Today we're going to talk about how to

control your thoughts. So the

interesting thing about this is if you

look at people who are incredibly

successful like Eileen Goo, she says the

coolest thing about the mind is that you

can control your thinking. And this is

something that I actually technically

hard disagree with. I think that you

can't control your thinking. Even more

interesting is that she's not the only

one who disagrees with me. In fact, if

you look at people who are incredibly

successful across all kinds of

industries. So here's a clip of Louiswis

House. How much of our thoughts do we

control?

>> None. We don't control our thoughts.

>> No, the mind generates thoughts. You

find that most people who are incredibly

successful believe that they can control

their thinking. And I'm on the other

side saying technically you can't. So

what's the deal here? Why is there so

much disagreement between people who are

incredibly successful at the top of

their field and me over here who's

insisting that it can't be done? What

we're going to tunnel into today is how

these people end up shaping their mind

in a way that gives them the idea that

they can control their thinking. And

this is work that I do like literally in

my day job, right? As a psychiatrist, my

job is to take people who are moderately

successful and help them become

incredibly successful. In my day job as

a psychiatrist, my goal is to help

people shape their thinking in the

correct way. And the blunt unfortunate

truth is that I've learned you can't

control your thinking. And I'll give you

a simple example. Okay? So let's say

I've got a patient who's got OCD. This

is by definition an illness where you

can't control the thoughts that pop into

your head. You have intrusive thoughts

which we call obsessions. You think

about it over and over and over again.

And then you have compulsive behaviors

to reduce the obsessions. But it's not

just OCD, right? We can think about

someone who's struggling with

depression. So let's say this is an

actual, you know, case of someone that

I've worked with, someone who built a

very successful company, sold it, right?

So they they did the the miraculous

thing, the founder exit at the age of 42

and then they became incredibly

depressed. So this is another situation

where there are lots of negative

thoughts that pop up in their head and

they don't want to think this way. They

try not to think this way. They may even

do things like stand in front of a

mirror and say positive affirmations to

themsel every day. But if you kind of

pay attention, the struggle with the

mind, the basic problem with the mind is

that you can't tell it what to think,

right? You can't go to bed tonight and

say, "Tomorrow when I wake up, I will be

confident and I will think positive

thoughts and I will believe in myself

and I will understand that the world is

a good place. I won't have existential

depression about the nature of how AI is

taking everybody's jobs and there's

wealth inequality that's increasing at

an astronomical rate. There's inflation.

I can't buy a home anymore because of

private equity. I'm I'm not going to

think that way anymore. And if you try

to do that, it simply doesn't work. The

cool thing is that there are a couple of

things that you can do. And when I work

with someone, my goal is to teach them

the skills that high performers

basically have internalized, what

they've learned how to do, what they can

control. So let's start with this

example from Lewis.

>> Do we generate a thought or is a thought

generated automatically?

>> What are you thinking?

>> I'm thinking you're touching my leg.

Yeah.

>> Did you have control over that?

>> I can think a different thought when it

happens. I can shift the thinking.

>> So this is a key thing to understand.

You can't control what pops into your

head, right? So when when I'm touching

Louiswis's foot, like he can't control

like, "Oh my god, this guy is touching

my foot." And that's like the problem in

life, right? So you text a friend of

yours and then they don't text you back.

And you can't control the thought that

pops into your head. But what you can do

is shift your attention away from it.

And this is one thing that is huge.

Separates people who are like broke from

people who are billionaires. the ability

to shift their attention away from

something. So, I'll give you all kind of

a simple example of this, right? So, I

can't control what is on the different

channels on TV, right? There's a news

channel. They're going to play this on a

particular day. There's a murder mystery

channel. There's the Discovery Channel,

like whatever. I can't control what's on

the channel. All I can control is which

channel I choose to watch. And this is

what's really important. This is what

athletes learn how to do. Really

successful people learn how to do. They

learn to shift their attention away from

an unproductive thought line. Now, what

happens when we don't do this? The

classic example is a thought spiral. So,

I've worked with people who will say,

let's say they get dumped. So, they get

dumped by their significant other. Now,

they feel lonely. They think to myself,

I have been dumped. And then their mind

jumps to the next thought. Since I have

been dumped, that means I am unlovable.

Since I am unlovable, that means I won't

find anyone else in this life. And since

I won't find anyone else in this life,

that means I'll be alone for the rest of

my life. I think a better example of

that second thought, I don't like I am

unlovable. I've spent so many years with

this person. I've been in this

relationship with this person for 10

years. I haven't been on a first date in

10 years. I'm so behind in life.

Therefore, I will remain behind in the

rest of my life. So, if you really look

at this damaging kind of thinking, it

isn't one thought that is damaging. It

is getting stuck in this loop, right?

this spiral where now we've boarded the

train of negative thinking and we think

this for an hour and each of those

negative thoughts piles up reduces our

self-esteem makes us feel worse about

ourselves what's the difference between

people who basically don't do very well

in life and people who do really well

what is the clinical work that I do I

help them shift from having a thought

chain to shifting their attention to

something else right because if we think

about what's the real problem with the

thought spiral It's not an individual

thought. It's the fact that they all

chain together and then we think them

again and then we think them again and

then we've lost two hours of our life,

right? And we feel terrible about

ourselves. This is also why the most

basic skill that we have to train the

shifting of attention is meditation. I

keep seeing comments, Dr. K, how do I

apply this to a situation in my life?

That's literally why we created a

coaching program. Our coaches are

certified on an evidence-based

curriculum designed to help you get

unstuck. This involves analyzing your

patterns, increasing your understanding,

and working with you week to week to

help you develop a plan to create

lasting change. So, if y'all are

interested, check out the link in the

description below. So, I can give you

all a really simple example right now.

So, really simple practice. I want you

to close your eyes and just pay

attention to the tip of your nose. Just

concentrate on the tip of your nose.

Right? If you're driving or something,

don't do this. Just the tip. Put all of

your attention there. So notice what

happened when you focused on the tip of

your nose. I actually this is like sort

of like a secret meditation technique

because it is so powerful in that you

can do it immediately and it'll shut off

your mind and you will stop thinking all

things. So, literally, I want you all to

think about 30 seconds ago, your mind

was thinking about what I was saying,

right? You had maybe all kinds of

skepticism or this guy doesn't know what

he's talking about or oh, maybe this

will fix me, right? You have all kinds

of thoughts happening. But when I tell

you to shift your attention, you

concentrate on the nose and all of those

thoughts go away. So, the first key

skill that athletes develop is the

ability to shift their attention away

from unproductive thoughts to other

things. There's a second thing that is

very important for athletes to learn how

to do, which is to regulate their

emotions. Now, this is why this is so

important because a lot of people don't

realize this. See, we tend to think that

logic and emotions are like separate,

right? So, like, oh, I'm not very

emotional. Like, I'm a logical thinker.

I'm a critical thinker. But if you've

ever seen a debate about politics, both

sides believe they're perfectly logical

even though for some reason they're not

able to see logic, right? You can look

at problems like, you know, dating or

the manosphere versus like the feminist

circles or pink pill versus red pill or

whatever. There's just a lot of like

people who think that they are

completely logical, but they're not. So,

here's the key thing to understand. Our

thinking is controlled by our emotions.

Like literally. Okay? So, if you look at

the emotional circuits of our brain,

they are so potent at shaping our

thinking. And if you've struggled with a

negative emotion before, you kind of

like know what I'm talking about, right?

So once you get angry, once the anger

turns on, the thinking is like a

torrent, right? Like, oh my god, they

did this and they did this and they did

this and they did this. And so if you

sort of look at it like the the emotion,

as long as the emotion is fueling your

brain, if that's what's dominating your

brain, there will be lots of thoughts

that are generated from this, not just

anger, right? Once you feel ashamed

about yourself, if you look at someone

who feels like they're a loser, an incel

or whatever, they have a lot of negative

emotion. What they really feel is a lot

of shame, they feel a lot of regret. And

that shame and regret are like little

factories that produce thoughts that pop

up into your head. And so, as long as

the emotion is present, it will shape

your thinking. What we learned in

cognitive behavioral therapy is that if

we can manage someone's emotions, if we

can teach them emotional regulation, if

you can calm down the anger, then the

thinking will change. Okay? There's a

big difference between the way that most

athletes manage their emotions and the

way that we manage our emotions. The

biggest problem is that we have access

to this. And this is a really good tool

to shut off our emotions. But shutting

off our emotions is not the same as

regulating them. The problem that we

have with this is when I look at funny

cat videos on the internet, right? Or I

look at like, oh my god, there's this

hilarious thing that happened in a video

game that I like or there's this funny

short about how the World Cup is

dominating or Scottish people are in

Boston and they're draining all the pubs

dry and everyone there's no beer except

for Bud Light left in the city of

Boston, right? Which is oh my god like

people outside of the America can't

drink Bud Light. Another tangent. You

see how I shifted away? So, here's the

problem with this kind of stuff is that

when we when we engage with things on

the internet like social media, it

artificially suppresses our emotional

circuitry. But we're not learning to

regulate it, we're just like turning the

TV off, right? We're like stepping away

from it. And then the problem is once we

stop doing that, once we let our mind be

free again, once we start thinking about

things that emotion comes rushing up

often times with an additional amount of

regret because now I've wasted an hour

on my phone and I should have been

working, right? So I my emotional

picture is actually moving in the wrong

direction. Whereas what many successful

people learn how to do is to regulate

their emotions. They do this often times

very physically, right? So a lot of

these athletes will learn techniques

like deep breathing. And by the way,

breathing is probably the best way. Best

in the sense that is very accessible and

very effective, very easy to do, very

natural. I teach this to literally

four-year-olds because your breath and

your emotional state are connected.

Okay? So if you think about if I breathe

like this,

what emotion am I feeling? Right? You

can tell there's a a particular

neurohysiologic pattern of respiration

with a particular emotion, which is why

we tell people, hey, you need to calm

down, take a deep breath. So, this is a

two-way street. And athletes will learn

deep breathing, but this is where we

want to decompress or regulate our

emotions. Often times, regulating our

emotions is an important skill that we

will do with other people. So, this is

where like in our coaching program or as

a psychiatrist, right, we will teach

these techniques which are learned over

time. So that's a really great way to

learn them. But deep breathing or

breathing in general is the fastest way

to immediately regulate your emotions.

So another thing that athletes tend to

do that we don't do is argue with

themselves. So often times when we have

these negative thoughts in our head, our

response is to try to logically argue

against them. So if you think to

yourself, I have low self-esteem. And

then people will say, okay, like so no,

but I don't have low self-esteem. Like

let me make a procon list. Let me try to

convince myself. And oftentimes athletes

do change the way that they talk to

themselves, but that kind of convincing

is very hard to do on your own. You guys

may have noticed, right? You've tried to

do it. Some people are able to do it, in

which case it's no longer a problem. But

many people will look for logic to

combat logic. But what we've learned

sort of what I've learned as a

psychiatrist is that as long as the

emotion is fueling those thoughts,

arguing against yourself really doesn't

change your self-esteem very much. And

that's a big trap that people fall into

that often times, I don't know if this

just makes sense. If you look at someone

who's incredibly successful, what

they're doing is not like sitting at

home spending 4 hours arguing with

themselves. And literally, I've worked

with I can think of a couple of esports

athletes that do do that. They spend

time hours at home after practice

thinking about how they should be

different and this and that. Their mind

is once again out of control and their

performance doesn't actually get better.

That actually holds them back a fair

amount. So, oddly enough, logical

argument is not something that works.

Another really important thing to

understand is where our thoughts

actually come from. So, sure, we can't

control them. We can shift attention

away to a different channel, a more

productive channel. We can regulate our

emotions. But the other key thing to

understand is that our thoughts

fundamentally come from our sense

organs. This is also something that

people who produce advertising and

propaganda very clearly understand. Why

does propaganda work? Because if I can

give someone enough sensory input, if we

look at the way that political campaigns

are run, I'm going to bombard people

with images, with music, with sound

bites, with clips. And if I can do this

enough, I can literally change the way

that they think. So the weird thing

about this is that other people are

actually more empowered to control your

thoughts than you are. really scary but

it's absolutely true right your wife has

certain thoughts in her head she's upset

and you can do things to alter the

pattern of her thinking you can say oh

tell me what's wrong I love you we as

human beings can affect the human beings

around us we can affect their thinking

>> which means by definition her thinking

is being shaped by who

>> me

>> so as we saw in this clip with Lewis his

wife's thoughts are actually controlled

more by him and his wife controls more

of his thoughts than we want to give

ourselves credit for and depending on

how you've existed in the environment.

You may have noticed this as well, like

if you're spending some time with your

boss and your boss like gives you a

negative performance review or they, you

know, give credit to one of your

colleagues, this environmental influence

can trigger all kinds of thinking. And

this is the other thing that athletes

and professionals are really, really

good at. Think about their environment.

Right? So, if I'm a professional

athlete, I wake up in the morning. I'm

eating some kind of healthy food that is

determined by my nutritionist. I go into

work, I spend time with my coach, I

spend time with my peers, I get a

massage, I do a cold plunge. My

environment is feeding me a certain kind

of thinking. They're not spending 8

hours a day watching how their

competitors are working harder than they

are, doing better than they are. Oh my

god, they have this coach and they have

I only have a cold plunge, but they have

an infrared sauna. That's not actually

how they're spending their time. This is

really important. The environment that

highly successful people have is very

controlled and that induces a certain

kind of thinking. A good analogy to sort

of stitch this all together is a garden.

So if we look at a garden, can you

control what grows in a garden? Now you

can look at a well manicured garden. You

can say like yeah like they kind of

control that, right? There's rose

bushes, there's liies, there's a crepe

myrtle, there are no weeds. So clearly

they can control it. But if you sort of

stop and think about it technically like

I can plant a seed, I can water it, I

can add the fertilizer but I cannot make

it grow. What I can do is take certain

actions to cultivate a particular kind

of growth. And the other really

important action that we take with

gardens is that we're we do weeding,

right? So when there are negative things

when they're negative plants growing, I

remove them. I remove them. I remove

them. I remove them. But technically,

you can't like stop weeds from growing.

You can only do the work of weeding them

on a daily basis. And this is ultimately

the difference between what I would call

high performers, the thinking of high

performers and the thinking of low

performers, which is that high

performers, they weed on a daily basis.

When they have a negative thought, they

shift their attention and they fertilize

themselves in the right way. I'm going

to spend time with my coach. I'm going

to spend time away from social media.

I'm literally spending my days doing

things. I'm doing things like deep

breathing. Each of these things that we

do will start to shift your mind in a

particular direction. And when we look

at someone like an Olympic athlete, they

have a well- manicured garden because

many of them from the age of five or six

or even younger started this process of

mental cultivation. The problem that we

run into is that we will do these things

for a little while, right? We'll say,

"Okay, I watched this Dr. K video. I'm

going to shift my attention. I'm going

to concentrate on the tip of the nose.

I'm going to do all of these things. We

do it for a week. We do it for 2 weeks.

We do it for 3 weeks. We do it for four

weeks. And then we think to ourselves,

"Oh my god, it's not working." And even

as you guys are listening to this, you

may be thinking these thoughts like, "Oh

my god, what is Dr. K saying? He's

saying just stay off your phone. Is that

basically what you're saying?" Like,

sure, if I'm a pro alete and I have a

coaching staff, I have an infrared

sauna, I have all these things, then

it's easy to do what you're saying, Dr.

K, but my life is different. I can't

afford to stay off of this. My boss

sends me emails. I have to check Slack.

I have to check Instagram DMs for my

job, right? I have to do all of these

things. And I want you to notice what

you just did, right? I want you to

notice what thought popped up into your

head when I said this is what we need to

do. This is exactly the problem, right?

So, you can't control your negativity in

response to this. But if we look at this

is a key thing that separates people who

are really successful from people who

are not which is that when they have a

negative thought pop into their head.

What is the shift that you are making

right now? Are you making the shift of

and this is the shift that they make.

This is an obstacle. How do I overcome

it? That is the difference between a

high performer and a low performer's

thought. Low performer's thought is this

is an obstacle therefore I can't do it.

Right? You see this? And there's so many

people in our community. This is why I'm

doing this work, right? Because y'all

think, "Okay, it won't work because of

this. It won't work because of this. I'm

different. There's another thought.

There's another weed that has grown. I'm

less than everybody else. What works for

other people doesn't work for me. These

people have advantages I have.

Therefore, I can't accomplish what they

can't accomplish." And I'm not one to

say that advantages don't matter. Right?

I I said from the get-go, many of these

people, they they are this way because

they were trained from the age of five.

You were not trained from the age of

five. I was not trained from the age of

five. Right? There's no question that

they have advantages that you don't

have. The question is, how does your

mind respond to that discrepancy? Do you

say, "Therefore, I can't do it." Notice

how it's happening right now in your

head. Even as I point this out to you,

what is your mind's reaction? Is it

finding some way to twist and turn to

reject what I'm saying? Or is it

actually starting to shift a little bit?

Maybe I should think about how to apply

this instead of finding the five

obstacles that I need to wipe away

before I apply it. And this is the key

thing. See, if you're struggling with

this, it's completely normal because if

we go back to the garden, the issue with

the garden is if we have a garden that

we have not manicured, right, for 10

years, 15 years, the garden is overrun

with weeds. How many weeks of tending

the garden? How many weeks of weeding

does it take for the garden to become a

rose garden? We have to start planting

the right thoughts and we have to do a

lot of weeding. And this is what's so

hard. This is why I like working with

people, right? And if we look at like

our coaching program, it's really

interesting because we see really good

outcomes. So people start to get better

within four weeks, but we see really

good outcomes at 20 weeks. And that's

because it takes about 20 weeks to get a

garden under control. You can put in a

lot of effort for 4 weeks, 8 weeks. You

can do all of the right things, but you

will not notice a difference. And it's

just like a garden because you're

working, working, working, working,

working. And then if you go 4 weeks in

and you're like, "Oh my god, I've been

working every day for 8 hours and the

garden is still an absolute mess." And

even though you're expending effort, you

don't see a result. But then something

magical happens at 8 weeks, 12 weeks, 16

weeks. And this is another dangerous

thought that people have. I'm putting

forth effort therefore and I don't see a

result. Therefore, this is a waste of

time. Therefore, this will never work.

But with a garden, the key thing is at

some point the effort starts lessening.

The more you do it, the more you

cultivate, the easier it becomes. But it

still requires that maintenance on a

daily basis. I want to leave you all

with one super concrete thing, which is

what is it that I need to weed in my

mind. So, by all means, you can focus on

the tip of your nose, learn to train

your attention. That'll help you a lot.

But the last thing that I want you all

to notice, this is the thought that you

need to weed. Any thought that is black

and white. So, in the world, nothing is

black and white, right? Or maybe some

things are black and white. That's a

black and white thought, right? So,

let's weed that out. Maybe something is

black and white. Most things are not

black and white. And if you look at

athletes, they're really good at this.

So, I I recently heard a a clip from a a

tennis player who was saying they

unexpectedly lost a tournament where

they were, you know, favored to win and

they're like, "I never want to play

tennis again." That's a black and white

thought. And do you think that this

person is going to quit tennis? I would

be really surprised if they do. They

have the black and white thought, but

they shift away from it, right? How do

you shift away from I never want to play

tennis again? You shift away by saying,

"Look, I had a bad week. It was a bad

game. Everybody has tough times. Here's

what I did well. Here's what I did

poorly." And what I found literally you

can measure the black and the level of

black and white thinking with the

severity of mental illness. And what you

will find is that the more severe the

black and white thinking is, the more

likely they are to be severely mentally

ill. So in borderline personality

disorder, one of the diagnostic features

is black and white thinking. When people

have psychotic depression, it's black

and white thinking. So notice anytime

you think in terms of black and white

and you have just one task, shift

towards gray. It doesn't have to be all

the way from black to white. Even white

is bad. I've worked with many people. We

talk about psychotic depression. Other

example of white thinking. Is all white

thinking terrible? Absolutely. And we

call that mania. So shift away from

black or white to gray. That is the most

fundamental weeding you can add.

Do you want