- So I was watching this Woody Allen film called "Hannah and Her
Sisters," and in the movie, there's this scene where Michael
Kane's character, Elliot, is sitting at the dinner
table with his wife, Hannah. Now, Elliot is completely
emotionally detached, he is disturbed, and that's
because he's been having an affair with his wife's sister. Shocking stuff, I know. But this scene really got me thinking about the way in which a lot
of us live our entire lives, hopefully not by having affairs
with our wife's sisters, but what I mean is that
we do certain things or leave certain things undone in the past that continue to eat
away at us subconsciously in the present. And a lot of the time, we
do this so compulsively that we don't even know
that we're doing it. We just see it as normal,
we don't know anything else, yet we're living a lower
quality of life because of it. Every single thing that we do, every single conversation that we have is infected by the things that we've left usually undone in the past. And I think this is the
most insidiously toxic thing about escapism and procrastination, and that is because of something I like to call mental air time. When we haven't yet done what
we know we're supposed to do and we have a tendency
to put these things off every single day, then we
exist in a mental framework where we are a person who
hasn't yet done the thing that we're supposed to do. And over a long period of time, this really changes how we
feel about our entire lives, because no matter what we're doing, no matter what kind of
conversation we're having, no matter how special the person we're having that conversation with is, we are subconsciously tainted by the fact that we are not where
we're supposed to be, we are not being who we're supposed to be. And we live our entire lives like this emotionally disturbed with
this feeling of anxiety that's just always there
because of our chronic escapism. People don't talk about
procrastination this way, it's nuts, because when we procrastinate,
it's not just the thing that we're supposed to do that suffers, everything else suffers as well because we're not present with it, we don't have the mental
capacity to enjoy it. Anything good in our lives
is infected with this feeling like it's not good enough,
we're not supposed to be here because there's that other thing that we're supposed to be doing. And the weird thing is, it's not like we're never
going to do that thing, we usually end up doing it. Usually the deadline comes closer, the repercussions for not
doing it grows scarier and more acute, so we eventually guilt ourselves
into eventually doing it so that we can repeat that
cycle every single day for the rest of our lives. But what's crazy is since
we end up doing it anyways, there's great utility to
just changing the order in which we do things. We can escape and do all of
the other bullshit later, but if we could find a way to do the the most important
thing that we need to do earlier in the day, then we could change the
entire narrative of our lives. We could change the way
we feel about ourselves, about our capability to solve problems. And the theme of our lives that's echoing through our subconscious becomes, oh yes, I can play video
games, I can watch this movie, I can enjoy this conversation, because I've already done the
thing that I'm supposed to do. So how do we do it? That's
the golden question. Well, knowing what it's
doing to us is great and I think this will help
you get some motivation to just do the damn thing,
but when push comes to shove, this is an irrational problem. I can give you all the
rationality in the world but when you're faced with the crossroads of watching this funny
little YouTube video versus writing a research paper, something other than logic takes over. Your monkey brain kind of
bullies your rational brain into coming up with a rationalization to justify some suboptimal behavior. So the answer can't be logical. It has to be an emotional tactic and I think that tactic is submission. - Submission. You know, that's a bit of a problem. - Nobody talks about this word submission in a productivity context. They talk about it in other contexts but we're not gonna get
into those other contexts. That's not what this channel's about. What I mean by submission,
it is a feeling of melting into what you're supposed to be doing. It's not increasing the
tension in your body to try to fight and
bully your monkey brain into doing what your more logical side of your brain wants it to do. No, it's acknowledging that doing what you're
supposed to do feels difficult, it's feeling that tension
that's stopping you from doing that thing,
and letting go of it, and doing the thing anyways. We need to get good at
shutting the brain off, stopping the chatter of
rationalization and escapism, reduce the tension in our body, take a deep breath, and just do the thing. We can think about all the
rationalizations afterwards. But submitting to what you already know you're supposed to be doing is less of a psychological feeling, it's more of a physiological feeling. And again, this might sound very woo-woo, but if you've ever tried
to take cold showers or go cliff jumping with your friends, it's the same feeling. You almost submit to the discomfort. If you're standing there
at the edge of the cliff and you don't want to jump, even though you know it's perfectly safe, it's a very steep drop
off, very deep water, nothing could happen to you. You almost need to just
submit to the gravity. Same thing with cold showers. If you already know you're going to enter into the cold shower and
feel very uncomfortable, the only way that you're
gonna get in there is if you just walk in. You stop the chatter, you stop thinking. The mind is corrosive. It'll try to figure out all
these different little ways to weasel out of it and
you don't end up doing it. It's like if you already know
this is what you must do, relax your body and submit to it. And while you're in the cold shower, it feels so much colder if
you maintain this resistance, if you try to fight the cold, if you tense up your body and you try to convince
yourself to power through it. It's so much better if you
just concentrate on the cold, you fully submit to it,
you fully focus on it, and you accept the fact that it's cold, and then it ceases to be so cold. You're allowing yourself to
relax into this discomfort, and it actually feels quite
euphoric when you do that. I think this is the key
to stop procrastinating. I think this is the key to make better decisions in the moment. You've already heard the logical reasons as to why you should do the thing that you're supposed to do. You know that your life
will be dramatically better if the majority of the time
you spend here on this Earth, you exist in a head space
where you have already done the most important thing
that you need to do. You already know that
this is so good for you. The only step now is
when you're confronted with the crossroads is to
just turn the brain off, to submit to what you're supposed to do. It's like submitting to the
highest version of yourself and you start to develop trust that that highest version of yourself has your best interest in mind. So if you are now motivated and excited to submit to your destiny
and you want further reading or other resources that
will help you do that, then I highly recommend the audiobook, "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller, which is an audiobook I frequently revisit using today's video sponsor, Audible, because that book really talks about a lot of the things that I
talked about in this video. It's about distilling
down all of these things that you have to do into
this important thing and it helps you tackle doing this thing as early as possible so that you can live the rest of your day having already done this thing and having that very narrative
change your entire life. And for those of you who don't know, Audible is the leading
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