when you have a desire your mind is occupied the literal thoughts that you have are focused on what you don't have so in my mind what is the nature of desire it is I don't have this I don't have this I don't have this and what is the nature of contentment I've wanted a girlfriend my entire life I don't I have low self-esteem because I'm a virgin and then I finally got laid hell yeah hell yeah I have it so have having is happiness and wanting is unhappiness simple right today we're going to talk about
how to conquer desire easy right just easy like we got a maybe 15 20 minute video I don't know maybe 30 minutes on how to conquer desire and at the end of that we'll have figured it out no but seriously today we're going to talk about the fundamentals of conquering desire because often times the reason we struggle with conquering Desir is we don't really know how desire works so let's start with what is desire so some part of our brain our body our mind gives us desires right and why do we have desires desires are
our organisms way of showing us what will bring us happiness just think about it for a second right so if I'm if I have a desire let's say I want to eat something what will happen when I fulfill that desire I will be happy if I have a desire for a particular kind of relationship let's say I want a boyfriend or a girlfriend and I get that thing I will be happy if I have a desire from a week away from work and I get that thing it will make me happy that's kind of what
desire is right it's our organism's way of pointing us towards happiness but there's a fundamental problem with desire which is that once I get that thing the satisfaction doesn't last right so even if I say okay like I want to eat a cookie and then the cookie will bring me happiness once I eat the cookie and then I want another one and then maybe I feel okay for a while but then tomorrow I'm going to want cookies again I'm going to want to play one game and I don't know if yall are like me but
anytime I get a new game I'm not really looking for a new game I'm looking for the joy that old games used to give me right I'm chasing that high and even if we look at things like opioid addiction they even call it that they call it chasing the dragon because when you become addicted to opio opioids the second third fourth fifth nth time you use opioids what you're really hunting for is a recreation of that first experience so desire is what brings us to happiness but also is kind of a scam because it never
leaves us happy and if we really pay attention to it we find something really strange and unfortunate which is that the more we give into desire the less happy we become right so it's kind of like in a moment if I eat a cookie I'll get some amount of happiness but the more that I become a slave to my desires it's not like I'm fulfilled and joyous and filled with contentment or whatever every day for the rest of my life it's like the more that I feed the beast the more the Beast grows and the
hungrier it gets so how do we fix this fundamental problem if youall want to dive deep into the most important topics for our community check out HG memberships so the first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk this is a Vasa too your mind is vasas all the way down so the key thing about Detachment is not that you don't have wants it is that your wants do not control you membership grants you access to monthly streams as well as a back catalog of a Year's worth of content
in addition to quests and so much more if you're interested you can sign up for 10 bucks a month at healthy gamer. g/ memberships or click the link in the description below hope to see you there so I'm going to sort of illustrate this by I had a great experience when I was in residency this is when I was uh training to become a psychiatrist so I was working at this place called the Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School whatever and my third year of residency I was doing something called um Boston street team so
street team is is part of this organiz or it's a thing that Boston healthcare for the homeless used to do so this is a super cool experience very formative for me where like homeless people like don't have a home right they have difficulty commuting they can't always make it to appointments like they don't have a stable place to live so what you used to do is you actually walk the streets of Boston tracking down your patients and delivering medical care so I'd have like my stethoscope I'd have a backpack maybe a prescription pad and I'm
with this team of people and we like wander the streets of Boston okay so street team would start with like breakfast in the morning where we'd all meet at like a dut place so we'd have coffee and donuts and then I'd wander the streets of Boston looking for my patients thing that really surprised me was like how resilient and happy some homeless people were and so I'm trying to be a psychiatrist right so I like talk to people about their feelings so I'd go and I'd talk to them and I'd be like hey you know
like you seem really happy and I'm confused how is it that you're like so happy and so homeless person I was working with asked me like so what do you have for breakfast this morning I said I had coffee and a donut and he's like I had the same thing right so like what more do I need I have my friends here I had a coffee and a dut like yeah sure you're like a doctor and you're at this you're training at Harvard Medical School but like we still had the the same breakfast I'd be
like wow that's kind of I guess it makes sense like we did have the same breakfast but my circumstances are different your circumstances are different but I guess if you say so and then what I do is I i' walk a couple hundred feet after I'm done to this you know the Massachusetts General Hospital which is one of the best hospitals in the United States if not in the world and I'd go to my office and I'd go see a patient who is a managing director or partner at a venture capital firm who comes into
my office who has like a $3 million house in Cambridge who has an amazing job who's married and then we talk about their depression and I was like super confused and I was like wait a second like what's going on here how is it that a homeless person is pretty happy in this super successful managing partner at a venture capital firm is unhappy because we know that depression strikes the rich and the poor alike and so that's when I started to really understand the nature of Happiness okay so let's understand this so that's when I
started to really dig into the nature of happiness and let's understand this so if you think about happiness desire starts with like an emptiness within you right there's a void I don't have a thing and then when you get the thing you are happy so let's use the example of getting a PlayStation 5 so a couple years ago I got a PS5 and I was thrilled I wanted a PS5 I wanted to be ready for Elden ring let's go and so I got a PS5 and I wanted a PS5 wanted a PS5 wanted a PS5
got a PS5 cool and when I got a PS5 I was happy for a day a second day a third day and that's what happens when we get what we want right so there's like wanting mode and then there's having mode the moment you get the PS5 you're pretty happy the next day you wake up you walk into your gaming room or whatever and you see your PS5 and you're like yeah let's go and you're like yeah this is great and the next day you're like yeah this is great yeah yeah this is great but
at some point you stop having that feeling and then you start wanting other things so if we tunnel down into what desire and happiness are bear with me now so really pay attention it is literally a state of mind right so in one state of mind we are wanting and in one state of mind we are having when you were looking at what you have in the world and you are happy with it I just got my PS5 so it's really easy to be happy that I have a PS5 my desires are satisfied but when
I look at the world and I see an absence of what I have that is where the wanting and the desire come right so I'm missing this I'm missing this I'm missing this I'm missing this now I don't know if you guys have noticed this but that there there are a lot of people who have a lot but are still very unhappy so they have a PS5 they have a Nintendo switch they have whatever the current Xbox is they have a a PC and then they wake up and they're like me I'm still not happy
I want this I want this I want this right so I'm reminded of like I don't know if y'all have read Harry Potter but there's this great section about Dudley Durley and he throws a temper tantrum because he got 36 Christmas presents and then his parents are like oh we'll get you two more and why is he unhappy that he got 36 Christmas presents because last year he got 37 so I don't know if this makes sense but literally when you have a desire your mind is occupied the literal thoughts that you have are focused
on what you don't have so in my mind what is the nature of desire it is I don't have this I don't have this I don't have this and what is the nature of contentment I've wanted a girlfriend my entire life I don't I have low self-esteem because I'm a virgin and then I finally got laid hell yeah hell yeah I have it so having is happiness and wanting is unhappiness simple right and so what we tend to think is that okay how do we stance shift right so it's like there's wanting mode I'm in
tank stance how do I shift to DPS stance how do I shift to having stance I shift by getting something that's the easiest way to shift right so I want a PS5 get a PS5 now I shift from wanting to having if I shift by getting things then I become dependent on getting new things and this is the curse of desire right that I want more I want more I want more and I don't know if you guys have noticed this like there are going to be people in your life who will ask you for
things and you will give them what they want and then what are what happens tomorrow they want more and more and more and they keep on demanding more and more and more and what is happening in their mind in their mind they're focusing not on what they have not on what you've done for them but what more you could do for them so they are stuck in wanting stance instead of being stuck in having stance and then there are some people who are incredibly content and they're very happy and they don't have many desires and
then if you ask them if you like talk to them which I've Done Right for like a decade now what is in your mind what is the nature of your lack of desire and it is they that they focus on what they have and we've heard this right we've heard of this concept of gratitude to have gratitude for what you have and this is where so many people myself included when I work with people on gratitude I'm like this is BS how am I supposed to be grateful for what I have when there is all
of this stuff that I don't have how am I supposed to be grateful for this little shitty little piny little I don't even know if that's a word piny little thing over here when there's all this stuff that I don't have and that's exactly the point you can't be grateful for this as long as you have this pile of wants right because wanting and having are fundamentally two different things and as long as you want you will never conquer desire instead what we need to focus on is the having literally right so I want you
to really think about moments in your life where you didn't have desires and what is going on in your mind is your mind is looking at what you have and this is the the Crux of it conquering desire is about where your mind looks because you can get 36 presents and you can still be unhappy and why is that because you are looking somewhere else you are looking for 37 I graduated from medical school but I am still unhappy why because I wasn't in the Honor Society you're a [ __ ] doctor you're going to
be fine it's going to be great but if you look at what you don't have which is what desire is right because we can never have desires without having an absence that's literally what a desire is so if our mind looks at absences we will be unhappy and we will have desires if our mind looks at fulfillments we will be content we will be happy and we will conquer desire and so now the question becomes how do you do this so this is where the Trap that we fall into is that once again we think
that fulfilling our desires is about getting stuff but this is where I also want you all to remember when I get stuff what is the effect on me right so when I get this pen and you stick it in my hand it's like I want a Sharpie my mind thinks about what I have not what I'm missing so what am I looking at am I looking at this am I looking at having or am I looking at wanting where is my mind focused the the key thing about getting an object is getting an object shifts
us from over here to over here it is the most natural way to shift from wanting stance to having stance but here's the really cool thing you can train yourself to shift into having stance and the more that you train yourself into shifting into having stance the more desire will mean uh the more conquering of Desire you'll do you'll win battles against desire as you shift to having right and so this is the first way to do that the next time you have a desire that's fulfilled notice how long your contentment lasts and instead of
trying to control your desire just try to extend your contentment just a little bit so I'll give you all a really simple example of how to do this so I'm hungry right now I don't know if you guys heard my stomach growling so I'm going to go eat something today and when I eat something today I'm going to enjoy it a lot right because my body's hungry so I'm going to go eat something but then what I'm going to do is even an hour or two after I eat something I'm going to reflect back on
how good it was to eat damn that meal was delicious I'm going to reflect back I'm going to hold on to that having stance for a little bit longer and even tomorrow when I wake up I'm going to look back I'm going to intentionally do this right I'm going to direct my mind to man that was really awesome I worked really hard made this video and then I went and I got a sandwich and that sandwich was delicious right so you can extend the having that's the first step and we kind of do this right
so like like even if we talk about things like PS5 I'm going to do some gaming today I'm going to play some ff7 rebirth or some star sector some DOTA I don't know deadlock I'm going to play something but when I sit down to play I'm going to appreciate it I'm going to be like yeah let's go you can reflect for just a moment and be like how awesome is it that I'm not homeless how awesome is it that I have this stuff to play I'm really looking forward to this and I've got it here
it's awesome I've got this great setup that is the way that you can shift to having stance right because we Chase these things so autopilot we don't really think about it we just like play games without really appreciating it and when you play games without appreciating them what are you doing you're spending a bunch of money on Steam sales or whatever because you're looking for some kind of thing that'll give you a huge dose of having so literally what we want to do if we want to conquer desire is shift your mindset to having now
a lot of people may be worried because they'll say but Dr K if I shift my mindset to having doesn't that mean that I won't be ambitious or this won't happen or I won't because if I want a girlfriend or want a boyfriend and that desire is what motivates me to find one and so this is not a technique I hate to break it to y'all now that I've said this to you it's not like you're going to do it like this and a th% of your desires will disappear overnight it's like oh wow oh
Dr K wow dude you're great you made a 15-minute YouTube video I'm enlightened and all of my desires are gone the big difference will be the percentage of your desires that remain because what is the value of overwhelming Desir it doesn't do you any good so when we have a gigantic desire and we even fulfill some small part of it we don't actually get a whole lot of Behavioral reinforcement right when you have when you want a billion dollars making a million dollars is going to feel insufficient why because you're not focused on having you're
focused on wanting so don't worry about that instead what is more likely to happen this is what I've seen from my clinical experience and this is the lesson that I learned from the homeless people which I taught to the managing partner of a VC firm is focus on what you have right and I'm not saying ignore what you don't have I'm just saying shift your focus what percentage of your time is in desires and what percentage of your time is in having mode and as you shift into having mode something really cool will happen you
will be more content and as you become more content the desire has less of a pull on you right so I want yall to understand this as well what screws us about desire is the size of it so if I'm starving I become a slave to my desires if I have nothing going in my life I become a slave to video games so our desires control us because the size of the desire motivates our behavior and then we end up fulfilling our desires in unhealthy ways that's why we're all here so we want to absolutely
reduce desire in a sense as much as possible it's not going to disappear overnight don't worry about it and then something cool will happen so as we be shift into having mode we will experience more gratitude we will experience more contentment the amount of dopamine that we actually experience will actually go up we will start to enjoy other activities even more like working out and things like that there are all kinds of benefits to it we'll reduce our cortisol our mood will improve and then something really cool happens as all of these things start to
improve our capability to fulfill the desires that are really important to us improves because if you want a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you're struggling with social isolation you have social anxiety the more contentment you have the less stressed out you have the happier you are the easier it will be to solve all of your problems we have buckets of research that show that contentment in life leads to resilience so as you shift from wanting stance to having stance your desires will start to go down as your desires start to go down your ability to
conquer them to control them will increase and once you conquer or control your desires then you get to decide what direction you go in life instead of your desires 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 chat [Music] oh [Music]
