What are we getting wrong about motivation?

So much. The biggest mistake we make with motivation is that we try to increase it. This is what stuckness is. It's a lot of irrelevant movement.

We do use the word I feel stuck, I feel stuck, but you're saying that's actually the wrong word, and it's inaccurate. Yes.

It's not that you have no motivation. It's that you have a very powerful motivation to not move. What's better, for you to be in control of your wants or for your wants to be in control of you?

Oh.

That's the question.

Now, I'm I'm feeling like you're pinning me to the wall, Dr. K. I don't know. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and I am so thrilled to be able to introduce you to Dr. Alok Kenogia, also known as Dr. K. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because he is now back on the Mel Robbins podcast. You loved him when he first appeared several months ago. Dr. K is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in modern mental health and the impact that technology is having on your brain. And what I love about Dr. K is, well, there's a lot of things I love about him. I love how he explains these really heady topics. And I also love the fact that he has a super impressive and diverse skillset. First of all, he did his medical and psychiatric training here in Boston at Harvard, and he's also been studying integrative health and Ayravedic mental health for over 20 years. He's the co founder of HealthyGamer, which is a huge mental health platform and training company. They've got over 175 employees who are dedicated to helping people overcome addictions to technology, and they also train clinicians in Dr. K's methodology.

His YouTube channel, HealthyGamer GG, has over 2 million followers, and he's the author of the new book, How to Raise a HealthyGamer. And today, Dr. K is here to talk about all things motivation, dopamine, and tapping back into that power that you have to get where you want to go in your life. Dr. K, Welcome back to the Mel Robbins podcast. Could you tell the person listening how their life might change if they take everything that you're about to share with them to heart?

I think the way that they live life would be very different, and I think their outcomes in life would also change immensely. So I think the basic thing to keep in mind is that we don't learn how we work. We have a fundamental educational system that teaches us mathematics, history, marketing, finance. But no one teaches you, this is how your mind works. This is where desires come from. This is how you get motivated. And we assume that there's no formal education in this, but there absolutely is a formal education in this. And once we dig into that, what I tend to find with the patients that I work with, people who watch my lectures and stuff like that, is we just teach them how they work. And once you understand how you work, once you understand the buttons of the controller that is you, then you can direct your character in life wherever you want to go.

I am so freaking excited. So we're basically going to get a master class from you in understanding how to unlock our internal driver Cribers, right? Is that what you're basically saying? Among other things, sure. You are known, Dr. K, online as the authority to help people unlock their motivation, to help them unlock more meaning in their life. But you have a really cool backstory story for how you got into this field of work. Could you just tell me a little bit about your story?

Yes. My parents moved here from India. I'm the child of immigrants. I was born in the United States. Both of my parents were doctors. So growing up, I was supposed to be a doctor and really didn't have my heart in it. So I wasn't motivated. Basically, failed out of college. I had less than a 2.0 GPA after my first year of college was on academic Well, did you just not go to class?

Like less than a 2.0, that actually takes some work to not do that. It does.

So I was very addicted to video games. And so played a bunch of games, basically failed out of college, would play for 16, 18, 20 hours a day. And then my parents tried everything. So they tried punishment. They tried being very supportive, and they just didn't know what to do because even today, we don't quite understand how technology affects our brains, and it affects us so profoundly. So after about two years, my dad said, You got to go to India. And I went to an ashram, which is like a monastery, and I stayed there for three months. I decided to become a monk at the age of 21. My teachers told me that I was too young. They told me, You need to go back to school. You need to get a doctoral degree, and then you can take your vows at 30. And that, too, I was like, I want to give up my life. And one of my teachers was like, You don't have anything worth giving up. So if you If you want to become a monk, you have to go build something in the world and then give it up. Rise to the top of your profession, get a doctoral degree at a minimum, and then give it up if you want to give it up.

But right now, you're running away. You're escaping. There's nothing worth giving up.

Well, those monks know how to just drop a bomb on you, don't they?

Yeah, they really do. So they ended up sending me back. So I would travel back and forth for about seven years and learn more advanced practices and stuff like that. Ended up meeting my wife. So it turns out my teachers were very wise. So the whole monk thing was not going to work out. And then decided to go to med school, partially because she wanted to be married to a doctor. And my teachers had said, You have to get some doctoral degree. So I was like, Why not medicine?

That seems like a big commitment to try to impress somebody that you are dating. You know what I mean? Like, Oh, I'll go to medical school if you like me.

Yeah. So it's interesting because that's how it would seem, right? We have all these ideas about you shouldn't craft your life based on someone else's preferences and stuff like that. But I think if you're internally okay with it, I knew I had to get some doctorate degree. I'm very interested in how human beings work. That's what I loved about India. So what I learned in India is this is how a human being works from the inside, not research. But the challenge with scientific research is that it's hard to apply to an individual. What I love about this Eastern perspective on spirituality, it's like desires. I mean, if I tell you So your desire comes from the nucleus accumbens. You can't do anything with that.

I would be like, it comes from the nuclear humma-humma?

Exactly, right? So there's some neurotransmitter floating around in your brain, but it's not actionable information. Yes. So what I learned in India was an actionable way to I have to change myself. And then came back, graduated with a 2.5 GPA after five and a half years of undergrad. And then it took me about three years to get into med school. I got rejected from 120 med schools.

120 med schools you applied to?

Over the course of three years. Yeah, like 40 a year.

Wow. And you kept going, though? Yes.

Absolutely. So that's speaking of motivation, right? So I think when your motivation comes from the right place, then you are impervious to the circumstances around you affecting your motivation.

Oh, whoa. Okay. I know we're going to dig deep into that, but I want to make sure as you're listening to Dr. K, you really just got what he just said. When the motivation comes from the right place, you're impervious to all the external things that are going on.

Absolutely. 100 %. So ended up getting rejected a lot. After two years of applying to med school and not getting in, people in my family were like, Hey, maybe you should think about something else. Like, your GPA is set in stone, right? But I said, I'm going to go ahead and do this again. Ended up getting into med school, went to Tufts for med school, and then also had decided to do psychiatry. So originally, I was going to do holistic cancer treatment. So I had studied a lot of Indian medicine in India and alternative medicine, yoga, meditation, all that good stuff. But did psychiatry because my favorite organ was the mind. And really noticed a lack in the West of our understanding of the mind. Because we do things based on population-based studies, right? So we can say, motivation comes from this part of the brain. But as a human being, how do you take that fact and apply it to your life? That is what was missing for me. Or what I saw was missing in the field. So ended up doing my psychiatry training at Harvard, down the street at Mass General Hospital in McLean Hospital.

It was an awesome experience. And then a couple of years in, I had this I had a pretty large group of people coming to me wanting holistic mental health treatment. So how can I conquer this depression or anxiety or narcissism or sociopathy? Worked with a lot of CEOs and high performers in finance and places like that. And then I realized that there's no shortage of people trying to help this group of people, right? People who can pay a lot of money for really high quality support and to really unlock their potential or maximize their potential, whatever. But there were a bunch of people who no one was helping. And those are the degenerate gamers. These are the 22-year-olds who finish college and never get a job. These are people who drop out of college. These are people who are 25 years living in their parents' basement, and no one's helping them. They can't pay anything. So I started streaming on Twitch and doing mental health content on Twitch, and was stunned when we became the fastest-growing stream on Twitch for a period of about three months. Wow.

So for the person listening who does not know what Twitch is, could you explain what you mean when you're giving mental health content on Twitch? Yeah.

So Twitch is a live streaming platform that usually streams games. So what I noticed is that in my office, I was having gamers come in, and I was teaching teaching them certain concepts. I wasn't actually doing therapy. I was like, Here's how your mind works. Here's the effect of dopamine on your brain and your motivation and things like that. And so I just had the same conversation over and over and over again. So what I started doing was streaming conversations on Twitch. So I would talk to people And I would start teaching some of these principles, almost like a podcast, where I just like some random person would call in and I do like Q&A, or they'd be like, I struggle with motivation. I'd say, okay, let's understand the neuroscience of motivation. So we dig into that. And what I really discovered is that if you look at people today, we're being so shaped by our environment. Other people decide what thoughts we have. So we're seeing companies get better at advertising. We're seeing short form content. So other people are shaping your views about yourself. They're shaping what you think will make you happy in life.

So we're bombarded with all of these images of what it means to be happy. Then what happens is there's a deficit. So our brain notices, Oh, look at all those happy people over there. I am not doing those things, and I am unhappy. And then they try to sell you something. So this is where there's a lot of very intentional shaping of people's unhappiness, and then selling people solutions. So As all of these kinds of effects are going on, we don't know how to fight against that.

It's so true.

And we'll say, Okay, just cut back on technology use. But it's become a part of our work. It's become a part of... It's how you keep track of... I get emails from my kids' You use a teacher to tell them classes cancel, so you have to stay plugged in. And so we're not equipped with the tools to fight against this external environment shaping us.

That makes a lot of sense. And so it's almost as if there are two pieces that we need to really dig into. The first one is the internal and really understanding, which I think you very eloquently explained to us, that you go to school and you learn all of these subsets of skills and knowledge. I'm not even speaking correctly, but you learn all of these subjects, but you don't learn how a human being or how you operate from the inside out. I think we're all scared of the way that our environment and tech is shaping us. Where I want to start, especially given the number of people that are following you online and the advice that you're giving on YouTube, I mean, millions of millions of people, Dr. K, what are we getting wrong How about motivation?

So much. In the West, what we call motivation, there is no motivation center of the brain. Motivation is an emergent property. So when I say, if I look I reach you, Mel, and I say, You're motivated, how do I know that? It's because I'm observing some behavior. There's no one place that motivation comes from. Motivation is an internal drive that comes from emotions, comes from what you should be doing, comes from issues of ego and identity, comes from issues of ego and identity. It comes from issues of comparison. So there's so many different things that motivate us. So this is the first thing, is that motivation is not a thing. It is lots of different things. And I think the second thing, the biggest mistake we make with motivation is that we try to increase it. And I know it sounds weird, but let's understand what motivation is. So let's say you're motivated to do something. Is it easy for you?

Yes. Okay.

So now what happens is your actions, that's a problem. That's not a solution. It's a problem.

Why is it a problem if something's easy for me?

Because you are not in control. So if you feel motivated, you're trying to make your life easy instead of being in control of yourself. An alternate solution is imagine if you could act independent of motivation, even if you didn't feel like it. Because everyone's trying to increase their motivation because we're so burnt out all the time. We don't have the energy for it. I'm looking to make it easy for myself. When my body, my brain, and my mind are sending us signals, don't do this. I don't feel like doing this. And we're ignoring that. We're trying to... And so then what we try to do is we try to create situations that make it easy for us to act. But this creates a fundamental flaw.

How so?

Because if the situation changes and your motivation changes, then you're screwed.

So you're basically saying, just take the simple thing of getting out of bed in the morning, right? So the alarm rings. And the second the alarm rings, most of us have some emotion that that we feel about the act of simply getting out of bed. Something we've done thousands of times in our lifetime. We know how to do. It is relatively simple set of actions to roll out of bed and stand up and start your day. But so many of us are relying on this feeling of motivation, which is, I guess the way that I would describe it, is this emotion of wanting to do something and feeling like it's going to be easy. And if that feeling is there magically in the morning, I get out of bed. But if it's not, I don't take the action. So is that a good example of what you're talking about?

Yeah, exactly. So let's play that tape through, right? So that means that if the motivation isn't there, the first thing that happens, your alarm rings, and then your cognitive willpower starts to drain because you already have to overcome something. So you start the bed, you start waking up and getting out of the bed tired because you don't feel motivated. Correct. So that makes a lot of sense. But the crazy thing here is that if we look at motivation, right? So this is where If you think about it, what that means is that your wants control you. So if I want to do something, then I'm motivated. And so that means that what I want to do controls my life because those are the things that I do. So now the question becomes, what's better? For you to be in control of your wants or for your wants to be in control of you?

I think I just got something. So you were addicted to video gaming. It's what caused you to fail out of college. It's also, in many ways, what drove you inspired you to speak to all of us about the brain and about understanding your internal drivers and yourself. And if you look at it in the negative, all addiction begins with wanting to do something and allowing your wants to be in complete control. I want to eat that thing. I want to drink that thing. I want to play that video game. I want to just have sex with somebody that I don't even know. I want to ignore that obligation. I want to do this. And so when you start to live a life where your wants and your desires in the moment are controlling what you do and what you don't do, you're out of control. Is that what you're saying?

100 %. Not only are you out of control, you'll be unhappy. So if we look at addiction, there's a couple of fundamental problems with wanting stuff. It just doesn't work. So first thing is, if we look at addiction, we know that there are uniform pathways of addiction in the brain, and all addictions do two things. One is they give us pleasure, and the second is that they take away pain. So if If you look at all addictions, and this is true of opiates, heroin, and social media video games, they activate this part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is where our dopamine reinforcement circuitry is. Dopamine does a lot of things. It also does movement. But if we look at our drive towards something, the nucleus accumbens gives us three things. It gives us pleasure when we get something, and it also gives us craving. So if you think about eating a cookie, it's delicious. Let Let me have another one. So this is where we're in a huge... There's a fundamental problem with dopamine and gratifying our wants. The second thing that all addictions do is they suppress our negative emotional circuitry.

So if you look If I'm eating a cookie, if I'm having a bad day and I eat a cookie, I feel a little bit better. I'm feeling burnt out. I'm feeling tired. Let me hop on my phone. Let me browse social media for a little while. And it pushes the tiredness away for a time. But when you get off of your phone? Or do you feel energized? Do you feel like, now it's time to like, now I have the energy to go and cook a meal and go take care of this stuff and send an email to my boss? No. All you're doing is delaying your tiredness. And this is what we see with addictions is that they suppress our negative emotional circuitry. And in my case, what was going on is I was failing out of school every single day. I was skipping class. It got to the point where I had so many absences that the max I could get was like a 70. If I got 100 % on all of the rest of the stuff, I could get a 70 in the class. And so what we see in addiction is as your life gets worse and worse and worse, the only way you can manage that pain is by utilizing the substance, or in my case, playing video games.

Well, I think this is a really important explanation as we dig into this concept of motivation. And Dr. K, you've already said, Gosh, we get so much wrong about it. Because I think what happens for so many of us, and you've certainly been there, whether you're at a state where you would say you're addicted to something that is slowly ruining your life, or you are just in one of these negative spirals mentally where you feel unworthy or you feel not good enough. Every day you wake up and you're like, Today's the day I'm going to work on my resume, or today's the day I am going to exercise. Then you see yourself, just like you said, I was failing out of class every day. You see yourself every single day failing at the simple things What do you want to be doing? And so, Dr. K, what else? What do you want us to understand about motivation as we start to look at what I think most people struggle with, which is this feeling every day that I'm not able to follow through on some of the simple things that I really want to be doing, but for whatever reason, I'm not, quote, motivated to exercise or eat healthy or make that phone call?

It's a great question. So let's understand a little bit about where motivation comes from. And we'll draw on both principles of Eastern spirituality that yogis practicing meditation in the Himalaya has figured out a couple thousand years ago that have now been verified by neuroscience. So let's start with when I act, right? So you're saying, I have a struggle with follow through. So that's the problem with motivation, is that motivation waxes and wanes because motivation is oftentimes highly emotional. So if we look at the a part of our brain that creates behavior. Our emotions are very powerful. So if we look at what is the evolutionary function of emotions? Emotions give us information, and they give us motivation. So if I feel angry, I will feel like doing something. If I feel afraid, it will motivate me to run away. The problem, though, is that emotions vary. That's the way they're supposed to be. They don't last forever. So if I can have the perfect wedding day, it does not mean I will have the perfect marriage. I won't be happy for the rest of my life because I have this one perfect day. So our brain has this very natural principle of homeostasis, which means that we experience joy, and then the joy goes away.

And so then what we end up doing is chasing those things that bring us joy. That would be great, except there's another principle in the brain of tolerance. So if I eat one cookie, it's delicious. If I eat a second cookie, it's not quite as tasty. If I eat a third cookie, now I'm feeling full. True. And even then, oftentimes, if I think about getting that cookie tomorrow, it's not going to be as good as the first time I have it. So now we're stuck because our motivation is going to wax and wane with our emotions. We're trying to cultivate these past experiences over and over again to try to keep us motivated, and it just doesn't work. So what can we do? This is where we're going to focus on a principle from Eastern philosophy called karmafar. So karm is action, and far means fruit. So there's a really simple principle that the more that you devote yourself to your actions instead of outcomes, the more easy your life will be and the more you will be in control of your behavior. Now, this may sound weird because oftentimes in life, we are conditioned to focus on outcomes.

So I don't care how much you know, I care what your GPA is. I don't care how healthy your company is, I care what the stock price is. So in our life, the way that our life is structured right now, we're all focused on outcomes, we're focused on goals and things like that. And everyone may think, well, yeah, blah, right? That's the way that it should be. But if you stop and think about it, we have a society that is increasingly focusing on outcomes. And we also have a society that the human beings are increasingly burnt out and lack motivation. And those two things are tied. So let's understand a little bit about why. So if we're not going to focus on outcomes, then how the hell do we get motivated? So let's understand another thing about the brain. So we Our brain does this thing called an action success calculation. So what it does is any time we're thinking about doing something, our brain knows, okay, what's the likelihood of this to succeed and what's the likelihood of this to fail? And the problem is that if you're trying to cultivate motivation and you put in a lot of work and we're focused on the outcome, and things don't work out, then I won't reinforce the behavior.

So if I say, I'm going to study really hard for a test, and I don't do well on the test, what does my brain learn about the value of studying?

That it doesn't help. It doesn't help. So is this one of the reasons why so many of us give up either going on a healthier diet or going to the gym and working out because you're not seeing the results? So you start to go, This isn't working.

Absolutely. So this is a really fascinating principle from motivational interviewing. So if we look at behavioral change, we have one evidence-based technique that helps people change their behavior, which is something called motivational interviewing.

So what is motivational interviewing?

It is a way to talk to people that increases their motivation.

Oh, my God. So can we use this with people in our life, too? Not just with ourselves?

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So we're going to learn, not just with people in our life. I mean, I'd say we do it in psychiatry with other people. The beautiful thing is you can do it with yourself. Oh, my God.

Let's go. Okay.

So let's understand. So this is a beautiful thing about motivational interview. We figured out that most human beings are conflicted. Okay. So I want to go to the gym. I don't want to go to the gym. Now, before I go to the gym, the pain of going to the gym is a hypothetical. The pleasure of staying home is also a hypothetical. So when we start out, neither of these two things are realities. So I think about the gym, I think, Here's the cost, here's the benefit. But it's a hypothetical, right?

Because I haven't gone. I haven't gone. So I'm just making it all up in my mind.

So as I go to the gym, what happens to the pain induced by the gym?

Lovers because I'm going in, right?

On the contrary. So when you go to the gym, as you start going, as you move towards the thing that is difficult, the hypothetical pain becomes real.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

You're right. So as I actually start, I can think If you're not working out, that's not painful. Actually working out, huffing and puffing, I want to stop. My body is like, Don't do this. My knees are hurting. The pain actually increases. So anytime we move towards an action, the pain increases. Right. The reason we want to engage in the action is because at the end of the pain is some pleasure. There's some outcome that we're devoted to. Yes. And then we hope that the pain will be worth the pleasure. But our brain doesn't see it that way. Where our brain sees, and you'll notice this if you're thinking about something in your life where you think about doing something and you know it's going to be painful, but when you start to do it, it's actually painful, and it actually decreases our motivation. So moving towards our goals oftentimes comes at a cost before For a benefit.

That makes a lot of sense. So just so I can break this down so everybody's tracking, intellectually, you can know you want to do something, but you are going to think about what it's like to get out of bed, or think what it's like to go to the gym, or think what it's like to work on your resume. And because it's going to require you to move toward the pain before you get the payoff, motivation decreases as you move toward this thing that you really want to do.

Got it? Absolutely. And this is also presuming that the reason for your motivation is the positive outcome. That's why we're motivated, because I want to be healthy. I want that sexy beach bot. But the problem is that when we actually engage in the behavior, when I go to the gym, I don't get a sexy beach bot. No. So then my brain is looking at this and it's saying, Wait, what the fuck? Why are we doing this? This is just pain. There's no benefit. Yes. This is dumb. Yes. And then we wake up the next day and we're like, Our brain is like, Don't do that thing. And then we all get confused. This is why we need to separate our ourselves from the outcome because our brain makes this calculation and says, This pain in the gym today is not worth the payoff today, obviously, right? And then it's going to turn around and it's going to say, Don't do this thing.

What's so fascinating is you are revealing the mechanism internally that's at play that most of us are unaware of. And so we are engaged in all of this mind battles with ourselves to try to force We're calling ourselves lazy. We're saying that we're this. Why can't I do this when you're simply saying, Honestly, this is how your brain works. You're not going to see the result right away. You're wired to move away from the pain. And so you cannot focus on the result because that is not going to get you through this little contradiction in your brain.

Yeah, beautifully said. So what I would say is we are spending our whole lives swimming upstream. Instead of understanding our motivational circuitry, we are trying to conquer it. Instead of utilizing Realizing it, we're trying to fight against it and overcome it. So instead, understand how your motivation works, and then you can craft your life so that action becomes easy, and outcomes will improve, too. There's tons of data on this. So now let's start by understanding that I have this positive goal that comes with a reward. When I think about working on my resume or going to the gym, I'm looking for that positive reward at the end. I'm not really anticipating pain. So instead, what we want to do is we actually want to let go of that goal. And in motivational interviewing with someone who's addicted to alcohol, here's how this looks. So people will say, I want to be sober for a year. I will say, You can't be sober for a year. It is impossible to be sober for a year. Literally, you cannot do it. People will be like, What on earth are you talking about? You can't be sober for a year.

If I said, Mel, get up right now and be sober for a year, could you do it?

I don't know.

Sober for a year is not an action. You can't do it. It is not an act. Do you get that? It is an outcome.

Oh, hold on. Okay, because you're right. When you said be sober for a year, my little brain went, do, do, do, do, 65 days not drinking, okay. Box, check, box. And I jumped to, I accomplished it. I totally fell into your trap, Dr. K. Absolutely, right? So if you think about it- Well, I do want to break it down because I think the person listening myself, we are so hardwired to think about the things that we want that you're trying to get us to understand that we've got to interrupt the way that our brain jumps to the end and start to think a different way to make this work for us. Is that what you're saying? A hundred %. Because I think half the people listening are probably going, Well, I'd like to find a significant other. I'd like to lose weight. I'd like to have a million dollars in the bank. All goals and outcomes. And that is what is keeping... You're basically saying that thinking keeps you stuck, swimming upstream and not able to activate what you need in order to act in the way that you need to act.

Beautifully said. So I'd love to add a couple of different points to that. Please. Let's just tunnel down into that. Okay, so now remember that if I go to the gym, you asked about follow-through. So if I go to the gym, it's painful. I don't see the yield today. So then where does the motivation of going to the gym come from? So the motivation of going to the gym comes, you wake up one day and you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, I'm tired of looking like this. You're driven by negativity. So this doesn't work. So when your drive to go to the gym is pain. So I don't like the way that I look. I'm unsatisfied. We're not satisfied. Our brain gets confused because we're moving away from pain into pain. Our brain is like, this doesn't make sense. So this is why people don't have follow-through. They pendulum. I'm going to the gym this week. I'm not going to go next week. Because you're always listening to your You're saying, I'm unhappy with this. I'm unhappy with the amount of money I make. I am trying to resolve my unhappiness by engaging in...

I'm unhappy with the amount of money I make, so I'm going to work harder at work, which is not a pleasant experience. So we keep on ping-ponging between negativity and negativity.

This actually makes a lot of sense. I was with somebody last night who has been in a job for two years where they keep promising promotion. This person keeps delivering what they're supposed to do, and it's not coming. And yet, there's a lot of like, I can't stand this situation, and yet I don't know what to do about it. One week I want to quit, one week I'm working harder. And it is this pendulum thing that you see. And from the outside, you go, Why don't you just get another job? But from the inside, you really do see somebody trapped between one situation that's painful, which is trying to double down in a job that's not working, versus the other situation that's painful, which is organizing your resume and putting yourself out there and looking for a job. And so that, to me, makes a lot of sense as to why we swing between these spurts of exercising and not eating healthy and then not drinking and then not. Absolutely.

So if you look at the mechanism of that, and that's a beautiful example, what we find is there's no actual fluctuation. You are following through 100%, which I know sounds weird. What you are following through with is you are always moving away from your negativity. So on this particular day, I want to be recognized. I I don't like being unrecognized. I feel undervalued. I'm moving away from my undervalued. And then on the next day, you're moving away from something else. So you keep on running away from the negative things in your life and you stay stuck. You are still being controlled by those desires all the time. So consistency doesn't come from obeying whatever emotion you're feeling in the moment. That makes perfect sense. We just don't realize. We think about that in terms of things like love. So today, I fell in love. Tomorrow, I fall out of love. Fair enough. We don't think about that in terms of professional life. It's all just listening to your circuitry instead of your circuitry listening to you. The point of the human body, the human brain, and the human mind, these are all instruments to serve you.

You don't exist for their benefit. They exist for your benefit. My arm, my tongue, does not dictate what I do with my life. And yet we let our brains and our mind dictate what we're doing with our life. It's absurd. The key is to focus on the action, not the outcome. When the mind thinks about action, the outcomes improve. And when the mind thinks about outcomes, sometimes you get there, sometimes you don't. You get into this motivational problem. So going back to my life, I decided I'm going to apply Why? That's what I'm going to focus on.

And you're talking about the fact that over the course of three years, you applied to 120 medical schools until you got in.

Until I got in, right? And people think like, Oh, doesn't the first 10 failures weigh on you? Don't the next 10 failures weigh on Because that's how most of us live our life, right? Yeah. But the beautiful thing is, if you think about it, what is the difference, Mel, between applying to the first medical school and the 100th medical school?

Well, when you think about the actual action, There is zero difference because you are filling out paperwork, you are organizing a bunch of stuff, and you're hitting submit.

So then where does the difference come from? You're 100% right.

Your emotion and the stories you tell yourself about the difference between the first application and the hundreds.

So I want you to think about this. The action is exactly the same. The only thing that is holding me back is the weight in my mind that I have failed 99 times before. That is not reality. That is a thought in your head that is telling you that you have failed 99 times. And as long as that is the way that your life is working, you will never be in control. Because if my mind wakes up, some people say 20 is too much. Some people say that 20 failures or 20 denials of a job, I feel weighed For some people, they can tolerate 40. For some people, they can tolerate 60. And the people who quit after 20 look at the people who try 60 times and they say, I wish I could be like that. I wish I could follow through. I wish I could have more discipline. They're all doing it wrong. Each action that you take in life is individual.

100 %. I'm constantly astonished by the number of people who write in because they feel like they're either too young or too old to do the things that they want to do. And for me, as a 56-year-old woman, who launched this podcast 18 months ago, I just go, Well, I just put my head down and just focused on the simple things every single day that lead to launching a podcast. And all of that garbage that you're telling yourself like, I'm too young, or I'm too old, or I'm too this, or I'm too that. It's complete fiction. And the action is actually the only way that you prove that that crap in your mind is a lie.

Yeah, beautifully said. I think the challenge is that we are so conditioned to thinking that our thoughts are reality.

So how do I use motivational interviewing to tap into this wiring inside me in an effective way, Dr. K?

So great question. So if you want to be consistent every day, step number one, abandon every day.

What?

Abandon every day. You can't do something every day. Focus on today. You see how deeply it is?

Yes, I see that I'm screwed.

So I'll give you a great example. So when we think about Every day, successes become failures in my mind. So if I say to myself, I'm going to meditate every day, and I meditate for 39 days, and day 40 rolls around, did I meditate every day, Mel? Have I succeeded in my goal?

You did for 39 days.

It's still a failure.

Because you didn't do it on the 40th.

So now I'm looking at 39 days of success, and I'm calling it a failure because I didn't do it on day 40. Crazy.

Crazy.

I work with people who are addicted to substances. So my day job was an addiction psychiatrist. And these are people who will be sober for 48 days, and then they will have a relapse. And then this is no longer sober. It becomes binary. And then what does the brain do? The brain says, what's the point of resisting alcohol for 39 days if we're just going to drink on day 40. We demotivate ourselves. So what we want to focus on is the action. Focus on the present. Focus on doing the thing.

And so if you're waking up and you want to use this tool in your life, and there's something that you would like to make more consistent, which is still not a thing because I see how quickly I default to, I want to do it every day. I want to be more consistent. I want to lose the weight. I want to make more money. How do I use this technique to get myself to focus on what I need to do today, Dr. K?

A couple of very good things that you can do cognitively. The first is focus on the negative. Anticipate the negative.

Meaning what?

Meaning that if you're thinking about going to the gym, let's say you want to go tomorrow, tomorrow. So what you want to do is, tomorrow when I wake up, I'm not going to feel like going to the gym. Mentally prepare for the difficulty. So there are studies that show that predicting or anticipating the difficulty is a very, very important part because then you're not caught off guard by it. When everyone thinks about going to the gym, they're thinking about the positive. They're not thinking about the negative. And then when they run into the negative, the pain of actually going through the act, their brain gets confused because I'm thinking about this as a good thing, but my experience of it is as a bad thing. So the first thing that you actually want to do is anticipate the difficulty of the action that you want to take.

And that makes a lot of sense to me. I can give you, as you're listening, an example. I've been doing a lot of the cold exposure, climbing into a... I hate it. And I do not try to motivate myself, so to speak, or get myself all hyped up. I'm literally like, This is going to blow. I'm going to do it. It's going to be 90 seconds of my life, and I'm just getting in the damn barrel. And there's something about saying it that it's almost like this internal resistance lowers. What is happening in your body when you use this? Like, I'm going to have a healthy dinner tonight, and it's going to suck. And I know I would rather have a delicious, juicy, whatever cheeseburger, but I'm going to just eat the salad and the clean protein, and that's going to be that, and that's what I'm doing. What happens in your brain when you do step one, Dr. K, and you anticipate the negative?

So the first thing that it does is it doesn't let you get caught off guard. So you're changing your expectations from a positive thing to a negative thing. And what we know about human beings and expectations is nothing basically lives up to your expectations. So we have this imaginary capacity in our brain, and no reality will measure up to that. So the interesting thing is if you look at something negative and you say this is really going to suck, you don't want to tell people who are getting injections and stuff like vaccines, that this This is going to suck. But you can tell people, Hey, this is going to hurt for a little while. You just want an accurate representation. Don't try to pump it up and don't try to let it down. The beautiful thing about that is that once you remove, once you bypass all of this positivity and stuff, When you actually do the thing, it's usually not as bad as you expect it. The other thing that you're doing, which is very, very important, is you are taming your brain. You're telling your brain. It's not about motivation, because motivation is about gratification of the brain.

It's like, I want to I want to do this thing, and I want to feel good. It's all about positive. It's about getting that reward at the end. It's not the outcome. We're separating, we are divorcing the action from pleasure or pain or anything. We are learning to be independent of pleasure and pain. I say I'm going to do this. That's what I'm fucking going to do. I do not care what my brain wants. I do not care. It's fine. We're going to do this. You do it, and this is what happens. You're separating yourself.

I love this, Dr. K. I want to make sure you got this because this, to to me, this is something you have to understand. I even want you to visualize it. This makes so much sense to me now that you have taught us that motivation really is about pleasure and craving and drive and all that stuff over here. And you When you say step one, I am just going to anticipate the negative. I'm going to tell myself this is going to suck. I'm going to focus on what I'm doing today. And by doing that, you are literally cleaving a separation transition between pleasure-seeking part of your brain-And pain avoidance. And pain avoidance to literally activating the ability to see that something's not going to be enjoyable, but you're going to do it anyway. Absolutely. This makes so much sense. You're basically flipping the switch on the part of the brain that activates to go, Whoa, don't want you to do that. And going, I see this coming. You can take a nap because we're going to go and have the healthy meal.

Absolutely. So this is where in Sunskrit, there's also this concept of detachment or, which a lot of people think will mean It's not apathy and a lack of motivation, but it's actually quite the opposite.

What is detachment?

So detachment is divorcing ourselves of the outcomes of our actions. So to focus on the action itself instead of worrying about the outcome.

You're basically saying that there is a superpower in life in putting all of your energy and focus and resources into what you can do right now, and you can be committed to something in the future, but you can't focus on that. You got to focus on the actions and what you can do right now.

100 %. So you call it a superpower. This is where I would say this should be the default state. So if you stop and think about it, Mel, what do you control in this life?

I control what I am going to do next. That's it. That's it. I can't control anything that you're doing. 100 %. I can't control anything that anybody outside I know what these windows in downtown Boston are doing. I can't control what you're thinking or how you feel. And in many ways, I can't actually control the emotions that come up because they're just rising and falling or the thoughts that rise and fall. But I Can, with practice, focus on what action I take next? That's it.

So it's crazy, right? So if you're listening to this podcast right now, I want everyone to stop for a second and think about what you literally can control. It is the bounds of your body. That's it. And I see this, especially with women, because they are responsible for their husbands. They're responsible for their parents. They're responsible. We put so much responsibility on women for the people around them. So here you are stuck in this world where you are trying to get everyone else to fall in line, but it is impossible. And then we get so bent out of shape to get my boss to do this, to get my son to do this, to get my parents to do this. We're We're trying to control everything around us, and we cannot control it. It's physically impossible.

How do I use this idea of motivational interviewing, though, to get people to do things that are hard? Give me the script, Dr. K. So if I'm sitting down with somebody that I really care about, and maybe they've just let their health slide. It's a partner that I have been with for a while. They've put on a bunch of weight. They've become pretty sedentary. I'm worried about their happiness and just their overall state. What is the script for the open-ended question? Because a lot of us don't even know how to freaking open that conversation up.

How do you feel about your health?

Oh.

That's the question.

And fine. Like, I'm okay.

Okay. So it sounds like you're okay about your health. You feel okay about it.

Yeah.

What makes you feel okay about it? Oh.

Now I'm like, 'oh, ' I'm feeling like you're pinning me to the walls, Dr. K. I don't know. I've been like this a long time.

It sounds like you've been this way for a long time, so you've gotten used to it.

Oh. Yes, I have.

How do you feel about that?

I feel like it's going to take a lot of work to change things. I'm comfortable where I am.

Yeah, you're saying you're comfortable. It almost feels a little bit more to me like resignation, like maybe it's going to take too much work to change.

Yeah, it does feel like it would take a lot. And I've tried things in the past, and I work a lot, and I'm constantly traveling for work, and I just don't have time for it.

And I'm hearing that it must be really challenging because, first of all, it takes a lot of work, and you have so much on your plate that you certainly don't have time for it.

Exactly.

That's got to be tough.

It is.

What's hard about it?

Oh, God. Man, I can't hide from you, Dr. K. I feel like I'm letting you down because I know you would like me to do something about it, and I'm tired of you nagging me about it. And I I don't feel like you understand how hard it is for me.

It must be incredibly frustrating to have me nagging you all the time, riding your ass, expecting more of you.

It is.

Yeah. Can you tell me a little It's really good. Can you say a little bit about how long you felt that way?

Wow. A long time. This is really good because what I'm experiencing, even though I'm stepping in the shoes of somebody, is I'm experiencing This sensation that I can't escape the truth.

And you're speaking. You're talking about your conflict. You're articulating your difficulty.

Yes.

That's what we lean into. If I come at you and you say, I'm nagging you, and then I say, Yeah, that's got to be hard. So I don't say, It's for a good reason. We default to, It's for a good reason. It's because I love you. We got to do it because of X, Y, Z. I mean, beautiful words. And by the way, that's a very real conversation. People were listening. I'm sure they felt it, right? Because that's what it's like, you don't realize how hard I work. Oh, my God. Powerful statement, especially in a relationship.

What are you looking for in terms of the moment where it breaks open, or are you not even looking for that? You just want somebody to- We're halfway there already.

We are? Absolutely, right? Because now we're talking about your difficulty. So now I ask you, it's got to be so hard to do this, too, because you're doing this, you're doing this. I'm riding on your ass. That must be so difficult. What's that like? And we keep on digging in because here's the problem. When our mind has difficulties, we try to push them away. We try to conquer them. But there's a very simple A simple principle of psychology, which is that that which stays within the mind will grow over time. So what do we know is that when someone gets traumatized, they keep it on the inside and it compounds, it expands over time. So what's our treatment for trauma? Anything that you vent from the mind will decrease in the mind. The energy of it literally goes away. So when we do therapy for people and we're talking about how hard it is to struggle with alcohol, how hard it is to to go to the gym, all of that difficulty almost gets vented. It's bizarre. We come to accept it for what it is. Instead of trying to conquer it, instead of wishing it was a different way, it is hard.

Being married to me is difficult now. And I am admitting that, too. That's not usually what we do. That's not what parents do. They don't talk to their kids and say, Wow, it must be hard having me as a parent not understanding why you play video games, not understanding why you won't go outside. I don't understand. Same conflict. Exactly the same, that your parent doesn't understand, your husband doesn't understand, your wife doesn't understand. So start by engaging in understanding. Start by repairing this. Start by helping me who is nagging you understand. And one side I understand, and once you feel like I understand, then you will actually listen to me.

And what do you say to somebody once it gets to that point where you've had this realization as the nigger, right? That, holy cow, it's got to be difficult to be you. How do you open the door for how can I help you? Or what do you need, or do you even want to do something about this?

Very good, right? You did a beautiful thing in your mind. I don't know if you noticed this, but you rolled back where you were heading. So how can I help you presumes that you want help. And you ended up with, do you even want to do something about this? So that's the beautiful thing. So if I jump to how can I help, we haven't realized, we haven't agreed that you want help. Now I ask you point blank, do you want to change this? And then the person much more likely to say yes, and now you have done it. Because now they used to say no, now they're saying yes. I do want to do something about it. Now the motivation is coming from them. So instead of pushing them, you create a vacuum. And anytime you create a vacuum, there's a negative space, and they will be pulled into that space. That's the big thing that we don't understand about cultivating motivation in other people. We need to give them space, not push. Any time I push a human being, they will resist. That is human psychology. Psychology 101. That's why we do this reverse psychology and stuff like that.

You'll see it in your kids. Put on your jacket, then put on your shoes. No. I want to put on my shoes, then I want to put on my jacket. We want to flip it around. Which one do you want to put on first?

You're a genius.

I don't know if I'm a genius. I've had teachers who are geniuses.

So what is it, if you had to summarize it, Dr. K, that really keeps us stuck?

I'd say the main thing that keeps us stuck is that we are controlled by our mind. So then if the mind wants to go this way in one day, and it's not stuck, it is moving back and forth.

Say that again, because we do use the word I feel stuck, I feel stuck, but you're saying that's actually the wrong word, and it's inaccurate. Yes.

So a lot of times, when I work with people who are stuck in life. So they'll say, I'm stuck and I have no motivation. This is incorrect. It's not that you have no motivation. It's that you have a very powerful motivation to not move. So if you try to move, what happens? A pile of resistance arises within you that has been dormant. And it says, Don't go outside. Let it go. Don't pick the fight. Walk on eggshells. Don't piss off your boss. Just fucking stay there. Stay seated. Don't do anything. That's powerful motivation. It's not a lack of motivation. And now I think that my cup is empty when it's actually full and I keep on adding water to it and it spills all over the place because I misdiagnosed the problem. Proper treat development comes from proper diagnosis.

So for anybody that's stuck, the first thing you just revealed is you're actually not stuck. You're highly motivated. You're in conflict. And what is the next thing you need to do? If you don't want to stay in that conflict with yourself, where I'm motivated not to make waves, I'm motivated not to go to the gym, I'm motivated to not try to fix this thing and just stay pissed off where I am, what is the next thing once you realize, Oh, wait a minute. I'm not stuck. I'm in this highly negative motivated place.

So the beautiful thing is that everyone assumes there's a next thing.

Uh-oh.

So science even tells us, and this is what the yogis tell us, that awareness precedes control. So technically, all you need to do is be aware of the conflict. So if you look at the actual... I know people are going to not believe this.

Everyone's like, Dr. K, I don't want to know this. Okay, keep going.

So we're aware- We're going to give you neuroscience research to back this up. Okay, let's hear it. So awareness, technically, all you need is awareness. So let's understand the experience of someone who is stuck, okay? So you want to do something and something arises within you. You get caught off guard, right? This is a positive thing. This would make me feel good. I went on this date. I don't even feel good about myself. I'm lonely. Let me go out and make friends. I go outside. Now I'm socially anxious. I don't want to be here. I'm burnt out. I'm an introvert. Let me go back home. So we're just getting ping-ponged around by ourselves. And we dilute ourselves into thinking that going out is going to fix our loneliness. We don't think about how it's just going to increase my social anxiety. This is what stuckness is. It's a lot of irrelevant movement. So awareness is the most important thing. And this is what we see in motivational. This is what I see in patience. See, once you understand something, then the body and the brain will act normally. The whole problem is that when we focus on addictions, for example, we focus on insight.

We focus on helping people understand what is the consequence of your addiction. It is an internal understanding. So if I ask you, Mel, if you touch a hot pan and you get burned, you understand that this causes pain. Yes. The problem is that for many of our behaviors, we don't actually have a good understanding of what the consequences are. We're confused because we're like, why Why do I keep drinking? Why do I never go to the gym? This causes me suffering. But the reason you keep doing it is because you're fucking motivated to do it because of something else that you are ignorant of. So everything that we do is driven by our motivation, and we are ignorant of that fact. So awareness is technically enough. There's also a really fascinating study about the anterior cingulate cortex, which shows that what we perceive as willpower, technically in the brain, this is going to sound confusing, is monitoring of conflict. So anytime our brain is monitoring a conflict, this is the same thing as willpower. We think about willpower as overcoming a conflict, but technically, if you look at it, the part of the brain that exerts willpower is a monitoring of conflict.

And I know this sounds weird, but I want everyone who's listening to really pay attention to this. I want you to really think about this. When you are trying to exert willpower, there is a struggle. In the moment that you fail, you stop paying attention to the conflict. If you really pay attention, you will find that as long as you are conflicted, the willpower is active. That's why you're conflicted. But the moment that you give up, the moment the willpower wins or loses, the conflict disappears.

So the only way that you can actually increase your willpower is by forcing yourself to do things that make you stay in conflict. So if you If you force yourself to go to the gym today, if you force yourself to not have a drink at happy hour, if you force yourself to sit in the stacks in the library and study chemistry for two hours, even though you don't want to, even though it's hard, even though it's painful, I think about this when I climb into the ice barrel, I hate doing it. I feel that conflict that you're talking about in my body and brain as I'm walking to the barrel, as I'm taking off my sweatshirt, as I'm stepping into the icy cold water. I freaking hate it. And the conflict itself and that wrestling with it is what's making you stronger. Isn't that right?

That is willpower. So let's stop and think about your experience. You're walking, walking, conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict.

Well, the second I think about it, I'm like, I got to do this thing today. It begins there. It begins like an hour before I even do the damn thing.

And so then you're monitoring the conflict, monitoring the conflict, monitoring the conflict. And as long as you're monitoring... So notice that even in your For example, you didn't decide to go in. Do you see that?

What do you mean? No.

So you said, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And then you get in. Technically, what most people perceive, I know this is so weird, Most people perceive that, okay, you make a decision, and then you're calm, and then you go do the thing. That's not what happens. No. You're conflicted, conflicted, conflicted until it happens. You don't make a decision. You're just monitoring the conflict, monitoring conflict, monitoring conflict, and then the thing happens.

I just got something. I think for my whole life, I have looked at people that have discipline and willpower as people who can calmly, without any conflict, walk up to an ice barrel and calmly sit in, or who can Like, calmly, see that it's raining outside or hailing and still go for that run. And I think that willpower means that they somehow can do these things that are very difficult without any internal friction. What you just taught me, Dr. Okay. As you just taught us, no, willpower is conflict and the ability to stay in it.

Yes. So once you have an understanding of something, then it's easy to do the right thing or not do the right thing. So I work with people who are addicted, right? So they'll say for the first couple of years, it's hard. And oftentimes, they'll have a moment where they have this flash of insight. And this is a very common experience for people. Oh, now I get it. This is no longer difficult. Now I get it. This is no longer difficult. Now I get it. This is It's no longer difficult. That's what we should be cultivating, understanding. Because once the brain truly understands the risk-benefit ratio, once it understands the consequences of your actions... I have patients, for example, who have to eat a particular diet, otherwise they get constipated. And at some point, they recognize the constipation is not worth the dietary choices I make. This is just better for me. And this is what I see when it comes to eating healthy, going to the gym. It is about cultivating understanding because then the behavior will flow naturally. So What are the ways in which we can cultivate understanding? So there's one big mistake that most human beings make, which is not dwelling after an action is completed.

And that's a mistake? That's a mistake.

Okay. So we need to be doing is sitting with the consequences of our actions, whether they're good or bad. This is the other thing that we don't do, very common in imposter syndrome, by the way, is we don't sit with the positive outcomes. So when you do something well, when you get an A, you don't sit down for 15 minutes on a park bench and think to yourself, What did I do to get to this point? How did I get this A? What do I need to improve? What should I be grateful for? Because for a lot of people who are very successful, it's constantly moving goal posts. There's no sense of gratitude. There's no sense of resting. And this is why everyone's so burnt out. Because no matter how much you get, you have to do better. You got a million followers on Instagram, now you need two million. You got a two million, you never give yourself a pat on the back. It's always the next thing. It's always the next promotion. We never sit with the consequences of our actions.

Why is this important?

Because there's research that shows that giving your brain time to mull on the consequences of your actions, you don't even need to come to a conclusion or anything like that. This is what's super cool about it. Just giving your brain space to process, reinforces the behavior in the positive direction, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. If it's a negative behavior, it'll reduce. If it's a positive behavior, it'll increase.

So let's put this into a normal person's life, okay? Okay. So let's use the example of you are focusing on just taking I'm going to take a walk for 30 minutes a day, two day, not worrying about being consistent, not worrying about doing it for 30 days in a row. I'm going to focus on today. I'm going to take a 30-minute walk. If we do the walk, what do you want us to do in terms of to Dwell on what we just did.

So for two or three minutes, sit after you're done with the walk, or even stop halfway. You don't have to do at the end. Say, How do we feel about this? Was this a good thing? Was this a bad thing? What was hard about it? Just sit and you're just notice that behavior and let whatever thoughts come, come. And the beautiful thing is, if you do that, you'll say, It was difficult to do, but I'm really glad I did it. And that's where you get behavioral reinforcement. That's when you have an understanding this was worth it.

Let's say the converse happens. You said, Today, I'm going to find time to update my resume because that's what I'm saying I'm going to do. And then the day goes by and you catch yourself at the At the end of the day and you've been scrolling for two hours, and now you're in that mode where you beat yourself up and you're about to get back in that stuck mode. How do we use dwelling to help us wake up tomorrow and follow through?

See, Great question. So now what we want to do is, when I say dwelling, I mean awareness. So if you trigger your mental habits of beating yourself up, you're not actually learning. You're just going through a mental habit of shame and beating yourself up. Repeating that mental habit is not awareness. It's actually the exact opposite. It's autopilot. So anytime you have a failure, the mind has a tendency to trigger autopilot. Shame, self-blame, blaming other people. If you're a narcissist, you're going to blame other people. So we have these mental habits, so we're not actually aware. So what I encourage you to do is if you had a goal for the day that you didn't hit, stop for a second. Let's think, okay, what do you think about this goal? Was this reasonable to do? Where does the desire for this goal come from? What got in the way? And we know this from business perspectives. In medicine, we literally have something called an autopsy, where we sit and we have a postmortem and we look at what went wrong, what went right. This gets applied in the business world, but we don't do this in our personal lives.

We default to, I should have done this. Next time, let me fix it. Don't even jump to fixing it. That's too far. Hold on a second. Take a big step back. Was this reasonable in the first place? Because when we jump automatically to fixing it, we are not acknowledging that hungry part of ourself that wants to be better. And so in that wanting signs us up for unreasonable things. So I want to work on the resume. I want that to be done. I want it to be finished. Why do I want it to be finished? Because I'm tired of having this hang over my head. I see. So your motivation to finish the resume is running away from negativity. If your motivation is running away from negativity and you sit down and work at your resume, is it joyful? Are you having a blast? No, that induces negativity. So now we're ping-ponging between negativity and negativity. And then something beautiful will happen as you go through this awareness process, you look at this and then you realize in your mind, Okay, there's no way to win this because it's all negative. So now I have a choice.

Do I want to be negative for one day, or do I want to be negative every day until this gets done? And then they will finish the resume. It'll happen so naturally, it'll happen so effortlessly. And so many people understand this, that if you really look at your life, there are things that are hard for you, but one day it becomes easy. One day your mind just understands Oh, my God, this is idiotic. This relationship is not working. And then we default to self-blame there, too. So it's awareness. Hold on a second. Notice your reactions to things. Don't even try to steer yourself a particular way. And the more that we notice our reactions, the more that they melt away.

And the more your resistance to doing what needs to get done melts away and the obvious rises to the top.

That is detachment. The resistance to the difficult thing, because if we think about what is resistance, it is being attached to the opposite. So I resist going to the gym because I'm attached to not feeling embarrassed because everyone else is in shape. So it is my attachment to feeling embarrassment. I don't want to feel. It's the avoidance of the negative thing is what I'm attached to. So I can't do the correct behavior.

What you're teaching us to do is to tap into the deeper wiring and mechanism of the brain and the body to have it help us move toward the things that we want to feel in our life and that we want to be doing in our lives. Instead of being in a constant state of conflict, conflict with ourselves and feeling out of control. I got so much out of this, and I would love for you to speak directly to the person listening. There are so many things that you taught us today and made us think about differently. But if there was one action or one thing that rises to the top that you would want the person to really put into action in their life, what would it be if you speak directly to Here's what I'd say.

We are way too obsessed, and chances are you're way too obsessed with fixing things. You want your life to be different. You're saying, This needs to change, this needs to change, this needs to change. But that's only one part of you. There's another part of you that doesn't want things to be different, that wants to stay at home, that wants to hit the snooze button, that doesn't want to ever go on a date again. And if you want to master your life, you need to take control of all parts of you. You need to understand all parts of you. And we spend way too much time trying to fix our problems without even understanding where did this come from? How does this manifest? How does it affect me? So spend a little bit more time or a lot more time with yourself understanding your conflict. Don't even try to fix your problems. Just understand them. Where does this come from? What is the experience of this in my life? In a moment to moment, what does my struggle actually look like? Where does my drive to change come from? Because a lot of that crap is societal conditioning and trying to keep up with the Joneses and all this stuff, too.

And just spend time with yourself and understanding yourself. Because the more that you understand yourself, the more you will understand, here's where the gas pedal is, here's where the break is, here's where the steering wheel is. But without spending... See, we're looking at what everyone else is doing. We're looking out the windshield, and we're seeing everybody else driving their car, and we're not even looking inside our own car. And then we wonder, why does our car keep on getting into a wreck? Why doesn't it go where other people's car goes? I can see it moving forward. How do I get it there? So start with understanding yourself. And once you understand yourself because you are a unique human being with a unique set of levers that control your emotions and your behaviors and motivations and all that stuff. And you're trying to use other people's answer for your unique genetics, your unique circumstances, your unique karma. And instead, understand yourself first. Just spend some time paying attention. That's the one thing that needs to change. And if that changes, then you will be amazed at how easy everything else will... It'll be like dominoes, where once you understand yourself, then a lot of things will start going positive in your life.

Fuck, yes. Oh, my God. I feel so encouraged, Dr. K. Dr. K, what are your parting words?

Wow. Okay. I would say... So this is what I would say. I think the biggest mistake The biggest take that most people make right now is that their shortcomings are manufactured. That you can have an objectively bad situation in life. I'm not saying that that's the case. But the biggest take is there's the actual problem, and there's the crap that you do to yourself because of the problem. Now, one of those things is actually in your control, and one of them is out of your control. The tragedy of life is that we get them confused. So I can't control whether I get into medical school, but I can control whether I beat myself up. And what is it that actually determines my success in life? It's not whether I get into medical school, it's whether I beat myself up. And that's the only thing that we can control, because for medical school, someone else needs to agree. To get someone to marry me, someone else needs to agree. I can't control the world. I can just control myself. And we're so busy trying to control the world instead of controlling ourselves that we end up shooting ourselves in the foot because we're controlling something that's uncontrollable.

And then no wonder we're ashamed. No wonder we're behind. Because I'm trying to drive somebody else's car. It's impossible. It's crazy. So spend more time focusing on what you do to yourself.

I think my heart just broke a little because when you really put it that way, that we are obsessed with fixing all these manufactured problems, like trying to keep up with other people or trying to drive other people's car, and we end up just spending so much time beating ourselves up And that you said it so beautifully, that if you only really looked at that one thing, you can control whether or not you beat yourself up. You cannot control whether those people are going to hire you for that job, or whether even the weight is going to fall off, or whether You will go 70 days or 700 days or 70 years never having alcohol. You cannot control what other people are going to do, but you can truly wake up every day and just focus on the actions that you take which are in your control. You apply again. You apply to the next job. You go to the gym again. You make a plan to go to that party tonight and have a non-alcoholic beer. Then you also can control Whether or not you beat yourself up during the process.

Absolutely.

And how much would your life fucking change if you simply were able to focus on the actions and not be so hard on yourself? Dr. K, it has just been really amazing to spend time with you today.

Yeah, you're amazing at synthesizing information. I'm truly impressed.

Thank you. My head is just fucking spinning right now. I know I don't need to go do anything. I'm just in the moment with you. I'm getting really choked up because I really hope that as you're listening, that you take this to heart, because what I see in everything That's the thing that you're talking about is how much pain we cause ourselves because we just don't know where the gas pedal is, where the break is, where the wheel is. And these things, when you explain it and you go deep, but then you rise up and learn, No, no, no, no, this is what you can do. It just feels so dumb that we are hurting ourselves this way because we don't know.

Yeah. I think I get choked up, too, because I see the real tragedy of this is that it's avoidable. Yes. That's the real tragedy.

Yes. Well, the real gift is that you're helping us see it so we can avoid it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you for being here with us. And please share this with people that you love. Dr. K will make a huge difference in their life. If you got something out of this, please hit subscribe. That tells us that you loved it. Please check out Dr. K's channel and his book. And in case nobody else tells you, I wanted to be sure to I'll tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take everything that you learned today and put it to use to help you create a more meaningful life. All right, I'll talk to you in a few days. And for you sitting here watching with me on YouTube, I just want to say, please share this with somebody. Don't just sit and watch. Please do something. Take a minute and subscribe to this channel because it's really a way that you can support me in bringing you new videos every single sure you're looking for something really inspiring to watch, to really move you.

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