Why Adaptability is Your Biggest Advantage in Today's World

today we're going to be talking about adaptability and how to cultivate [Music] it so this is incredibly important because a lot of times we think that our success in life is determined by our circumstances if I'm born rich then I will be successful and if I'm Bor born poor then I won't be successful but if you look at these two groups of people there are some people who are born rich who end up kind of screwing up in life and then there are some people who are born poor who end up being very successful so

what's the difference it turns out that one of the major things that's different between success and failure irrespective of your circumstances is the ability to adapt and it turns out that we are getting worse at adaptation and many of the things that we're doing which we think are moving Us in the right direction are actually harming us and at the top of the list is finding the perfect solution so nowadays when I work with people Everyone is looking for the perfect solution so people are looking for the right supplement some magical supplement that will cure

their anxiety or even the right kind of meditation to cure their anxiety they're trying to find the perfect partner despite the fact that we have 400 games in our steam Library I'm looking for that one perfect game that makes me want to play and it turns out that the more that we Chase Perfect Solutions the less adaptable we become hey y'all today we're going to talk about something incredibly important your personal data it turns out that there are corporations called Data Brokers that will collect personally identifiable information this is info like your birth date where

you were born where your family members actually live and even info like your social security number they'll package this up and sell it to third parties this isn't just about privacy this is about safety and that's where delete me comes in I first used delete me about 4 years ago when I became a content creator to scrub my info from the internet I submitted my info for removal and got a report back within 7 days not only that but Le me has services that keep these companies from repopulating that record to keep your information off

of the internet so definitely check out delete me if you're interested in protecting your privacy and safety get 20% off delete me US consumer plans when you go to join delet me.com healthygamer and use the promo code healthygamer at checkout that's join delet me.com healthy gamer code healthy gamer and thanks to delete me for keeping mental health content on the internet free so I'll illustrate this with a very quick example okay so let's say this is you and this is what what you want to achieve and so what we go doing what we go on

doing in life is we're looking for the right kind of solution so then we turn to places like the internet and we're like okay how do I get from here to here and someone says this is the solution that will will help you and someone else says this is the solution that will help you but if we look at these Solutions they're not perfect to us right so we try what this person says and we find that it doesn't quite fit so we're like looking at someone else's solution and then we sort of end up

realizing like this doesn't work for me and so what real adaptation is is the opposite of actually looking for the perfect solution real adaptation is changing ourselves to fit the circumstances so that things work out and if we look at society today what we tend to find is that Society is actually discouraging us from doing this the way that Society exists it's making us less adaptable and more lazy so I'll give you like a simple example right so if you look at society today and you're you have a particular goal you don't need to change

to accomplish that goal if you want to eat something Society will send you food to your doorstep if you want groceries we'll send you things to your doorstep if you want to play a video game we have so many video games right now that there's at least one video game that will perfectly match your interests you like vampires you like city building you don't like competitive multiplayer hey here's a vampire City Builder single player game on the flip side I like FPS but I don't really care about you know I suck at aiming so I

want some kind of FPS that gives me autotargeting and it's also single player so let me go ahead and play this game the society that we exist in today is tailoring itself to us so much that we no longer need to adapt but this creates a huge problem because if you look at life in general adaptation is what leads to success we know from the theory of evolution and natural selection that there's a lot of different species out there and the ones that are able to adapt are the ones that survive but adaptation doesn't just

happen at the species level it also happens at the individual level we have these mechanisms of things like neuroplasticity which is our brain's ability to adapt to a circumstance and actually change Us in the moment we also have um you know studies from the field of things like epigenetics where our our body will literally change the methylation state of our DNA and activate particular genes or reduce the activity of particular genes so adaptation is crucial for success and this is what I see in the people that I work with and I want you all to

just think about this for a second okay so there are a lot of people in life who face challenges and for some reason we got super caught up in this idea of resilience which is like when you face a setback are you resilient but what I've really seen is that people who are successful are the ones that are able to adapt when they face a particular problem they are able to change to address that problem and what really sort of helps people advance in life is their ability to adapt so on the one hand you

have people who don't adapt right they're the kind of people who when faced with a challenge I try things one way and then I try it the same way and then the same way and then the same way and then the same way and then the same way and then it never ends up working out and then there are other people who realize when they face an obstacle they need to change but that's not what we see nowadays right what we see nowadays is a society that tells you you don't need to change at all

if you're looking to date someone you don't need to improve you just keep swiping until you find the perfect person that's literally what's going on right so you don't need to change your preferences for entertainment you don't need to learn how to watch an enjoyable show you need to keep looking through the millions of shows that are available at your disposal until you find the one that's perfect for you think about how absurd it is the concept of changing yourself to enjoy watching a piece of television or some kind of TV show is so foreign

except that is exactly what living organisms need to do to be successful So today we're going to teach youall how to increase your adaptability the first thing that we're going to do is talk about black and white thinking so if you look at clinical stuff right so you look at people who are depressed people who have PTSD if you look at clinical illnesses what we tend to find is that the more black and white thinking you have the less adaptable you are and we know that the clinical interventions that we have things like cognitive behavioral

therapy or mentalization based therapy the goal of these Therapies in some way is to reduce black and white thinking so there's this disease called borderline personality disorder which sort of is very very challenging for a lot of people and we know that one of the features of borderline personality disorder is black and white thinking and literally in the process of therapy what we try to do is reduce this thinking so I'll give you all other examples of black and white thinking it's all or none right so all men are bad or all women are bad

or I I am a loser I will be alone for the rest of my life there is zero chance that I will find a relationship I will never be successful these are this is all or nothing or black and white thinking so it's either 100% or zero there's no Shades of Gray and literally what we know from the process of psychotherapy is when we have people who think like this right so let's take the case of someone who has depression and is suicidal and they walk into my office and they say there is no reason

for me to continue living there is a 0% chance that I will find joy in life this is the nature we call this like we call this like illness right we call this mental illness when people is are so stuck in their black and white thinking we literally call it mental illness and the goal of things like Psychotherapy interventions things like cognitive behavioral therapy and mentalization based therapy for BPD and things like that is to actually reduce this kind of thinking we want to encourage people to see Shades of Gray right so when I'm working

with someone who's depressed they think in that moment that there is a zero reason to be alive but as I work with them they begin to increase the flexibility of their mind they start to cognitively adapt a little bit they're able to see Shades of Gray okay so even though my life isn't great there are some things that are going for me and I want you to think about which one of these two people do you think is more likely to be successful there is no reason for me to live anymore or despite the fact

that there are many disadvantages I still have some things going for me so what we want you to do is literally reduce the way that your mind works don't think in terms of black and white practically the way that that works is that you can't really control your thinking but you can at the beginning notice it so notice anytime that you have a black or white thought an All or Nothing thought I'll be alone for the rest of my life I will never be successful and your mind May feed you all kinds of evidence why

this is true but I hate to break it to you'all but no human being on the planet can predict the future our mind likes to tell us that we can predict the future but I have never seen a human being who can actually see into the future so these thoughts are objectively wrong if we really look at the world what we know from tons of scientific research is that most things are something called multifactorial which means that the reason that you failed is not because of one issue it is because of a consequence of lots

of different things put together so what we want you to do is literally pay attention to all of your All or Nothing thoughts right and the more that you pay attention to those thoughts then what we want you to do is try to see the other side of it so we want you to take a step back and notice ah this is Black or White thinking how can I add some gray to the equation even though I feeling like I will be alone for the rest of my life what are some things that may actually

make it possible for me to be not alone for the rest of my life try to add that shade of gray and what you'll find is that this is very difficult for your mind to do and that's exactly the problem is that as people become less cognitively flexible they get locked into a particular way of of viewing the world and then they cannot adapt right that thought becomes fixed it becomes a reality and then if you think you're going to be alone for the rest of your life anytime you go on a date that will

influence the enjoyment of the date and the enjoyment of the partner so it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and we can fix this by increasing that cognitive flexibility the second thing we're going to talk about is to not counter what you hear even if you disagree with it so you all will notice that this is happening so commonly on the internet where if someone shares a view your mind automatically jumps to why that view is wrong right so if we look at the internet today what we have is we have liberals and conservatives we

have DOTA players and League of Legends players we have you know men versus women we have a lot of people who automatically counter whatever other people tell them so if a woman says yeah I'm a woman and it's scary for me to I would rather be with a bear than with a man on a trail right and then automatically what happens is a bunch of dudes are like oh my God that's so bad that's so bad we don't even stop to try to consider someone else's perspective and so as we as people will sort of

give us information we are not adaptable right we immediately reject it and the more that you immediately reject things in instead of being flexible the less adaptable you will become it's kind of my way or the highway so we even see this in gaming so this is really important to understand so some people are like hard stuck at bronze they can play a game for 10,000 hours and they never improve and these people will even go on forums and they'll start asking for help they'll say hey this hero is overpowered I'm having trouble like advancing

like I can't climb ranks you know the matchmaking is rigged against me they'll think all these kinds of things and people will counter them right I don't know if you guys have ever seen this but sometimes people will say hey I want help with something and then someone will offer help and they'll say no no no no no that doesn't work right that doesn't work that doesn't work that doesn't work this is cognitive inflexibility and it turns out that some people can play 10,000 hours of a video game and they actually get better over time

and some people can play 10,000 hours of a video game and they will never get better and this is true of Life some people will be 30 years old and will be incredibly successful they will adapt they will change they will improve and some people will be 30 years old and they will be behind what is the main reason for this it is a lack of cognitive flexibility here is a study looking at rank in League of Legends cognitive flexibility in decision-making predicts expertise in the MOBA esport League of Legends results showed that cognitive flexibility

was positively correlated with rank percentile at a P value of .001 like this is insane okay I want youall to realize what this study is showing us this study is showing us that if you were hard stuck at bronze or in life what this means is that if you become cognitively flexible then you will actually improve in both of the these Dimensions so we talked a little bit about clinical improvements right so we also see that cognitive flexibility predicts PTSD symptoms so I'll show yall this sentence right here individuals with better cognitive flexibility at one

month post trauma showed significantly less severe PTSD symptoms after 13 months and then here's another study that shows this is looking at psychological flexibility as predictors of individual outcomes in hospital healthcare workers so this is not just in gaming or mental illness this is also in like studies of just people who are working in hospitals and what we find is that employees who show psychological flexibility are more likely to show greater openness to the acceptance of setbacks in the working environment and to carry on their valued living and working path and this seems to correlate

with individual well-being so now we've looked at three studies and I want yall to really pay attention to this so like in the case of trauma this is something that is a traumatic setback so there are two individuals one of whom is not cognitively flexible and one of whom is cognitively flexible or adaptable they both have bad stuff happen to them because in life we cannot control that sometimes bad happens but there is a huge difference in how you respond to that bad event and if we look at healthcare workers we know that bad stuff

will happen there will 100% be setbacks but there are two types of people for one person a single traumatic event results in something called PTSD which means one event lingers in their brain and continues to screw up their life in another situation we have someone who has a setback at work they're able to carry on their valued living and working path right so some people when they face a setback give up they are not perseverant they can't adapt to their circumstances this is a lack of adaptability and it results in you being hard stuck at

bronze it results in more mental illness right which then screws over your future prospects and it even results in things like not following through at work giving up on a career path that you originally engaged in because you loved it in some way and on the flip side we have the people who are highly adaptable and those people and this is crazy right like you look at some of these people and I used to be both of these right there was a version of me that no relationships no money failing out of college playing a

ton of video games and I still sucked at video games and today I have a career gratefully that I enjoy a lot it's fun to be able to do this I'm arguably in a happily married relationship and I've got two kids I have relationships I'm and I'm even climbing rank in Dota right now like my my has gone up like 1,000 points and this is not some way to Humble brag and say like oh like what I'm saying is that I used to be both of these people like literally like these are both me the

big difference is in one scenario I was not adaptable right I kept on trying the same things over and over and over again and once I started adapting to my circumstances my IQ was always the same it's not IQ it's about your ability to adapt to your circumstances so how can we increase this adaptability it is to not counter what we hear so people will tell you hey this kind of thing is true and then immediately in your mind you reject it immediately in your mind you reject it that is not adaptation there's no flexibility

it is rigidity of the mind so when someone tells you something that is contrary to your experience the nature of adaptability is to try to understand it right try to actually steal man their argument instead of straw man their argument recognize that in your life this is true for you in this particular state but if you can understand how they can be right if you can adapt your mind to that you will literally improve the third thing that we're going to talk about is somewhat related to that and that's the most devastating statement that I

hear which is that this does not work for me so a lot of people out there will offer solutions to your problems and then you will say this doesn't work for me oh people say meditate first thing in the morning but I'm not a morning person that is a rigid statement it is a black and white statement Therefore your solution does not work for me then you are stuck looking for the perfect solution and this is the problem in life is no one out there will make a solution just for you right they will make

General Solutions so anytime you say this thought pops into your mind where this doesn't work for me socialization doesn't work for me dating doesn't work for me the gym doesn't work for me eating healthy doesn't work for me working first thing when I wake up in the morning doesn't work for me you are abandoning all of those Solutions and you are looking for the perfect solution and in doing so you are failing to adapt so instead what you should do and I've literally seen this in my office so I'll have some people who are highly

adaptable and very successful and I'll say okay this is the kind of meditation that you should do or this is how you should try to improve your relationship and what they do is what doesn't work for them becomes an obstacle to solve instead of a reason to give up so if I tell them meditate first thing in the morning half of the people I work with will say I'm not a morning person so doesn't work for me the next person the opposite Camp says okay even though I have trouble waking up in the morning the

first thing that I need to do is wake up in the morning so that I can meditate first thing in the morning an obstacle doesn't become a reason to quit it becomes a problem to be solved so anytime in your mind you hear this thought oh this doesn't work for me instead ask yourself how can I make this work for me how can I adapt so that this solution can actually be successful and then suddenly think about what that will do to your life because there are a thousand different solutions out there the problem is

they don't work for you but the moment that you start adapting all of these thousand Solutions don't work for you can suddenly start working for you then you can rely on the wisdom and experience of other people and this is literally what I see in my practice this is the change that I made in my own life I start to make things work for me this is the nature of adaptation now as y'all are listening to this I'm going to bet you money I don't know how much money that someone listening to this even potentially

the majority of y'all will say but Dr K what about this Edge case are you saying that I should adapt to my abuse of relationship and learn how to be happy even when the circumstances are bad but Dr K I have I'm on the autism spectrum or I struggle with social anxiety and this may not work for me and look at what you are doing here I am arguably someone who's somewhat knowledgeable in helping other human beings attain success I've done Neuroscience research I'm a psychiatrist I'm a gamer and I've even shared with y'all peer

reviewed scientific research about how cognitive flexibility improves rank in League of Legends and there is going to be a group of y'all that are listening to this that will reject my Approach about adaptability you will reject this in your mind and you will say this doesn't work for me for these reasons oh you're saying this but that doesn't I've tried it and it didn't work I've tried to adapt I've tried to adapt I'm not an adaptable person right think about this and notice how reflexive it is in your mind the last thing to consider is

make it work for you so imagine that if you reject what I'm saying fair enough there may be Reasons I'm wrong but can you make it work for you because if you can make it work for you if you can become more adaptable then what would your life be like what if you could adapt to your circumstances and always do well right it's not necessarily always there's black and white thinking and the last thing that last example I'll give you is is one from relationships where everyone out there is looking for the perfect partner but

I don't know that there is the perfect partner dating apps will tell you keep swiping until you find the perfect person they're out there but in my overwhelming experience as a psychiatrist who's worked with a ton of people going through divorce done a touch of marriage counseling not my forte what I found is that the most successful way to create a successful relationship is to adapt to the other person don't try to find someone who's a perfect fit for you you need to learn how to adapt to them and they need to learn how to

adapt to you that's not what's happening and that's why we have a loneliness epidemic we have a dating crisis all of these different things so lean into your adaptability stop thinking in terms of black and white really listen when people say something that you disagree with try your hardest to understand them and if someone says hey this will work and you say it doesn't work for me you need to change B