brain rot a term that has taken on several meanings depending on where you hear it from the stuff like skibbidy toilet I don't even know what that is it's just an overload of sounds and pictures and it's it's just nothing basically for the purpose of this video I'm going to distill the definition of brain rot into a single identifiable experience that about 90% of you have gone through it's the feeling of confusion fatigue and frustration after after scrolling highly engaging short form content for more than 30 minutes it has a massive impact on how much
effort you can put into future mental tasks how long you can stay focused and even affects your self-awareness and emotional regulation look let's be honest social media is pretty inescapable at this point and I'm not here to tell you to delete all your social media apps because you'll probably just end up redownloading them within the next couple of weeks what I am going to teach you is how to cure your brain rot Tendencies and control your devices so so that they stop controlling you and I'm going to do so using this long form video and
very little stimulation to help Kickstart the process of not needing Subway Surfers playing in the bottom of your videos in order for you to stay fully engaged so let the task of staying focused on this video until the end with no distractions be your first mission the first step which must not be skipped is developing what I call escapism awareness in order to start fixing the feeling of brain rot you first must understand why you continue engaging with the content that you know will lead to brain rot yes there is obviously a science behind it
your brain finds short form content incredibly rewarding and social media platforms take advantage of the brain's most Primal areas related to buzzword like dopamine which people Miss contextualize far too often these days and while that's certainly part of the addiction aspect of brain rot it doesn't explain the real reason why you keep doing something that you know is bad for you the real reason you keep putting yourself in a brain rot inducer coma is because you are trying to escape something you see brain rot is not the cause of a suboptimal life it's a symptom
of it people love to set goals like only use social media for 1 hour a day as if that's the key to stop being addicted to their phone but if that's the way you're approaching this problem you will inevitably always fall back into the habit of Doom scrolling and numbing your mind over the past year I've been carefully crafting my life to be filled with activities that make me genuinely excited at the thought of waking up in the morning and this has been exponentially more powerful at reducing my brain rot than setting any amount of
social media usage goals could ever be more and more I have started to occupy the reality of the person who naturally doesn't want to scroll on their phone for hours a day because I'm no longer trying to escape from anything now there's nothing wrong with having some copes life is hard and it's hard to deal with sometimes but setting the goal of using your phone less will never compensate for having a a shitty life there are specific emotions events or actions you involuntarily or voluntarily participate in throughout your day that make you more susceptible to
picking up your phone and scrolling as a means to escape whatever it is you don't want to confront and this is where you must enact the hardest but most impactful part you have to start to become aware of when you're trying to escape and actively make an effort to confront and deal with those moments so here's what I want you to do anytime you have a really strong urge to put yourself into brain rot mode notice everything that has just happened before and during this moment ask yourself what do my thoughts look like what emotions
am I experiencing where are these emotions taking place in my body what just happened before I habitually picked up my phone and what happened today or maybe in the past week that I wish wouldn't have happened if you have trouble finding the words to describe your emotions which is usually more common amongst us men then this wheel of feelings might help you it expands your vocabulary core emotions within the middle of the circle to more specific words towards the outside of the circle that you may have had trouble accessing before now when you do this
enough times patterns are going to start to emerge and this is when you will become painfully which is definitely the best word to describe this painfully aware of what problems you've been avoiding in your life by using brain rot to escape them this is the pivotal moment where you must choose to sit and bring awareness to your problems and then actually do something to start to shift what you do in your daily routine so I'll use my own life as an example here CU I've gone through this exercise before I found that I was more
susceptible to brain rotting when I had a really tough day and was exhausted I felt so tired of using my brain and working and the exhaustion made me want to just turn my brain off instead of finding a healthy way to recharge like actual rest and it saw short form content as the easiest most stimulating way to do that so instead of trying to use sheer willpower and say all right tomorrow I'm not going to use social media no more games it's time to change my life like most people approach this issue I asked myself
how can I start to shift what I do in my routine to have more energy in the day so I naturally don't feel inclined to pick up my phone and start scrolling because that is addressing the root problem instead of trying to resist the symptom depending on what you find it might go much deeper than this you might have been abused by bullies or unsupportive parents and when you think of how much they've caused you to have low self-esteem you habitually pull out your phone so you can escape that problem instead in that moment you
have to face those negative feelings recognize them and start the process of Shifting your identity by giving yourself the love and nourishment you wish your family and peers would have given you when you went through that traumatic experience the more you develop escapism awareness the easier it will be to change your life and like I always say don't try to get rid of bad habits to change your life change your life and life will naturally get rid of your bad habits because nobody I know who genuinely loves their existence enjoys scrolling on their phone eating
junk food and being lazy all day so now that you become aware of the fact that you're using brain rot as a form of escapism the question is how do you start to fill the time that you usually spent brain rotting well that's where step two comes in cognitively challenging skills there's a form of Escape escapism that I purposefully left out of the last step because it ties into this step more upon going through the escapism awareness exercise in my own life I also found that I tend to pull out my phone and start scrolling
right before I'm about to write the scripts of these YouTube videos why because I was trying to escape hard work that had some resistance behind it and that's another important distinction to make sometimes you will try to escape things that you might genuinely enjoy because they actually require you to use your brain INF Focus for a set amount of hours and this will especially be true if you are brain rotted out of your mind and your attention span is cooked what your brain loves more than anything is getting you into a routine of predictability it
loves repeating behaviors that it knows you have done before that have gotten you results that make it happy and comfortable so this is where we need to start to reinforce some new behaviors that make staying off of short form brain rot content effortless through neuroplasticity when deciding what what you want to pursue with the time you used to spend rotting your brain consider these questions what feeds me with energy after completing it rather than draining it when I visualize myself doing this task how much excitement do I get at the thought of doing it is
this thing still difficult enough to be a challenge on my attention span despite being enjoyable what would I do if I knew I couldn't fail and perhaps the most important question to ask especially in regards to finding your thing what is something that when other people try to to do they find mind-numbingly boring and excessively hard but I find intriguing and enjoyable if you're having trouble answering these questions it's likely you haven't done enough life exploration yet because a necessary prerequisite to understanding who you are and how you want to spend your time creating and
giving to the world is understanding who you aren't and what you don't like start experimenting with different hobbies that don't produce immediately gratifying rewards reading yoga weightlifting writing running rock climbing there's something out there that will take a lot of time until you eventually reap rewards from it that will simultaneously train your brain to not need as much stimulation in order to feel satisfied and the byproduct of this is that once you find one or more things like that to do and you feel more of your life with them you will naturally start going to
bed at night thinking to yourself wow scrolling sounds really unappealing right now learning new skills has also been shown to increase gray matter in your brain which is linked to improved memory emotional regul ation and you guessed it improving your attention span I was fortunate enough to find out what that thing was for me at a very early age which is video editing and video creation and the pursuit of video editing has completely changed my life with each new video I put out on my YouTube channel I'm trying to get 1% better or learn one
new editing technique that I haven't used before once you get past the beginner stage of your new skill this is how you're going to keep it as fresh and exciting as possible though no matter what it is going to die down a little bit in excitement for you and that's normal maybe you've been considering video editing as that thing you've wanted to pursue for a while now but you just don't feel like you're good enough to start which is really just an excuse to procrastinate and avoid the fear of being judged regardless something that could
really help you that I still use until this day is the sponsor of today's video motion array motion array is a marketplace with tons of video assets like templates stock footage photos music and sound effects I actually already used motion array to create a couple really cool effects in this video that you've already watched and it really helps me experiment with new ways of video editing to keep it fun and novel all you have to do is download the asset drag and drop it into your timeline and you have a beautiful graphic or transition that
probably would have taken you hours to make had you try to do it from scratch it's membership based meaning you can sign up for a month or a year and get access to absolutely everything they have to offer but you can try it for free too I understand that video editing can seem incredibly overwhelming but the hardest part of any Endeavor trust me is just starting and motion array will help you start creating great videos so if you're interested in taking video editing seriously you can click the first link in my description and you will
get $50 off motion array now the next step which has been massive for reducing my need to rot my brain is doing normal things without the stimulation add-on or in other words incorporating more silence and Stillness into my daily routine there's no doubt a plethora of benefits from listening to things like music it can help improve your mood your memory and it of course releases the buzzword dopamine keeping you more motivated to do your tasks but how many of you always need some sort of music or background audio playing while you're doing something in order
to finish your tasks there's a ton of research to show the benefits of listening to music while doing things but I'm still waiting for the research to show the detriments to always needing some sort of audio or maybe even video stimulation paired with a difficult task that you're trying to do the thing with music or podcasts or the like is that they should be used as an aid for certain types of work yes it can be useful for focusing on things like writing or running but it shouldn't be absolutely necessary in order for you to
get through these things without having blocks in your day were the only only thing you can hear is your own thoughts in the present moment you're just priming your brain to seek out other stimulating things and escape from what it is trying to get you to notice you wonder why you don't know who you are why you feel so shitty but you don't even allow yourself that time in your day to truly be still and sit with yourself without any external distractions I say it again and again and I'm going to keep on saying it
again and again take on the habit of mindfulness meditation for at least 10 minutes a day meditation has also been shown to increase gray matter in the brain and it will allow you to get more in touch with when you're being reactive so you can be more proactive so let me explain what I mean by this when you habitually pull out your phone to scroll this is a very reactive type of behavior it is done without you even realizing it or taking a second to reflect on whether you actually want to do this thing or
not well the more you incorporate many meditations into your daily routine and that can be through actually sitting down and shutting your eyes like most people do it or through walking without music or engaging in your daily tasks without multitasking the more you will be able to stop yourself when you are about to escape into brain rot and in that moment when you feel the urge to escape you can say I know what my brain's trying to do here and I'm going to choose to establish emotional control and stop myself from doing this I mean
really truly fully engage with just one thing at a time with no distractions when you're doing the dish es feel the weight of each dish and the water pouring over your hands and listen to the sounds of the sponge rubbing against them most of us are never truly here anymore we are doing one thing while our mind is in a completely different reality because we're trying to juggle another thing if you work out consistently which I really hope you do then try working out without putting any headphones on especially if you are running I did
not realize how much I disassociate from the pain and the feeling ings that come with working out and going on a long run and feeling my heartbeat and my breath until I made the decision to no longer wear my headphones when I'm working out and it has turned into such a meditative experience for me and for any other activity that usually requires some extra stimulation in order to get it done try doing it without anything other than what's necessary to finish the task itself your 4C attention span brain will thank you for it well actually
it'll hate you first but your conscious self will be happier because you'll be able to focus on things that matter and produce Joy more easily now like I said at the start of this video you're probably not going to be able to stay off social media forever so why not use it to Aid in training your attention span rather than destroying it this is where step four comes in an algorithm detox social media platforms are designed to continue feeding you content that you've been engaging with the most it gathers a bunch of different factors based
on the video video's length versus how long you decided to watch it the topic whether you commented liked shared Etc and when you know this you can purposefully curate your algorithm to give you videos that add to your life and stimulate your brain to think critically rather than have it turn off and go into brain rot mode to do this is very simple think of categories of thought which require you to focus on what is being said or in other words require you to listen attentively in order to learn kind of like this video that
means stuff like philosophy psychology history self-improvement or honestly anything you're interested in where you get to learn something new personally I'm a big fan of video game history myself then every time your algorithm presents this sort of long form content make sure to click on it like it and watch it until the end to get recommended more of it but if you find yourself going back to short form content every once in a while here's what I suggest on sites like Tik Tok or Instagram reals you can find these creators that have entire Pages dedicated
to help you stop scrolling and I'll leave a few creators I like on screen right now go to their page and go through a few of their posts and watch them all the way through like and save the video and then you should start seeing more videos that help break your brain's tendency to turn off and not be activated as it is when you're consuming short form content remember our brains are masters of falling into patterns if you feed it the right things more consistently it will naturally want to continue doing them in the future
until until it becomes a part of your identity and when these things are part of your identity doing positive things that induce growth will be more natural and more enjoyable than brain rotting and step number five to curing your brain rotten mind is to have challenging open-minded conversations that require critical thinking being able to accurately put into words how you're feeling and express your ideas to others is intimately intertwined with brain rot and I'll tell you why remember when I talked about those Primal brain areas earlier in the video well there's actually a specific part
which handles most of your emotional processing the amydala this is the part of your brain which receives information from the outside world first and determines whether it is a threat to your physical body or not if the threat is perceived as too intense then the amydala will start to tell other parts of the body to start to secrete stress hormones making it more difficult to think critically and emotionally control yourself but there is a part of your brain that helps you communicate to the amydala that there are in fact no real threats and that's your
prefrontal cortex that's your higher level part of your brain around this area if the filtering system of the higher level brain area is strong enough it can essentially Monitor and ensure the amygdala's threat response doesn't go off for those who scroll short form content endlessly and instantly get triggered by everything they see online their filtering systems are quite weak they will consume all of this information and get overwhelmed to the point where their higher level brain areas like the prefrontal cortex can't use emotional regulation because the bonds between their higher level and lower level brain
communication are so weak but when you engage in meaningful discussion with other humans this has actually been shown to help increase activation in the higher level brain areas related to that communication and therefore when you do this more you're not only going to become better at regulating your emotions overall but you'll also have an easier time stopping yourself from getting into brain rot mode and scrolling mindlessly for no reason because that is an act that one partakes in when they're Ula is trying to feel safe and comfortable by soothing itself in this useless vapid content
it's basically your monkey brain taking over I'm not sure what you happen to have around you in real life perhaps the opportunity for a book club or some sort of extracurricular activity that requires you to speak on your college campus or some friends who really like having deep conversations but make an active effort to coordinate things like this more for example in my self-mastery community which is linked in the description if you want to join we meet in a video call every week to discuss topics on things related to stuff like self-improvement psychology and philosophy
it always requires me to think about my unique perspective in life and how it relates to other people's unique perspectives in the call on a certain topic and it's such a great exercise in open-mindedness which is one of the keys to curing brain rot when you're forced to consider other people's viewpoints and not be reactive just because someone may have different beliefs or ideals than you or in other words when someone challenges your ego you have no other choice than to activate and train your higher level brain areas to be used more in order to
remain emotionally regulated your brain is like a muscle and depending on which areas you train the most the more those areas are going to be developed and speaking with other people on topics you don't understand or think you understand but other people can bring something new to them is one of the greatest ways to become a higher level thinker and a master of understanding your promotions so since you lasted this long in the video which I do applaud you for because I'm guessing around 30% of the people who clicked on this video lasted this long
I want to give you one last bonus tip and that is to Simply go easy on yourself even though I know all of this I still sometimes scroll mindlessly on social media I still want to shut my brain off and not face my work I still have things that I don't want to confront and that's okay what's often more detrimental than Doom scrolling your brain into the ground without any awareness or change in the behavior is knowing how bad it is for you doing it and then beating yourself up over the fact that you engaged
in the activity because all that's going to do is make your self-esteem stay low which will then make you escape more which will then cause you to engage and brain rot more ironically the very thing you think you need to do to get yourself to stop for good being hard on yourself will be the very thing that keeps you addicted to a escapism do not try to escape your emotions emotions are medicine for the mind they are there for a reason and they are trying to tell you something when speaking about trauma physician and author
Dr Gabor mate said this trauma again is not what happened to you it's what happened inside you as a result of what happened to you and that's the good news cuz if trauma was what happened to you that somebody sexually abused you or that your parents died in a war if that was the trauma there's nothing you can do to change that that happened it was never not going to have happened but if the trauma is the wound that you incurred in inwardly you can heal that wound at any time you might not think this
pertains to the topic of this video but it does there are parts of you or your reality that you're unwilling to accept and you might think this world is so cruel for what it's done to you but you need to start to recognize your emotions and what they're trying to tell you give them the acknowledgement sit with them make friends with them and give yourself the grace that you need to learn and change and grow out of the lifestyle that naturally wants to make you doom scroll for hours a day when you change who you
believe yourself to be at the very core of who you are to someone who enjoys life and enjoys experimenting and engaging with all its different aspects through creation instead of consumption that is when brain rot will dissipate for good good and all that you'll be left with is just scrolling sometimes because let's be honest this [ __ ] is really addicting and we're not perfect of course I'm not going to tell you to watch another one of my videos I'm just going to put one on screen oh yeah uh I'm going to go now don't
watch it just go do good things I love you guys bye
