HealthyGamerGG - Why Day Dreams Get In Your Way

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

Dr. K delves into how day dreaming can get in the way of doing what you want to do! He talks about breaking the cycle, setting goals, becoming more present-focused and more! Support this podcast at �� https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this is important to understand. Why do human beings experience negative emotions? It's because they're actually very powerful motivators. They tend to be the strongest and easiest motivators, but they're kind of like dirty motivators. They're like burning unclean fuel. I keep rewarding my brain by daydreaming about my end goal without actually working towards it. I have this issue where I keep relying on external motivation is fuel to propel me forward. Fantasies of grandiosity where I'm infinitely better than the person, who rejected me romantically and making them realize what they lost, approving my worth to people who took me for granted.

Righteous justice. I know this sounds like covert narcissism, not so covert. I might as well be one non-diagnosed. I wouldn't jump that far, so we all have ego defense mechanisms. So we all, that's just a normal part of the human mind. I think what's fundamentally flawed within my mind is the belief that no one could ever love or appreciate me if I'm not interesting enough. The general advice is to just focus on self-improvement,

and somehow that's going to meet all of my emotional needs. I tried to set deadlines for my goals, but sadly now I feel only anxious because I'm not putting in the work, and as a result, I return to escapist behavior, which includes daydreaming. At the end, I find myself stuck in a loop where I have a goal in mind. I work on my goal for one day. It starts to feel overwhelming because I'm super depressed, and no one wants to give me attention.

I revert back to escapism and fantasize about the life I'll never have due to my laziness. Then I resent myself for not putting an effort and compare myself to other people's achievement, which acts like a catalyst and motivates me for another day or two. I know Dr. Kay has talked about daydreaming. I'm aware of it now, but I have yet to find a solution to my problem. How do I stop worrying too much about how uninteresting I come across and just focus on my hobbies that I once enjoyed regardless of the outcome. So this is kind of a really good post because this is a case of someone who's done some of the work.

Right. So most of us, when we struggle with a problem, we're not starting from zero. We sort of recognize a couple of things. We recognize, for example, that daydreaming is maladaptive. We recognize that there are certain techniques we can use, for example, like set goals for yourself and sort of focus on those goals. We also have learned as a community to introspect some, right? So this person has also done some introspective work and realized, oh, I have this, like,

fundamental flaw within my mind that no one will appreciate me or love me unless I'm interested enough. So we've started to do some work as a community, which is awesome. At the same time, this can be, like, really challenging because learning some of these nuggets doesn't fix your problem. right so like this is the basic problem with like daydreaming which is that okay i feel bad about myself i daydream in some sort of grandiose way that sort of makes me feel like righteous and good right like it makes me feel like emotionally good the problem is that like then i don't actually

change my life because i'm stuck in this dream and then like time goes by and then a day has gone by and I haven't actually moved forward and then I start beating myself up, right? I start to feel resentful for myself. Instead of actually doing anything about my problems, I'm just dreaming about fixing my problems. And sometimes that resentment, some kind of negative emotion can even spur some kind of action, right? So for a day or two, I get so frustrated with myself that I channel that frustration. I use it as fuel to propel me forward for a day or two and I work. I'm tired of this. Never again. but then that emotion fizzles and my motivation fizzles with it

and then I feel bad about myself and then I daydream and then the cycle repeats so how do we break out of this okay like this is what we have to figure out so what we're going to do is sort of give you all three very concrete steps about how to break out of this cycle of daydreaming setting a goal

sort of moving towards the goal sort of getting frustrated with yourself about moving towards the goal, not it not being enough, scrapping the goal, being resentful, beating yourself up. Like, how do we break out of this cycle? So we're going to tackle this in three different ways. And the key thing is that the third thing that we're going to talk about, I think is something that's grossly, grossly misunderstood, or missed. So a lot of us have awareness that, okay, there's like some kind of negative emotion here.

I need to deal with the negative emotion. I've yet to find a solution. How do I stop worrying about how to become uninteresting? right? So we'll sort of figure out, okay, how do I stop worrying so much and how do I just act? How do I focus on my hobbies regardless of the outcome? We know that we need to do those things, but we don't really know how. And it turns out that we tend to miss one really, really, really crucial step of this process oftentimes. Okay, so let's try to understand the cycle and the process that goes with it. Okay. So first thing to consider, let's start by understanding

kind of scientifically the cycle of the daydream. So I feel bad about myself. I have negative emotion. And then I daydream. And what happens to my emotional state after I daydream? It becomes positive emotion, right? Because now it's like grandiose. I feel good about myself.

There I am kind of like laying in bed at night, grinning to myself, I'll show them one day. You know, all these people all realize this. Okay? So it's kind of interesting. The first thing to understand is that daydreaming is actually like a coping mechanism. It's an emotional coping mechanism. So the tricky thing here is that when we want to stop worrying too much, our brain is like, oh, your goal is to stop worrying too much? Fantastic. I have an awesome option for you. So let's say I have some kind of negative emotion and I'm unsatisfied with myself. Let's say I'm unsatisfied with my physical appearance.

Okay, so there's negative emotion here. I've got two options. I can do a lot of hard work, okay? And then I'm going to add a caveat here, and then maybe at the end of the hard work, I'll feel good about myself, okay? Or what I can do is daydream. And then what I can do is feel good about myself right now.

So our brain has a choice. both, there are two roads to positive emotion. One is daydreaming and one is doing something about it, right? But which one's easier? Which one's more efficient? It's like kind of think about it this way. I mean, like, you know, if you want to get water, you don't walk a mile to your friend's house to get a glass of water.

You go to your kitchen or your sink or whatever and you get water from there. Your brain automatically takes the easiest path. Now, there's another really important point to consider here. which is that there is an assumption that hard work will lead to positive emotion and progress and feeling good about myself. But if we actually look at this scenario, I work on my goal for one day and it starts to feel overwhelming. Okay, interesting. So when you work towards your goal, you feel overwhelmed. I resent myself for not putting enough effort, which acts like a catalyst and motivates me for a day or two.

So now if we're actually like if we're scientific about it, what does hard work actually do? If I work for one day, if I do work for one day, how do I feel at the end of it? I feel overwhelmed. This is what we assume happens. But if we actually look at our experience,

these are the choices that we have. And our brain is like, you can work for a day, get nothing accomplished, feel overwhelmed and feel negative emotion. feel resentment, and then that in turn is going to go over here and reinforce this. So which path do you think your brain is going to take? It's going to take this path. Easy.

Right? Because if we actually look, if we use experimental data instead of our mind, what we'll observe is that even working towards our goals can sometimes create negative emotion. Then we get confused like, oh my God, why am I daydreaming all the time? It's this. simple. Just look at yourself and you'll find this cycle. So a couple of other things about daydreaming. Second thing to understand. So here I am in the present and I'm feeling bad about myself.

And when I daydream, I go to the future. Future time, one year in the future. And here I'm happy. I am triumphant. and I feel good about myself. And so the interesting thing is, so this person did the right thing. They're like, okay, so if I want to get from here to here, what I have to do is set a goal. So let me set a goal. Right?

Let me work towards my goals. So I'm over here as I'm working towards my goals, what tends to happen? Now, if my goal is based on a fantasy, if it's based on a daydream, that goal is very, very, very, very far away. And if the goal is very, very, very far away, one day of effort is just right here.

It doesn't substantially move me towards my goal. Right? So there's something else kind of interesting happens. We touched on this yesterday, and we've talked about it before. But if my goal is up here and I'm over here, and this is how far I move, the gap is huge. there's very little positive reinforcement for my brain, right? So this is why people say, like, you know, have goals that are kind of like bite-sized. You want to sort of reduce the size of your goals.

This is really important to understand because if we're basing our goals based on daydreams, those are going to be pretty unrealistic goals and are going to set us up for a lack of positive reinforcement even when we make progress. Because like, look at this for a second. I work on my goal for a day and it starts to feel overwhelming. Like what? Like how are we going to reinforce this kind of behavior? Like how are we going to work for two days if working on my goal for one day is overwhelming? So what's kind of interesting is like setting a goal that you can accomplish in one day. Then there's no progress. There's no need to be overwhelmed because you're done. Right? That's it. So how do we tackle

this problem. Now that we've sort of figured out, we have two basic problems. The first is that daydreaming is an emotional coping mechanism. And daydreaming also anchors us in the future. So this is kind of interesting. But if we want to break out of this cycle, once we understand the pathophysiology of it, if we understand what daydreaming is, how it works, our answer actually becomes. somewhat clear. The first is that this is the wrong goal. Because if your goal is to stop worrying, then daydreaming is the answer. Instead of what we need to do, number one is be able to tolerate negative emotion. Very, very important. Right. So develop some kind of alternate coping mechanism. So instead of, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but like,

Sometimes in life, we're buffeted by our negative emotions. And our negative emotions control our behaviors. They create avoidance. We don't want to feel those negative emotions. So we start avoiding all kinds of things. And so as long as we set our goal is stop worrying or no longer feel anxious or like the elimination of negative emotion, we lose control of our lives. Just surrender control entirely to the negative.

Because then what happens is if that's the goal is no more negative emotion, the only things that you can do are the things that move you away from negative emotion. And this is how you get stuck in the trap of daydream. So this is kind of interesting, but it's sort of like even this person's like negative emotions sometimes motivate them in the right way. So this is important to understand. Why do human beings experience negative emotions? It's because they're actually very powerful motivators.

They tend to be the strongest and easiest motivators. but they're kind of like dirty motivators. They're like burning unclean fuel. Okay? So instead of trying to fix your negative emotion, sit with it. Right? So we've taught a lot of meditation. Like that's a very good example of, you know, tolerating negative emotion.

So when you feel some kind of negative emotion, I'm not saying in this may, you may, so if you're listening to this, you're like, but like there's too much of it. Right? But then how do I fix all my problems? These are all the things that your mind will start. Like, what do you mean? tolerate negative emotion. Like, that's not going to make my dreams come true. Like, tolerate it until when? When does it end? What? I'm just supposed to sit and wallow in my negative emotion forever?

No, that's your mind not knowing what's going to happen when you learn to tolerate negative emotion. Like, you just don't know how to do that, right? So it's so intolerable. You start daydreaming to get rid of it. You start playing video games to get rid of it. You get eye to get rid of it. And so you don't know how to tolerate it. So you don't know how to tolerate it. it because it feels so intolerable. So that's where like you sit for like 15, 20 minutes, you meditate for a little while, and what you'll tend to find is that the negative emotion will go away. It may be triggered again by something else, but just learning to be non-reactive to your

negative emotions for at least a brief period of time for one hour a day, for two hours a day, will be very, very revolutionary for your life. Then you're like, how does it fix my problems? Well, we've sort of explored how all of your problems. start with this. So if we sort of, if this stops becoming a problem, right, then like this becomes easier. If we kind of like get overwhelmed and we don't let that feeling of overwhelm this stop us from acting, then we can continue to act. And it's good, it's pretty cool. Okay. So number one is like learn to tolerate your negative emotions. You can do that through meditation. We'll give you a

couple of other tips here. Second thing that's very important to do is adopt a present focus. So remember, goals are in the future. And if I have a goal that I've set up for myself that's a year from now or two years from now, if I've got, let's say, 800 days to get in shape, what difference does it make if I don't exercise today? Not much. Right? Oh, I've still got 799 days to get in shape. How long does it take to get in shape?

I don't know, maybe six months, eight months. So, I mean, I could go down to 400 days without making a single step towards my goal. I've still got plenty of time. So goals are things of the future, generally. Right? And so what you really need to do is don't focus on this step. this phase of your life, focus on this phase of your life. What can I do today?

And just focus on that. And this is where you've got to be careful because all kinds of negative emotions will come up if you start focusing on the present. It'll be like, it won't be enough. But what if? All kinds of thoughts. What's the point? What's the point of practicing piano for one day? What's cool is playing?

playing piano and busting it out and impressing everyone. You see how your mind automatically goes to that fantasy? Because once you start living in the present, once you start moving into a present focus, you're depriving of your mind of the ability to daydream. And then your mind gets terrified and it's going to fight you and it's going to make you feel bad. Because if it makes you feel bad, what does it get to do? You're taking away your mind's crack and it ain't going to like it. and it's going to try to punish you for it. So that's where you're going to breathe, you're going to meditate. You're going to focus on what you can do today. And so that's sort of where like, if you want to learn how to focus on the present,

the key thing to understand is that your mind is going to tell you all kinds of stuff. Like, it's not enough. But that's okay. It doesn't need to be enough. I'm just going to focus on what I'm going to do today. And like that's my goal and I'm sticking to it. If it's not enough, that's okay. And then your mind is like, no, but it's not okay because I want all these things.

I want these people to love me and I want all those things. That's where you pause for a moment. You talk to your mind and you kind of say, I understand that you want those things. I hope that we'll get them. All that stuff is fine. For the other 10 hours of today, we can worry about that stuff. But for the next two hours, for this two hours, we're not going to worry about that. I'm going to exercise for 45 minutes.

I'm going to read for 45 minutes and I'm going to clean for 30 minutes. The rest of the next 10 hours, I can worry about how it's not going to be enough. I can panic for 10 hours. I don't need to panic for 12 hours a day. 10 hours of a day is sufficient. So adopt a present focus. And in terms of goals, just focus on things that you can accomplish today.

And not even today, focus on things that you can accomplish within 15 minutes, in 30 minutes. I'm going to do one Pomodoro of studying. So be very, very present focused. So this is important because I don't know if like this kind of makes sense, but I've worked with, so back when I was doing

primarily clinical work, I was mostly an addiction psychiatrist. And so I'd have patients who would come in and people who wanted to get sober. Two kinds of people who want to get sober. People who want to be sober for a year and people who want to be sober for a day. My goal is to be one year clean. And generally speaking, what I found is that people who focused on being sober today, we're much more successful than people who are trying to be sober for one year. Because you can't be sober for a year.

It's literally impossible. There's nothing you can do to be sober for a year. Being sober for a year is an emergent property. It is not something that is actually created. It is something that is built up over time and that you can't actually do. All you can do is be sober right now. All you can do is not take that drink in this moment. That's really all you can do.

And in the next moment, you can not take the next drink. And in the next moment, you can not take the next drink. But literally the only thing that exists is the present. And so once people realize, and then it's the ones who are like, okay, yay, I did it. I'm sober for a year. I accomplished my goal. And what do you think happens over the next month? They relapse.

Because they did it, right? The battle is over. We won. Easy. We're going to hang up our weapons. We're going to chill. We're going to take off our weapons. armor, we succeeded. Whereas the person who recognizes that this is a battle that I'll have to fight

every single day is the one that actually wins. So what is this? This is a present focus. And we need to adopt this, especially for unhealthy coping mechanisms like daydreaming. Number three, so this is the thing that people miss. So as we look at this diagram, what we see is that we're reinforcing all the wrong behavior. This positive emotion that we experience actually reinforces the daydreaming. The hard work that we actually do makes us feel overwhelmed and create sort of like a punishment, actually. It's not negative reinforcement.

It's punishment, according to the terms of classical conditioning. Because if we work hard, what do we do? We feel overwhelmed. And if we daydream, what do we do? We feel good. So one of these leads to a punishment and one of them leads to a reinforcement. So the other problem with this whole cycle is that we're reinforcing the wrong things. We have an altered reinforcement.

And let's go back to the case. So at the end of the day, stuck in a loop where I have a goal in mind, work on the goal for one day, it starts to feel overwhelming, right? Act like a catalyst which motivates me for a day or two. So all the wrong stuff is being reinforced here. So there's one thing that we need to start doing, which is how to sort of build on our successes. So all of these problems that people have, we always focus on fixing the negative. We want to take away the negative. We want to stop worrying.

How do I do this? How do I do this? We're always focused on avoiding the pain, removing the negative, and like fixing the problem. What we don't ever do is positive reinforcement. or reinforce the positive. So I'll give you just an example. At the end of that one day of work that you've done, what do you do cognitively before you go to bed?

Do you feel good about yourself? Do you even bother to reflect on the day? Can you take a step back and say, hey, good job. I know it feels like I haven't gone far enough, but at least today was a win. Maybe I need to duplicate today, but, like, I can actually, like, be proud of what I accomplished today. Do you guys get any sense of any kind of positive reflection in any of this post? All I see here is self-loathing, right?

I think what's fundamentally flawed within my mind is the belief that no one could ever love or appreciate me because if I'm not interesting enough. No, what's flawed in your mind is that you don't think you're interesting enough. So then what you have to do is come up with, like, all these hobbies. that you're good at to impress people because intrinsically you don't see the worth. And you can see it like the way that this person beats themselves up with every sentence. You all see that? And there's no positive reinforcement. There's no appreciation, which acts as a catalyst and motivates me for another day or two.

This is not a success in this person's mind. I work on my goal for one day. That's not a success. That's a failure. And when progress becomes a failure in our mind, that's when we're truly screwed. So what we've got to do is spend some time reflecting on the positive. At least acknowledge our wins no matter how small they will be. Because right now, we're recording our wins in the L column.

Work for a day. Is that a win or a loss? It's a loss because I only worked for one day. I got motivated. I worked for one to two days. Is that a win or a loss? That's a loss because I only worked for a win or a loss. because I only worked for one or two days.

Well, what would a win be? Well, if I worked for 365 days in a row, that would be a win. You'll see this? So this is something that people don't do often enough. It's completely absent. How do I stop daydreaming? Well, there are days that you stop daydream. Right?

There are days that one day that you get something done, a couple of days that you feel motivated. So you can acknowledge all that negative stuff, but at least spend a few moments to reinforce the positive. at the end of the day say, hey, I don't know if this is going to be enough. Who knows what frame of mind I'll wake up in tomorrow? But at least today, I can be proud of what I did. And notice how your mind is like, what on earth?

Like, we'll rebel against that thought. No, no, no, no, no, no. What do you mean? How can you be proud of not accomplishing anything? You didn't accomplish anything. Your goal isn't met. You haven't achieved the fantasies that I've created for you. And then this person wonders that I once enjoyed regardless of the outcome.

That is how you do it regardless of the outcome. Do you see that? Like literally you train your mind and your mind says that's not enough. And you say, okay, who cares? I don't care. I did a good job today. There is something I can be proud of today. So whenever, so this is the key thing.

So oftentimes we get stuck in this cycle of like burst of motivation. followed by like period of wallowing in our despair. And the problem is that even when we have the burst of motivation, we don't reinforce that in any way, shape, or form. All we think about is how do I get rid of the despair? How do I get rid of the despair? How do I get rid of the despair? Part of getting rid of the despair is acknowledging when you do have some win,

no matter how small, and say, you know what? Good job, bro. Good job, girl. You did it. It's not enough. That's okay. It may not be enough, but like at least today, I can be proud of what I accomplish. And then your mind is like, but you didn't accomplish anything.

Even if I didn't accomplish anything, I still moved forward towards my goal. I did not spend the whole day daydreaming. That's a win. I did not spend a whole day playing a video game or binging stranger things on Netflix or whatever. There's something I can be proud of today. And watch your mind is it rebels against that thought. and as you do this especially, your life will start to change.

Because these kinds of things, like this is built up in a moment. It's like moments in your mind of war, subtle, subtle war, where your mind tries to convince you. And you have to start winning those battles. Moment by moment by moment by moment, my moment by moment. So it's a very common problem that people will daydream too much. And then you don't actually, you think about, you build all these goals for you. yourself and you don't actually move towards the goals. Instead of what you do is you think about the goals. And then we get stuck in the cycle of like, you know, daydreaming about this goal, not moving

towards the goal, feeling resentful towards ourselves. As we become resentful, we'll get like this burst of angry motivation that wears off in a day or two and then we're kind of stuck back down square one and then like the cycle repeats. So what do you do about this? First thing is to understand the nature of daydreaming. To understand that negative emotions are hard to tolerate in one way that we cope with them is we daydream. Because when I'm feeling bad about myself, and I think about how awesome the future is going to be in my dreams, I start to feel good about myself. Yay. Second thing to understand about daydreaming is that it takes us to the future. Right? It's not, that's the whole point, is we're not stuck in this horrible present where we're

not doing anything and not accomplish anything where people don't value us and things like that. So like, we love to be in the future because the present sucks. And the future is a beautiful place that I can construct with my mind. And I can make it whatever I want because it's a fantasy. How do you break out of this problem? First thing is like stop running away from the negative. Learn to tolerate your negative emotion. What do you mean by tolerate it?

That just means don't give in to whatever the default action of your negative emotion is for some period of time. half an hour, an hour. So I recently started doing this thing just to practice what I preach, and I've stopped taking my phone into the bathroom. No more phones in the bathroom. It's like, oh my God, what am I going to do for those five minutes that I'm using the restroom or even 60 seconds that I'm using the restroom? What am I going to do?

Oh my God! And you survive it. It's like not that bad, right? The other thing is when I take my phone in the bathroom, do I'm there for like 15 minutes. I don't need to be there for 15 minutes. So learn to tolerate negative emotion. Second thing is start living in the present.

Focus on the present. Focus on today. Third thing, this is the thing that people miss the most, is actually like acknowledge your positives at the end of the day. Reinforce that. Say, hey, like this is actually something like, I may not have moved to a significant amount towards my goal because your mind is going to tell you all this kind of crap.

But at least I did something. I didn't waste the whole day daydreaming. So if I've got a choice, right, this is what you tell your mind. It's like, I've got a choice. I can spend the day learning to practice piano, and I may never learn how to play it, it may never be enough. Or I can spend daydreaming about practicing piano and becoming an awesome piano player. Which one do I want to pick?

I want to pick actually spending a day practicing the piano. And that's what I actually did today. So I lived my life today aligned with the person that I want to be. even if it doesn't work, at least I can take pride in that. Sounds completely foreign. You've got to start practicing it. Right now, Amazon is offering some amazing extra perks that come with a job offer. If you start a warehouse job, you can get a $1,000 sign-on bonus.

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