Motivation Psychology | Healthy Gamer Webinar #1

all righty let's get started so okay oh my goodness alright let's get started let me see if there's some I need to record so welcome guys to the first official healthy gamer webinar so we're gonna be so this webinar is gonna be a little bit about what I call the science of the self so what I mean by that is that we don't usually learn how we work right so there are a lot of like principles about how human beings function whether it be neuroscience or psychology or yoga or meditation like what we learned from Buddhism or things like that and so we're kind of going through life without understanding like the mechanics or how to use the controller or like the mouse and keyboard for like who we are alright so where did desires come from where does ego come from how does behavior work how does motivation work like no one ever teaches us these things how do you learn how to concentrate how do you focus your mind on one thing had like you know what is the nature of procrastination so this webinar is actually designed to offer you guys sort of a comprehensive answer to a lot of those questions and the structure of the webinar is going to be as follows so every day we're gonna do yoga for about 10 minutes so I'm about to shift my camera and we're gonna do something called Surya Namaskar the next and then each day we're gonna have a 30 to 40 minute lecture and today's lecture is going to be about motivation and how motivation works where it comes from what's the neuroscience of motivation how to create motivation in your life which is actually incorrect it's really about unlocking or redirecting motivation and then we're gonna have about 10 to 15 minutes for Q&A and we're gonna end with meditation so my goal here is to give you guys kind of a chance to start your day off right during kovat and because everyone's gonna be at home and stuff like that so how can we sort of behaviorally anchor you to doing something like properly on a daily basis how you learn something how can we make it concrete how can we make it comprehensive so I encourage all of you guys to not just watch but to participate in you know the yoga that we're about to do so the first thing that we're going to do is something called Surya namaskara and Surya namaskara is the Sanskrit phrase for Sun Salutation so it's a sequence of yoga poses that is designed to kind of start your day off so you're supposed to do it like in the morning like facing the sunrise ideally and what I like about the Surya Namaskar is that it's kind of like a complete set of yoga poses that you can kind of stick with so when I first started learning yoga back in 2003 you know Surya Namaskar actually even before 2003 like when I was a kid and I would go to like Sunday school like Surya Namaskar were the poses that they taught us at the age of 10 and then I went to India and you know started learning I mean relearn Surya Musco and then learned all this advanced yoga and basically now my main yoga practice is like back to pseudonymous car because it's kind of a complete sort of yoga practice and so what so want one or two preparatory things about the suit in a mosque are so the first is that the goal of yoga is not to become a human pretzel so the goal of yoga is not to stretch as much as possible or increase your flexibility Yoga is actually a preparatory practice or Ahsan which are yoga postures or preparatory practices for meditation so the goal of yoga is actually to prepare your mind for meditation or even enter a premeditative state so what do I mean by that so what that means is that when you guys are doing this practice what I want you to notice is what your mind is doing so the goal of these postures is to stress you out enough so that your your mind cannot wander so the reason that the practices are difficult is because your your brain is going to be your somatosensory cortex which is the part of your brain that you know gives you information about your body is going to be sending you so many signals that you're not going to be able to have your mind wander right so if we think about when does the mind wander the mind wanders when we are physically relaxed so if you're physically stressed out it's actually very hard for the mind to wander and if you have a physical demand then the mind is going to focus on that thing so the goal of yoga practice I want you guys to find the point in the yoga practice so if I tell you know for example bend down and touch your toes the goal is not to actually touch your toes the goal is to go down as far as you can to the point that your mind is focused on touching your toes okay yeah I know you guys are so some of y'all are in the EU and things like that so you know hopefully if y'all are here live that's fantastic so do yoga in the middle of the day and yeah so we're gonna go ahead and start [Music] [Music] we're gonna do three so we're gonna start so start by putting your hands this guys can still hear me okay so start by putting your hands so put your feet together and stand up straight and your angles should be touching so you don't want your feet spread apart you want two right next to each other and then place your hands in front of you like this close your eyes and notice that when you close your eyes you be can begin to be unstable that's the first step right if you open your eyes stability returns and then go ahead and close your eyes again and instability returns so just feel that instability focus on stabilization and notice that your mind focuses as soon as the instability returns open your eyes is instability goes away the mind becomes free once again and then go ahead and close your eyes feel that instability and now we'll begin the practice of subió Namaskar so the first step is to raise your hands hands above your head you can open your eyes now and go ahead and let your biceps touch your ears so the goal here is to keep your biceps touching your ears and that's really the posture that you want and just go ahead and feel this for a second feel the stretch in your back the pull excellent go ahead and feel that as you hold it you may begin to quaint a little bit that's perfectly okay and now we're going to go down to step two which is to touch your toes now in this posture we're gonna have to be very careful because the goal actually is not to touch your toes the goal is to hang your head and hang your body down and I want you guys to notice that there's tightness maybe in the back of your legs or in your back or even in your neck and now what I want you to do is let gravity pull you forward let gravity pull you forward keep your legs straight let your head hang and we're just gonna hang like this for a second you notice all the sensations that arise in your body your body's like hey man what are we doing why are we doing this then notice go ahead and come up a little bit and then notice how it's easier and as you go down let your your body hang let your head hang hold that for a second and now we're gonna do step three so what I want you guys to do is put your palms face down right next to your feet so you're kind of squatting right so you're pop the palms of your hands or face like touching the ground just like your feet you may feel a little bit of a stretch and I want you to take your right leg and put it back behind you like this so as you look down you should be able to see actually so as you look down I see that as you look down you should be able to see you know your palms and your your left foot in a straight line your knee is gonna kind of be in your next to your shoulder and then you got this this stretch in the back and notice that you can maybe move your leg up or down a little bit and it kind of enhances the stretch you can kind of go down and lean into it right and then you can kind of go up and just hold that for a second now put the other leg back okay and now we're gonna kind of enter push-up position and hold this for a moment notice it and then we're gonna lay down on the floor and this part is gonna be a little bit weird so what I want you guys to do is I want your toes on the floor knees on the floor hip like butt in the air so you're a hips up it's not touching the floor chest touching the floor you don't want your belly touching the floor and the last thing is for that so you're kind of touching the floor on four points forehead chest knees and toes and that's going to create like notice what happens if you just like lay your head like this you're relaxed as you touch your forehead to the floor notice what happens to the back of your neck next what we're going to do is when I move our hips to the floor and we're gonna push up so I'm going to show you guys this way okay so we're not going to do it and actually push up but your hips stay on the floor and you just want to bend your torso upward so your knees your elbow should be raised I want your shoulders rolled out so don't go like this don't go like shoulders out elbows out is fine and feel that stretching your back feel that stretch and now what we're gonna do is push up and then butts in the air and I want you guys to form a triangle form a triangle with your kind of with your body so palms face down once again your head should be kind of aligned with your biceps or even maintained and then the last thing that I want to do if you guys really want to feel a nice stretch put your heels to the ground so try to keep your toes on the ground and try to flatten your feet and notice what happens when you try to flatten your feet you'll feel fuel a beautiful stretch in your cap and just focus on that sensation and now what we're going to do is return back to a previous post so now I want you to take your right leg and put it forward okay so now that these that your two hands and the right leg are kind of in a line and feel that stretch in your hips and then just kind of feel that for a second and now back up to touching your toes let your head hang and then up and then back to the start okay we're going to do one more round so go ahead and relax for a second notice what your body is doing like your body's kind of like waking up right it's kind of feeling a little bit more take a deep breath now we're gonna do one more round we're gonna do this one quicker okay palms in front of you feet together and then up biceps to the ears and then down touching your toes remember keep your legs straight back bent let gravity pull you down notice the stretch in your legs as gravity pulls you down and then right leg back and then look up so right leg back left foot and two hands in the line and then other leg back so we're going to kind of be in push-up position feel that for a moment go down so toes knees chest and forehead feel that stretch in your neck and now push up hips to the ground back bent shoulders out knees I mean elbows bent feel that stretch and then they'll look up ooh my favorite awesomes it's called Bruijn awesome awesome so feel that - I guess part of my thoughts on mountain pose or a downward facing dog I think is what people call it nowadays and so remember put your make a triangle with your butt in the air and then put your your heels into the ground feel that stretch in your calf now right leg forward okay look up feel that stretch yeah it's good and then other leg forward let yourself move down let gravity do the work for you don't push it hands up biceps to the elbow and then back to Center okay what do you guys you guys want to do one more let's check in I have lied okay let's do okay well we'll start with two so we'll do three tomorrow okay so let's switch gears okay how was that okay too fast all right one more okay we're gonna just start with we're gonna start with two okay so I want you guys so some people may have difficulty with that because it's like you know it's kind of new for your body so we're gonna start with two don't worry guys well we'll work our ways up okay well patience okay lesson number one is patience patience so let's give everyone I know you guys wanted you could hey you know this is kind of interesting did you guys know that you can do this on your own that you don't need dr. kay to teach you fascinating so if you guys want to do one more go for it or do it on your own time or you can start with three in the morning we're gonna do three tomorrow okay so we're gonna over time gradually build up our have people are sweating so people are having a different kind of response to this which is perfectly okay but what I really want to do is get to I want to be a little bit mindful of our time so we're gonna get to the lecture cuz that's good - okay all right oh no devices connected there we go okay so you can have a little bit of water and just notice how you feel for a second okay all right so next what we're going to do is we're going to start our lecture so we're going to start talking about motivation okay all right so let me just get set up I feel like my arms are too short oh yeah you will discover all kinds of things about your arms and body when you do yoga okay so let's just start this testing testing testing okay all right so let's go ahead and switch so today [Music] we're gonna talk about motivation so let's start with this this over here okay so how are we gonna understand motivation okay so the first thing that I want to share with you guys is that we're going to talk about motivation okay so the first thing is we're going to talk a little bit about our approach and how this seminar is structured so the first thing is that I want us to draw on a couple of sources of information the first is going to be observation so rather than rely on science or what we know or what we've read we're actually going to focus on observation so we're gonna develop hypotheses and we're gonna make observations about ourself and see if we can uncover things about motivation to better understand how it works the second source of knowledge that we're going to rely on is actually like the yogic or meditative tradition so this is kind of where I learned a lot of this stuff and what I mean by that is that you know Yogi's like basically we're experts at observing the self and through observing the self they made certain observations or conclusions and that's going to be a lot of what we draw on the third thing that we're gonna draw on is neuroscience and I know I just said we're not gonna rely on science but what I mean by that is that I don't want you guys when when I'm asking you a question I don't want your answer to be what you've read I want it to be what you've experienced because here's the thing out like reading something right so you can read a book that explains to you how alcoholism works in the brain and that doesn't necessarily change your ability to control whether you have a drink or not so what's more important than what experts say is what you discover about yourself okay and this is going to be true this segment is gonna be true for basically every part of the webinar that we do that the most important thing is what do you observe or what do you experience and if it's contrary to what the most brilliant neuroscientist says that's fine forget about the neuroscience because you've got to deal with you okay so that's just kind of a quick kind of background about how this is structured okay so now our discussion on motivation is going to have four segments the first segment is do we really lack motivation so we're gonna spend a few minutes talking about you know what's the actual problem like what's going on here like how like what is motivation do we really lack it how do we determine that we lack it or not and the second thing that we're gonna ask is how does motivation work so once we define our problems so this is defining our problem okay this is going to be like understanding or problem the next thing is what does this mean for us right so this is applying you know our understanding of things to us and the fourth thing is what do we do about it right so this is kind of actions or moving forward and this is what everyone everyone wants number four but we're gonna take our time in getting there okay because I think jumping straight to solution actually isn't as important as you know really understanding what the problem is so let's start with number one okay so do you lack motivation so let's just think a little bit about motivation so people tend to say that okay like especially in kind of Gen Z Millennials right we kind of say oh I lack motivation I don't have any motivation I'm lazy I'm undisciplined whatever so let's just think about that for a second so the first thing is that this is a very very common problem right so lacking motivation is common that's number one so what is that what's the significance of that so the first thing that I want you guys to understand so I'm a physician right so I think about things kind of from a medical standpoint and what I want to share with you guys is that pathology is rare what do I mean by that if we look at actual diseases or things that are broken within people those tend to be rare for example like cancer like not everyone doesn't have cancer like cancer is a rare rare thing and and if you're unlucky it kind of happens to you or someone that you love but generally speaking the body works the way it's supposed to so if there's a common problem I don't actually think of it as a problem if an entire generation of people are facing a common shared problem which is that you know we all lack motivation it's not that we lack motivation it's not actually a problem it's actually the way that we're wired right does that make sense like if everyone shares a particular thing like everyone can use their left and right hand or presumably most people can use their left or right hand and if everyone can do it earth it's a common issue with most people then that's sort of how we're designed so the first thing to understand is that okay how do I there we go okay so the first thing to uncannily that fascinating no problem okay so the first thing no okay so pathology is rare we all we all lack motivation okay so then what this means is that actually our brain makes us unmotivated and I'm sorry guys I'm a doctor which means I have terrible handwriting right so even though we we're using electronic medical records we still have terrible handwriting and so so our brain actually makes us unmotivated and that this isn't actually this is not broken I want you guys to really understand this that your lack of motivation is not a problem it's actually how your brain is wired and so the first thing that this kind of clues us into is if everyone's doing it and it seems to be like really really common then like that's what our brain is designed to do it's how our brain is supposed to be and so like this this I think is really important because the basic reason that I think so many people struggle to fix their motivation is that they're defining the problem incorrectly we're trying to fix something that fundamentally is not broken where our brain is designed a particular way and so you're trying to redesign the function of your brain which is like not possible so instead what you should do is like understand how your brain works and then create a life that sort of uses your brain for you instead of trying to reprogram your brain okay so what do we kind of do with this okay this second thing I'm good [Music] okay there we go so the second thing is do you really Mack lack motivation so let's just think about this for a second are you you motivated so what people usually say is that people usually say like no I'm not motivated and let's think about this for a second so when you wake up every day and you kind of feel bad about yourself and let's say I'm just assuming for a moment that you spend your whole day kind of on social media reddit Instagram YouTube gaming etc like you wake up every day and you feel terrible about yourself so you have all of this like shame and and like all these like you know negative feelings which we hate having and despite having all those negative feelings and suffering we continue to do the same thing so I want you guys to think a little bit about suffering and how suffering motivates us right and if we think about it usually like we try we try very hard to avoid suffering like if I have you know if I go to school and I get bullied and people beat me up everyday like it's really hard for me to go to school and so even if we think about it despite daily suffering we continue in our patterns in our patterns so what that means so usually suffering causes us to change our behavior but what this means is our suffering is actually less than our motivation just think about that for a second right in order for you to continue doing something that causes you so much pain and suffering you actually have to be highly highly motivated to do it so when people tell me oh I have no motivation in life all I want to do is play video games what I really interpret is I have a high high high amount of motivation to play video games all the time it's not that you lack motivation it's that your motivation is pointed in the wrong direction so just think about this for a second how hard is it for you to stop playing video games it can be really really hard and if it's it's really really hard that means you're like highly highly motivated to play video games so let's first understand that the problem isn't that we lack motivation the problem is that our motivation is pointed in the wrong direction and furthermore we don't really think we don't really think about how complicated tasks are and we actually have a lot of different kinds of motivation but this is the main thing to understand so now if we kind of accept this premise and if you guys you know I encourage you to observe yourself and ask yourself do you continue doing a behavior despite it causing you suffering and if the answer is yes that means your motivation circuitry is actually really hardcore geared towards that behavior and so then the question becomes like okay so then then you know why do people struggle to fix it and I think the reason people struggle to fix it is because they conceived of it is a lack of something whereas like it's not that it's a lack of something it's just that that thing is there and and it's pointed in the wrong direction so what people try to do is create motivation instead of shifting motivation and I don't know if you guys realize this but like creating something that already exists is like really really hard but if the problem is not is not that you lack it the problem is that like it's an issue of direction not an issue of like absence or presence and this is the first fundamental mistake that people make right as they try to fix something that isn't broken right your effort is completely wasted because actually your motivation circuitry is intact and you're highly highly motivated you're just motivated towards the wrong thing so instead of making motivation what you really need to do is like learn how to turn the steering wheel and then you're going to be in a far better place so my answer to this question is do you lack motivation my answer is no I actually think that most people in our generation are highly highly motivated did they're just highly motivated in a direction they don't want to be if you think about people who like play tons of video like grind stuff right like they're dedicated to playing 10 hours 12 hours 18 hours a day day after day after day week after week after week you know people who are sort of addicted to social media and are dedicated to making posts and crafting their posts and getting likes and getting follows they're like so dedicated to it they're highly highly motivated and so you know that the answer is do you lack motivation no so let's start there so on to number two okay how does motivation work okay so the first thing is that motivation isn't binary and what I mean by that is if you think about motivation we talk about motivation in a way that is like I lack motivation or I have motivation but that's not actually how motivation works it's not binary right if you think about your day like let's say so I have a I have a glass of water right so I have a glass of water here and if I have a glass of water then you know my motivation to drink it is like one type of motivation my motivation to make money is separate my motivation to work out a separate my motivation to play video games is separate motivation is not one thing there are a thousand different things that calculations that our brain is brain is performing all the time and depending on those calculations we actually engage in the action or we don't engage in the action so that mean is that we have thousands of motivation calculations and why is this an important point so I believe that in order to move forward in life you need to understand and define your problem and this is also something that comes from medicine which is that if you want to appropriately treat a disease you have to appropriately diagnose a disease so I think a big problem that people face is of inappropriate diagnosis so they say I lack motivation but that's not really actionable like you can't flip a switch in your brain to create more motivation and that's why they fundamentally fail because they're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist so of course that's going to lead to failure they're developing treatments with an improper diagnosis so what we have to understand is that motivation is actually a thousand different calculations kind of constantly going on and so let me just kind of put that down so motivation really is an ongoing calculation about likelihood of success this is what motivation is and now we're gonna switch gears for a second okay so application window interesting let's do this then okay so now we're gonna do a little bit of we're gonna take a look at neuroscience okay all right great okay so I want to we're gonna see a little bit about what what this means for us and we're gonna look a little bit at science so this is a paper by actually a good friend of mine dr. Daoud who we trained together and so this is a paper about schizophrenia and I think it's bizarre but one of the best ways to learn about motivation is through studying schizophrenia and why is that so if we want to understand how something works one of the best ways to understand the function of something is to look at cases where it's broken right so if we want to like understand okay how does an engine work if we remove one piece of the engine and the engine no longer turns on we can study the engine and sort of figure out okay what is the role of that one piece does that make sense we want to understand something looking at a broken version actually give us a lot of insight into what you know what is broken and what influence that part has and so why do we look at schizophrenia because in schizophrenia people have two major things going on one is something that we call positive symptoms and this is usually what the media portrays which is that people will sometimes become paranoid or hallucinate or have delusions and we actually have decent medications for that the real problem in schizophrenia is actually something that's better called negative symptoms which are over time people with schizophrenia start to become like really really a motivated so when you kind of think about the quintessential crazy homeless person I'm not trying to be judgmental or anything but a lot of times people with schizophrenia end up in like bad social situations because their motivational drives aren't functioning properly and so what we know from schizophrenia is that that basically like some of their motivational circuitry doesn't work properly so let's just define you know as we look at the paper so what we see from negative symptoms is aspects of schizophrenia include constructs such as a sociality which that what that means is people like are not social a volition a reduction in the motivation to initiate or persist in goal directed behavior this is exactly what we're talking about and anhedonia reduction in the ability to experience pleasure so a volition is something that we see a lot in schizophrenia and I think is a lot you also see it in our generation so let's try to understand how evolution works and so what we're gonna do in this paper is we're really gonna look at this figure okay and the first thing that I want you guys to notice is that the behavioral response is over here and you know when we think about motivation we think about okay no motivation means kind of so the first thing is that no one really appreciates that there's a lot of complicated stuff that goes into a behavioral response that's the first issue right so you guys say oh I'm not motivated I need motivation it's not like a leads to be there's actually a lot of different things that happen in the brain that lead to a behavioral response and create motivation so what we're gonna focus on today so I can run through these so the first thing is hedonics so what that means is how likeable the behavior is so how pleasurable the behavior is the second thing that kind of goes into this input is how much you want it so I want you guys to understand this for a second wanting and liking or two different things okay we oftentimes conflate the two but there are actually completely different circuits in the brain your desires and pleasure are actually different things even though they're they're tightly related reinforcement through reinforcement learning through reward is dopaminergic and this is wanting and actually enjoying something is different anyway we're not gonna go too much into that what I really want to focus on is this stuff so the first thing is that our brain is constantly performing a cost-benefit analysis and what that means is that we're like int we're taking in new information we're computing some kind of like we're performing a computation and then based on like new information in a computation that we're doing we construct a plan and then it leads to a behavioral response okay so what does that mean so we're gonna kind of go back to all right so my point and kind of diving into that neuroscience for a second is simply that let's hold on okay my screen there just got restart my screen mirroring there we go [Music] so now going back to this okay so what does this mean for us so the main thing to understand is that motivation is not binary and that actually there's a constant calculation that's going in our in our brain about what we should do and what we should not do so if I think about like drinking a glass of water you know right now I don't feel like drinking the glass of water and my brain is performing a calculation as my sodium level rises in my bloodstream it sends signals to my brain that make me crave water and get thirsty and whether I respond to those signals or not depends on all kinds of things like the availability of water so if water is close by and I'm not very thirsty I'm likely to drink it but if water is not close by then the thirst actually has to increase to change my behavior to get me to go drink water you guys got that so like there are all kinds of like processes that are going on about availability of water what's my thirst level what am i doing right now am I going to be able to drink water later should I drink water now there are all kinds of things that kind of even go into something as simple as drinking water and so what does that mean for us like why do we care about understanding motivation that way and so I'll kind of give you guys an example so like I think understanding the complexity of motivation helps us understand the different components we can act on to increase motivation if we think about it as 100% or 0% then it's like hard to act right but if we think about motivation is 90% and there's like kind of a 60% 30% then like how do we navigate between these how does our brain sort of decide like if you know how do we move from 30 to 60 to 90 and as we understand more variables we can actually start to make changes in our life to move in this direction so let me give you guys kind of an example of this process and how understanding complexity of something how sus do a better job ah so sometimes people come to me and they say I want to be healthy and then what's my answer that do I say okay here's how you be healthy like okay let me just give you health and people walk around they say oh I want to be healthy I want to be healthy I want to be healthy I want to be healthy I'm not healthy I'm not healthy I'm not healthy I'm not healthy and so how do you become healthy is healthy something you can become like you just become healthy no but that's the way that we talk about motivation we say oh I want to be motivated I lack motivation I have a motivation other people have motivation I don't have motivation I need motivation I need motivation and people can walk around and they say oh I want to be healthy I'm not healthy other people are healthy I wish I was like them if I was luckier in life I would have been born healthy just like they're born healthy but instead I'm lazy and they got the they got dealt a good hand in life where their laziness level is low and my laziness level is high and so I don't have motivation I wish I could be motivated right so this is where I think like if we think about this like it's absurd like you don't become healthy well okay you don't really become healthy what you do is you understand that health so health is an emergent property based on multiple variables and now what I want you I want you guys to just think about that like that makes sense right health is a function of whether you exercise what you eat whether you see a therapist whether you meditate whether you spend out time outdoors whether you socialize health is a really really complicated process and if someone comes to me and says I want to be healthy can you give me a pill to make me healthy or what is the strategy to uncover health my answer is there isn't one there are actually a dozen strategies and the more you understand the components of health the easier it is to be healthy so what we're gonna do is replace this word with motivation right is an emergent property that's based on multiple variables is an ongoing calculation about the likelihood of success and this calculation has many variables okay so then the question becomes part three what does this mean for us okay so what we do is we do a likelihood of success calculation okay so I want you guys to think about this for a second our brains evolved not in our current society but in a society where we were like hunter-gatherers cavemen whatever so I want you to imagine that there was there's a there's a caveman with a spear right and the caveman wants to go hunting and he wants to go look for food so he like leaves his hot in the morning and then he looks at different trails he sees lots of different trails right how does he determine which trail to go down so he looks at five trails and he's like oh I don't really know like what to do but then he sees let's say that he sees tracks over here so see as he sees tracks over here what does that do to his likelihood of success calculation that he's gonna find food in this direction is that is the likelihood of success calculation increases the probability it motivates him to move in this direction you guys see that like suddenly this bit of data actually changes his motivation very quickly it's kind of simple right and then let's like so this is how he this is where motivation comes from so we do as a likelihood of success calculation and then let's say that like over here he sees actually like you know a deer okay so if he sees a deer over here then what does that do to his success calculation it increases his success count equation a lot he's like oh there's actually food there so suddenly his motivation is going in this direction now he's going there even more than over here so if we think about this his internal motivation is actually influenced very clearly by his probability of success calculation so let's think a little bit about that what has to do so what goes into our probability of success calculation so I have a problem okay and I lack motivation so let's say that I don't have a job so what do we think about our probability of success so like find a job what's the probability of success for finding a job the F knows you can't assign a number to that and if you can't assign a number to that you're gonna stay in the middle just think about this for a second if our brain has no idea how to assign up a likelihood of success it's not gonna act right so let's say okay vs. play a game which makes us feel better what's the likelihood of success here 100% so think about this look at it right how do you find a job like I don't I don't even know what does that even mean so when our brain when you wake up in the morning and you think about okay I need to find a job and then your brain is like I don't know how to gauge whether that's gonna work or not right it's kind of like waking up in the and saying I want to I want to find a pound of gold and your brain is gonna be like I don't know how to do that like what's the likelihood of success of finding a pound of gold and then your brain is also like okay well we're feeling bad so that's almost like a need that it wants to fix like hunger or thirst so as negative emotions arise within you your brain is like hmmm what can we do about these negative emotions because I'm trying to protect you buddy and I know that you're suffering right now why don't we just go play a game and so the problem is that you the the your brain is actually working perfectly fine it's just it's doing a good job at what it knows how to do and as long as you view your problems as something or your goals as something that like don't have clear likelihoods of success then you're not gonna do them and so let's think about this for a second all right so so a lot of people nowadays would rather play games with a 0% chance of finding a job [Music] rather than apply for a job with a 10% chance of success just think about that for a second you guys would rather do something that definitely does not help you move forward in life versus something that may not help you move forward in life and how on earth does this work right why on earth would your brain pick a 0% chance over a 10% chance and the reason is because this is actually not a 0% chance this is a hundred percent chance of feeling better so it's not that you lack motivation it's simply that you know your brain is doing like a different kind of calculation and like this is why because like what this is why you guys do this right so if you if you think about this you know this is an observation this what I was saying about observation so if we actually look at ourselves we find this to be true and if this is true rather than assuming that we're broken what we should do who is take that observation and try to use it is like scientific data and then develop an explanatory hypothesis that accounts for this observation the observations that you make about yourself are not signs that you're broken they're clues as to how you work and that's a really really important principle that I believe a hundred percent in so don't assume yourself to be broken assume that everything about you is data about how you work and then start to construct a strategy about how to deal with with those truths okay so the second thing is that so if we think about likelihood of success of success what else kind of goes into this so the next big thing that goes into it is confidence right so like if we think about you know our hunter again and let's say that there's a deer over here and then there's a like yak over here okay so whether he goes for the deer or he goes for the Yak depends on his confidence in being able to catch either one right and be able to hunt it down so if we think about a likelihood of success calculation your fundamental confidence for success leads to the likelihood of success so what that means is that if your confidence is low that leads to a low likelihood of success and that's like mathematical and if we have a low likelihood of success that in turn leads to low motivation or lack of behavior right and I don't know how else to put this but why don't you guys wake up every day and and jump up into the air and try to fly because wouldn't it be awesome to be to be able to fly like it would be cool if you could fly like imagine like how fun that would be but why don't you wake up everyday and jump up and try to fly like why don't you guys do that because the likelihood of success is close to zero so even though you want to be able to fly you're not going to spend time trying to fly if the likelihood of success is zero so likelihood of success leads to motivation or lack of Beor or behavior and if we think about what leads to likelihood of success its confidence in your ability okay so what is this so what should you do all this stuff is fine what now right what should you do so the first thing to understand well so let's like look at our equation so confidence [Music] leads to likelihood of success which in turn leads to motivation so now the question is if we want to increase this quantity how can we act on these two quantities so the first is that we can change our task from find a job likelihood of success 0% or a lecture that's not say zero let's be a little bit more fair okay let's say one percent okay to apply for a job ah now what happens so when if we set our target is applying for our job our brain is like oh like apply for job I can do that let's say 30 percent let's remember we're us right so even though it's perfectly in our control our brain is like oh like applying for a job like I understand what that means okay let's even change it a little bit further fill out a job application no that's like 50% and then download a job application that's pretty easy that's like 80% downloading job application is easy you guys see this this is the trend so you have to program your task so that your brain is like oh actually I can do that so if we go back to our hunter if we tell our hunter go find go find food in the mount like in the ten-mile radius the hunter doesn't know where to start you guys get that the more roads they have the bigger the task is the more paralyzed the hunter is so if the hunter gets some kind of data that focuses his attention his ability to act actually increases so we need to do the same thing over here we need to change our tasked to increase the likelihood of success and as you increase the likelihood of success you're more able to act so next question is what about confidence so we're gonna do an entire video on confidence but let's just think a little bit about this so what leads to confidence so the first thing I mean you know how do you get confidence so the first thing is that I'm going to kind of just toss out a couple of things the first thing is that dealing with negative emotion so one of the things that keeps us from being confident is that we're sitting on these piles generally speaking of like negative emotion and if you feel bad about yourself like if you have shame if you have fear if you have low self-worth then it's gonna heart it's it's hard to be confident and confidence is gonna affect all of these numbers right so the first thing and this is kind of weird because everyone kind of thinks about oh how do I solve motivation how do I apply for a job you know that they're looking sort of externally or even they will talk about habit or brain hacks or you know they'll develop all kinds of external strategies whereas my overwhelming experience is that if you actually deal with your negative emotions your confidence increases and the motivation naturally goes up the motivation just goes up on its own it's just like it happens magically like as I do therapy with people and I help people process their negative emotions they just start being more active in life so one solution to motivation is just by directly dealing with your confidence and addressing your confidence the next thing that you can do is understand where confidence comes from so confidence a lot of people think that confidence comes from success but actually that's not true so if you guys watch some of our videos you'll realize that success after success after success actually leads to things like impostor syndrome so confidence comes from [Music] surviving failure okay and so what that means is that when most people are thinking about motivation they think that if they get like something good going on for them they'll be motivated and that kind of leads to like positivity so what I want you guys to understand is that you know likelihood of success comes from confidence right so we kind of have this relationship here and confidence comes from surviving failure and so the real key to building confidence is actually failing and what that means is that failure leads to confidence in confidence leads to success so what that means is that failure really leads to success and let's just think about this for a second like if you think about a kid right how does a kid get confident and walk if you if you've ever watched a kid learn how to walk at first there they're hesitant to walk because they're afraid of falling so they hold onto things and you try to get them to take like one or two steps and you really have to encourage a kid to learn how to walk and so the tricky thing here is like how does a kid learn how to walk and what happens is they fall and then they get back up again and they're like oh actually falling is not that big of a deal and the more they fall the easier it becomes to try so failure makes trying easier and trying is about success confidence is about dealing with the uncertain right so confidence isn't guaranteeing a result if you're confident in something you're willing to do something with uncertainty and so if you guys want to work on your motivation I'd say two things one is change your task okay oh no no no okay so change your task right and the second thing is fail this is what you guys should do and if you really want to understand how to increase your motivation those are the two things that you should do define your task more clearly and learn how to fail and then the third thing is deal with your internal emotions because as long as this stuff is kind of sitting here you guys are gonna be like Sol and this if you kind of deal with this stuff if you get rid of this stuff then suddenly your motivation is going to increase it has nothing to do with your habits or think I mean it has stuff to do with that but I think these are kind of the highest yield things okay so we've got a few minutes for questions okay so we're gonna try this how do I I just click to check for speak speak accept so I think I'm accepting people so if you guys you guys want to try talking how does this work so Martin I'm accepting hate and I'm accepting you guys wanna try saying saying something can other people hear you how does this work [Music] alright looks like our questions are not working great okay so milik le Hadi Josh Joshua Samuel Daniel J Aditya you guys want to try speaking [Music] so cute okay let's see looks like that's not working Daniel has joined Oh beautiful we've got Daniel and Samuel hey guys okay so ask your questions what questions we've got about five minutes ten minutes oh noes hmm okay I'm gonna invite more people hello oh hey ask your question buddy Samuel Daniel [Music] I can't hear anything I'm just gonna start randomly accepting people maybe I'm gonna bust the webinar okay Oh Vince has joined the room there we go Dell egg great ask your questions guys let's get started we can't hear anything no see a little bit hello yeah ask away buddy okay I have two questions go for the first it's like my brain overvalues my time because I like gaming so much that like doing anything besides gaming so I a high cost for me yep and the second question is like I think I'm meditating wrong I've been doing like for eight weeks but like I see the quests like having major experience at first and I don't have anything okay so let's start with the first one so I completely agree with you that your brain over values the time from gaming that's why everyone games because gaming gives you a very clear like path to success so what should you do about that smaller tisks absolutely right so you have to you have to make the cost of gaming like if you tell yourself to apply for a job or get a girlfriend or get healthy or get in shape your brain is like that is way too much of a time investment for a very low likelihood of success and so what you need to do is change the equation for your brain mm-hmm and you say that you're you're meditating wrong yeah what do you mean by that I been meditating for our like over eight weeks and like I don't have a technique like I tried everything that was on YouTube and I feel like I don't even know mine state and I see the guests in the show like on the major having major experiences at first like Mitch like was major and I don't remember right yeah so that's kind of complicated and has something to do with a Sun script term called Nick Scherr which means initiation and I'm sorry but I know this is gonna sound completely bizarre and is probably gonna create more questions than it answers but there's this concept in meditation instruction where a teacher actually imparts a portion of their spiritual energy to the person they're directly teaching and I actually didn't put so like you and get in she ate it into a meditation practice by a teacher or guru and that somehow that initiation is worth more than like learning it from a book or a video or whatever and I actually did not put any value in that concept I found no scientific validity for that concept until I started making observations that the people that I teach meditation directly to oftentimes have big experiences on the first try whereas a lot of people watching do not I don't understand quite how that works so I'd say that you know continue practicing and try different techniques we're gonna do a little bit of meditation now okay does anybody else have a question I'm gonna Daniel thanks for coming on buddy I'm gonna just boot you and don't do it if it gives room for someone else [Music] anybody else have a question yeah yeah yeah no yep yeah so basically her I was wondering that you said you build confidence by surviving failure yeah and how does it actually happen like shouldn't failure diminishes or contents like you shouldn't really you can build yourself up that way and second question I cover this is that does not depend on your perception like is perceiving failure a certain way I mean let me rephrase sorry perceiving failure a certain way might make you more my increasing motivation and perceiving it definitely might reduce it so how do you influence your perception of that great questions so the first question was doesn't how does failure lead to doesn't failure isn't that a blow to your confidence mm-hmm right so the answer is yes so I didn't say that failing leads to confidence what did I say surviving failure there's a big difference hmm what's the difference your perception very good right so that now we go straight to your second question which is that like if if a child old Falls and gets hurt and they don't feel like if the consequence of the action was negative it's gonna be like it's gonna be a punishment and it's not going to reinforce the behavior confidence comes from surviving failure right it's from knowing that you're actually alive at the end of the day so in my case like when I was failing out of college it did not increase my confidence at all it was the knowledge that like one or two years after graduating that you know I was still me and that even though I had failed and that was a challenge it was kind of like this idea that okay like failing hasn't actually destroyed me that I'm still okay I'm still smart I'm still capable and I just need to change a little bit about like how I function so surviving failure is a big difference from failing and you're right that it has to do with your perception and understand that like failure in and of itself is going to be a negative reinforcer I mean it's not really the right term it's gonna be a Punisher for a particular behavior so it's going to reduce a behavior so this is exactly why processing and understanding your perspective is very important because you're a hundred percent correct that you need to change your perspective on what failure means so a lot of times when we get wrapped up in the ego we look at one failure and then we just stop trying again right so if I fail a class I'm not gonna try again but if you play a video game and you lose a game how does that change your behavior you're just queue up again exactly so there's so what I want you guys to do is think about that and observe within yourself why doesn't losing a game cause you to quit playing and why does losing something at life cause you to quit playing and if you can understand within yourself why you can queue up again that's what confidence is all about right when we think about someone who's confident if I asked a girl out and she says no and I queue up again you view that person as confidence that's the very definition of confidence it's not letting failure affect you and understanding that like your worth as a human being is not necessarily tied to the outcomes of your actions just because a girl says no doesn't mean that I'm unlovable but for a lot of people that's what happens in their right I mean there are a lot of reasons that a girl could say no she could be in a relationship she could have just finished an abusive relationship she could be not interested in men sexually there are all kinds of her romantically there are all kinds of reasons that people say no but when our ego gets involved it no longer is about that aspect and starts to be about us okay awesome and great questions I'm gonna give you the boot to make room for someone else okay all right anyone else yeah you can go okay you were talking about dealing with negative emotions and I grew up being called stupid and whatnot throughout my entire life and I've been failing through the course of like my education and that kind of led me to take through gap years and I know that this is like a big topic on its own but I want to know like how to specifically deal with those emotions because even when I'm listening you talk I get like this anxiety where I'm like I'm not going to understand this I'm not gonna understand this like I'm stupid I'm stupid okay so you're right that that is a whole topic in and of itself and I can't do I can't give you an answer that you deserve in the time that we have left but I'm gonna give you one an answer anyway right so the first thing is it's good that you notice it so I'm gonna ask you is it delag a dozen Delic so delegate so do you if you're noticing that thing you are not that thing does that make sense yeah so that's the first thing to understand is that you don't have to be defined by that feeling even though that feeling is strong it's just a feeling it's not truth and I know this sounds kind of bizarre but oftentimes we think our emotions and our thoughts or facts that's the way that we live and operate through life they're not facts there are just emotions and feelings and if I'm watching a scary movie and I'm scared that doesn't actually mean I'm in danger right now and if I can think all kinds of thoughts like I can think I'm a dumb person and my mind is telling me that but that doesn't mean it's true it's just my mind telling me that so over time what you need to do is learn start to appreciate and notice that delag is actually different there's a part of you there's like there's some kind of like I want you to think about it this way you're the machine you're the computer and you have an OS and then you have programs so the computer is different from the program and you have a program that's running in your head that says deleg is not gonna understand it delegates not gonna understand it Dalek is not gonna understand it it's like Spotify like playing in the background and you're trying to like have a voice chat with someone and Spotify is just gonna like be playing in the background and then it's gonna be like really hard for you to function but just because it's saying that doesn't mean it's true and that starts that recognition starts with noticing and and you know you can also kind of ask yourself like what are other like if you don't think so just think about this for a second if you--if there's a voice in you that says that you're not gonna understand it why why are you still in the sound webinar why don't you drop out you're not gonna understand in any way fair no I'm asking it's not I'm not making a point I'm genuinely asking question why didn't you drop out of the seminar because I want to try and understand beautiful so there is another program in you that says actually I can make a difference actually I want to try and all you need to do is learn to prioritize that program instead of the one that tells you that you suck at life right right so you have both of those programs within you and then kind of like the angel and devil on your shoulder over time you can train yourself to listen to one over the other but it starts with individual moments like this where you chose not to drop out in the seminar and pay attention to that think about like why didn't you drop out did you think about dropping out what happened in your head that kept you from dropping out I mean yeah I did want to drop out of this call because I thought my question was not valuable and it's something so why didn't you write so now you really need to go back in and pay attention to why you didn't drop out well because I hate the almond aspirin sure because I felt as if my issues as you said it's a common issue where people feel as if they well they doubt themselves and then I felt as if since I have the opportunity here I can ask for other people as well yeah but so do you see how that's a different program the content of the program is fine what I'm pointing out to you is that there is an impulse within you that says drop out and there is another impulse within you that says no let me do this as part of my daughter mom let me ask this question for other people even though people are gonna think I'm an idiot because I'm asking a question that's unrelated but you did it anyway you chose to listen to the part that was gonna make you feel like an idiot and that's exactly what embracing failure looks like it's choosing the things that are gonna make you feel like an idiot that's how you build confidence because now delag you're a little bit more confident to speak whether you realize it or not because you did the hard thing you made yourself look like an idiot and it turned out okay right right so now you've survived looking like an idiot how does it feel pretty good there you go right it's that simple it's not easy it's simple okay great question man and more about develop your confidence okay we're gonna have time for one more and then then I gotta go yep my question is about like the focus of meditation of like motivation okay so like the way of like shifting your focus from the thing that you want to the thing that you know is good for you like beating the like biological rewarding system of doing the things you know are not necessarily good for you okay to put that focus on the things you know that are good for you and that you don't necessarily want like in the instant moment yeah so I would actually disagree with your premise how do you know that something is good for you in the sense that it would make me I don't know healthy or would be a an investment of time that I know would worldwide reward me with something that we do you know that well I feel it so where is that feeling coming from it's from like I don't know a vision of the future that I'd like to excellent growth or so let me explain something to you Vince fantasies about the future do not factor in to the likelihood of success calculation that your brain does this is exactly my point so I can fantasize about wanting yacht like I want to have a yacht I want it to have like very fast internet connection I'm gonna get a gaming PC stick it on my yacht and I want to sail around the world while I game while I'm on the ocean and then I want to dock in places and eat delicious local food and what does that do to my motivation well it just enters it because it's kind of a unattainable ideal absolutely right so I think you're so you're you're starting with a couple of assumptions that I don't agree with and that's that you kind of say there are some things that are good for me and there's some things that are not good for me and how do I choose the thing that is good for me instead of like playing video games and I think that your brain doesn't actually understand that those things are good for you because I think that they are like they're they're not things that you feel they're like random rational thoughts or fantasies which don't actually lead to behavioral change that doesn't go into the equation so I think actually what you need to do is go back to that like defining what you want things so the likelihood of success calculation so like what's a goal of like what's an example of something that you think is good for you the you doing healthy perfect so I even addressed this almost directly eating healthy is not a thing how do you eat healthy tell me you put your attention towards buying certain types food and cooking certain types of mean for you so what is the likelihood of success of that the likelihood of success of putting your attention on buying healthy food is pretty high but I'm not so sure about that right so like you my point is that use offered a very complicated statement putting your attention on buying food and then cooking it yeah so what you need to do is chunk up each of those because I agree with you that if you put your full attention on the buying yeah that becomes easier than quote-unquote eating healthy but the problem is that your brain is like they're a bunch of other things that you're talking about here you're talking about you know being willful when you go to the grocery store you're talking about buying food and a lot of people buy healthy food but then what happens then you have to cook it you have to prepare your food yes - and which how to do with that well it depends on the case but I mean if you buy the if your answer is it depends on the case your brain calculates that is a low likelihood of success if your brain thinks it depends that's not a high likelihood of success does that make sense yeah so therein lies your problem because you're talking about eating healthy and health is the example I use because it's a great example of how we actually poorly define tasks for our brain and our brain doesn't know what to do with that yeah so I think in your case I would start by really examining where you get the idea that there is like something that's good for you and something that isn't because I think your brain believes the exact opposite it's like we can do this weird fantasy random amalgamation of tasks that has an unclear chance of success or we can play a video game yeah got it okay I got a run so thank you very much Vince we're gonna do I'm gonna go ahead and I'm sorry Mikey I gotta kick you but we're gonna do five minutes of meditation and then I really do have to run okay so sit up straight we're gonna do not II should be which is alternate nostril breathing so take your fingers and do this so what you're doing is folding these two down if you have to do this that's okay it's not a big deal it can also be like this or something like that it's not a big deal take your right nostril block your thumb I mean block your right nostril breathe in switch and out breathe in through the same nostril switch out in switch out in switch out in switch out in switch out and now continue at your own pace go ahead and finish the breath that you're on let your eyes remain closed let your hands relax and now kind of notice once again that there is sort of a basic you there is an observing self that there may be thoughts emotions desires conclusions but those are all products from you they're not you so all those little voices inside you that say don't bother do this or don't do this is your choice whether you listen to them or not and that from this place how true or false they are becomes a little bit more clear when you're ready go ahead and come on back thank you guys very much day one of our webinar we're gonna continue tomorrow I don't know if we're gonna do tomorrow maybe we may talk a little bit about managing relationships and tight quarters given covin so like how to communicate matter with people things like that maybe something else I'm not quite sure so thank you guys very much and we'll see you guys tomorrow 9:00 AM cxeh Central Standard Time and we will upload I think to YouTube so take care

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

Views: 219,401

Keywords: drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, psychiatrist, science of self, learning about yourself, motivation psychology, motivation psychology lecture, motivation psychology theories, psychology of motivation, psychology of self, healthygamer webinar, healthygamer webinar 1, science of self webinar, science of self lecture, psychology, motivation, motivation neuroscience, mental health, self improvement

Id: 2tGZA-F1_n0

Length: 85min 58sec (5158 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 26 2020