Motivation Psychology: How to Not Be Overwhelmed

Dr. K explains active challenges in motivation psychology
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Active Challenges are challenges we decide to take on, which gives us an innate motivation to do them. When challenges are dumped onto us, or we are forced to do something, they are called passive challenges. Passive challenges can sap our motivation because we don't plan on doing them.

In this video, Dr. K explains why our motivation for active challenges can lead to success.

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#Motivation #Selfimprovement #selfdevelopment

[vanya]

Is this why it feels awesome cleaning your room, but when your parents make you do it it feels like a chore and hard?

[davidfrance]

You literally answered in 3 minutes why I clean when I get stressed. It's almost subconscious. This is especially true if I get into an argument with a partner. It's feeling like I'm lost in the situation and can't control the outcome, and cleaning is a total go to. Wiping counters. Sweeping. Dishes. It's legit my reaction, and it makes total sense. I feel out of control emotionally, so I control my environment externally.

[dragstationvr]

Notes:
- Anxiety is excess mental energy, expend it by taking on active challenges
- Taking on active challenges makes you feel less overwhelmed because you feel like you have more control over your life

[Deeharok]

5:05 "anxiety is just a disorder of excess mental energy never going away" holy shit this statement alone was a epiphany for me. Thank you so much for your content.

[KuIJohnQ]

"All anxiety is, is unused energy." Holy crap mind blown

[ryanscott]

Dr K just blows my mind sentence after sentence. It's insane that I've gone 22 years of my life so far never thinking about things in the way he's laying them out.

[aldagrim]

I have a tendency to try and force myself into action by putting deadlines to my active challenges. I.E. I decide to run a DnD group as an active challenge, so to force myself to get started on it I tell the group it will be ready by a very specific date before I start work on it. I assumed the pressure would give me the motivation needed to get going on it, but what ended up happening is the idea of working on it amidst other things going on became overwhelming, and it never got done really. i think this made me realize I've been turning my active challenges into passive challenges on purpose and I gotta stop doing that.

[This]

"anxiety is just energy bouncing around in your head" wow this is the best description I've ever heard!

[johnsmith-mokz]

This makes sense looking back. I adopted a daily task list for the past few months, but the kicker us that I usually never cross everything off. What I always manage to get done is the important passive tasks while the active tasks live another day, but early on when I had no active tasks on the list I would struggle to do important stuff like getting homework done.

[zlg]

I end up doing a lot of things when I was quitting a depression of 4 years but at that time I thought that was like trying to not be "myself" so I gradually stop doing things, then I wasn't depressed but eventually got the feeling of being really overwhelmed by things, now I realize I was doing right when I was challenging myself with difficult activities like boxing or music and its true I remember not being overwhelmed by things when I was doing that stuff.This is a life changing lesson for me, thank you very much :)

[pokemusicfan]

man this is a massive brain frack. bit it is so truuuu, everytime I start a project I thought of it makes me high and happy, but then it becomes an obligation and expectation and I get confused why doing it isnt great anymore. little did I know I'm supposed to stoke the fire by quickly adding active challenges to outweigh reality

[dend]

I feel overwhelmed when im doing one thing and thinking about doing the 4 - 5 other things

[doodlesparks]

So my version of this is to pick up hobbies when I'm stressed and overwhelmed at work, but the issue is that when the passive challenges continue to increase or don't go away and I pick up more active challenges I just get burnt out and have to stop everything and then the cycle begins again. I just end up taking on too much, and often bad at asking for help or saying no.

[elwiwi]

I swear everytime I have a problem Dr.k pops up in my recommendations to talk about the exact same thing that's happening to me. His videos are truly godsend

[moosefromhell]

This is so damn true. I only started to cure my anxiety after I started studying my passions everyday.

[finalink]

I am in a 1-year intensive program for VFX. The course load is very high, we have 7 classes and team project which we have to complete by the end of the term. I have been spending at least 50 hours every week at the school trying to complete 5+ project tasks along with class HW assignments. However, I haven't been able to complete my tasks at the same speed of classmates. One of the reasons is that they spent more time working on their tasks by doing brutal 60+ hours each week(something i have been pushing myself to do as well). Although another reason, I discovered after watching your video, is that I believe they treated all of their tasks as active. Whereas, I treated almost all my tasks as passive which made feel like there is so much to do . So, from now on I will treat my tasks as active to complete them faster by doing a bit more than the teacher asked. Thank you Dr.K for helping me reach this conclusion.

[..]

Wow, your channel is overflowing with so much great advice that I really needed in my life right now. It really helps.

[copiumforthepeople]

amen.
just don't feel bad about yourself if you feel stuck doing nothing because you're just unable to do anything that day. it happens. and it won't get better if you keep on beating yourself up about that.

[professorcactus]

Does meditation count as an active challenge?

[pGHz]

I want this to be wrong but I honestly had one of the busiest times of my life last year and while I did struggle in some regards I did notice I stopped doing the thing where I have something I have to do and just avoid it. I ended up probably getting as much of the usual stuff done plus all these new things because I just had like an hour on a Thursday to get it done. I think it was too extreme because I had not time to reflect or veg or exercise. Maybe that's not quite the same thing but the feeling of being overwhelmed was gone once I was doing lots of things for me. This summer I signed up for all of these things I think I'm under-qualified for and ended up being selected for a bunch of them, and mentally I actually kind of love it because I am not bored, I am doing challenging things, and the same old tasks I still have to do I just get done in-between rather than drag out. I just need to have that happening in concert with a better time structure I think to make time for sleep, planning social stuff and healthy eating, exercising, and staring at the wall time.