HealthyGamerGG - Why Habits Don't Work

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

In today's episode, Dr K. addresses the concept of habit building, the issues with commonly shared solutions, and how to make drastic and lasting change in your life. Check out more mental health resources here! https://bit.ly/3xsk6fE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You are unlucky because the person that will inherit all of your hard work tomorrow will not be you. You will wake up. They will be a different human being who will spawn into your life. They will have a clean kitchen. They'll have food in the fridge. They'll feel hungry in the morning. They'll be well rested. That person is going to reap all the benefits of your hard work.

And this is where you have to be very careful because as long as you are embracing the struggle, you will be fine. Today we're going to talk about why habits don't work. Now, this may sound kind of weird, right? Because here we are. We have a bunch of research, right? That habits are really great. And, like, people who are very successful have good habits. And everyone's all about building good habits, habits, habits, habits.

But in my own life, as well as with a large fraction of my patients, they're just people who are not habit people. They're people who are fundamentally inconsistent, right? They're not these, like, farmer types where you wake up every day. the same time. You do the same things every day. You go to bed at the same time. They're a little bit more like hunters. We're going to wake up early. We're going to go out into the environment. We're going to see what we can find. They're much more dynamic. And the problem is that if you are a dynamic person, habits can be very, very hard to build. And then we have this idea that

unless you build habits, you will not be successful in life. So today we're going to teach you all an alternative to building habits. If you're one of these dynamic, dynamic, which means inconsistent lack of follow-through people like myself, there are ways where you can be just as successful or even more successful than someone who builds habits. And what we're going to focus on today is the basics. So we're not talking about habits that are, we're not talking about goals that are like super ambitious, although arguably this could be ambitious.

But we're going to teach y'all today if you're someone who struggles with habit, how to do the basics. We're talking about exercising, meditating, eating healthy, going to sleep, and doing some amount of admin stuff, right? So this is all of the crap that is not, like, enjoyable in life, but if you are able to check all of these boxes, these are the sandbags that kind of hold you back. Right? So at the end of your week when you've gone to work and you did some of the, like, you know,

the important stuff in life, there's all the crap that you should do. I should exercise. I should meditate. I should cook at home. I should eat healthy. I should go through my mail instead I'm procrastinating on all this stuff. It's all this crap. We're going to teach you all how to do that without necessarily focusing on habits.

When people hear about our coaching program, their first response is usually, why would I work with another human being when I can watch YouTube videos all on my own? Working with a coach is about amplifying your time and effort. We're great at wanting things and even making some progress, but we usually struggle with follow through or have some kind of setback. And that's exactly why working with a coach can help you accomplish particular things in a fixed amount of time. They'll help you set appropriate goals, keep you accountable towards that progress, and ultimately even work through the setbacks that you will inevitably face.

So check out the link in the description below to see if coaching is right for you. So the first problem with habits that we don't really consider is that habits promote laziness. Now you may listen to this and say, Dr. Kay, what are you talking about? The whole point of habit is that you're disciplined, right? And disciplined is the opposite of lazy. No, let's understand scientifically what a habit is. A habit is an automatic action. The habits that you have, hello, don't require effort, right?

That's what makes them a habit. They are automatic. They don't require a struggle. And that's why we love the idea of a habit. Man, I wish I had good habits. Then I would not have to struggle to exercise and eat healthy. My life would be easy if I could turn all the good actions into habits. The desire to create a habit-filled life is a thirst for laziness, a thirst for a lack of struggle.

I want everything to happen automatically. I don't want to struggle with my stupid head up here. I want to wake up and then do everything before I even realize it. In the same way that I lose myself in this or lose myself in this or lose myself in this, I want all of the special good things to be done. that way. Now, this creates a huge problem because the goal of habits is to get rid of laziness. But the path to habits is the opposite of laziness. It is a struggle every single day because building a habit is very hard. And so if you're a fundamentally lazy person and the appeal to you is that you no longer have to struggle, chances are you haven't built the habits. Now, I'm not saying

that habits are bad, right? So habits are really good. There's a lot of great evidence behind But what I'm saying is that in my clinical experience as a psychiatrist, human beings are different. And the habit pathway doesn't really work great for a lot of people. So there's a group of people that I've worked with for whom drastic change in a short amount of time is actually the most successful way forward. This is not I'm going to make a 1% change in my life every day for 800 days. Some of us are like, we can't do that, bro. I can't do anything for 800 days. I've had plenty of patients who will stop using substances by going cold turkey.

I'm not going to cut back on my cigarettes by 25% every week until I stop. It's like, I got to stop now. Oh, yeah, we have to go through a breakup. So, like, we're going to do this, and then we're going to break up 25%. And then we're going to break up 50%. And then they're going to move out. And then I'm going to give them their boxes. And then we're going to text this much.

And then we're going to text a little bit less. And then we're going to text a little bit less. And then we're going to text a little bit less. No, it's like, get the hell out of my apartment. I'm a block you on everything. And this is what I've seen with patients. So I've had a group of patients who have joined the military. And I know it sounds insane, but like I want to say 60 to 70% of the patients that I've worked with who have joined

the military think it is a awesome thing to do. I'm not advocating for joining the military. I think it's an individual choice. This is not sponsored by the U.S. Army. But I'm telling y'all, like some people really love that they join the military. And why is that? It's because it instituted a drastic change in their life. It gave them structure.

They started eating. They started exercising. They started waking up every day. They started making their bed because they joined the military. So I've done a fair amount of veteran work. Most of them are pretty happy with joining the military. Even the ones with PTSD, right? They may dislike a particular part of their service.

They may dislike particular officers or things like that. But the majority of people I've worked with could be selection bias. They're actually pretty happy with it. The key thing to understand is that for some people making a, a drastic change in a short amount of time is actually the path to success. Now, for many of these people, they also stumble down the road, right? Because, like, okay, I can do drastic change for a short amount of time, but how do I sustain it? And we're going to talk about that, too.

So the first thing that I'm going to say to y'all, another last example I'm going to give you all is diet. So when I worked with people who've made dietary changes, it's not like I'm going to cut back on my carbs. That doesn't work nearly as well as keto. Like, I'm going keto. Like, we'll sometimes will have these kinds of things, but the majority of people who make drastic dietary changes, like, I'm going to go on FodMap, I'm going to start doing keto. They don't make it drastic.

They're like, I'm going to toss all of the carbs in my house out. I'm going to go to the grocery store. I'm going to buy a bunch of protein and vegetables. And like, now I'm doing keto for 30 days. Drastic changes work for some people. And we as a society do not acknowledge this enough and we do not support these people enough. So let's talk about the basics. Food, sleep, exercise, meditation, admin. So the best thing, honestly, the best thing that works is to speed run all of this crap the moment that you wake up.

So if we really look at it, what most people do is they wake up in the morning and they grab their cell phone. They lounge around for about 45 minutes, maybe have a cup of coffee, maybe we're chilling a little bit, maybe watch a little bit of TV, end up putting my phone away. sit down at my computer, have my cup of coffee, and open up the same fucking website that I used this. Just that again. Variety in life. Oh, this is spending so much time on the phone is bad.

So let's use Reddit on the phone for 45 minutes when we are sitting in bed and scrolling. And then when we are ready to be productive, we'll make the coffee sit down and then we'll browse. Now I'm on keyboard and mouse. Now I'm being productive. Hour and a half goes like that. Different if you set your alarm clock and you have to be at work at a particular time. But if you have the time to yourself, chances are you'll waste it. Average human being uses cell phones for about four hours and 37 minutes per day.

So what we're going to do is speed run all of the crap the moment that you wake up. So rule number one, don't be anywhere near a device. A device should not be within hands reach. But what if there's an emergency overnight? How am I going to like, oh my God, like my cell phone is my alarm? Like, oh, like all of these challenges. So I'm going to, I'm a fucking doctor, okay? The number of emergencies that I get on my cell phone are probably like two or three a year.

Right? When I was in a robust clinical practice, that's high acuity. I have this thing called a pager. That's a different story. But I use my cell phone as my alarm. Oh my God, that's crazy. If only there were other ways that you could have an alarm without your cell phone. Key thing to understand, once you start with this, it's GG. So nowhere near your bed and where you sleep. Next thing is for the first 90 minutes, you are going to be your bitch. It's not going to be easy. We're not going to build habits. It's going to be a struggle. from day one. It's going to be a struggle until day 99. Until day 100. It's going to be a struggle every day. You just accept that. It's never going to be easy. And what we're going to do is speed run everything. Wake up. Exercise for 30 minutes. Meditate for 15 minutes. Spend about 15 minutes doing admin stuff. Pay your bills. Go through your mail. I don't care what it is. In box zero. 15 minutes. Shower. 10 minutes. Get yourself cleaned up. If it takes you a little longer, it takes you a little longer. Cook yourself something. The basic breakfast that we're going to talk about. is a couple slices of toast, two eggs, and some fruit.

That takes about 20 minutes to prepare and eat. If you guys don't eat eggs, if you don't like toast, if you're going keto, there's all kinds of other things that you can do. But there are tons of meals that you can prepare and eat within 20 or 30 minutes that will satisfy these requirements. The way that we do this stuff is drastically and right at the beginning. And this is where you're going to say like your mind, if you're not careful, your mind is going to say all kinds of things.

But I don't have 90 minutes in the morning. Oh, really? You could set your alarm clock a little bit earlier. But then I'll be tired. Good. That will help you with sleep later tonight. These are all positive things. Drastic changes right when you get up.

And from the moment that you get up till 90 minutes into your day, you will have done it all. But then you say, Dr. Kay, what about consistency? Excellent question. So now we're going to teach you about spawn points. So this is something that we don't quite understand. But every day when you wake up, you spawn into your. or life, right? So there's like past you and there's future you. And the basic problem with life is that past you has no problem screwing over future you, right? The reason you want habits is because

you're lazy. You don't want to struggle. And if that is your ethos, then what you will do is leave the dishes in the sink the night before. Future you can deal with it. Oh, we'll go through the mail tomorrow. Future you can deal with it. And then what happens is you wake up. When you wake up in the morning, you have all of these things hanging over your head. Oh, God, I have to do the dishes. I have to go through the mail. All the stuff piles up. And then we experience negative emotions. It's too much to deal with first thing in the morning. And when it's too much to deal with, do we deal with the little part that we can deal with? Of course not. Because once we cross the threshold from okay to deal with to too much to deal with, we do none of it. Oh my God. It's so much work. Oh.

Too much to deal with, so do none of it. So recognize that every day you control your spawn point for tomorrow. Every day you have a choice. Where do I want to wake up tomorrow? What is the condition that I want to wake up in tomorrow? Do I want to wake up tomorrow and have a clean sink or a sink full of dirty dishes? Do I want to wake up tomorrow and have some amount of meal prep done? Do I want to go ahead and boil 12 eggs tonight so that I have boiled eggs tomorrow morning?

because I don't have time to make eggs in the morning, or I like boiled eggs or whatever. The key thing to understand is that if you want to stick with this, right, and we're not quite necessarily talking about habits, but we'll maybe get there. Who knows, maybe we're lucky. The key thing to understand is you create the spawn point for tomorrow. And the problem is that any time we are faced with doing a task,

why do we procrastinate because of the struggle? And what does your mind tell you? Your mind tells you, oh, if you do it, you can just do it tomorrow. And your mind makes a critical, critical miscalibated. which is it says that if you do it today and if you do it tomorrow, the cost is going to be the same. This is incorrect. The cost increases every moment you wait. And you all may say, but Dr. Kay, hold on a second. How is that true? Because going through 10 pieces of mail is going through 10 pieces of mail. No, it's not. You all know this. I know this. When you procrastinate, things get worse.

When you take out the trash today, not that big of a deal. When you wait two days, it stinks more. That's not that big of a deal. What about working on your term paper? What about letting your boss know that you need some time off. And we procrastinate, procrastinate, because we don't want them to think we're lazy. We don't want to ask for an extension. And then you wait until the last minute. You wait until after the last minute. And then you ask for an extension.

Sorry, I know the paper is due today. But my grandfather died two weeks ago. When we procrastinate, things get worse. Your mind will try to trick you into telling you it'll be the same amount of work in the future. Give you all a very simple example. Renewing something is way less. work than reapplying for it if it is, if it has expired. Completely different amount of work. So be careful when your mind tells you, oh, we can do it tomorrow. It's not going to be the same.

It will be worse. Every day that goes by, it gets worse and you know it. So be prepared to pay the cost. Set yourself up for a better tomorrow. Control your spawn point. What you need to protect against is yourself. Protect against you and help yourself out. This is what controlling the spawn point is. So on any given day, when you are faced with procrastination, remember, we're going to do drastic changes today. Tomorrow will worry about tomorrow. Because the reason that we don't do any of this crap is because we allow tomorrow to be where the solution is. I'll take care of it tomorrow. And then you spawn in tomorrow and you like look around and you're like, fuck, I don't want to do any of this stuff. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it over the weekend. Oh, I'll start on Monday.

It's a no habits of reform. And they're not going to form. Don't worry about it. So focus on today. And this is all the time you have. Drastic chain, join the military in your mind. Practically, what does this mean? Practically, this means get your ass to the grocery store or whatever your equivalent is as best as you can, right? Buy food that is healthy. Do not buy food that is unhealthy. It becomes way easier to eat unhealthy food when it is available. The food that goes into your body, the number one thing that determines what goes into your body is what is available. That's like a fact of physics. It's not even biology.

If I'm stuck on a boat and the only thing that's available is hard tack and water, that's the only thing that I can eat. I cannot physically eat food that does not exist. And some of y'all may say, okay, but Dr. K.I. buy healthy food, but then I end up ordering Uber Eats anyway. Fair enough. Because you're avoiding the struggle. So set yourself up. for a future, a better tomorrow. Set yourself up for the spawn point of tomorrow. So we want to buy food and the moment that you feel like, oh my God, I don't feel like cooking in that moment. I'm

going to order some takeout. That's where you have to embrace the struggle. How do you want to set yourself up for tomorrow? It's not even about today. Today's going to suck, except that today is going to suck, except that there's nothing you can do you. I mean, you can make today better, but making today better will come at the cost of tomorrow. How do you want to wake up tomorrow? Do you want to have eaten some of the food? Do you want to have more rotting vegetables in your fridge that you have to throw out a week from now? Because wow, there's something really cool you can do to avoid throwing out rotten vegetables. You can eat them before they rot. But instead we order food, the vegetables rot, and of course we have leftovers. And so then those sit in our fridge and then tomorrow what happens? I've got these leftovers that I can heat up or I have this broccoli that's like maybe going bad. Well, let me eat the leftovers because if I make the broccoli now, the leftovers, will be more leftover tomorrow, and then they won't even be edible, and then I'll have to throw them out. So let me eat this. Let me eat the unhealthy leftovers so I can throw out the healthy broccoli. We're screwing ourselves over. You have to protect yourself against yourself. You're the one who is not controlling the

spawn point properly. So when we spend the first 90 minutes of the day doing this kind of stuff, everything going forward becomes easier because when I eat breakfast in the morning, I don't have this like 2 p.m. incredibly hungry where now my like my grellin and leptin levels are all messed up so i'm craving very calorie dense food because i haven't gotten any calories since 10 p.m. last night so the more that you wait between eating windows the more unhealthy food you will crave because your body is like hey we can't broccoli is not going to cut it we're at a 1200 calorie deficit get me a fucking burrito son you screw yourself in the future by skipping breakfast i don't need a huge breakfast doesn't work for everyone. Principle still stands.

Right. Eat something. I usually have a banana. So set yourself up for a better tomorrow. Embrace the struggle for today. If you exercise, if you meditate, and if you eat a good breakfast, then it will be easier to eat a good lunch. If you eat a good breakfast in a lunch, you will not be

calorically deficit at dinner and you won't eat a gigantic pile of food. Now, the problem with eating a gigantic pile of food is that it will trigger an insulin response. You'll get really, really sleepy. You'll kind of sleep it off. And then you'll wake up again at 10.30. And then it'll be hard for you to go to sleep. The sleep that you get tonight is determined by how you spent your day. Everyone's like, how do I go to sleep on, like, how do I have a healthy

sleep schedule? It's not about a schedule. It's about the way that you spent your day. So on days that I work out for like an hour and I'm like sweating and dizzy and nauseous, because that's sometimes how I work out. When you push yourself to the absolute limit, sleep becomes very easy. When you eat the right food, sleep becomes easy. When you go to bed at night and you're beating yourself up for all this crap that you've cried, oh, I spent another day binge watching this show. I spent another six hours playing this video game. Deadlock is my poison of choice at the moment. Fantastic game. You will screw up tomorrow you. And if you don't sleep properly, that's the easiest way to screw up proper you. So the problem with putting together your life is that we want to do it one percent at a time.

And there's a very good argument for doing that. Right? People will say, oh, habits have changed my life. Habits have changed my life. I'll be the first to say it. And they don't work for everyone in the same way. Your mileage may vary. What about those people who struggle to form habits?

Here's the crazy thing. The reason that you struggle to form habits is because your cognitive fingerprint is not habit-oriented. You are more dynamic. You're go big or go home. And the best points in your life are probably the times where you made drastic changes. broke up with my girlfriend, broke up with my boyfriend, got a gym membership, started eating healthy, started crushing it at work, I'm no longer going to be that person. Embrace the suck. Don't lure yourself into, oh, life will be easy. Once I build all the right habits, then I can be the lazy MF that I am.

And I'm going to be in shape. And I'm going to be eating healthy. I'm going to making so much money. I'm going to still get to be lazy MF. Let's go. It's not about 1%. Sometimes it's about drastic changes. And the cool thing about shaping your spawning environment is like that's literally what you're doing.

And the cool thing is if you shape your spawn environment, things will become easy. The other cool thing about drastic changes over time. is that they're synergistic. Here's the reason why it's so hard to break bad habits, 1% at a time, because they're synergistic. Getting high is fun. Playing video games is fun. Having sex with your partner who doesn't really push you forward in life

and keeps you relatively stuck. You guys know what I'm talking about, the comfortable relationship where y'all are just kind of existing and both you all want something more, but you just kind of enable each other's bad behavior because you don't judge each other, and you don't judge them because if you judge them, they're going to start judging you. So you let their bad behavior slide and they let your bad behavior slide and you all are kind of comfortable but unhappy.

The negative behaviors in our life are synergistic. We understand this in psychiatry. We have this process called dual diagnosis. When someone has a mood disorder and an addiction, you can't treat one at a time. It becomes impossible. I feel depressed. Because I feel depressed, I drink. I cannot treat depression with something like an.

antidepressant medication as long as someone is drinking. Medication doesn't work. You have to do both. You have to do everything all at the same time. It's a vicious cycle. Bad habits are synergistic. So are good habits. If I start exercising, I will crave different foods.

I've never heard of anyone like going to the gym and sweating to the point of nauseous and be like, oh my God, can someone get me a frappuccino with six shots of cream and piles of whipped cream? Oh my God. I need an ice cream shake so bad after running a marathon. What I want more than anything else is an ice cream shake. Fucking tubelard ice cream is not what people want when they finish running. Get me water.

Create the signals in your body to move you in the right direction. Good habits synergize. When I exercise, I want water. When I want water, it's going to help my mood. It's going to help my energy level. When I exercise and I eat the right food and I don't go into this food coma, insulin coma, followed by this glucagon spike afterward that wakes me up at 10.30. I eat this gigantic meal at 8 o'clock.

I'm kind of like, uh, until 10.30 and suddenly I have trouble going to sleep. Yeah, that's because all the insulin's gone. You overcorrected. There's some weird physiology there. When you get a big sugar spike,

big insulin spike. Insulin makes you sleepy. Big insulin spike. Now your sugar drops, and it drops too much. Now you're at a negative sugar balance because your insulin level was so high. Once you get into that negative sugar balance,

your glucagon spikes. Once your glucagon spikes, it first of all wakes you up. And secondly, causes you to crave food. So it's weird, right? You can eat a thousand calories of chips and mountain dew and you can feel hungry two hours later. So set yourself up for a better tomorrow. Start to synergize all of these things and a beautiful thing will happen if you make drastic change. The two or three things that we're shooting for, first of all, is activating those

synergies. The more that you do this stuff, now that you've slept a good night, when you wake up in the morning, you will feel more refreshed. If you exercise the day before to the point of nausea, you will feel hungry when you wake up. It will be easier to eat breakfast. And this is where you have to be very careful, because as long as you are embracing the struggle, you will be fine. This is going to be difficult. But the second that you slip back into this, you're screwed. All the bad stuff happens together, all the good stuff happens together. And sometimes the bad stuff is very hard to eliminate 1% at a time. I don't think I've seen a single case of someone reducing a toxic relationship 1% at a time. It's almost always like a Band-Aid right off and way later than it

should have been because you're hoping it'll be easier. So protect your future, protect your future self against your current self. Set your spawn point up for tomorrow. What is the world that you want to spawn into tomorrow. And this is so subtle. Do you want to spawn into a world where your phone is within arm's reach? Do you want to spawn into a world with their eggs in the fridge?

Do you want to spawn into a world where your kitchen is clean? Do you want to spawn into a world where you feel hungry in the morning? Do you want to spawn into a world where you've slept for eight and a half hours because you were so tired at night because you exercised hard?

And then you wake up at 6.30 in the morning on your own? Or do you want to spawn into a world where your alarm goes off at 7? and 30 and you've only been asleep for five and a half hours. Where you've got leftovers sitting in your fridge, you don't quite feel hungry, you don't know what's going on, you're drinking too much caffeine, that crashes eight hours later. And now you have no energy.

It feels hard to exercise. You can't exercise because you've got no energy. Of course you can. But you're going to build habits because then it'll be easy. Once you have a habit of exercise, oh, then you want to, whether you feel tired or not, won't matter. It'll be easy because it's a habit. It'll happen automatically.

And you go on chasing this fantasy. So drastic change. Set yourself up for a better tomorrow. You are unlucky because the person that will inherit all of your hard work tomorrow will not be you. You will wake up, they will be a different human being who will spawn into your life. They will have a clean kitchen. They'll have food in the fridge. They'll feel hungry in the morning.

They'll be well rested. That person is going to reap all the benefits of your hard work. You will get nothing. The moment that you adopt this attitude, drastic change will happen. The moment that you start synergizing, your life will be easier. They even be autopilot someday.