Why You Need To Get Better At Doing Nothing

today we're going to talk about why doing nothing is the most important thing you can do now this may sound kind of bizarre because you're sitting there thinking well I do a lot of nothing and in fact my problem is that I do way too much nothing and instead I need to be doing something but it turns out that scientifically there are different kinds of nothing and we tend to do the wrong kinds of nothing and there are actually certain kinds of lit in action that lead to positive outcomes in our life now this may

sound weird but just hear me out so right now we live in a world that is going to hell there's climate change problems inflation problems dating and gender Dynamics are a mess like people under the age of 30 are mostly living with their parents there's like Wars and stuff going on the world is an absolute mess so as human beings when we are faced with absolute messes we do particular things and it turns out that the things that we do when we are faced with problems actually create more problems than they solve as a simple

example let's say I have a final that's coming up at the end of the week and I'm terrified that I'm not going to do well so what do I end up doing in order to deal with this problem I end up spending a lot of time playing video games or binge watching shows or maybe even getting drunk or something like that so it is the way that I try to solve my problems that actually creates additional problems it would be one thing if I just didn't do anything all day long but even the things that

I choose to engage in like let's say I do get drunk or go to a party or something like that mean that I'm hung over the next day which means that studying for the test is actually harder the most common experience that I hear from people today is despite the fact that they're swimming really hard everyone is still drowning despite the fact that you are trying to stay afloat the harder you seem to work the worse things become and then what ends up happening is people feel incredibly burnt out so today what we're going to

do is figure out how to completely re-evaluate that cycle and paradoxically do less but in the right way so this sort of idea actually comes from some really interesting research around coping mechanisms so coping mechanisms are things that we do when something is not going right so when I have a problem the way that I manage that problem is the way that I cope and recently what I've heard especially in the field of like Psychiatry and therapy and even just the internet is everyone's like level up your coping mechanisms bruh like I need to be

able to cope like I need my copium like oh my God like everyone needs to be meditating and exercising and spending time in nature and like these are the healthy coping mechanisms instead what we need to do is get rid of the unhealthy coping mechanisms I need to be meditating instead of watching porn and jerking off well it ain't that easy right and so today what we're actually going to teach you is a little bit better of a way to deal with your problems with actually doing less because that's actually the most powerful coping mechanism

I know it sounds crazy but hear me out let's start with the worst form of coping which is called emotion focused coping so motion focused coping is when something goes wrong out there it creates an internal change in here so if I am you know for example if I have that test and I feel afraid what I'm going to sort of focus on is not fixing the problem out there but managing my internal emotional state this is called emotion focused coping and what we sort of know from studies in Psychology Psychiatry coping mechanisms especially things

like trauma is that the worst kind of coping mechanisms are actually emotion focused coping emotion focused coping mechanisms actually lead to poor outcomes over the long term so what that means more practically is if I solve my problems or if the way I deal with my problems because I'm not really solving them or to actually change my internal emotional state that actually doesn't fix any problems and is going to lead to worse problems later on let's just think about this right so let's say I have a test I'm studying for or supposed to be studying

for and instead I feel incredibly anxious and fearful that I'm not going to do well on the test I really need an a I really need an A and what do I do with all that fear and anxiety I turn to something like video games or pornography or alcohol or marijuana or whatever something to manage my internal emotional state there are also other examples of this so let's say you're in a relationship with someone who is very very dependent on your emotional support or maybe you're the one who needs emotional support and then anytime you

feel negative emotions in here your goal is to make those negative emotions go away now this is a huge problem nowadays especially with things like trigger warnings now I'm not completely against trigger War warnings there's some evidence that they're a little bit harmful but let's just understand this okay so what goes on with a trigger warning what goes on with a trigger warning is you say something that makes me feel a particular way we're not saying talk talk about hate speech or anything but you say something oh my God you were talking about exercising and

that triggers my trauma about when I last went to the gym so in this situation what is this person doing they're saying that you should stop doing what you're doing to try to control my internal emotional state the worst problem here is that we are surrendering the power of our internal emotional state to other people but at the end of the day all of these are emotion focused coping and the purpose of emotion focused coping is to fix the emotions that are caused by problems so what happens when we use emotion focused coping at the

best nothing changes right because I'm managing my emotions but I'm not solving the problems that actually create them and at the worst when I engage in Emotion focused coping it actually impairs me when I try to solve my problems I'm more hung over now it's been a week since I've studied and I forgot something so even though I've sort of delayed by seven days I'm actually forgetting something each one of those days and so what we sort of know of the science of emotion focused coping is that people who rely on it tend to do

poorly so if we don't want to do emotion focused coping what's the other option so now we move to standard copium in standard copium the most common example of this is something like problem solving so as we already said you know I have a couple ways of dealing with my problems one is that I can try to manage my emotions and not actually deal with the problem and the second is I can actually deal with the problem and the cool thing is when we focus on problem solving is a coping mechanism the data shows that

we tend to do better right no surprise that people who fix their problems tend to do better in life so here I am telling you oh just go problem solve and just fix your problems and this is where we run into a really important problem with problem solving which is if you are listening to this video right now you've already figured it out which is that you can't solve all your problems right because hey the world is going to hell everything is screwed up climate change and inflation all the other crap that I said I

haven't been able to go on a date in 2 years I've never had a girlfriend all the men I I date are toxic and all these kinds of problems exist out there and these are unsolvable problems and so then what do we do we decide to give up so this is the other problem with problem solving is if the Mind cannot clearly see a path to problem solve we will go ahead and give up and that is exactly the wrong thing to do because as it turns out trying to solve unsolvable problems is one of

the most useful things you can do this may sound insane but hear me out so I'm going to tell you all the story so when I was an intern I had a patient who had stage four metastatic liver cancer so this means that they had cancer of the liver and it had spread all throughout their body so this person was going to die and his family would come in every day and they would be freaking out we'd sort of explain to this person and his family what the diagnosis is you've got maybe about a month

to live right that's like it's like one of these bad scenarios and the family was like they since he's got liver cancer so the liver is like up here and then it presses on the stomach it's it metastasizes so it's all in his abdomen and it's his intestines and stomach and stuff like that so what is he doing he's not eating and then the family gets really really bent out of shape about this they're like oh my god he has to keep his strength up he's not eating anything you got to get him to eat

like we're trying to get him to eat he needs to eat he needs to eat needs to keep his strength up and I'm sitting there in the back and I'm kind of thinking like bro what are y'all talking about like he doesn't strength ain't going to make a difference the guy is like terminally ill with cancer like this isn't going to work and so this was back when I was an intern right so this was before I became a psychiatrist and I realiz I didn't realize at the time that we're missing out on something really

really important which is that when we try to problem solve there are two mechanisms actually at play one is we are trying to solve the problem and if we can fix our external circumstances then we will sort of get better right right our lives will get better objectively because we fix something but there's a second aspect to problem solving which is incredibly important and has nothing to do with with whether the problem gets solved or not and that is the mental aspect of problem solving so in the case of this family what they were doing

is doing anything they could and the cool thing about that is that anything that they can do even if it's completely irrelevant in the long run changes their psychology so if we look at in the face of unsolvable problems there are two options one is we can try to do something futile and then at least we're giving it you know we're trying something we're giving it some effort that we've got or what we can do is give up and now this is the beautiful thing when it comes to long-term outcomes and people who use coping

mechanisms and stuff like that there's one big difference that people who try do way better than people who give up and so the other really bizarre thing is that frequently when we give up we also have a cognitive bias at Play and our mind tells us there is no point in trying because we are doomed to failure but that isn't objectively correct especially if you look at something like dating or whatever there there's so many people that I've talked to who have said yeah this is objectively hopeless everything is a mess look at all this

evidence that I have from the internet and people talking on the internet and people posting things on shorts and Twitter or X or whatever it is nowadays and look at all of this evidence and I have my own experience of trying to go on dates three or four times and everyone says right cuz let's remember that the internet is scientific research those two are absolutely interchangeable when we're sort of faced in that situation we tend to give up and so I know it sounds crazy but even in the face of unsolvable problems I strongly encourage

you to give it a shot and don't worry about your mind telling you this will never work that's not what we're actually shooting for when we're trying to solve an unsolvable problem the goal is not to actually solve the problem but there's a decent chance you'll make an impact of some kind the goal is mentally to not give up the goal is to mentally understand that if you can put forth some effort even if it's futile it changes the equation of mental burnout in your mind so this is kind of what copium is all about

we absolutely want to try to solve our problems but even in the face of unsolvable problems you should still give it a shot because human beings at the end of the day when they do something they feel like they're doing something right so people will kind of say oh you know I prayed to whoever right I prayed to God and because I prayed to God this person's life was saved and I'm not trying to dock on prayer or say God exists or doesn't exist or anything like that I'm just pointing out that the psychology of

doing something makes people feel like a little bit more responsible and take a little bit more credit if things are moving in the right direction so we absolutely want to give things a shot and then we move to the top tier of coping mechanisms which is what I would dub hopium which is the super cool because the top tier of coping mechanisms that leads to the best outcomes in life actually involves doing absolutely nothing and this tier of coping mechanism is called cognitive reframing cognitive reframing is literally changing the way that you think about things

and I know it sounds insane but I've worked with a lot of people who are like degenerate Gamers and a lot of people who are super successful like CEOs and like streamers and stuff like that and what I've the really bizarre thing is that I don't think that there's a big difference between these two groups of people hell in my life the big difference like I was the same person I was like 15 years ago as to now what really changed my IQ didn't change it's not like my conscientiousness magically increased what changed was the

way that I think about things which is technically doing nothing and so cognitive reframing is one of the most important tools that you can actually harness so let's understand this a little bit B better okay so you can take two different people who encounter the same scenario let's say they go through a breakup and literally we've done scientific studies on the way that people respond to breakups and what we found is that the way that they think determines their outcomes over time so if I break if I break up with someone I can think to

myself oh my God I'm unlovable and I will be alone for the rest of my life and this person is going to do so much better without me and there's no hope for me right so we went through a breakup they dumped me didn't dump me whatever you can pick whatever scenario you want on the flip side we have people who are good at cognitive reframing and these people literally take their initial thoughts and try to move them in a different direction and you can even acknowledge the negativity wow I got dumped that means that

you know I'm really not in a good place right now I really have a lot of work to do if I want to become a healthy person who can engage in a healthy relationship even even though this relationship fell apart at the least I learned a lot from it and I will be better prepared to engage in future relationships so this is literally what cognitive reframing is and this is what we do in Psychotherapy is that we take people's default thoughts and what we actually try to help them do is reframe to more helpful thoughts

and so it's not enough that I just tell y'all hey just start thinking differently bruh so there's a a particular process that I'm going to walk youall through like a you know a quick rundown of how to cognitively reframe hey just a quick note a lot of people will ask us what do I do next and that's why we built Dr K's guide It's a comprehensive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience both as a monk and as a psychiatrist and it's designed in a way that's tailored to fit your needs so if

you're interested in better understanding your mind and taking control of your life check out the link below so the first thing to do if you want to C cognitively reframe is you want to write down whatever your initial thoughts are so you're going to have all of these kinds of like negative thoughts that kind of come out and just write them down right and then ask yourself this kind of a dgen technique okay ask yourself if you were a different human being if you were a more resilient human being if you were a better human

being if you were one of like one of those people who's like good at life right instead of you what would they think about the situation you know those dumb asses that are trying to encourage you and get you back up and stuff like that they're like oh man like think about the big picture like what would they say and what you're going to find is that there is an instinctive revulsion to that second column what you're going to find is as you write things down your mind will naturally react by countering those kinds of

things but here's the crazy thing just because your mind has a reaction doesn't mean that it's true and so then what you want to do is notice that third reaction right which is the conflict between column 1 and column two just how do you feel when you're trying to write down the second column and write those things down this is absurd this doesn't work for me this works for other people but is not going to apply in my case you're going to recognize all these kinds of thoughts and just jot them down then take a

deep breath and just ask yourself out of the second column which is the hopeful column right which is the cognitive reframe column which of these things because you can't accept all of them but is there a single one that you can somewhat sort of accept right so you take these five things in which one is the least offensive is the least Incorrect and just circle that one and just spend a little bit of time thinking about it and then ask yourself okay why can I accept this one after you pick your one just ask yourself

okay what is it about this one that makes it okay well at the end of the day like I know technically any breakup that I go through I will have learned something I'll have gotten better at breaking up I'm managing my emotions it's like pushing me to do a little bit better and this way and this way and this way and so Something Beautiful happens the second you start doing doing that is that you have actually cognitively reframed you've literally rewired your neurons a little bit because what we know about thinking is that thinking happens

in patterns so anytime you see a particular thing your mind will evoke the same thoughts right so like in my case you know like I was just thinking about one of my kids and one of my kids doesn't like Mayo so the first question she asks anytime she sees a sandwich is is there Mayo on it every time there's a sandwich it triggers some kind of response and in my case it's like whenever I eat something sweet I'm like wow I like this it's not too sweet so you may have noticed that you say the

same damn [ __ ] over and over and over again or people that you know say the same damn [ __ ] over and over and over again and that's because our neurons have been well-wired in that way so if we want to start thinking differently literally what we have to do is push this up this Boulder uphill of positive thoughts and it will feel very very cumbersome when we first do it the beautiful thing is that if you engage in this cognitively reframing technique over and over and over again your mind mind will literally

start to change the natural responses that you have when you get a setback will be a little bit different you'll be able to look on the brighter side of things and once you're able to look on the brighter side of things that's the first Domino because now you're not in despair now you're not burnt out now you're not giving up at the first setback and even if we sort of think about these terms what is the difference between giving up in a setback it's just whether you keep going or not right a setback which is

your last setback is when you give up but if you don't give up after a setback it automatically becomes a setback and so then the question you need to ask yourself is what do you want your life to be do you want to be a person who gives up or has setbacks and that's the big difference between a dgen gamer and a CEO one of them gives up and one of them has setbacks so I know it sounds kind of crazy but it turns out that a lot of what we do when we are faced

with problems actually creates more problems this is why doing nothing is actually everything but there are different kinds of nothing and the most important nothing that you can do is the nothing up here the interesting thing is if you really pay attention most of y'all when you say I do nothing you're not actually doing nothing you're doing something right I have a test at the end of the week are you literally doing nothing no you start doing crap you start doing dumb crap right you start watching TV or you're on YouTube right now procrastinating from

doing the work that you're doing by watching this [ __ ] video this is not doing nothing you are doing something you are watching me right now and that's the crazy thing is that what we sort of found is that people who focus on doing something that makes them feel better mopi or emotion Focus coping or even problem solving are not as Chad or Stacy as people who actually do a little bit less or do way less but do that Less in a very particular way which is cognitively reframing and not giving up this is

normally the part of the video where I would say now go out and do something but actually maybe you should do [Music] nothing