. The first is that like let's take a disease like ADHD. So in ADHD, what someone's mind is is like incredibly flighty and incredibly fast. Why on earth would we give a stimulant medication to someone whose mind is moving way too fast. Because when you give a stimulant medication, literally what it does in the mind of someone with ADHD is it allows them to hold a thought,

a single thought in their head for a long period of time. If we look at like ADHD and why these people struggle to be motivated, even though they want it a ton, they want so bad to be a good student. They try so hard. But their mind literally cannot hold one thought in their head. When I open my book with ADHD and I try to put my mind on one place, it literally does not stay there and it goes somewhere else. And therefore, I feel like I can't actually like read something, right?

So it's kind of bizarre because it's like there's a really interesting test of this hypothesis is that we actually have a medication that causes people's minds to sit in one place. We also see this not just in ADHD, but if you think about caffeine and like when you caffeine, when you drink caffeine, and it allows you to focus, what does that mean allow you to focus? It means it allows your mind to sit on one thought and then you get shit done. We also see holding a thought steady in the mind in other unfortunate cases in mental health, like in depression and suicidality. Right. So when I think about a patient who's highly suicidal and I ask them and they're like motivated, when I ask them what is going on in their mind, they have one thought that dominates their mind, which is that I don't want to be alive anymore. I don't deserve to be alive anymore. It's kind of bizarre, but when you

think about people like the people that I'll actually hospitalized, it's that their mind is dominated by one thought, which leads to a high amount of motivation. Right? So it's interesting because we don't think about someone who's depressed and suicidal is motivated, but if you really want to be scientific about it, you know, making a suicide attempt requires a huge amount of like direction and motivation. Is it in the wrong direction? Absolutely. Is it a problem? Absolutely. Should you go get mental health treatment or an evaluation if that's happening in your mind? Absolutely. And at the same time, the mechanism in your mind that leads to a behavior can be understood through procrastination, through ADHD, through addiction, and through depression even.

And so the next question that we would ask ourselves is, okay, Dr. Kay, like, if this is true, is there data to support this outside of clinical experience and psychiatry and stuff like that? Like on a more basic science level, is there science to support this idea? And the answer is absolutely yes. And that is because if there were a practice, so you could make a hypothesis that if there was a practice that you could do to keep a thought steady in your mind for a prolonged period of time, would that result in an increased amount of motivation? And the answer is, yes, there have been thousands of studies on meditation that show exactly that. So if we look at meditation, what meditation is is the ability to like tell your mind to do a particular thing and have it listen. Right. So we'll concentrate on the breath. We'll concentrate on a yuntra.

We'll concentrate on a mantra. We'll concentrate on, you know, sight or sound or touch. And you tell your mind to do something. And this is what's really fascinating is that when you train people to meditate, what happens is their ADHD clinically gets better. Even without ADHD, what you find, so this is why, you know, I teach meditation at like corporations and stuff. And what I find is that people's like motivation and focus and their output improves when I

teach them to meditate. You also see this in very rare cases of like people whose motivational circuitry is actually like compromise. So if you look at the brain of someone who has schizophrenia, they actually have a lot of motivational problems, which seem to be very neuroscientifically grounded. And the really fascinating thing is that we don't really have any medications that will affect their motivation circuitry. We have medications that will do things like reduce hallucinations, but we don't have medications that will help those people get out of bed in the morning. But what is really interesting is there are studies on schizophrenia and meditation that show that meditation is actually effective at reducing what we call negative symptoms, which is problems like Anahedonia and A motivation.

And so it's super fascinating, but I would posit to you all that, you know, the big, mistake that people make about motivation is that when you're trying to motivate yourself, what you're doing is looking outside. You're making an observation of behavior instead of understanding what's going on in the inside of the mind. And I want you all to understand that you can never learn about motivation from like looking at someone's behavior. Motivation, if you really want to understand motivation, you need to look inside the mind because that's what it comes down to you, right? Whether I go to the gym or I don't go to the gym, the action is rooted in what is in my mind. And furthermore, if you really look very carefully across a lot of

different situations, like people, addictions, mental health, you know, studies on meditation, what the conclusion that I've come to is motivation is simple. Motivation is simply the ability to hold a thought in your head for a prolonged period of time. And what I'll say to you guys is like, you know, when I wake up and like I have a thought, it's like, I need to stream today. Like, that's a thought and the thought is held in my head and that's a how I end up streaming, right? Because there have been times today where you may say, but you need to. Isn't that a need? No, because there have also been times in my life where it's like, I wake up, I have a Spanish final today. I need to go to the Spanish final. Otherwise, I will

fail Spanish class. And then it's like, okay, let me load up War III. Right? So the need is separate. The motivation, in that moment, what does my mind do? Here's the Spanish final. Here comes Warcraft 3. Bump. Oh, now we're playing War III for eight hours. Woo. Where did the thought of the Spanish final go? It didn't go anywhere. It just disappeared. Right? So I would posit to you all that motivation is the ability to hold a thought steady in your mind for a prolonged period of time.

And that once you understand this thing and as you cultivate the ability to hold one thought steady in your mind for a prolonged period of time, that's all it is. You can like literally practice that. As you practice that, you will become more productive. You will become more motivated because that's what motivation is. It's not like some special, you know, fire. Like, sure, you can say the taramah and all that kind of stuff. But even if you talk about tarma and other things, what that all results in, the common element to need and should and duty and responsibility and passion and wanting and desire.

All of those words through the mechanism of holding a thought in your mind, when all of that crap holds a thought in your mind is when you act. And that's, that's it. Questions. can you be motivated and actively not look forward to the work you have to carry out? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right? Because motivation is simply holding the thought in my mind. So I can like hold the thought in my mind that I have to do something today. And as long as I don't displace the thought, I don't have to enjoy it, but it'll get done. Okay. So people are asking, holding multiple thoughts, you can't hold multiple thoughts in your head. You can only hold one thought. How can I practice holding a thought in my mind. Yeah. So one meditation

that I think is really, really good for that is Thrataka, or fixed point gazing. So Dharana techniques, which are focusing techniques, will be good for that. So you don't want to do mindfulness here. Although mindfulness is effective. But in my experience,

there are some techniques that are more effective, which is Dharana. And so someone's asking about obsessions. So could obsession be a part of it? Absolutely. Right? Let's think about that for a second.

So if I'm obsessed with something, I'm thinking about it all the time. So if you look at like OCD, right, what is OCD? Like, I cannot shake the thought. So if you guys, I don't know if you'll know this, but in OCD, it's obsessive, compulsive disorder. So a compulsion is a behavior and obsession is a thought. So what happens in OCD is that people discover that there is a thought that is lodged in their head that they can't get out. and the only way to dislodge it is to engage in a compulsion or a behavior. Oh my God, my hands are unclean.

And the only way I can dislodge that thought is by washing them 13 times. And what people sort of figure out what OCD really is, is that compulsions, the behaviors, are solutions to let go of the obsession. So OCD is actually the best example of this principle. And if you think about people who are like obsessed with stuff, that's all they think about that's all they're motivated towards, right? Like, you can see it in video game addiction, too. Desire is also focused on one thought.

No, desire is something else. A desire is a want, right? It's not a focus on one thought. Like, I desire a yacht, but I'm not focused on it 24-7. So a desire is born of the indrias or the sense organs. So if we think about where our wants truly come from, they come from our sense organs. Right? I can't want a yacht until I see one.

And I see like people partying on a yacht and I'm like, wow, that looks like a lot of fun. I want that. If you're walking down the street and you smell someone like, you know, frying food, it's like, wow, I want that. Where did that want come from? It came from a sensory stimulus. Could you explain this meditation practice? Yeah, we'll do that today at the end of stream. So how do you navigate life if you have good motivation but no desires?

That's the best way to navigate it. Right? So like motivation is about holding particular thoughts. And here's the thing. Desires are the thing that bump the thought, right? If I want to eat healthy and then I smell fried chicken, that bumps. So if we think about what are the things that bump the thought that I want to be motivated towards, desires bump them. So if you, as you become free from desires, you will actually become more motivated.

Does that make sense? Okay. How do you balance holding a single thought in your? your mind and bouncing between activities are being vata inclined. So like, it's actually quite easy because when you are doing one thing, that is the thought that you have in your mind. So here's what I'd say as a vata. Okay. So this morning, for example, like, I did some writing, I did some stream prep. I saw a client and now I'm streaming. And so if we think about like what happened is when I sit with a client, that is what my mind is focused on. And then when I'm done sitting with a

client, my mind shifts to something else and that's what I hold and I work on that. And then like now that I'm streaming, this is what my mind is on. So I'm like, this is the thought that's in my mind. It's like now it's time to stream. So you can rotate between things in your mind. That's okay. And then you're going to be motivated for those for that period of time. What if focusing on the thought of what I need to do gives me anxiety? Yeah. So that's a good question. But that's where focusing on the things. thing that you need to do does not give you anxiety. I know this is going to sound weird. So the question was, what if focusing on the thing that I need to do gives me anxiety?

That is incorrect. That is not what is giving you anxiety. What is giving you anxiety is the consequences of doing it or not doing it. It's not focusing on the thing. It's the outcome of the thing that leads to anxiety. So this is the other thing. Remember, it's holding a thought steady. So if the thought that I'm holding is go to the gym, what? gives me anxiety is if I go to the gym, this is the anxious thought, because it's not holding a thought today. Here comes the anxiety. The anxiety bumps out. People will think I'm out of shape. And then you're no longer focused on going to the gym. You're focused on what people think. This is the anxiety. Anxiety is a really powerful thing to bump motivation out of your mind.

Do you all get that? It's critical to understand this because it's so damn subtle. But it's huge to understand this. Focusing on the task, is not what gives you anxiety. In fact, anxiety is what keeps you from focusing on the task. The nature of anxiety is the consequence of doing the task or not doing the task. If I don't go to the gym, people will think I'm fat. If I go to the gym, people will think I'm fat. That's not focusing on going to the gym. It's focusing on people thinking you're fat. Do you all understand that? This is critical. Do you guys get that? anxiety is the biggest hammer that knocks crap out of your mind.

This is crucial to understand. It doesn't actually keep the thought. It keeps the consequences of the thought. Okay. Good question. Okay. So, okay, what if nothing but that hedonistic dopamine can't think of any goal like for my life outside of the next dopamine thing? also worrisome since I'm almost 40.

So this is another good example of like a question that gets at the general topic, but is missing the general point. So goals have nothing to do with motivation. Okay? Another weird thing. Right? So if you like really talk to people who are highly motivated, they're usually not motivated towards a goal. They can be.

But like, you know, people who are motivated tend to focus on the action, not the goal. So if you think about like, you know, the best students, some of them may really want to like get a 4.0 GPA and that's what they're thinking about. But what they're really thinking about is like the task. If we think about things like flow states and optimal productivity and motivation, it's like devoting yourself to the task at hand, not the goal. And so if you're motivated like if your motivations are based on hedonistic dopamine, like that's absolutely why you're not going to get it. right? Because let's think about hedonistic dopamine for a second. So what is the relationship between hedonistic dopaminergic stuff and like this model of motivation? So what that means is that I am highly motivated towards something like, oh, I want to smoke pot. And then I smoke the pot and then what happens to the thought? It disappears. I'm good. And then another thought comes in. Oh, now I want to eat Cheetos. And then I satisfy that thought in my mind. And then I get a dopamine hit. And then it's like, okay, let's play some games. And then you get that dopamine hit. And so if you

really think about it, what's happening is you have tiny amounts of motivation towards individual tasks, which is why you call yourself unmotivated in life because there's no central thought that you hold on to. Literally, dopamist, hedonistic indulgence and dopamine reinforcement doesn't lead to what we call motivation on the outside because you're not actually holding a thought in the middle of your mind for a long period of time. Dopaministic, hedonistic, like, dopamine satisfaction is actually like just cycling, like random thoughts and being motivated towards them, right? And that's what it means. It's like, okay, now I'm going to eat this thing, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this. So this is why I think like this, once you

understand the principle that all motivation is, is holding one thought in your mind, a lot of these questions will start to make sense. And this is the problem is that everyone has. these questions, what about dopamine? What about anxiety? What about this? What about that? E equals MC squared. Once you understand it equals MC squared, you can take any number of test cases involving, involving this crap, and it can all be reduced down to the equation. And the problem with motivation right now is that everyone is looking at all of these random things like, oh, there's research on dopamine, so let me go read about that. And what about dopamine? What about anxiety? What about this? What about that? All that crap can be reduced down to holding a thought steadily in your head.

that's it. Okay, so I get self-discipline to achieve long-term goals. You don't. This is the problem. That kind of thinking is the problem. Because that is a thinking of, that comes from looking from the outside. Right? You, like, where do you get the idea that there is a thing called self-discipline? And where do you get the idea that there is a long-term goal? Like, what is that based on? It's based on observing other people. and concluding, oh, that person has self-discipline because they are able to move towards a long-term goal. But if you actually ask that person, are you disciplined? They may say yes and they may say no. Discipline is not a thing in your mind. Discipline is an emergent property. It's like flight, but it's not a feather,

it's not a wing, it's not a bird, it's not a muscle. discipline is not something that you can create. It's an emergent property from other things. And so this is the problem is like if you set out trying to create flight, you will never be able to create it. What you have to do is create the components of flight and then flight will emerge. A feather is not flight. A muscle is not flight. A bone is not flight. In that same way, discipline is an emergent property that you can see from the outside. But how you make it and what you observe are fundamentally different. Do you guys get that?

The question is rooted in a false understanding of the thing. And it's simply like, do you guys get this? The reason no one finds self-discipline is because it's not a real thing. And everyone's constantly asking themselves, how do I get self-discipline to achieve long-term goals? And you're setting yourself up for a standard that when you don't get, you feel like you beat yourself up and you feel like a dumbass. And it's like impossible to begin with,

which is why a thousand people are asking the question. and a thousand people are failing. And then once you're dealing with that negative emotion of like, oh, look at all these disciplined people out there and like, I suck. That makes things even worse. Because then anytime you try to do something,

guess what's coming. Let me go to the gym. I suck. I suck. I suck. I suck. I suck. And then you sit there at home and you never go to the gym. It's tough. This is the problem.

People don't understand the root of what motivation is. And once you understand what it is on the inside and you start to cultivate it, then long-term goals will start to get achieved. It's like, I know this sounds kind of weird, but do you guys think I have long-term goals? I do not have long-term goals. Would you describe me as motivated if I accomplished a lot? Sure. Do I have long-term goals?

No. It's bizarre, right? Like, what do I do? Like, I wake up and it's like, what do I need to do today? So when I ask you all, like, you know, why we're doing this? Why are we doing this instead of talking to someone? Because we ask ourselves the questions. This is like the mission of the organization.

It's like, what do these people need? It's not about the law. It's not like, I know this sounds kind of weird, but I won't know to just think about this for a second, right? We don't wake up at Healthy Gamer and think to ourselves. A decade from now, where do we want gamers to be? That is not the question we ask ourselves. The question that we ask ourselves is, what do you all need now?

Who the... I don't know where y'all are going to be in 10 years. How on earth... What is... Like, I don't know, but what I know is y'all need something today. And so it's like, we sit there and we ask ourselves, okay, what do gamers need? All right, they don't understand motivation.

Let's do a bit about motivation. Okay, people have questions on the subreddit. Let's answer those questions. And this is what a present-focused mindset means. Right? It's like focusing on, like, what is your long-term goal to lose 50 pounds? Like, that's not...

That doesn't get you to go to the gym. Or it can sometimes. But what gets you to go to the gym is to hold that thought centrally in your mind. And for some people, it doesn't sort of matter what the thought is, as long as it gets you to go to the gym. If the thought that you're holding centrally is, I need to lose 50 pounds and you hold it in your mind constantly, you'll be motivated.

If the thought is, I need to go to the gym today, you'll be motivated. You'll go. So the goal itself is not as important is the mechanism through which the goal acts in your mind. Does that make sense? And this is the problem is everyone is out there looking for the right goal. Like you're thinking if you find the magical formula, then it'll sit in your mind automatically. Right? You're trying to, but just need to get it to sit in your mind.

Like, practice that. That's what Thratica is. Okay? Yeah, this is a good question. So Revelation v. asked, what does need to mean? Exactly. What does that even mean? Right? Ah, forge, forging.

Now we're getting good questions. So do you guys notice? These questions are now like on a different frame. So force holding the thought, absolutely. Force holding the thought. Yes. Hold that thought in your mind. Let's go to the gym.

Let's go to the gym. So if you're telling yourself that thought, notice what happens in your mind. It's going to be assaulted from all sides. by all kinds of thoughts. I don't feel like it. It's too hot. It's too far. It's too long.

I'm so out of shape. People will think I'm dumb. There's the thought. And what happens when you go to the gym? When you go to the gym, that's a test case of when that thought does not get bumped. And when you don't go to the gym

is when it gets bumped by one of those things. Right? Yeah. So this is when people say, say just hold the thought, lull, sort of yes, and that's why we're going to teach you a practice that will literally be like doing pushups for holding a thought in your mind. It will train you to do that, right? And this is the problem is like, we don't have a training for motivation, but we absolutely have a training to hold a thought in the mind. Congress. Hold the thought,

pay attention. So this is what I want you all to do. Chat, there's two meditations here. One, we're going to teach you guys in a little bit. Should we just do it now? You guys want to meditate now? Maybe we're going to do it now. So first meditation is pay attention to yourself. And notice what happens. When you have a goal, let's do it now.

Okay, we'll do it now. So when you have a goal, pay it meditation number one. So I'm going to give you all an inquisitive meditation and a practice meditation. Okay. So when you have a goal in mind and you're looking for motivation,

notice the thought that would get you to go. And then notice. Notice what happens to it. Don't even try to hold it at first. Just notice what happens to it? Right? Because if you try to hold it, then what's going to happen? Oh, like, I need to go to the gym. And then you're like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, I'm trying so hard to hold it. I'm trying so hard to hold it. I'm trying so hard to hold it. I'm trying so hard to hold it. I'm trying so hard to hold it. I'm trying to hold it. I'm not actually thinking about the gym. Or I need to go to the gym. Oh my God. I'm so dumb. I can't hold it. I can't hold it. I'm so bad at this. I'm so lazy. I'm so disciplined, not even holding the thought. Weird. Pay attention. So understand first, chat. Open up that user manual. Look at the FAQ of your mind and learn about yourself. Second thing, Trataka. Okay. We're going to teach you guys a Yantra Trataka, okay? So Trataka is fixed point

gazing. Okay, so we're going to find good old Wikipedia. So what I'm going to take teach you guys to do. What we're going to do is open our, we're going to like stare at something and we're going to like look at it without blinking. Okay? So what I want you all to do is I'm going to show you a picture and I'm going to instruct you to look at the middle of the picture without blinking. Now, you can do a half-litted gaze. If it starts to get too painful, you can close your eyes. But try to hold your gaze as long as you can. Your eyes will start to tear up a little bit, which is totally fine. That's actually like a good thing. It's going to lubricate your eyes if they start to dry out. We're going to keep our eyes open for about 30 to 90 seconds. If you need to close them

before that, that's totally fine. We're going to stare at one point and then I'm going to instruct your mind what to do. Okay? So I'm going to tell y'all to concentrate at one thing. So your eyes are going to be pointing to one thing like this. But I'm going to tell your attention to move around the periphery. So I want you guys to stare at my nose, but pay attention to the corner of my chair. And you can sort of see it in your peripheral vision. Does that make sense? You can move your attention away from where your eyes are focused. Okay. So I want everyone to sit up straight. Okay. So this is the Sri Yantra that's on Wikipedia, okay? Anyone's looking for a source. Okay? So here we go.

So what we're going to do, I want you all to start by closing your eyes. Just close your eyes first. Sit up straight. We're going to take a deep breath in and out. Good. We're just going to calm down for a second. We're going to take a couple breaths. And now I'm going to ask you to slowly open your eyes and stare at the red dot right in the center.

Okay? We're not going to blink now. Stare at the red dot. Focus on it. Look at it. Look at it. look at it. We're going to just focus on that red dot. Your mind will be distracted by the sensations of not blinking, so that's okay. Just keep looking at the dot. Try to return your attention

to it. Squint if you need to. I haven't done this in a while. I'm out of practice. Ooh. Okay. Just look at the dot. Gently. Gently. Now, gently. Relax. So notice that as you let the tension out, it becomes easier to look. Deep breath in and out. Focus on your breathing, keep looking, don't blink. Now as you stare at the red dot, I want you to focus on the yellow triangle around it. Don't move your eyes, but let your attention move

to the yellow triangle. And after a breath, go to the green triangles around that. Remember, we're not going to move our eyes, but move your attention outward. Expand your attention. And then expand outward to the black triangles, and then expand outward to

the red triangles. Don't let your eyes move. Expand outward to the blue triangles. Nice deep breath, subtle. And then slowly move outward to what you see outside of that, the red petals. And then the yellow petals. Take a deep breath in. Close your eyes. Feel the relief and notice the after image. Look at the center of the after image. So focus on the center of the after image with your eyes closed. And notice the different aspect. So you can even move outward from the center and put your attention to the after image, the triangles, the circles. And you may even notice it's like hard to hold on to the image. But you can almost relax a little bit and it'll float to the surface. So what we're going to

teach you how to do is let it float forward. So look at it, concentrate on it. But if you hold on too tight, it may be become too hard. All right. Now put your hands together in front of you. rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub. And then cup them over your eyes. Deep breaths in and out. Now slowly open your eyes and let your hands come down. Okay? It's okay.

Blinking is fine. Better to blink than hurt yourself. Okay? Okay. Chat, this is a forbidden jutsu. It is a powerful technique. There's so much to understand. about this technique. It will teach you guys so many different things. So take home points. Number one,

do what you can. If you need to blink, you need to blink. Okay. Practice. Practice. Practice, practice, practice makes perfect. Right? So adept meditators like can comfortably do this for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, arguably maybe even up to an hour. I don't know. I've never, I don't think I've ever done Thratica for like longer than half an hour. And the interesting thing is that there's a very cool physiology behind it too, like you're the way that your photoreceptors work and stuff like that. But the key thing here is focus. That's all you guys really need to learn from this. And there's a lot of other benefits too.

Like people who do Thratica really well learn a real, like, because we think about focusing is effortful, right? I don't know if people like get this, but optimal flow state is not a state of stress. it's a state of relaxed focus. So Thrataka is the best practice to learn relaxed focus. And it's especially in the second phase of Throtica after we close our eyes. Because if you're too stressed, the image is like shaky. And you have to like sort of like step back and the image will float to the surface.

But holding it there, if you step back too much, it'll slip away. So it's like this sweet spot of like attention and focus. Right? So if you didn't see the image, that's okay. So the image is going to become more clear, the longer you're able to keep your eyes open. Okay? And there's a physiologic reason for that. And it has to do with the way that your, I think, rhodopsin is the pigment,

exhausts in your eyes and how it needs to get replenished. The shape is called a yantra. That is shri yantra. And there's also spiritual elements to this practice as well. By the way, there's a lot about this stuff in Dr. Kay's guide for people who are like curious and you know more about it. But there's even a spiritual component where the object that you concentrate on is supposed to cultivate a particular kind of spiritual energy.

Now, when I teach meditation, I sort of have three kind of perspectives on it. One is psychological, one is neuroscientific, and one is spiritual. Or physiological as well. So like this practice I feel really confident in like the psychological effects and the neuroscientific effects. I understand the physiology of what happens in your eyes and like why it happens and stuff like that. The spiritual stuff, you know, I personally place value in, but you don't need to. People are curious about that.

We can teach you guys about different kinds of yonthras and cultivating, you know, cosmic energies and all that good stuff. But let's set that aside. So let's just be a little bit scientific today and focus on the psychological and experience, experiential aspect. And also like the neuroscience of how meditation helps motivation. So someone's asking, why does this help motivation? Because we just explained that motivation is the ability to hold one thing in your mind for an extended period of time. And this is the practice that's basically like push-ups for that. Okay?

All right. Someone's asking if you want to quit something, can you think about not doing it? No. Because, wait, hold on. This is a tricky question. if you want to quit something, can you think about not doing it? No. Because then you're thinking about not doing it. If you want to quit something, you can not think about it. That'll work. And I know it sounds kind of weird, but think about all of the things that you've quit. Why did you quit them? Because you stopped thinking about them. Right? So if you think about like getting into a game, right? Oh, there's a bunch of hype. There are a bunch of advertisements. Each of those advertisements is putting the thought in your head. Then you see your favorite streamers like playing beta and it's like, oh my God, then you're thinking about it more and more. Then you play the game.

You play it for eight hours. And during that eight hours, you're thinking about the game. And then when you go to bed at night, you're thinking about the game. And when you wake up in the morning, you're thinking about the game. And then what do you want to do? You want to play it. Think about the games that y'all used to play when you were nine. Why don't you play them anymore?

Do you think about them and not play them? No, you stop thinking about it. Right? Why do we stop playing games, chat? Because we stop thinking about them. Can you go too far? OCD? Absolutely, you can go too far.

And that is exactly what OCD is. I don't know if someone's joining late, but we literally talked about OCD. So check out the VOD, I guess. So someone's asking, where can I learn all of this Ayurveda knowledge like you? So first thing to understand, this isn't about Ayurveda.

This has very little to do with Ayurveda. So this is more yoga. And it's because people have been asking me that question, hey Dr. K, where can I learn this stuff? That's why we put together Dr. K's guide. Because it's not Ayurveda. Like I can't point y'all to a single book. What we teach on stream is a synthesis of knowledge. It includes all the, oh, hold on. It includes all the crap on the bookshelf, right? There are books on Ayurveda. There are books on neuroscience. There are books on psychology. There are books on yoga. There are books on meditation. There are books on Buddhism. We try to put it all together for you.

I'm done with my part of the guide. I was highly motivated for a lot of long period of time, even though it was obscenely painful and tiring. But I'm done. So now it's in post-production. Need a reading list? Yeah, I know. It's tough. I'll work on that. Why don't you use the word mindfulness? There's like literally a video about that in Dr. Kay's guide. So here's the reason I don't use mindfulness. Because mindfulness is not meditation. So what happened is scientists who had had personal experiences with meditation tried to figure out like there are all these different types of meditation, right?

There's like mantra chanting and there's like Zen meditation and then there's like dothoric meditation and then there's like, you know, Kundalini meditation and Kria meditation. And so like people are sitting there like, how do I understand like how can we study this because it's so different? And so what they did is they settled on mindfulness. What they did is they took all of the meditative traditions

and they tried their best to reduce it down to the most common component. And what they settled on was mindfulness. And then we started studying mindfulness. And the way that I describe it is like there's bread, there's pasta, there's cuscus, there's rice, and then there are carbs. And so there's value in understanding. carbs, but like, I don't want to feed people carbs. I want to feed people like rice and bread and cuscus, right? Like, those are the real thing. Like, you can reduce something to its most

basic building blocks. But in my experience, meditation is, in a sense, better than mindful. Or mindfulness is just one branch of meditation because there are a lot of different branches of meditation. And mindfulness is just one of them. It's in a specific branch. So we teach some kinds of mindfulness, but sometimes we don't teach mindfulness. We teach dharanas, which are the opposite of mindfulness. So Thrataka is not mindfulness. Mindfulness tends to be cultivating the witnessing attitude, which is observing things. Dharana is different because it's focusing your mind. It's not observing something. It's forcing it into a place. And so when I work with patients with trauma, I do not teach mindfulness. Because when you have trauma and you have psychological defense

mechanisms that are trying to keep it varied, and you just, like, observe it and you let it out, like, those people don't do well. And so even if you look at the techniques, the mindfulness techniques that work for people with trauma, they're not really true mindfulness. They're actually grounding techniques, which is different. They're focusing techniques. They're actually the exact opposite of mindfulness. But we just call it mindfulness in the scientific community. Because that no one, you know. Now that's. science has discovered something, they think they understand it, which is what happens with science. Yeah, hopefully the guide will come out in August. Okay. How often should we do this meditation?

I would say at a minimum of every other day, ideally every day. Five to 20 minutes. Sakhi-S-H-H-I-B-H-A-V. It means witnessing attitude in Sanskrit. It's just once, it's the most actually basic state of consciousness on the path to meditation. Yeah, so people are asking how to do this. So what I would say is like, you know, start with 30 to 60 seconds of open itratica and then close your eyes and do that. And then you can try again. And eventually what you want to do is try to extend the amount that your eyes are open

because remember, you're going to have the eyes closed for the same amount of time. So like if I can hold my eyes open for 90 seconds and then I keep my eyes closed for like another 90 seconds or two minutes or five minutes, that's fine. and then over time you want to work your way up to 20 minutes of total practice. Okay, so we've got a bunch of questions on Lorett's, which we've got to get to chat. So we're one hour in. So we've got about 10 to 15 minutes per question, okay? So we're going to try to get to five.

So let's take a look. Okay, how do I stop being this kind of person? What's up? I'll vote. Yeah, hold on. let me think about this. So how do I stop being this kind of person? Whenever I have something coming up later in the day, I can't relax until it happens, even if it's just meeting up with a friend. I hate how I am, I have an appointment at 4 p.m., so I can't do anything all day type of person.

Let me just think about how to answer this for a second. This is tricky. So the problem, so if you're the kind of person who has an appointment at 4 p.m. and can't do anything all day, the challenge there or the weakness there is that for your mind to be relieved, the event has to be over. Right? You can't detach from the event prior to it occurring. So I want y'all to like just think about this for a second. So in the mind of this person who has an appointment at 4 p.m. and can't do anything all day, they wake up in the morning and then their mind is like squeezed by that thought. I have to do something at four. I have to do something at four. I have to do something at four.

And then, like, what these people have learned is that after the 4 p.m. appointment, then you don't have anything at four, and then the mind relaxes. And so in order for your mind to have space for other things, it can't be occupied by one thing. Because your mind can only have one thought in it at a time. Okay? So, like, if your mind is, like, fully occupied by your appointment at 4 p.m., and you don't have time for anything else, like you can't think about anything else,

then the solution is to actually, like, train yourself to kind of let go of that thought, right? And so then the question becomes, okay, well, how do I do that? So we just taught you all in Thratica, so that's actually like a good way to like, because if you think about what Thratica is, Thratica's training your mind to point where you tell it to.

So if I train you, my mind to concentrate on like this, if I'm looking at this. And then like my mind, because if you think about the process of meditation, I'm going to tell my mind, I'm going to sit here. And then the mind is like, but let's go over here. Let's go over here. Let's go over here. Let's go over here. But I train my mind and I tell it, no, no, no. We're going to sit here. We're going to sit here. We're going to sit here. We're going to sit here. So one thing that you can do is literally train your mind how to focus, which we kind of just did. The other thing that oftentimes happens when there is like a 4 p.m. thing. that you can't think about, it has to do with the consequences of that thing. Okay? So what you need to

let you're trying to not think about your 4 p.m. appointment, whereas what you really need to let go of, and it's hard to let go because that's not actually what you're holding on to. You're not thinking about the appointment. You're thinking about the consequences of the appointment. Right. So what I would do is sit down and think to yourself for a second about like, why is thinking about this so important to me. What is it about this that makes me not be able to think about other things? And then what you'll inevitably find is because the consequence of that appointment is so important. So like, it may be like a really important appointment. And it's kind of interesting because what you're doing is you're relying on your circumstances to dictate where your mind goes,

which kind of needs to be, you can train it to do otherwise. But I don't have a, yeah, So you can train your mind. I think the second thing to think a little bit about is, you know, the consequences of the thing, which is actually what you're attached to. But I feel like there's a better answer somewhere there that I'm not really able to suss out right now. Release date is hopefully in August, chat. Okay. Let me think about that, this question for a little bit.

Okay. Dr. Kay, what do you struggle with? You were AEOE healing tons of people, but you were so busy helping others that you never took the time to explain what you struggle with in a video. What do you struggle with? Oh, chat. Okay. Let's try to understand something, okay? So, I don't, the truth is, I don't struggle much.

And the reason I don't struggle much is because I figured out how I work. So prior to, so this person is saying, like, I spend so much time thinking about other people, like, Why don't I share what I? Because I figured out what works for me. Right. So I struggled a lot before. And I'll give you guys just an example. So like while before I understood that I was a Vata and I started crafting my life around being a Vata. Before that, I used to struggle a ton. Okay. So like just to remind people, you know, Vattas are people that whose minds are like the wind. So I get distracted easily. I get bored easily. I get excited easily. And what I found is that like that, like, that. was really challenging because the world does not support people who are creative, distractible, excitable, and like shift, right? The world, our, our current society is

structured to support people who are like focused, driven, ambitious, and like consistent. That's what matters to people, right? Like, if you look at school, school is about eight hours a day, followed by studying. A degree has gained over four years. And so when I went to college, I got super excited about stuff. So in my first year of college, I ran for student government. I joined a bunch of clubs. I joined a frat. I took Spanish, Japanese, Spanish and Japanese is language. I took a philosophy class. I took a chemistry class. Failed most of those classes. and so like I was so excitable and distractible that I kind of wanted to do everything. It was cool and it sucked.

I failed at all of it. And so then what started to happen is like as I started to fail at things, I got like more stressed out. And I was really easy, it was really easy for me to drop stuff too. So on the one hand, I'm excited by Japanese class. And on the other hand, like I'm doing bad in Spanish class. So let me just quit Spanish and do Japanese. So I was like, it was really easy for me to be a quitter. And college was this kind of environment where like, you know, it doesn't reward people for being quitters.

Duh. Okay. And so for a long time, I struggled. And like, I struggled bad and was like, I imagine super depressed in retrospect. Like, you know, felt like I was failing life and stuff like that. And then I went to India. Like, so this went on for two years. Failed a bunch of classes.

You know, had like a 1.5 GPA or something. managed to pass something here or there. So it wasn't like a zero, but like got a couple of Cs, a D here or there, maybe a B. I don't think I got a single A in my first two years. And then, you know, I went to India and then someone was like, yeah, like that sounds like a...

So then actually, so there's one piece of the story that's missing. So then as I struggled, I, you know, I went to my dad and I asked my dad, I was like, hey, like, you know, I need to help. Actually, I didn't ask him. He was like, you're doing too many. things, you need to stop doing stuff. So he's like, stop doing student government, stop doing your clubs. So I did all that. And I was like, okay, I'm doing too many extracurriculars. I just need to focus. He was like, just focus on your studies. I was like, okay, dad. So I cut everything else out.

Same result. And I was like, oh my God, I'm so dumb. And then he was like, okay, just focus on your studies. So I was like, you know what? If I can't handle five classes, I'm going to take three. so I cut down to half a normal course load. Same result. And then I went to India. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. I was trying to do too much. So if you're trying to do too much, the solution is do less, right?

So I went to India and one of my teachers was like, that's a terrible idea. Oh my God, you're destined for failure if you just do one thing. You're going to get bored. And I was like, wait, what? And so what my friend or teacher, what they told me was that like, you're a Vata. And so what that means for your temperament is that like you're going to get bored easily. So like you need to have three or four different things that you do where you can switch from one to the next. So like when you get bored, the next thing's ready for you.

But the cool thing is by the time you get to thing number three and you get bored of that, you can get excited about thing number one again. And thing number one will be fun. And I was like, oh, fascinating. So what I did is like structural life where, you know, like I understand my temperament. And once I understand my temperament, I can structure the life to be aligned with my temperament. And so now I sort of don't struggle much. Do I make mistakes? Yes. Is my life hard in some ways? Yes. Do I deal with what on paper seems stressful? Like absolutely. But I think the key thing about like not struggling is like understanding like what's your temperament. So as a vata, like the key weaknesses of vata that will cause you to struggle is that first of all, you exist in a pitha society.

So what that means is that, like, people are going to be more ambitious than you, that people are going to be more dedicated than you. But what you bring to the table is, like, creativity, excitement, spontaneity, and, like, being dynamic. So the cool thing is that, like, when a crisis happens, VATAs are awesome. Because they learn fast. So they can deal with things. They can manage a bunch of different stuff, like, coming at you.

Whereas FITDAs are like, I need a system to deal with this or this does not work in the system. And we can kind of see this, right? Like, they're going to be like, this may be a random example. But, you know, so when like the Me Too movement was happening in universities, they were like really slow to respond, right? Because they had their system. And like the Me Too movement like didn't jive with their system. And so they couldn't deal with it.

So if you look at institutions, like when allegations of sexual problems started coming out, the bit-oriented institutions were. like, we can't deal with this, so we're going to pretend it's not there. Meanwhile, you look at Twitter, where Twitter is super vata. So Twitter, like, could handle the Me Too movement like that, right? Like, Twitter is adaptable. It's dynamic. It has a short attention span.

And so when something like the Me Too movement arises, Twitter can respond to it very quickly. So it's not that being ambitious and disciplined is better. It's that most of our structures, are designed to be that way. And furthermore, that that makes certain weaknesses in those structures. And if you look at the companies and institutions that responded to the Me Too movement better, they're the ones who had dynamic leaders who were a little bit more VATTA. And they're like, okay, we have to throw our current playbook out the window and let's figure out how to deal with this crisis now. And I've seen this in startup consulting too where like if you've got like, you know, people who are too bit though will like not be able

to deal with a dynamic environment and they'll start to fall apart. And then for people who are kaffa, you know, kaffas tend to be like slow and methodical. So even, so if you're a kha like in a pita environment, what you'll sort of find is that other people are like lobbying for promotions and they're gunning, right? Like they're ambitious. And you're like, oh crap, like maybe I should be more ambitious. It's not like you're all over the place and you're scattered. You're just kind of like, you know, you're kind of chilling. Like you like your job. You're dedicated at your job. You care about your job, but other people are like fiery. They're like, I want to get promoted. I want to do this. I want to do this. I want to do this. And Gaffas are sort of like, I'm actually okay doing this. And should you advocate for a promotion? Like, absolutely, right? You have to learn how to be a little bit more bitta.

But what's the other advantage is like if you're a kafa, like in a pit, if you have a company full of pithas, everyone's going to fight. Right? Everyone's going to be lobbying at the promotion and be like resentful towards each other and then crap like that. Whereas like Gophas will be like a stabilizing influence. So I think the key thing, the reason I don't struggle is because I've sort of figured out like how I work. And that's why I try to explain like, you know, my whole ethos is like bros or women, whatever, everything in between. Homies, let me explain something to you. If you all understand how motivation works, it will transform your life. No one explains this stuff. Like the reason I don't struggle is because like I understand.

Right. I'm not saying I'm special. It's not like I'm. brilliant. In fact, I'd say the opposite. The whole point is like what I found in India was that actually this stuff is pretty simple. It's just we don't teach it. Right? Like we don't teach this stuff. So if you guys want to struggle, you know, what I'd say is continue trying to be what you're not. And if you want to not struggle, understand who you are, understand your strengths, understand your weaknesses, understand the environment that you're in

and try to tailor your life to adapt to where you are. Right? So this is where like as a resident, for example, like I would write when I was on call. So other people will be on call and I was like, this is cool. I'm here for 24 hours. Like I can see a patient and I can write. And so like I wrote, you know, 80,000 words over the course of like six weeks. and wrote a nonfiction book about video game addiction. And it was like, just did that in six weeks.

So that's something that Avata can do. Now, you ask me to write something like, you know, Game of Thrones. And like, I don't have, like, it takes a guffat to write Game of Thrones. And like, GRRM seems pretty guffat to me. It's like this long marathon of like, you know, I can't write that. I can spit out a book in six weeks, but it's going to be random. It's going to be all over the place. and it's like you don't know what you're going to get.

Because my Twitch is perfect for me. It's like, y'all are chatting at me and like ask me all these random questions in my Vata mind's like, sweet, let's do it. It is so much harder for me to teach at Harper Medical School than it is for me to teach on Twitch. And so the reason I don't struggle is because I teach here. This is what I'm good at. Whereas, wait, you wrote season eight. I wish.

Actually, if I had written season eight, I think it would have been better. Random. Right? So like early chat is right. It's random, dude. Like, I'm good at randomness. Like, you can give me RNG. You know?

Would you say most people in Harvard or Bithas? I don't know. So I do think that if you look at like certain executive leadership positions, I'm pretty sure there's a bias towards Bita. But I'm not sure at Harvard. Okay. We should just crowdsource season eight,

Like, I've seen so many, like, fan. Like, it would be better if, like, the best, the best season eight fan theory that I thought was like, there was this thing about, okay, I shouldn't say it because spoilers. But. Okay. So, spoilers, all right, if people haven't seen it. So I'm going to talk about this for a second. I'm going to count five and then spoiler free. Okay.

One, two, three, four, five. So, like, the Night King, instead of Aria showing up. out of nowhere and just killing the Night King. I saw this great thing about how like, you know, like the Night King defeats everyone. And then like Jamie Lannister shows up. And he's like, you know what they call me? And then the Night King is like what?

And he's like Kingslayer. And then Jamie gets his fucking redemption arc. He kills the Night King. It's like, you can, that's so easy, man. Like just have Jamie kill the Night King. It's like such a small thing. It fits so much. The guy's called Kingslayer.

you're working on a redemption arc and he fucking gets crushed by mortar? Like what the fuck? Like what it? It's like low-hanging fruit. Low-hanging fruit, chat. We can literally crowdsource a better... If we sat down

and we were like, Twitch writes Game of Thrones season eight, we could literally make something better. Whatever. So I see lots of people saying, Jamie sucks. Jamie should have killed Sarcei instead of the night. Like, what? Like, any of that would have been better than...

You know, there's so much character development about, like, Jamie not being a Lannister and, like, growing, you know, something. Like, he's changing, right? And they just, like, runs to Sarcei at the end and they just both die. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, what would be cool, though, is, you know, I don't know why people aren't writing books, but, like, like, Patrick Rothfuss streams, right? he streams

I think we got to get all these folks like Patrick Rathus George R. Martin and Scott Lynch and we got to do some like solid coaching with them to help them

overcome whatever it is that's keeping them from writing. Yeah. Right? Like let's let's start a group for writers who have books that we want to read and use our power for good

instead of helping y'all fuckers put your lives together. Like who the fuck? cares about that. Let's get wins a winner. Let's get that stuff out there. Like, whatever it takes. We'll teach them how to meditate. We'll teach them how to focus. We'll teach them how to overcome their internal, you know, like fears. Because there's a lot of stuff. I've actually worked with successful artists. And there's like, there's stuff there. Like, because success can be like one of the most paralyzing things. Because when you're writing your first book, right? I can only imagine. Like,

when you're writing your first book, it's like, you just have to write it for you. It's the story that you want to tell. And we see this a lot actually in our content creator program is that the bigger you become, the more creatively constrained you become. It's kind of weird. Because then what happens is like there's something that the people want from you. And the formula that you use to create the first thing was not giving people what you want. It's giving people what was in your heart. And the more successful you become, the more your mind gets caught up and giving people what they want because they liked so much about what was in your heart. And then it gets really, really challenging because it gets hard to access this in here,

because you don't know if people are going to be satisfied with it. And the more that you start caring about the people, the worse your art becomes. And so it's weird, but it happens and it's challenging. Yeah, so many people are saying like money leads the world and stuff. You know, it's like, it's tough. But I think like as fans, you see, So we have a certain responsibility to this, right? Because like, if you come, like, what do you want from people?

Do you want to, do you want them to give you what they gave you before? Or do you want them to give you what they have to give? And as fans, the more we are able to accept what authors give us, even if we don't like it. Like, we can say like, hey, I'm glad you tried that. and and you know like we're glad you gave us this anyway even though it's not my cup of tea like thank you it's not my favorite

but I'm glad you did it and I'm glad you innovated and I'm glad you tried okay don't feed Negan I have a weird issue Dr. Kay lately when I turn tune into your stream when we touch on something that might be relatable to me I start getting kind of anxious how do I fix that? You don't fix it

you feel anxious and then you ask yourself why am I feeling anxious? Where is this coming from? Right? Like you understand it. Like this is the thing. If you guys want to not struggle, understand. Right. Think about like all of the games that you play where you don't understand the mechanics and like what happens. You struggle. And once you understand the mechanics, it's like, oh, this is how this works. So I play some Dota and I'll tell you that the place that I struggle the most is Dota. And the reason I struggle in Dota is because oftentimes I don't understand it. right like why is this carry doing this thing oh my god i can't believe he's doing it oh my god

this carry is so bad this so bad everyone's so bad and i don't understand i don't understand the greatest revelation chat the greatest revelation i'm the one who's bad chat i'm the one who's bad and once you begin to understand that once you begin to understand oh i should have been doing this oh the reason that like we lost this game is because their supports were stacking camps and i wasn't. The more you understand, the less you struggle. And then you start winning games. It all comes down to video games, chat. All lessons of life can be learned. So what should you do when you come in here and you feel anxious? Let yourself feel anxious. What's up with that? Don't try to make it go away. Try to understand where it's coming from. That's the biggest problem of

our society today. We're so hell-bent about trying to make things go away instead of understanding where they come from. If you talk about, like, you know, like, I'll see this a lot. We choose to just, we just love to hate whatever the hate of the week is. We hate something every week is a society. You know? And it's like, I saw this a lot. Like, I still remember, like, talking to, so when Trump won the U.S.

election in 2016, like, people, you know, in my residency program were very upset, which is understandable. A lot of people were really upset. And like everyone was talking about like everyone loves talking about how Trump supporters are idiots. But like my point is like, do you guys get that like a bunch of people voted for this guy? And like what are they thinking? You can't just call them stupid. Because there's something there that is causing these people to vote for this person. If you guys really want like things to change, we need to understand those people instead of calling them stupid.

And we see the same thing. It's like, oh, my son is addicted to video games. He's such a waste of space. It's like try to understand him. That's what we tell our parents that come to our program. Like, we'll get this often where parents will be like, my kid needs to be in your coaching program. I'm like, does your kid want to be in my coaching program?

No, he doesn't. Why do you think your kid needs to be in our coaching program? Because he's wasting his life. Okay, so like we're happy to take him if he wants to be there, but if he doesn't want to be there, we won't take him. What we'd love to do is take you. He's like, I don't need coaching.

He's the one with the problem. I'm like, okay, in my experience, the parents who think that way are the ones that benefit the most from our coaching program. And like half of them will be like, no, I don't need nothing. It's my kid, that's the problem.

And the ones that show up are transformed in 12 weeks. They're like, wow. I never realized. Yes. That is why you were struggling. And once you realize the struggles will stop. Okay?

All right. We got to do more stuff. Oh my God. Okay. How to know, so, how to know what to fix and change versus accepting who you are? I know Dr. Kay talks a lot about

not trying to be someone you're not. But how do you know what you should change about yourself versus accept? If I'm not happy with who I am, should I try to change or should I learn to accept myself? Okay. Let me explain something to you all. Really simple. Accepting yourself has nothing to do with not changing.

Where on earth, and I don't blame this person, but where on earth is a society, did we say that once you accept something, that's the way it is forever? This is the biggest problem. Do you guys get this? like this person was conditioned to think that accepting yourself means not doing anything and like this causes so many problems right like if you can't accept me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best

therefore I'm going to be a bitch half of the time and if you don't like me I'm going to feel self-righteous and call you selfish it's your fault that you can't accept me I don't need to change you don't deserve the good parts of me if you're not willing to take the dumps that I dump in your mouth twice a week. Where on earth did we start thinking that accepting people means that they shouldn't change?

Because in my experience, like, actually changing starts with acceptance. So, like, I'm an addiction psychiatrist chat. What that means is I deal with addicts. So these people come in And there are two kinds of people that come in One is I'm addicted to alcohol I have a problem

Does that when someone comes in and they accept That they have a problem Do I say to them good job You accepted that you have a problem Now don't change at all Because acceptance means you don't need to do anything else Go out there and drink bro You're an alcoholic so you should just keep drinking

And you accept that and that's gonna be peace And mindfulness and all that crap no and then comes in the second type I don't have a problem which one of those people is going to change

acceptance is the first step to changing accept where you are and then do something about it the two go hand in hand so when someone comes in and says Dr. Kay I'm an alcoholic I'm like sweet

now we know what the problem is let's fucking fix it and then for the person who's like I don't have a problem. There's nothing to change. Person's not going to change. So this is what I want you all to do. How do you know what to accept

and how do you know what to change? The answer is everything. Accept each and every aspect of yourself. Whatever you are right now, this is the present. I know this sounds kind of weird, but you can't do anything about anything that has happened before now.

There is literally, if you have graduated from college, and you don't have a job one year out because of the pandemic. There is nothing you can do about that. So accept it. You are a college graduate with no job for one year and then change it. The problem is that the reason we tell you guys to accept is because so many people get caught up trying to rewrite history instead of accepting the present. If I had done this, if I had done that, if the pandemic this, if this, if this person did that,

if my parents did this, if that, then I would not be here. and all of that thinking is completely useless. Because that shit happened. There are no ifs. Life, like, reality is here. You are unemployed. Accept it. And then people are sort of like,

but then what about all the self-blame and shame and all that crap? Yeah, so like work through that, right? That's what we're here for too. But understand that, like, it's not your fault that you made mistakes before. I know it sounds kind of weird. You made those mistakes,

but the person that's here now has to clean that shit up. Like, the you of today is not the same you that was there a year ago. It's kind of weird. Right? Like, you have to, like, whatever, you did what you did. You can beat yourself up for it if you want to. You can also accept that you just made mistakes. And then change.

It's not your fault. It's the dude from a year ago. Do you guys get that? It's kind of weird. But, like, when I was 21 and failing in college, that wasn't me. It's not the me of today. It's the me of yesterday. Those are completely different people. Completely different people. You'll get that? Like 17 years ago, when I was failing out of college and went to India for the first time, I was not Dr. K. How on earth can I blame that kid for what he did? Like, he didn't know any better. The poor kid was so confused. He was grown up Indian. His parents were like, you've got to be a doctor to mean something in life. He had a... boner for going to Harvard and had zero chance of going there. Like the kid, like, needed help.

Why am I going to blame that kid? Like, he didn't know what he was doing. Like, how on earth could I expect that this kid would understand what I understand now? Clueless kid. It's not as bad. Like, he did the best that he could. Like, he was just so clueless. Like, cut the kid a break.

He did what he could. And 17 years later, theoretically, it's the same mom. in the same body, but it's a completely different person. So accept yourself where you are. If you made mistakes, you made mistakes. Right? That's the nature of things. You're not born. You don't pop out of your mother's womb at level 100. You pop out of your mother's womb at level one. And then here you guys are at level 22, beating yourselves up for being level six and not being able to do stuff. When you spawn into this world, you're level one. And depending on the RNG

sometimes you spawn with good gear. Sometimes you spawn with like some sweet loot, right? Like you're in a guild. And they like give you all these legendaries. And so even though you're level one, you could still down level 10 mobs. And some of y'all are born at level one and you're actually like given debuffs

because of your upbringing. And then you beat yourselves up for being level 15 and grinding on level 10 mobs. That's because your parents gave you cursed gear. And it's like giving you penalties instead. And so what does it mean to accept? It means like, this is what self-compassion is. You know, we talk like, oh, like, just have self-compassion, man.

Just forgive yourself, bro. Learn to love yourself. Like, that's what that is. How do you do that? It's by acknowledging that the kid who was 17 years ago didn't know shit. Why am I going to blame him? The guy can't do anything. He's a noob.

I'm going to get mad at him. I don't have the time to get mad at him. I have shit to do. And you guys should realize that too. Like, why are you beating yourself up? Okay, like two years ago, you fell in love with a girl. And you were like, one of these nice guys. So you like asked her out.

And then she said, no. Then you call her the C word. And now she won't talk to you. And then you feel like such an idiot. And it's like, yeah, you were an idiot. But like, did you know any better? Really? Are you going to do it again?

So accept that you did it. Except that you don't know what you're doing. And then, like, change, right? Become a decent. being work on it. Try to understand yourself. So you should accept each and everything about yourself. You should also accept that like you weren't perfect a year ago or two years ago or three years ago or four years ago or shockingly you're not perfect now. And that each and every iteration of u.exe has bugs and it's going to make mistakes. And you should debug that shit and improve

whatever bugs you have. It's like, you know, u.exe version 2.29 and then u.d.exe version 2.31. But like, you got to accept, like you got to accept that there's some bugs there before you can fix them. Right? And so life is a process of like

balance patches and bug fixes. And you are the program. So you should absolutely accept and absolutely change. Ah, see, look, so someone's saying, okay, be careful, I'm so bugged, I'm fucked. Maybe kind of true, but let's be clear. Because one of the tricky things about the process

is that our debugging process is sometimes messed up. So when you have things like depression, it's going to tell you that things are way worse than what you are. But that's a diagnostic that's produced by your mind. So you can't trust it. Right? It's tricky. Because in the mind of a depressed person,

they're going to say, it's so hopeless. There's nothing that I can ever do to fix it. There's no point in trying. That's a bug. It's not a feature. Your mind telling you that is a bug. It's not a feature.

Not trusting your mind is actually like, learning what you can trust about your mind is one of the most useful skills that I've ever learned. So it's funny because someone's saying NCS, every bug is a feature. Yeah, so we've got a good video about this on Dr. K's guide, but depression is a feature too, chat, right?

So like, I want y'all to think about this for that. It's going to be wild, okay? Think about this. Depression is a conserved experience across the human race. Conserved experiences across the human race tend to have evolution behind them. So it's actually a feature.

And what it comes down to is we have this part of our brain called the default mode network. And depression is the evolutionary price we pay for having a default mode network. So what happened in our brain is we developed the capacity for self-reflection. So like if you look at what's different about humans versus most animals, it's metacognition. We can think about ourselves. So instead of trial, just doing Pavlovian conditioning and trial and error, I can like think about myself. Right.

So instead of just figuring out what works in relationships, after I have three terrible relationships, my brain has the capacity using the default mode network to think about myself. And then I can ask myself the question, hey, am I doing something wrong in relationships? It's a meta level question. It's not like if, you know, there's like the relationship level question, there's the metal, am I doing something wrong? Not is this wrong in a relationship? Am I doing something wrong?

That capacity for metacognition, the ability to think about ourselves is what allows us to dominate the planet. Because our problem-solving capability, it's like we have an AI in our brain that can like problem-solve. It's not just Pavlovian conditioning. It's not like stimulus response reinforcement. It's like thinking about something on a higher level. And that part of the brain is called our default mode network. The interesting thing is that default mode network is hyperactive in depression. So what happens in depression is we think about ourselves too much. The circuit is stuck on. Oh, could I be doing this something better? Oh, I'm so dumb.

I'm so bad. The reason that I didn't get that job is because I'm so bad. You're thinking about you instead of the job. It's all like up here in a metacognitive level. Oh, people would be better off without me. Oh, the only reason that people are inviting me is because they're trying to be polite. They could never like me. It's all metacognitive thoughts about you as a person outside of the actual interaction.

And so what we discovered is this thing called the default node network. And when it goes haywire, which allows human beings to be metacognitive, when it goes haywire, we get depressed. And so then you can even ask a question, okay, what about, you know, so theoretically, if I gave someone a chemical that's shut off the default mode network, would it cure their depression? And the answer is yes. Yes, it will. We have chemicals that do that now. That's how the psychedelics tend to work. The cure is a strong word, but, you know, it's how they tend to function.

and then also meditation shuts off the default mode network. Interesting. Look at that. Meditation is a clinically effective treatment for depression and it happens to shut off the default mode network. I wonder if there's a connection. Okay. So just from a safety perspective, they don't cure depression. And secondly, all of these things should be used under the guidance of the medical professional. because while they may have therapeutic benefits from for treating depression, which are being studied in clinical trials, jury is still out there. We also want to be really careful because I've seen patients who have had PTSD and new anxiety disorders from using psychedelics. So it seems like most things, like if you think about anesthesia, right, anesthesia can keep someone alive after an accident and it can also kill them. So most things in medicine, like blood thinners are another great example of this.

Blood thinners can prevent you from forming clots, and they can cause you to bleed to death. So most things in medicine should be done under the guidance of a medical, or all things in medicine, should be done on the guidance of a medical professional, because of what we've discovered in medicine is that when you take some random-ass compound that exists outside, you stick it in your body, it can have good effects and it can have bad effects. That's why we train people about how to, like, give them properly. Okay. So there's also a lot of stuff about the default mode.

We have a, in Dr. K's guide, if you all want to learn more, we've got a couple more questions we have to get to today. But if you all want to learn more, we have a neuroscience of depression section of Dr. K's guide that talks a lot about that. Let me see if I can pull up a reference for you all, just so that, you know, can read more without purchasing the guide if you don't want to. Hold on, hold on, chat. Worth it to find a reference now. There we go. Oh, here we go. It's a cool paper.

Okay, so once again, to be done under the guidance of a medical professional. Okay. Cadamine effects on default mode network activity and vigilance. A randomized placebo-controlled crossover simultaneous fMRI EEG study. It's a dope study. Okay? So, um, actually this may not be the paper I'm looking for. It's a cool study.

Don't get me wrong. But let me find something else. It's not the one I'm looking for. Okay, one second chat. One more. We'll do this one. So this is from annual review on neuroscience, okay? So let me just find this real quick.

So the brain's default mode network. Okay. So its discovery was an unexpected consequence of brain imaging studies. first performed with pet in which various novel attention demanding and non-self-sellerential tasks so this is

hold on hold on let's go to the summary yeah this is too theoretical of a paper I can't find a good one right now for some reason they're great papers oh god let's just show you all one more reference okay

oh god So good. Okay. That's cool. Okay. The entropic brain. A theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs. This paper chat seriously is just whack.

Okay? This is like fascinating. I'm going to try to summarize it for you. Okay. So entropy is a dimensionless quantity that is used for measuring uncertainty about about the state of a system, but it can also imply physical qualities where high entropy is synonymous with high disorder.

Entropy is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics. So what this is kind of talking about is that when we think about our consciousness, this paper is fascinating, okay? When we think about our consciousness or a sense of self, it's a low entropy state. I am this.

Okay, like Dr. K is this. You are this. You are successful. You're a failure. You're awesome. You suck. Whatever. But you are something.

That's your identity. Okay? This is whack. So what this paper talks about is that like when you use psychedelics, you create a state of high entropy of the self. So the self becomes like disorganized and diffused. And so when people talk about, like, you know, being connected to other people and their sense of self kind of breaks down and they realize they're like connected with the universe, it's like a high entropic state of consciousness. It's whack, man.

Like the research on this stuff is just so fascinating. So when someone's talking about ego death, absolutely, right? So in moksha or enlightenment, ego death happens. And so like you are no longer you, but you are like one with the universe. And we can say those words, but it doesn't make any sense until you experience it in a state of consciousness. And the neuroscience behind this stuff is fascinating. Okay? Once again, don't do drugs chat.

I'm serious. Because I don't know if you guys get this, but shattering your sense of self can sometimes leave you traumatized. So don't do that. Okay? Like really, like the point of showing you guys these papers is to demonstrate this is not something to play around with. Okay. All right, let's do one more. Okay.

Okay, so someone's asking, what about microdosing? Okay, look. So, let's just talk about this for a second, okay? So there are a lot of fads within the substance use community. And like, as a scientist and medical professional, the short answer is, we don't know. Right? We don't know what microdosing does to you. We don't know what microdosing doesn't do to you.

I love the fault. We just don't know, right? So, like, I know that a lot of people, like, just think about this for a second, right? If you guys are, like, pro-microdosing. Like, is that safe? How do you know? Oh, like, people are doing it now.

Really? Does that make something safe if people are doing it now? Like, I don't think so, man. So I know that a lot of people think that stuff is okay, but it just depends on what threshold you want to use when you like stick something in your body repeatedly for a long period of time. I don't know, like what are the long-term effects of microdosing?

No one knows because I think microdosing is relatively new. What is microdosing going to do to your brain a year from now, 10 years from now? We don't know. So I would strongly, strongly encourage y'all when it comes to using substances and stuff like that to do so under the guidance of a medical professional. And I don't say that just because it's like medical professional monopoly, right? It's like there's a reason for that, man, because the people who's for whom microdosing ends up going bad are the ones that I end up seeing in the emergency room.

Like, I don't think, and I have a bias there too because all the people for whom microdosing does well never wind up in the emergency room. So what I see is like the worst cases. So there's like a bias both ways. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm not saying I'm objectively correct. What I'm saying is that if you look at science, science will study this stuff and look at like 15,000 people who microdose and then we'll say, oh, here's what appears to float to the surface. So I would say like trust in science and trust in medicine, right? But what happens to them? Who knows? Do they have a higher risk of anxiety? Do they have a higher risk of depression? Do they have a higher risk of being promoted? Like, we just don't know, right? And this is what happens. If people just discover

something and it makes them feel good, right? Your brain absolutely loves it, which is why everyone's doing it. So it can't be bad, right? Kind of like when cocaine was in Coca-Cola, tastes delicious, gives you energy. There are no downsides. Let's do it. right got to be careful chat there's a reason why like medicine is a thing and science is a thing okay be careful so i'd steer clear of drugs chat really um okay so how can i be kind to myself while seeking progress in my goals i've noticed the reason why i never get the things done are i'm incredibly harsh on myself when i fail and i am a perfectionist not now that i I found those issues, I'm going to adopt a mindset of progress over perfection while still trying

my best to being as kind to myself as possible. How can I go about doing this? I want to make progress on my goals fast while getting the job done good enough and not be perfect. I also don't want to put a lot of pressure on myself and treat myself and others with as much compassion and empathy as possible, so I don't make my mental health worse and I don't lose track of my goals. How can I be kind to myself while making progress on my goals? So this is a great question

that is a sneaky, sneaky question. Because what this person is trying to do is be perfect. See? This is perfection. This is being perfectionistic. This is perfection. You see this?

This is perfection. The person is still chasing perfection. You're going to wind up exactly where you started. You all see that? Oh, yeah, I'm not doing a good job. I need to be less perfectionistic and more self-compassionate. Let me be more perfect by being less perfect and more self-compassionate. You see that?

Tricky, tricky, tricky. Because they're saying, oh, I'm going to be like, achieve my goals fast with self-compassing. compassion. That's so OP. Let's go for OP. Why would we want to achieve our goals slow? Let's achieve them fast with self-compassion and forgive ourselves when we don't achieve it fast enough. But we still want to do it fast. Is that, is that, you guys get that? Same thing. Same thing. Okay? So what I would ask this person is, why can't you achieve your goal slow? And then when I asked that question, it's going to come out. Oh my God, I can't do that, man. Like, I need to do it fast. Time is running out. Everyone else is doing it fast. Oh, my God. Do it slow. And be careful

because your mind will be like, is there a perfect level of slow? How do I do it slow perfectly? It's like, it's a never-ending cycle because this is how the mind works. your solution is coming from a perfectionistic mindset. You're like, how do I be more perfect? What's the perfect amount of imperfection? How do I get that? Let's find the perfect amount of imperfection. So this is where like, you know, I know it's kind of weird.

Now that I have found the issues, I'm going to adopt a mindset of progress over perfection because that's the perfect mindset. progress over perfection. That's the perfection I need to chase. It's tricky. Right? It's tricky.

It's a great question. And it's one that so many people have because, like, I'm not trying to make this person feel stupid. I really hope I'm not, but it occurs to me that maybe I am. I'm happy because, like, it's such a beautiful question, and this is what people struggle with. Because the solutions that your mind generates are coming out of the same AI. that's causing the problem. Right? And so it's tricky.

So then the person is like, wait, but what do I do? What direction do I move in? How do I move towards it? And it's like, you don't. So if you want to shatter this completely, take a Zen approach. You guys want a mindfulness approach?

You want a Zen approach? Don't progress. But then what? Exactly. But then what? answer that question. That's the Zen approach. The Zen approach is like taking a gigantic mallet to your cognitive thought process and shattering it.

That's the Zen approach. It's tough. It's like requires a lot of, you know, fortitude. Let me see if I can come up with something. Okay. Okay, chat, here it is. Okay. So how can I be kind to myself while making progress on my goals?

the real question can be how can I be kind to myself while not making progress on my goals you see this is a devastating question you guys can y'all tell what is in the mind of that person it's relentless man relentless right like be kind to yourself whether you progress or not kindness isn't tied to progression kindness is only tied to progression when you're shooting for perfectionism. So like, I know it's tough. It's going to be really tough. Do you deserve kindness if you don't progress? That's the question you should ask yourself. And the answer is going to be probably in your head, no. So that's tough. Right? So as long as, like, if you don't deserve kindness, if you don't make progress, then like, I can't. I mean, that's the

issue we've got to work on. Right. I'm not saying, practically, like, just suffer. So we talk a lot about self-forgiveness and self-compassion, but I want you guys to notice that, like, I'm not going to play the game that the question sets up because the game is rigged. The real question is, why can't you be kind to your... Why do you need to only be kind to yourself, like, in progress?

Like, why can't you accept that it's okay to, like, not progress? I'm not saying don't progress. What I'm saying is accept yourself if you make a mistake. be kind to yourself if it doesn't work out and keep trying. I'm not saying don't try. I'm not saying give up, right? Subtle, careful. But you deserve your kindness either way.

You deserve your compassion either way, right? Like, when I kind of think about myself at 21 years old, like, I'm a bumbling idiot. Right? Just because I'm a bumbling idiot doesn't mean that, like, I don't deserve a pat on the back and like a good try and like, let's get up and try again. Right? That's what coaching is about. there's a reason we call them coaches

like they're not you know teachers and they're not therapists but they're like your coach so it's like it's like the person that when you you know get knocked down or when you're knocking yourself down they give you like a pat on the back and they're like

hey why don't you get up and try again when you're ready and I'm going to be here for you and like how can we understand like and they're going to point out some things in your thought process like this they'll make observations they'll help you understand why are you feeling this way like what's going on but the goal of coaching is not to treat a clinical diagnosis, it's to get you back into the field

at halftime when you're down by 20 points and like give it your best. Okay, so how do I start reading page one of a 500 page book? It's overwhelming. You're right. So the way that you start reading page one is by ignoring pages 2 through 500. Whether it's a 500 page book or a two page book, you got to read page one. It doesn't matter. 500 pages, 200 pages, 1,000 pages? Like, you can't read, it doesn't matter.

The action is the same. The overwhelming part comes from the goal. This is why we're telling you all live in the present. Because as long as you're living in the future, as long as you're thinking about your goal, like when we talk about motivation, I don't talk about goals. Why do you guys think I don't talk about goals?

Goals make things harder sometimes. Right? Okay. Here's another one. But what if it feels bad if I leave 10 projects unfinished? Then it feels bad. Okay, so let me explain something to you guys. This is my notebook. Just one.

There are lots of ideas in here. Okay? This is Vata. So there's a lot of stuff in here. It's filled with random crap. This one is... Let me just make sure this is. This is random two.

list. Okay? And on the next page, here's my education rant. So I, this is something I want you all to understand. So as being a Vata, nine out of my 10 projects are unfinished. So what? It's all good. One out of 10 is finished. Seems to be working so far. Just focus on finishing the good ones. This is where people say, but what about these other nine? And it's like, where do you all think all this crap comes from. So I had like, like I've had so many projects that are half complete. And when the community needs something, I'm like halfway done. It's great. It's like, I have all these projects. And they're halfway done. And I don't finish them until someone shows up and is like, hey, can you do this thing? And that's like, you know what? Actually, I can.

So like we earlier today, we're joking about, you know, group coaching for authors who haven't finished books. But there are notes in that about my notebook, about the creative, like, burden, right? Like, we have notes. Like, if we wanted to do that, we could. So this is the strength of a Vata is like, you have nine out of ten projects that are incomplete. Sure, great, fine. Complete one. and then be prepared for the other nine.

Because they could come in handy. It's crazy. ID8. That's what Rathas are good at. And the other thing is, if it feels bad, it feels bad. Like, that's okay. Like, does it feel okay to finish one instead of zero? You can still feel good about that? Yeah.

So just start projects. I'd say finish some of them, you know? But, like, Garba will help you with that. Goddaba helped me a ton. That was the big thing. It's like, now it's like, we've got stuff going on. Okay. So you guys, you guys think you can outdo Dr. Kay. How about if you finish zero? So I'm trying to figure out how to say this. Every finished project that I have completed was unfinished at some point.

Right? You guys get that? Like, I know it sounds kind of weird. But like, if you finish zero, you just haven't finished them yet. Right? Like, you just haven't finished it yet. So, like, so what? So I'll explain something. So like, the Dr. K's guide to meditation, I started writing in 2005. I started writing in 2005. And it was unfinished for 16 years. And now it is done. so like was that bad that it was unfinished to the decade in hindsight absolutely not i am so glad that i worked on that crap for a decade and then left it in a drawer because when someone sits down and asks me in four weeks to write two two or three feature-length films about meditation that ends up being 65 000 words it's ready so for

this is something else to just to show you about myself. I started writing all kinds of random crap at the age of 21 that never turned into anything for like over a decade. And now like, now it's like I'm just finishing one thing at a time. So I know it sounds weird, but how about if you finish zero? You haven't finished zero. You don't know if you finished zero. You could finish half of them. You just don't know yet. So thus far you've finished zero. So what? You can't. could finish it tomorrow. You could finish it a year from now. You could finish it five years from now. You never know. Right. It's weird. So be careful because when your mind tells you you finish zero, well, like obviously, like everything is unfinished until it's finished. And then you beat yourself up for not having finished any projects. It's like, that doesn't, you could finish it later. Everything is unfinished until it's finished. It sounds so stupid and simple. It's interesting. Right. And then like the other big thing that people seem to, The other big realization I had is that you don't need to publish to get value out of writing.

That was another huge revelation that I had. I wrote all this stuff and I thought, oh my God, this is unpublished. Like, I never turned it into anything. But where do you guys think these answers are coming from? Like, when I answer a question, like, where do you think it's coming from? It's coming from my head. How to get into my head. It got into my head by writing.

So writing for me is the clarification of my thoughts, which then are like accessible. So like people talk about unfinished projects and they value unfinished projects. and they value unfinished projects over finished projects. But in my experience, there's so much to be gained from unfinished projects. You learn so much. You learn about yourself. You learn about the process. You learn about the material.

And if something comes along that demands that it be finished, it will be finished. Because the other thing I want you all to think about is when you have an unfinished project, like it's just you finishing it for the sake of finishing it. That's a waste of your time. It needs to be finished when someone needs it for something. Now, if you're not finishing things that people are depending on that are important, that's a different story. But I would venture that for most people, their unfinished projects are like existing in a vacuum. And you're just placing this arbitrary label on finishing it for the sake of finishing it because that's better than not finishing it, even though it may not have value in the world.

It's kind of like, you know, why don't you have unfinished papers when you graduate with an English degree? it's because you finish all the papers that needed to be finished. And all the half-written poetry crap that you didn't finish isn't ready to be finished yet. Okay, change my mind. Don't coach George Aramarton. Okay, chat. I may pick out one question if something pops out, but let's, uh, let's, who are you rating? How many notebooks do you have?

Good God. You see that pile over there? That's my notebooks. Just in this iteration. I mean, there's like others in boxes, but that's maybe 20 to 25% of them. Can you recommend? I know you guys. Okay, I'll recommend one book.

Marcus Aurelis is Meditations. Let's start there. Read that one. It's in the public domain. All right. Love y'all. We'll see you all on Friday. And hope we had some fun today.

Take care of chat.