Okay, let's talk about making a hobby

your whole personality.

>> People try a hobby. They choose one.

Unbelievable. They Google it once, they

buy the basic starter kit like a normal

person, book a weekly session, stick to

it, and slowly improve over time.

Imagine doing something without it

turning into a personality, a lifestyle,

and a three-year business plan by

lunchtime. ADHD people try a hobby, and

it's a full personality shift that can

last anywhere between 4 minutes and

seven business days. Because we don't

collect hobbies, we're collecting

possible lives. Every time we pick

something up or try something new, what

we're actually doing is running a deep

psychological experiment that's called,

"Could this finally be the life that

fits me?" Last week, I tried yoga for

the first time, and the instructor said,

"I can't believe that this is your first

class." The next thing you know, I'm

searching if I could realistically move

me and my dog to barley for 185 and

become a wellness instructor because her

comment made me feel something.

>> Okay, so let's talk about this for a

second. There are times where we run

into stuff. Could this be me? And there

are a lot of good reasons for that,

right? cuz I I think like most human

beings feel out of place and we look

around and and there's this idea of like

finding your tribe like I remember when

I was in medical school so when I went

to medical school I was going to become

an oncologist my dad was an oncologist

he was a amazing oncologist was one of

the seminal researches researchers in

something called graph versus host

disease was was at MD Anderson which is

one of the best cancer institutions in

the world came from India was just an

amazing doctor and so I saw my amazing

Dr. Dad, I saw how his patients treated

him with so much respect. I saw how much

money he made and like MD Anderson is

gigantic and I was like, I'mma do that.

I'm not going to be some like allergist,

you know, like helping people sneeze

less. I'm going to cure lives. I mean,

cure cancer, save lives. Then I went to

medical school and I had a real real

real problem. See, on my psychiatry

rotation, there was something called

Shindle Time. And Shindle Time was named

after a particular psychiatrist who

worked there. the psychiatrist would

come and he would like sit with a group

of medical students in a room and the

problem was that like he wasn't teaching

us anything. We just be in a room with

him for one hour a week and we didn't

understand what we were doing there and

we were like, "Oh my god, this guy's

going to like psychoanalyze us." And so

like everyone goes into the room, he

doesn't make an introduction. He comes

into the room and he's just quiet. And

so we're like, "Oh [ __ ] it's happening.

These [ __ ] psychiatrists analyzing

us. He's sitting in silence. We all know

he's sitting in silence. He knows he's

sitting in silence. He hasn't told us

what we're doing here. We don't know

what we're doing here. We've heard

legends and myths of this kind of thing

from the senior students. We'll even ask

them what are they actually doing and

they're like, "Ah, we don't really

know." Some people be like, "It's a

waste of time." Like, it's like

whatever. So, during Shindle time, he

makes some effort at conversation, you

know, but people are quiet because like,

we ain't going to let you psycho analyze

us, bro. Then he's got an apple. Starts

eating his apple. He's just sitting

there and he's eating his apple. We're

like, "This is some some experiment,

bro. This is some experiment. This is

the moment I decided to become a

psychiatrist. I didn't realize it yet.

And then he eats this apple and he eats

down to the core of the apple and then

he does something insane. He eats the

core of the apple. He just There's a

little bit of an apple left. He takes it

and he eats half of it. He's like just

bites and then he chews the seeds and he

swallows the seeds and the whole room is

like, "What, dude? You cannot do that.

What are you doing?" And then he's like,

"What?" And then he eats the remainder

of the apple. Then he's got the stem and

everyone's like, "Bro, bruh, bro. what

are you doing? And he's like, what? And

then he eats the stem. And everyone's

like, oh my god. And they're like, don't

you know that apple seeds have cyanide,

bro? We're in medical school, man.

Cyanide kills you. And he's like,

really? They've got cyanide? And then he

just like pops the tension in the room.

And then everyone is talking. We can't

help them ourselves. And we become

outplayed by this guy who we knew he was

going to get us to talk. We [ __ ] knew

he was going to get us to talk. We

weren't going to talk. He's going to be

silent. I'm going to be silent, too. And

this guy just eats an apple. GG. Game

over. And so I was like amazed. I was

like, "What what was that? What was

that?" And then, you know, I I went to

go meet the guy and then like, so I

found my tribe. And so here's the scary

thing is like in life, we have this idea

that people find their tribe and that's

what we're looking for. And this lady is

talking about ADHD. And I think one of

the problems with ADHD is everyone's

like, "People with ADHD do this." This

does happen to people with ADHD. Now,

let's understand why. It doesn't happen

exclusively with them, but let's talk

about this idea of this hobby is my

life. So, I fell in love with psychiatry

and we're all looking for that thing to

fall in love with. Now, here's the first

thing to understand. If you want to find

the thing that you want to fall in love

with, the first thing is if you are

looking to find the thing that you are

falling in love with, the chances are

you won't fall in love with it. I hate

to say this, this is anecdotal evidence

as a psychiatrist. I decided to be

celibate. Met my wife. Decided to be a

real doctor. Save lives and cure cancer.

Fell in love with psychiatry. See, when

we are looking for something, we're so

hungry for it. Give it. Is it this? Is

it this? Is it this? And we get just an

inkling of something, right? We're like,

"Oh my god, is this the thing that I

want to do?" You just get a touch of it.

You're like, "Oh, oh, finally I found

it. Oh my god." And then what happens?

It turns out to not be your thing. You

abandon that hobby. It's you're not a

chess person. So then what happens? The

looking gets more frantic. Oh my god,

that's not my thing and that's not my

thing and that's not my thing. Please

let this be my thing. And so the moment

that something nice happens, you're

like, "Oh, I get a little bit excited.

This is me. Finally, I found the thing."

You guys see how the hunger becomes a

cognitive bias. It becomes rose tinted

glasses. The more desperate we are to

find something, we get so excited. And

that's where the ADHD comes in. Because

people with ADHD are more vulnerable to

that. They're more vulnerable to the

emotional fluctuations. There are other

reasons, too. But let's start with this

idea of, you know, if I'm hungry for

something, if I'm looking for something

and I get some sign of it, because

here's the thing. Remember, I haven't

found my tribe, I haven't found my

personality. So, I don't know what it is

to have a personality. So, like, if I

don't know what love is, and then it's

kind of like that, you know, the

butterfly meme of like, is this love?

Like, we don't know yet, right? Because

we haven't found ourselves. So, we don't

know what finding ourselves looks like.

Therefore, we will look at something and

we'll think, "Oh, this is finding

myself." But it's not. It's just what we

think finding oursel looks like. In my

experience, finding yourself is usually

done kicking and screaming. You're

dragged to it, right? It's an uphill

battle, not something, well, not always.

That's what's so weird is it's kind of

an uphill battle, but it feels so

natural. Despite making literally a

thousand YouTube videos, it seems like

people are still struggling with focus

and motivation. And that's why we're

launching a doing stuff bundle. It

starts with Dr. K's guide to ADHD, which

breaks down the science behind picking a

task and actually following through with

it. We're also including an action

focused planner, a meditation journal,

and access to our meditation tracks

feature, which helps people develop a

personalized meditation practice that

they can stick with over time because

progress comes from actually doing

stuff, not just watching content. So

check out the bundle below.

So that's the first thing. Second thing,

why are we so hungry for this hobby to

be our life? Let's understand what your

life is. What your perception of your

life is. Now we're going to talk about

ADHD because I think it's a beautiful

example. I'mma be this kind of person.

What does that mean?

Neuroscientifically, developmentally,

cognitively, developmentally,

psychologically. Who we are is a string

of emotional experiences integrated into

a narrative. So if I talk about my life,

I have this story about Shindle time,

right? That was a seinal moment for me.

And what makes it a seinal moment, the

emotion of that moment, I was blown

away. So your life is not having chicken

salad sandwich every day for 30 years is

the emotional experiences. We string

them together into a narrative and that

is who we are. Now, if you have ADHD,

this becomes a real problem because

chances are your emotional experiences

were negative in nature. You were

getting in trouble at school. You were

getting yelled at by your parents. You

were not getting invited to birthday

parties. So then what happens is you

develop an identity. And this is why

there's a great study of coorbidity

between ADHD and depression where if you

look at the causal relationship between

these two things 3% of people who are

diagnosed with major depressive disorder

will grow up to have ADHD or of the

people who have both 3% had the

depression first then developed ADHD.

70% of people who had ADHD will develop

depression of a comorbid population.

Now, every time I have a patient in

who's being evaluated from for ADHD,

what I one of the first things that I do

in the initial intake is rule out

depression, they have depression until

proven otherwise. That is now my default

assumption as a clinician. So, the

identity that you develop is not a good

one. Right? There's one common exception

to this, which is the class clown. So,

often times we'll develop an identity of

being a funny person. I remember when I

was in the third grade, I had trouble

making friends and stuff. So what I

would do is put a pair of underwear on

my head and I'd run around and I'd make

I'd talk in funny accents and then the

kids would like me. So you develop this

identity. Oh, I'm the class clown. And

then as you grow up into as an adult,

that kind of thing doesn't really work

when you're like 43. So you have to do

something else. So now we're looking for

a new identity. And then we see a hobby

and we see people who do oh I want to be

that kind of person because if I find

that kind of person if this is my thing

then first of all if this is my thing

then it'll solve my motivational

problems it'll solve my follow-through

problems because I have all these

problems of follow through and

motivation and I leave things behind but

if I find my thing there's a thing out

there that'll fix all of those

motivational problems for me. Oh my god

I hope it's this one. The problem is

that ADHD brain is vulnerable to this

whole cycle. It's vulnerable to the

emotional impact of not having found

your thing. You have this identity of

being a little bit depressed, not having

found your people. But man, sometimes

when neurode divergent kids get

together, they get along really, really

well. And they also get really

frustrated with each other, but they

fit. I have one kid who's probably

neurode divergent has one friend who's

definitely neurode divergent and they're

like they get along really well but they

also have a lot of conflict. It's really

weird. They keep want to see they they

always want to see each other but even

then like every time they have a play

date there'll be like an hour where

they're just in separate rooms doing

things on their own but they like it.

Right? So we're we're sensitive to

excitement. Right? When we get excited

we're like oh my god this is the thing.

This is the thing. This is the thing.

We've looked for the thing for so long.

So we're hungry for the thing and we

find it. We hope it's the thing. And

then there's the allure that if this is

the thing, then it'll solve my ADHD

problems. I won't be that kid who I used

to be, who didn't follow through with

things, who abandoned projects. This

thing will be different. And so we want

to adopt it whole scale. We want to make

it our personality. It becomes our

identity. It does not become a hobby. It

becomes an identity. Now what do you do

about this? I think the first thing is

to recognize. So always always always if

you ever want to break free of a pattern

the first thing is to recognize the

pattern. Now a lot of people will say I

know the pattern. I don't think so.

Overwhelmingly in my experience as a

psychiatrist people have an

understanding of the pattern but they

usually miss critical elements. And

there's some very interesting sort of

like theory of medicine around this. So

if you look at sort of like the

scientific study of like how people

heal, people solve their problems. Very

few human beings do not solve their

problems. The reason that problems don't

get solved is because they don't

understand how to solve them. Their

understanding of the problem is

incorrect. So most human beings if they

have a problem in life, it's not a lack

of treatment, it's an improper

diagnosis. Their understanding of the

problem is incorrect. Which is why our

job as psychiatrists is to help them

understand. I'll give you all a really

simple example of this. Most people

think that addictions are problems.

Patient comes into my office says, "Oh

my god, I got to stop drinking alcohol.

I I got to stop smoking weed. Weed is

ruining my life in this way and this way

and this way and this way and this way

and this way and this way. I got to

stop. I got to stop. I got to stop. I

got to stop." They see it as a problem.

So what is my job? What does weed do for

you? Let's not talk about the problems.

Let's talk about the problems it fixes.

Let's talk about weed as a solution, not

as a bad thing, as a good thing. Because

the reason we get addicted to weed is

not because of the problems that it

causes. We get addicted to weed because

of the problems it solves. But we don't

see it that way. Sometimes we do, right?

There's the pothead advocate. Weed is

great, man. I function fine. I do great.

It enhances my life. There's no

downsides. It's natural. It's better

than alcohol. Alcohol causes more deaths

than weed. you can't overdose on weed.

You know, there's the pothead, I don't

know what's what's the what's the word

I'm looking for, the pothead canned

argument, you know, the party line, the

party propaganda, and those people are

sometimes in denial. There's something

that we call pre-contemplative about the

negative effects of weed. And I'm not

saying that it isn't great in many ways.

Like I said, it solves problems, right?

So, if you want to break out of this

pattern, first thing is to understand

the pattern. Observe the pattern. Notice

that I'm getting excited. If you've got

ADHD, the most important skill that I

teach people, I say most important all

the time. I don't know that's actually

the most important. The most underrated

skill that I try to teach all of my

patients with ADHD, everyone wants to

control their negative emotions. They

want to manage their negative emotions.

Learn to manage your positive emotions.

Managing your excitement is the most

underrated skill in ADHD. And why is

that important? Because we already

talked about where does that anxiety

come from? I mean, sorry, excitement

come from, right? I want to be this. I

want to be this. I want to be this. It's

going to create a cognitive bias. The

brightest flame burns out the fastest.

This is the problem in ADHD. Don't make

it your personality. Keep it as a hobby,

right? Cuz the problem is we go from

nothing to everything. There's no in

between. And then we run out of steam.

You burn up our excitement. And here's

the the neuroscience behind this. Okay.

If we look at our the part of our brain

that ultimately dictates our behavior,

right? So we have our motivational

center of the brain. This part of the

brain gets inputs from other parts of

the brain. It gets inputs from some

parts of our frontal lobe which are

doing planning like long-term planning.

They're like this part of our brain is

like we should do this because 5 years

from now it'll help us in this way. Then

we have another part of our brain the

nuclear cumbent right that's going to go

there and it's going to be like dopamine

bro like let's do this because it's fun.

Then we have another part of our brain

the amygdala the lyic system. This is

the emotional part of our brain. This is

the part of our brain that tells us to

do something. Oh, like roller coasters

are fun. Dopamine, our nucleus encumbent

is like, let's do it. But the amydala is

like, they're also scary, so let's not

do it. Frontal lobe is like, let's not

go to the theme park today because we

have a test on Monday. All of these

parts have inputs into this motivational

center that makes this calculation and

then it makes a decision. Now the tricky

thing about controlling your motivation,

controlling your behavior, each of these

voices, frontal loes, nucleus, ccumbent,

and libic system planning, long-term

planning. Each of these has a different

weight. Like one of them gets 10 votes,

one of them gets 10 votes, the other one

gets 20 votes. What determines the

weight of these factions, the strength

of these factions, is how much you

listen to them. Just like in the real

world, right? If you're the dictator and

you've got three advisers and there's

one adviser that you listen to over and

over and over again, that adviser is

going to get stronger. So the reason

people have difficulty with follow

through with ADHD is because when they

get excited, it heavily influences my

behavior. Therefore, my behavior depends

on my excitement. And if it depends on

my excitement, when the excitement

waines, the behavior disappears. This is

why we start things and stop things.

It's actually not about dopamine, right?

Everyone thinks it's about dopamine.

Nucleus ccumbent is just one part of the

brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter.

Ven uh vententral tegmental area is just

one part of the brain. There's lots

other parts of the brain. And because we

live in a world where there's short form

content, we tend to reduce and simplify

things. And that's why people with ADHD

struggle so much because the truth is

your brain is not all one way. The truth

is that your brain is a complex organ,

quite possibly the most complex organ on

the planet. And there are many things

that influence your behavior. So be

careful. Modulate your excitement. Learn

to rein it in. It'll last longer and you

will become less dependent on it. Then a

hobby remains a hobby. And then we get

to the second problem which is if my

hobby is a hobby. Holy crap Dr. K, then

it's not my identity. Then what is my

identity? Excellent question. That is a

question that you should answer through

working through the question. Not find a

brewing kit and then suddenly the answer

is like found, right? Answer the

question. Do the work. Like show your

work like in mathematics. Who do you

think you are right now? Where did you

get that idea of who you are? Who would

you like to be? What can you do to

become that person? Right? And this is

where I would encourage you all to scale

back a little bit. Don't focus so much

on the end goal. Who do you want to be

today? Do you want to be someone who

reads this book or plays you take your

pick of game, right? So who you are? I

mean there's this narrative sense of

identity that we talked about

integrative in integral emotional

experiences which is there. But then a

big part of that, this is what I think

what people don't understand is that

emotional experiences are not always big

experiences. Sometimes they're very

small ones. Like I remember a big one

for me is when I first moved to Boston,

I didn't have a car. I didn't have much

money. So I stayed at a place that was

not the best location and I had access

to public transport only. And so I had

to walk I I had to change buses two

times to get to a grocery store because

I wasn't on a good public transport kind

of line. So I used to walk for 45

minutes because taking the bus was

basically the same amount of time or

even longer. The bus would run every 30

minutes and this bus runs every 30

minutes. Then the other bus sometimes I

miss and I have to wait there for 30

minutes. So I just walk for 45 minutes

every time I went to the grocery store.

One-way trip is 45 minutes. I'd have to

lug groceries back. Those are the kinds

of little things that made me the person

that I am. It's little things, right? So

when you look at who the person that you

are today, what are you upset with? Oh,

I'm a loser. I waste my time. I don't do

anything with my free time. I just doom

scroll. I'm a blackpillar. I'm an incel.

I'm aw.

That can be changed. You don't have to

doom scroll right this moment. But it's

hard. Yes. What does hard mean? Hard

means that that circuit in your brain is

underdeveloped. That means that it's an

adviser that you have not listened to.

And there's something really cool once

you start doing it. See, somewhere along

the way, I don't know when this

happened. Hard became a bad thing. You

guys noticed this that somewhere along

the way when things became hard, we

tried to find solutions to make it

easier instead of doing the hard thing.

And the moment that we did that, like

it's efficient, right? The moment we did

that, we ran into a very, very scary

biological wall, which is that the human

body strengthens through hardship and

weakens through ease. The elevator

doesn't give us gigantic quads. The

stairs do. And we tried to make when

when things became hard for us, we

accommodated that difficulty instead of

rising up to it. Fundamentally, this is

what I think is like wrong in the world.

when things became hard, we said, "Okay,

let's make it easier for you." And if

you look at like product development,

right? People talk about capitalism like

it's an evil thing. I think it's humans

who are to blame. But products make

things easier for you. Oh, we'll get it

to you. You don't have to you don't even

have to think, "Oh my god, we've got

2-hour delivery now." Like, this is

insane. I went to India recently. They

don't even have 2-hour delivery. They

have 15minute delivery. I was on New

Year's Day. It's 1:30 in the morning and

I was at a New Year's party and someone

shows me this this these two big

delivery apps, Zamato and Blinket. And

he's like, "Yeah, you can get whatever

you want within 15 minutes." And I was

like, I was just looking at it. It's

like, I can order a blender at 1:30 in

the morning on New Year's Day and it'll

be at this guy's flat in 15 minutes.

Like, oh, bro, planning, you don't need

to do that. Just be impulsive. We can

manage your impulses. We can accommodate

your impulsiveness. Oh, you feel like

have you Oh, you forgot to get a blender

and you want to make a smoothie. We'll

we'll take care of it for you. We've

started to make life so easy for

ourselves, right? There's so many cars

everywhere and we're like becoming

obese. We're not hauling groceries for

45 minutes anymore. We're getting them

delivered to our doorstep. And then we

have to compensate as human beings.

Since I'm not moving now, I have to go

to the gym and uselessly just lift

weight like this just over and over and

over again. What are you doing? I'm

accommodating for the fact that I sit in

this chair all day. Like, this is what

our life has become. It's so weird. You

guys notice this? When things became

hard for us, we said, "That's okay.

Don't do it. We'll make it easy for

you." And what do we all want? We all

want things to be easy.