Escaping The Self Help Scam

so when you go to a guru you're supposed to surrender you're supposed to do whatever they say they don't care about who you are they don't care about how much money you make they don't care about how you feel they don't care about what you want when they say jump you are supposed to jump but there's something a huge problem with this is that this is exactly why people open themselves up to abuse this is why the gurus get in trouble you have to be incredibly spiritually powerful in order to not give to The Temptations

of taking advantage of those people so we used to have these people called gurus who were known for having this mystical understanding of the universe and transforming your life through secret techniques but there was a problem these OG gurus started putting their peeps where they didn't belong and their dedicated followers started doing things like poisoning people so society as a whole kicked out these gurus and in their place popped up something else the self-help Guru and these gurus are gurus of a different breed they're often times influencers content creators people like myself who are offering

the masses salvation advice tips bioh hacks life hacks brain hacks all of these things to improve your life and make your life way easier but there's a problem with my brand of Guru as well which is that a lot of their stuff doesn't seem to work right so if you look at the self-help industry today it's a multi-billion dollar in Industry you have lots of content creators you have influencers you have all of these people that are offering you all of this stuff and yet the world is moving in the wrong direction depression is increasing

anxiety is increasing suicidality is increasing dating is an absolute mess despite the fact that they're all of these pickup artists and relationship gurus out there who are offering you all these easy tricks to make women fall in love with you and make men respect you and buy you things right despite all these things the problems are getting worse and we also have Financial gurus but it's harder to buy a home than it ever been so something is weird is going on where we have all of this advice but things seem to be moving in the

wrong direction and that's because we've lost something incredibly important that the OG gurus were really good at there was something that they did that allowed them to transform their shishas or disciples which US self-help gurus don't have the capacity to do in order to understand the difference we have to unpack how self-help gurus work and then we will discover a pathway to transforming ourselves okay and this is something that I have some interesting insight into because you know here right now I am sort of filling the role of a self-help Guru but in my day

job I actually have a job of helping human beings as a psychiatrist and there are a couple of big differences between those two things and once we understand how change actually happens we will be equipped to make change in our own lives that will be transformed ative okay so let's start with clinical Psychiatry so here is you and here is the change that you want to make so there's one thing that we sort of discovered in clinical Psychiatry which is that most human beings are ambivalent now what does that mean that means that most human

beings don't just want to go in One Direction they want to go in two directions right I want to eat healthy but I also want to eat unhealthy now the problem with this is that when we look at most self-help gurus what do most self-help gurus offer they say hey I will teach you how to eat healthy I'm going to make it easy for you right sign up for my course of $699 and I will teach you all the recipes and all the things and I will give you all of the benefits I will teach

you everything it'll be very easy so what they tend to do is emphasize benefit and don't really talk about the cost right so you can look at like let's say a fitness influencer and all these Fitness influencers will have like you know web pages or Instagrams or whatever where they're like looking super swole and they'll say like oh I have some I've developed some secret technique that will teach you some secrets about Humanity that the EMF and the big Pharma in the food industry don't want you to know and if you do this you will

be able to look like me whereas if you really look at like if you want to get in shape and you want to look like those Fitness influencers really what you need to do is go to the gym 4,000 times you need to work out for like 5 years in a row 10 years in a row and then you will look like that but the problem is that doesn't sell right the only real hack if we there is a fitness hack to be honest but there's a really good Fitness hack the problem is that it's

like anabolic steroids and injecting your butt with like growth hormone and [ __ ] like that like that's really the only Fitness hack we have on the planet everything else is hard work the problem is that when we look at Fitness influence or other kinds of influencers other kinds of self-help gurus what they sort of do is emphasize the benefit and when I say when we look at we fall into this category to maybe we'll get into why that is so they're always talking about the benefit so the problem here is that anytime they tell

you to do something there is an expectation of a gain and a lack of emphasis on the cost now this this fundamental propos position that they make is actually probably the biggest problem with why self-help doesn't work if we want to understand why implementing self-help is so hard this I think is the best resource for it so this is a book on motivational interviewing which is an evidence-based technique that gets people to sustainably change their behavior it's one of the most important Tools in my tool belt when I'm working with someone with an addiction so

if you think about an addiction this person wants to quit the substance or behavior but then they're also drawn to the substance or behavior so if we look at fundamentally like anytime human beings want to change they don't just want to change they want to change and they want to stay the same at the same time so the problem with self-help is that they basically offer us they have this idea of a gain over here where you are happy but they don't really think about the cost and then when you start to implement some kind

of change when you start to imple whatever the self-help Guru tells you to do you run into a problem so all of them involve being simultaneously pushed or pulled in at least two opposite directions the more you move toward one choice the clearer its disadvantages become and the more its opposite appeals right so let's think about what that sentence says so when you are given advice by a self-help Guru you are over here and then you look at envision your happy self right here's the value you're going to be a swoldier right you're going to

be swoll like everyone tells you like oh just do this thing and you're going to be swole but you're not really aware of the cost now as you start moving in this direction the cost actually increases right every time you work out you you were looking at being super swole but when you actually go to the gym you don't feel good you feel nauseous you feel embarrassed you feel like you have all of this you know you have so far to go you're never going to get there you always give up all of this negativity

arises and then here's the other problem when you actually go to the gym right so here's Happy The Happy you that you're moving towards and now the cost is increasing playing video games becomes more appealing oh I'll just work out at home right so the closer you move towards your goal there's almost this rubber banding effect where the closer you move towards your goal the more you actually want to move move in the opposite direction and this is the Crux of the problem is that the self-help gurus will focus on the benefit benefits but not

focus on the costs and why do we do that because we are living in an attention economy where if we sort of tell you hey this kind of thing probably won't work for you and it's going to take you basically if you want to get into shape work out for 4,000 days in a row like if anyone says that that's probably the sa safest easiest way to get healthy but no one is going to click on that everyone already knows that right so there's there's the the tricky thing is that the most important Solutions are

kind of known to everyone now let's think a little bit about how the OG Guru is different and then we'll get to some Neuroscience which is really fascinating here's how the OG Guru Works they'll they'll tell you you go to an asham right you go to a monastery this is what I spent seven years doing so Guru comes up to you and says here's a bag of rice and you're like okay and then they take the bag of rice and they toss it out onto the floor so the rice goes spilling everywhere they give you

a pair of chopsticks they're like pick it up and I'm like what the what what so I start picking up the the Chopsticks kind of one grain at a time right and then I fill up the thing and I'm like okay I guess I'm training in something this is like I guess there's some secret technique here and I go give the guru the bag of rice and he's like good job takes the rice dumps it out he's like do it again I'm like what and so I'm like okay fine I'm going to do it again

because this is what the guru tells me to do so I do it a second time do it a third time this goes on not not just two three times one month two months 3 months and then I'm here to learn meditation I'm here to learn yoga I'm here to transform myself and this guy all he ever does is takes the rice dumps it out every single day and tells me to pick it up with a pair of Chopsticks so this is how gurus work because on the path if you're working with a guru the

most important thing is this concept of surrender okay so when you go to a guru you're supposed to surrender you're supposed to do whatever they say they don't care about who you are they don't care about how much money you make they don't care about how you feel they don't care about what you want they don't care about your goals they don't care about any of that stuff they tell you to do something when they say jump you are supposed to jump but there's something a huge problem with this is that this is exactly why

people open themselves up to abuse this is why the gurus get in trouble because when you have a bunch of disciples who are doing exactly what you say you have to be incredibly spiritually powerful in order to not give into the temp ations of taking advantage of those people the other problem with the OG gurus is that many of them are what I would call false gurus they haven't gone through the level of spiritual training but since the tradition demands surrender they're like sweet I'm going to be a mega Guru I'm going to have everyone

surrender to me turn over their bank accounts and I'm it's going to be Gucci I'm going to get to do whatever I want to and then they do all kinds of psychological gymnastics to justify the abuse that they they Heap on their disciples but let's forget about all that and go back to how this actually works if we want to understand why this is so effective okay we have to understand how Behavior happens how we take action you have an action that you're thinking about taking and your brain has all of these circuits that are

influencing whether that action happens or not so the first thing that we're going to talk about are the frontal loes these things are responsible for planning and executing longterm [Music] goals right so these people like doctors who are like when I'm 16 years old I decide I'm going to be a doctor and then I have a goal that for the next couple years I'm studying really hard on my college entrance exams I'm working really hard in college I'm pre-made I get a 4.0 I take the MCAT then I apply to med school then I go

through med school then I go to residency then I'm a surgeon at one of the top programs I spend 5 years doing that so there are some people who are capable of at the age of 16 deciding that they want to be a surgeon and spend 2 6 10 15 years moving towards that goal and then they end up as a freshly minted surgeon and they've succeeded in their goal they've been focusing on that for 15 years so the frontal lobes are also where a lot of our shoulds come from so we know that we

should be working out eating healthy maybe working on this coating certification maybe polishing up our resum maybe networking a little bit more right so this influences our action the problem is that we have other things that influence our action as well so let's take a look at our emotional circuitry right so if I feel anxious instead of talking to people and tolerating it I pull out my cell phone if I'm feeling ashamed of myself I won't go to school I literally had that problem I skipped you know three days of Spanish class because I was

playing too many video games and then like on day four you feel stupid just walking in right like you just missed three days people are going to ask you where you were you don't want to lie do I pretend to have a cough like these are the kinds of thoughts that I used to have and then four days go by and then day five becomes harder and now that you've missed one week catching up after on day six next Monday becomes even harder so every day that goes by the shame increases and it becomes harder

and harder and harder to fix it so we have emotional circuitry that influences our actions and then we have this is a super simple full diagram we have our dopam energic circuitry like our nucleus succumbent which also influences our actions so the nucleus succumbent is what gives us a sense of pleasure in motivation right so this is where like you know when I play a video game I want to play it again so these are the three things within you that basically fight over determining what kind of action you take now how do we decide

who wins so this is where I want youall to understand a very simple principle of Neuroscience whatever you practice gets better so if I practice writing for example writing Cur cursive over time I will get better if I practice headshotting people in an FPS I will get better at that whatever your brain the more reps your brain does the stronger those that neuronal wiring becomes that's how things become easier for you so let's take a look at what we're practicing in our day-to-day lives so right now let's start with this idea that all three of

these circuits have an equal influence okay so they sort of have an equal amount of stuff going into and influencing our behavior when I do something fun right so when I play a video game what does that actually do it strengthens the connection between the nucleus succumbent and my final behavioral decision- making right so I I'm sort of expanding it you can think about it like a pipe and now I've strengthened this and so now the dopaminergic circuitry is controlling more of my behavior I've activated my dopaminergic ciry I played a video game once then

I want to play it again then I want to play it again so what I'm actually doing is I'm increasing the size of the nucleus succumbent effect on my overall Behavior this is also why people fall into problems like poly substance use right so we think about addiction as a gen genetic predisposition oh alcoholism runs into my runs in my family so I'm prone to alcohol addiction but if you look at a lot of people the majority of the people in the world today they're not just vulnerable to alcohol they are they're polysubstance addicts we're

not just vulnerable to marijuana we're vulnerable to marijuana and video games and uh pornography and alcohol right so we're vulnerable to all of this stuff why is that how can we be vulnerable to all of these things do we have a genetic predisposition to all of them AB absolutely not each time we engage in these things we are essentially practicing letting our dopamine control our Behavior this is also what we see in addiction right the more that you use the harder it gets to quit the more it influences your action but it's not just dopamine

we can also look at our emotions so if I'm socially anxious that and I let that behavior control me and then I'm at a party and I go to the corner and I pull out my phone what am I essentially doing I'm increasing the effect of emotions on my behavior so now that I gave in my emotions right I'm letting that activation dictate my behavior and as a result what happens the impact of my emotions on my behavior actually increases so it's kind of like I'm strengthening the connections between my emotional circuitry and what ultimately

my action circuitry let's call it that way right so now the more that I give into these things the stronger of an effect they have on which action I end up taking so this is where the self-help problem becomes actually super apparent so when people you know are offer you self-help what are they doing they're actually appealing to your dopaminergic circuitry they're appealing to reward they're saying hey if you do this thing you will get some huge benefit or if you're looking at someone like a you know a pickup artist or someone who's going to

teach you how to socialize they're saying hey if you if you take my course we will teach you how to socialize and be really good at things the problem is that there what they're actually doing is they are appealing to your emotional circuitry and your dopam energic circuitry they're talking to you all about the benefit and since our circuitry is already primed this way we sort of come into these things with this expectation that we will get some kind of benefit now here's the problem okay so let's say this to say hey if you do

this thing you will be successful sign up for my stock analysis course and you will make lots of money so then you sign up for the course okay you sign up for the course and then there's a problem because as you engage in these actions you don't instantly become successful right you don't become a successful overnight so you don't actually get a huge amount of dopamine you just get a tiny little bit of dopamine and since you have the gigantic pipe which has very little flowing through it then you don't engage in the action because

this is not influence it's not actually triggering action because the dopaminergic signal is so small they promised you all the stuff and they don't deliver very well which is why there's a multi-billion dollar self-help industry because if they delivered then you wouldn't need them anymore right so this is what I've seen as a psychiatrist I work with most of my patients for 12 to 18 months at a time that's kind of the average right some people are a little bit less but takes about 12 to 18 months and why is it 12 to 18 months

because we're done at that point right they' figured out what their conflict is with their mom they've learned how to set boundaries they' figured out what the problems are with their the way that they date people they figured out how to be more assertive they've conquered their anxiety so we're kind of done and they move on but what what happens in the self-help industry is that they you have a circuitry that's already primed for benefit they deliver very little benefit and then you're your motivation is not there because these are the two circuits that are

actually controlling your actions now let's look at what a guru does picks up the bag of rice throws it on the ground and says pick it up how do you respond to this so the first thing that happens is you get angry so you get a lot of negative emotion coming in saying no I don't want to pick it up right then there's also an aspect of ego here which is going to influence your behavior and then so then you have a choice right so when the guru says you have to surrender complete you do

what what the [ __ ] whatever the [ __ ] I say I don't want to hear anything you do what I say so you do it once okay and then so what happens that anger within you is telling you don't listen don't do it but you control that anger you use your frontal loes and you end up acting anyway so when you feel angry and you restrain that anger and there's no benefit there's no point to doing this right there's no benefit for you how is this going to change your brain so this is

going to strengthen your frontal loes and you will actually shrink your emotional circuitry so each time you do this what's happening you start it out this way right CU you came in from all the self-help crap and then it's going over here and then you do it for 3 months and then it ends up this way and then you kind of end up with a brain where your rage and what makes you angry has very little influence on your action and similarly since you are working really hard right you're controlling the other parts of your

brain then what happens is your frontal lobes are really really potent right they're coming in now they're huge and since this activity doesn't help you at all you are shrinking the dopaminergic circuitry effect on your brain so now it I knows kind of insane but what's really going on here is you are changing the drivers of action right because the guru says something and there's no benefit for you there's no benefit that your brain sees and you train yourself to do it anyway it feels frustrating that's literally why they do it that way right they

want to induce the frustration there can't be any benefit the whole point is for there to be zero benefit and at for it to be frustrating and the more that they put you in that situation and force you to act they're teaching you how to practice controlling yourself and once you have a brain like this then any kind of action in the external World becomes incredibly easy oh there's no immediate reward for me working hard at work no problem I am in control oh this thing feels socially uncomfortable I feel anxious no problem my brain

is used to all kinds of negative emotions and overcoming them and controlling them anyway this is how a guru works the problem is that in order for this to be successful we have to surrender right we have to give up our ego we have to let go of our emotions we even have to let go of advantages we have to kind of put ourselves last and Trust the guru because when we surrender we put themselves fully in that and that's literally what allows us to engage in these behaviors that are completely useless there is another

great example of this which is that you know so I I thankfully this didn't happen to me but there was a a great zen master who had the habit of smacking his disciples with sticks when they meditate and then they'd be like and then what would happen is is the the people would like start to develop like some kind of trauma related to it like a trauma response where now you're into ipating it now you're looking out for the master you're wondering is he hiding over here is he hiding over there he pops out behind

the bushes smacks you you're asleep he smacks you so he's been doing this for 30 years he's been catching disciples his like sneak attack bonus is super huge his hide his hide and shadows and his move silently or like through the roof right cuz he's like one of these ninjas end Masters so he's smacking you so much so much so much all the time and then something happens you you start to prepare yourself you tighten yourself up during meditation you're waiting for it you're ready for it and then he doesn't do anything 5 days go

by hasn't smacked you you're like oh maybe he's done smacks you just when you let your guard down and so then eventually what happens is the disciples learn one thing the first is that smack isn't that bad right he's not trying to hurt you actually he's just trying to [ __ ] with you and So eventually what you discover you come to one really amazing understanding look the master is just going to do this occasionally some days it'll be more some days it'll be less it doesn't affect my meditation it doesn't affect what I eat

eat it doesn't affect how I sleep like yeah it disturbs me a little bit but like whatever right so I can continue to live my life and the master can do whatever the hell he wants to there's some small inconvenience it doesn't really bother me that much if he smacks me he smacks me whatever I'm going to just like do my thing he can smack me as much as he wants imagine how that changes your life so you learn some degree of surrender you learn hey sometimes [ __ ] happens I am not going to

let the things that life sends my way disturb me I'm going to keep my eye on the prize and I'm going to let him do whatever he wants to I don't really care when that person leaves the monastery and bad stuff happens to them they don't crumble they don't fall apart they become increasingly resilient this is the original transformation that we talked about at the beginning of the video people are transformed by gurus they become different people it's like the stuff that bothers and knocks down all the other people in life these people seem more

resilient to it and there's studies piles and piles and piles of studies that show that meditative practice which is just the tip of the iceberg is really good at enhancing resilience increases res resilience by somewhere between 17 and 22% enhances quality of life incre enhances happiness strengthens our frontal loes helps with ADHD helps with schizophrenia helps with depression helps with anxiety because we are training our brain and that's what gurus were really good at now we still have a problem because now we're kind of stuck right so here are the self-help gurus that are offering

you lots of benefit but not training your brain therefore the moment that you engage in their stuff the costs start to rise which you weren't expecting at the very beginning the more the costs rise the harder it is to stay motivated why is it harder to stay motivated because your brain is dopaminergically controlled and the more that you move towards that goal the more the rubber banding effect kicks in and the more that you want to uh I don't really like working out sure I did it for a week but like let me take a

week off right I want youall to think about that I've earned a break the most toxic statement when you are trying to put your life together is I've earned a break what is that I've earned a break is the mask that your laziness puts on is the mask that your dopaminergic brain puts on right so it says oh I did this thing now I what I really want to do is play video games so let me come up with an excuse it is the dopaminergic vulnerability in your brain that is now putting on this mask

that feels positive I've earned a break earned it yeah like good I did a good job I've earned a break everyone deserves a break that's where the guru steps in the guru is like you don't deserve [ __ ] you picked it up the gra bag of rice a thousand times let's do a thousand in one but there's a problem because today we don't know what is a good Guru and what is a bad Guru so many gurus have taken advantage of so many people so what do you do how do you how do you

solve this problem is it that you should go find some Guru and devote yourself to them no you're going to get taken advantage of just like most of the people in the world get taken advantage of because the number of false gurus in the world far outweighs the number of real gurus so what do you do you take the principle of the guru and you apply it to your own life sacrifice surrender so every day when you wake up what is a guru truly teaching you the guru is teaching you do this thing with no

benefit it doesn't matter how you emotionally feel you do the thing for the sake of doing the thing so what I want you all to do and this is what sort of works when I teach it sort of in a clinical setting is focus on the concept of sacrifice sacrifice for yourself see most of the time when we work with the self-help gurus we are taking action for our benefit if you sign up for this thing you will be helped in this way right so we are ultimately acting for an advantage for some kind of

benefit for ourselves so we are focusing on the benefit and if the cost is too high we're going to quit instead what we need to do is sacrifice sacrifice for yourself do this thing today but this is the tricky thing normally when we focus on discipline and working hard we think about how this will help me tomorrow I'm working out so I can get my beach pod I'm working hard so I can retire early I'm learning about stocks so that I can buy a yacht we are always thinking about our benefit anytime we take an

action the key thing that a guru teaches you is how to stop thinking about your benefit so if we can duplicate that we don't need a guru I mean you still may need a guru but that's conversation for a different day so sacrifice for yourself today when you wake up think about all of the things that you're going to be doing and think about why you're doing them but don't do them for yourself if you're going to eat healthy you're not eating healthy for yourself you're eating healthy for a future you you are going to

pay the price today so that someone later can wake up one day in your body and feel good about their life you are giving a GI gift to the future version of yourself and this is the most important thing to remember you will never benefit from it the moment that you adopt this attitude of sacrifice I'm going to do this for future me I'm going to do this for future me you have to squeeze out any kind of benefit for yourself because if you are in your mind thinking about a benefit from yourself then what'll

happen is you deserve a break right and the opposite of this is true all the time we think about procrastination we think about how far behind what's the problem with procrastination the problem with procrastination is present you is screwing over future you present you doesn't give a [ __ ] about future you and when you are suffering with in procrastination do you look back and think to yourself man I'm so glad I wasted six years of my life playing video games that was such a great use of my time man this is amazing all of

the happiness from the past six years outweighs my suffering today you're going to look back and you're say man what a great life lived so what does that tell us that tells us that the future you is not really you it's a completely different person the sacrifice that you experience today is going to be is going to be of benefit for a completely different human being this is the main thing that gurus teach you so when you think about your life today when you think about taking an action don't think about the benefit just think

about the price just think today I'm doing this for someone else to benefit for the benefit of a future version of myself when will that future version come if yall have been paying attention you'll figure out the answer hey y'all hope you enjoyed today's video we talk about a bunch of topics like this on the channel so be sure to subscribe for more if you're already subscribed GG and we'll see you in [Music] chat for [Music]