Why You Keep Making The Same Mistakes

so if I get bullied at school I don't have to make these people my friends I can find friends on the internet in addition we're seeing the concentration Avail in availability of things like THC and CBD go up which helps us manage our shame so now we we run into a real serious problem now the problem is that since we can avoid contact this emotion doesn't work the way that it's supposed to anymore so you know something pretty simple not too important just something that we're going to kind of teach youall real quick is you

know how to stop making the same mistakes over and over again keep progressing in life you know the way that you should so here's the problem is that we make mistakes and when we make mistakes the basic problem is not that we make the mistake but that we make it again and then we make it again and then we make it again and we keep making it and if you're like me you kind of look at yourself and you're like man I just wish I would stop doing this thing and for me it's like it's

playing video games like even last night so 10 10:00 rolled around my kids went to bed and I was like man I could turn in early but did I turn in early of course not instead what I did is play two games of Dota 2 thankfully I won them so it wasn't very rage inducing but this is what happen 20 years ago when I was in college 22 years ago when I was in college and failing out like I would tell myself hey I need to go to bed and instead I would stay up so

late and we tend to make these same mistakes over and over and over again oh I sabotaged this relationship because I let my anxiety get the better of me I like started going to therapy but then I stopped like whatever it is for some reason when we make a mistake in life it seems to be very hard to correct it now if we want to understand why this happens we have to understand the apparatus that helps us learn from our mistakes and it turns out that the human brain in the way that it corrects mistakes

is actually being sabotaged or hampered by certain aspects of our society so what are we seeing we're seeing a an increasing number of people making some relatively consistent mistakes there are challenges in the economy sure 50% of people under the age of 30 or living at homes they're like absolutely external factors but we're also seeing a rise in loneliness we're seeing a rise in addiction we're seeing a rise in depression we're seeing a rise in anxiety we're seeing a rise in low self-esteem we're seeing a rise in hopelessness and what I'm really seeing arise of

is the inability to take corrective action So today we're going to teach youall basically how the brain takes corrective action and what is getting in the way of you taking the action that you should be taking hey y'all if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we discussed to your life to actually create change check out Dr K's guide to mental health the guide synthesize my years of training as a monk along with years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist to cover common topics like meditation ADHD and Trauma the guides include over 100

additional videos that can be navigated based on your needs or interests or in a more open Choose Your Own Adventure format the guides are now available in the YouTube store below and if they're a little bit outside of your price point you can check out a piece of them with our free resource packs which are also linked below so definitely check him out so in order to take corrective action our brain needs to do two processes the first is it goes through something called a counterfactual thinking exercise so this is sort of like an analysis

of what you should do and this is where a lot of y'all may say like oh yeah I figured out what I should do but I can't do it and that's where we get to piece number two which is actually the motivational component right so in addition to knowing what we should do we have to have the drive to actually do it so the way that I kind of think about this is imagine you have a car and in order to get from point A to point B you need a map you need an intellectual

understanding of where you are and where you need to go and how to get from point A to point B right you have to know that and then you also need fuel in the car and your brain needs both of those components and the crazy thing is that for the majority of people I work with who have this problem they really focus on one component and neglect the other so we're going to start actually with the motivation not the road map so we're going to start with the fuel okay so this is what what's important

to understand our brain has a couple of different areas of emotional circuitry so we have this this primitive part of our brain that includes the amydala so the amydala is where we feel what I would call Solo Survival emotions this is where we feel fear this is where we feel anxiety this is where we feel anger right so these are things that like even reptile can feel fear and anger and territoriality and things like that so this is a very primitive emotion but then we have this other part of our brain which is where we

experience the higher human emotions that are more social in nature so these are emotions like guilt and shame and if we kind of think about it like why does the human brain experience guilt and shame why does it why do guilt and shame feel so painful this is very important to understand so in the situation that our brain evolved which is very similar to like chimpanzee brains and like monkey brains and things like that these are social creatures so we have social emotions and in order for a social emotion to function properly it requires social

circumstances okay I'll give you all a simple example so when I was growing up I used to get bullied a lot and I'm sure that many of you all do too it absolutely sucks but when I was growing up I sort of didn't have a choice except to socialize with my bullies so I had to go to school every day as I'm sure many of youall do and I would get bullied every day and then my my you know I would feel ashamed of myself and then this negative emotion would induce some kind of Behavioral

change and this is important to understand anytime our body or our brain makes us feel bad these are very very important drivers for corrective Behavior so if we think about some of the most painful experiences in the world these are things like hunger thirst right even something like asphixiation the inability to breathe I one time had a patient that was having an allergic reaction and they could not breathe and the amount of panic and suffering that a human body and brain will experience when they are unable to breathe is astronomical crazy thing is that this

is also why panic attacks are so painful and so scary and actually so traumatic because you feel like you can't breathe so anytime the body has something that is very important for your survival if you do it don't do it your body will make you feel incredibly bad right so hunger hurts a lot thirst hurts a lot asphixiation hurts a lot shame hurts a lot guilt hurts a lot so with these signals like hunger and thirst it's really simple right so when I feel hungry this is my body's way of telling me hey I should

take corrective action I should eat and then I will feel better with thirst I should drink something then I will feel better with asphixiation I should take a deep breath then I will feel better if only it were that simple what about things like shame and guilt what is the corrective action so this is where you know if I feel ashamed of myself often times this is inspiration so if I got made fun of because of the way that I look or my weight either I'm too skinny or I'm too fat then this shame since

I'm going to see these people again can be motivational fuel for me to take corrective action I'm going to start going to the gym right and this is what we know we know that sometimes when people are ashamed of themselves they will do something to no longer be ashamed of themselves I'm going to get my hair done I'm going to start going to the gym I'm going to start feeling better about myself I'm so embarrassed to be unemployed I feel so ashamed of myself I'm going to work really hard to get a job because I

never want to feel that shame again that's the purpose of Shame now here's the problem in today's society we have one alternate solution to shame which did not exist a couple of here hundred years ago which is escape so now our society has become so escape and avoidant heavy that I no longer need to face my shame so if I get bullied at school I don't have to make these people my friends I can find friends on the internet if I feel ashamed of myself I have an electronic device that can make me feel take

all of that malice and that take all that shame and turn it into malice and resentment and turn it into toxicity on the Internet by crapping on the people that make me feel bad right I can do all of these things to avoid my shame in addition I can also like this literally suppresses those circuits of the brain but there's also things like substances we're seeing the concentration Avail in availability of things like THC and CBD go up which helps us manage our shame so now we we run into a real serious problem see the

only reason that shame worked is because I had to go to school every day right there was no way to avoid the consequences and this is the way that shame evolved because when we think about a tribal situation we think about chimpanzees like if a chimpanzee is ashamed of itself it has no choice but to interact with these same people so these emotions evolved under the circumstance of permanent contact that was unavoidable now the problem is that since we can avoid contact this emotion doesn't work the way that it's supposed to anymore okay so now

what happens is when we we we create this alternate scenario where okay I don't have to experience the shame because I I can avoid these people and what does that mean for my corrective Behavior now that I'm no longer experiencing the shame now that I'm no longer avoiding those people I don't have to fix the problem because remember fixing the problem was the antidote to shame that's the whole purpose of shame but if I can avoid the problem then I never have to fix it and this is literally what happens with people who are ashamed

and guilty they just avoid the social circumstances and therefore avoid the shame so this is where I know it's kind of crazy but like we have evidence-based techniques that we've sort of dug into as to what to do about this and I hate to break it to y'all but it's to stop avoiding the shame so real my favorite example of this comes from alcoholic synonymous where they have a particular step where they're kind of like you know doing all this internal work and they feel ashamed of themselves because they've like you know drank a bunch

of alcohol and they've ruined their lives and they've ruined relationships so they're carrying a bunch of this toxic shame often times the toxic shame precedes the alcohol addiction and so they have a really important step called making amends so then what they do is they make a catalog of all of the people that they can think of that they've wronged in some way and they're ashamed of their behavior there was that time that I got really drunk and passed out and I couldn't drive you to the airport and you missed your job interview and then

you didn't get the promotion and like everything got worse for you very shame inducing right and I used to run away from that I used to blame you for my failings this is what happens when people are addicted to alcohol so instead what they do is they go back and they embrace the shame they engage with the shame they go back to all of those people and they say hey I screwed up so they're no longer running away from the shame when you stop running away from shame you start gaining accountability and once they start

gaining accountability their life moves in the correct Direction the shame becames a positive motivator now there's an important caveat here which is that there is a version of Shame called toxic shame now toxic shame is a completely different feature so this is where remember shame is designed to induce the right Behavior but toxic shame is when people make you feel inappropriately ashamed and in that case there is no corrective Behavior because no matter what you do they'll still shame you for it we have other videos about toxic shame and if that relates to you by

all means check those out so this is where the fuel comes from and the basic problem is that the most powerful motivators for human behavioral change are actually negative emotions and our social uh negative emotions are incredibly strong at that but the moment that we start avoiding those circumstances we lose our motivation and then you end up just watching a bunch of videos about how to gain motivation instead of actually facing up to your problems and going to the gym or saying hi to people or asking someone out on a date etc etc etc now

we come to the second part because it's not just emotion we also need a road map and this is where we also fall into another kind of problem which is that often times when we are trying to come up with a solution we lean too far into Theory crafting so we have this part of our brain that does something called counterfactual thinking really really important circuit in the brain so this is the way that the circuit Works anytime I do something and I screw up my brain does something really interesting right it goes back in

time and it says it fantasizes about what I should have done differently my favorite example of this is that this occurs like usually when you're going to bed and your mind reminds you of some random memory right and for me growing up it was like clever things that I would say when someone made fun of me so someone was like oh you know like ol you're such a loser like all you do is play video games or like I remember one day I was you know in in recess or PE class and we were playing

football and then like someone threw a football and I dropped it right I couldn't catch the football and then like what happened is they made fun of me and they're like oh like did they not teach you how to catch a football when you play your Nintendo that's what they made fun of me and then what I would do is like 6 months later I'd be like yeah well n no I can't even think about what I came up with then but then six months later your brain is like oh this is what I should

have said six months later it sort of thinks about like how you could have done things differently we experience a lot of counterfactual thinking when we go through something like a breakup right so your mind is thinking okay like this is what I should have done this is what I should have done I would have shown him if I did this so our brain kind of gets lost in this hypothetical world that doesn't exist now in the worst cases this becomes something like maladaptive daydreaming where we get so lost in the counterfactual thinking that we

get divorced from reality that's also this is probably where counterfactual thinking meets ADHD which has been implicated in maladaptive daydreaming we have a video about that if yall are interested but this is basically how our mind corrects mistakes is that it engages in counterfactual thinking now here's the problem is that when we start to live an avoidant life our brain 's capacity for counterfactual thinking becomes weaker so if we think about what it takes for counterfactual thinking to be the most successful is we actually need as much data or evidence as we can get our

hands on and we actually don't want to Theory craft purely so usually what what I see in the the people that I work with who struggle to learn from their mistakes is they will Theory craft what they should do but since they have so little experience the data inputs for the theory crafting are not optimal by any means and if you all have Theory crafted in a video game you kind of know what I'm talking about right so if you're like playing a particular game you're like hey I'm going to do this build and it's

going to be great I'm going to do a four poool rush and I'm going to Zerg Rush with four poool and it's going to be awesome and I'm going to send a drone with it you come with all these wonderful ideas of how you're going to make this game work and how you're going to make this character build and then you go and you like actually play the game and you're like wow that doesn't really work at all and then you have to adjust your theory crafting if you're enamored with the idea you'll give it

an adjustment you'll try it again and then you do many iterations and then sometimes you can even make the build work right you don't have to just read The Meta builds and follow them now this is the problem is that in order for counterfactual thinking to work successfully that's actually what we need to do the first iteration of the solution that your mind comes up with is not going to be very accurate because you have a minimum of data and evidence now here's where we fall into another Pitfall which is that often times when our

Theory crafting when we're Theory crafting the way that we actually address this problem is with more Theory crafting we never actually queue up for a game so if I'm struggling with my motivation what I'm going to do is watch a bunch of videos on YouTube about motivation I'm going to read books and browse discussion forums and do all of this stuff instead of gain experience and data and evidence right if I'm struggling date I'm going to read a lot of like Mi I the posts on Reddit to try to figure out something about relationships I

don't even know what you're planning on learning over there right or I'll watch videos on on YouTube and all this stuff can be useful don't get me wrong but that's all in the category of theory crafting and if we look at our brain our brain doesn't respond very well to Theory crafting our brain does theory crafting with evidence so we can't like Theory craft our way from 0o to 100 and this is the critical mistake that a lot of people make is that they never give themselves the opportunity to get data and get evidence and

when I talk to people and I I work with people who have done something successful in terms of like making progress in their life or correcting their mistakes there is always a data Gathering or evidence Gathering process now a lot of people who are listening to this will be but I do have evidence all of this stuff happened in the past this is a fact about my life this is why people I it's POS for me to date I have all of this evidence so this is also where we got to be a little bit

careful so when we're talking about collecting evidence it's not just have these things happened in the past what we want to do is something that's like a prospective trial so anytime we're doing science there's retrospective data and there's prospective data and retrospective data is way lower quality than prospective data so when we're thinking about really feeding our brain the right kind of data to correctly develop a counterfactual I know that's a a a mouthful so I'll say it again see if we want to hypothesize if we want to build this road map we actually need

to give it as much data as possible and generally speaking people who correct their mistakes it's not like they correct their mistake once it's like okay I struggle in relationships let me date let me date again let me date again let me date again and as I date 15 different times then over time the natural model that my brain will construct about how I should fix my mistakes gets more and more and more more robust the good news is that you actually don't have to work very hard at this the brain will do the computation

all its own on its own all you need to do is feed at the right data now let's talk about but Dr K it's not easy to do that right it's not just easy to go out there and collect data well why not well that's because of the motivation so if I'm struggling with dating and I go out and I date once what do I feel I feel ashamed of myself I feel so pathetic and then what do I do I avoid so this is the cool thing we already addressed that in the first half

of the video that's why it's structured this way and this is the key thing that you all need to understand see anytime we're stuck the basic problem is that we are not utilizing the corrective circuitry of our brain in the right way our brain has the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere right and I know that like some of that stuff has been debunked but a lot of it is true so we know that the left hemisphere focuses on analysis and the right hemisphere focuses on emotion and we also know that the most productive and

successful state of human consciousness is something called The Flow State and what do we see in the brain of the Flow State we see Harmony between the left brain and the right brain we see an activity of emotion along with an appropriate level of analysis and if you're struggling to fix your mistakes chances are that these two circuits are not working together it is insufficient and this is the biggest mistake that that I see a lot of people make is they think that it is one or the other right they think like oh I feel

so ashamed of myself I should just focus on the shame that's a great place to start but then you also need to feed your counterfactual circuitry so that it can develop the right models to help you succeed and we do this in the gaming world right like when we play video games we do this successful where it's like okay I'm going to make up a build and I'm going to try it that didn't work I'm going to adjust my build I'm going to try again I'm going to adjust my build I'm going to try it

again and then eventually like we kind of make the build work like we're capable of doing it the problem is that in real life we do not give our brain the same level of data so we have to address our emotions we have to be super careful about avoiding shame because when we avoid shame all we experience is the pain of Shame without any of the corrective Behavior right so then what happens if I'm avoiding shame I don't actually fix anything and the next time I leave the house I feel ashamed of myself again and

then the next time I feel the house leave the house I feel ashamed of myself again so we actually create is a really crazy situation where when we avoid shame we create a persistent shameful existence that's crazy instead what we need to do is harness that shame use it as motivational fuel to fix our problems that needs to be com combined with a very robust counterfactual apparatus that allows us to analyze our problems and we need to feed at the right inputs what makes it hard to feed the right inputs the shame that we experience

causes us to avoid so when I work with people this is these are usually the two components it's about Unity between the left brain and the right brain and literally when people are able to do this in a more robust manner this is what we call the Flow State so if you're stuck in life if you feel like you're making the same mistakes over and over again ask yourself these two questions number one am I just Theory crafting my way all the way from the Earth to the Moon without ever building a sh spaceship and

never launching something or it's probably that you're it's not never it's that it's very rare what's the percentage of theory crafting you do and what's the percentage of data collection you do the other question to ask yourself is when you feel shame are you harnessing it to create a change in your life because it's one of the most powerful motivators in existence or are you avoiding that shame and perpetuating your current existence and hopefully what will happen is as you ask these two questions you will learn from your mistakes and start to progress more in

life hey y'all if you've watched our content for a while you're probably pretty familiar with our Core Concepts and that's why I'm excited about you memberships memberships allows us to dive deeper in a lot more detail on these Core Concepts we've also explored more advanced yogic or spiritual Concepts like vasana and Kisha which will help you understand how habits form in your mind and how to break those habits memberships are also community-driven which means that y'all get to vote on which lectures I will be preparing for the next month they're 10 bucks a month and

if you don't like the vibe of it it's painless to cancel so I hope youall definitely check it out and I hope to see yall next month [Music]