The Science Of Self Control

In today's video, we delve into the fascinating world of self-control from a scientific perspective. We'll explore the latest research and evidence-based techniques designed to enhance your self-discipline. Our journey will uncover the psychological and neurological underpinnings of self-control, providing you with practical strategies to apply in your daily life.

Join us as we discuss actionable insights and methods to boost your self-control, helping you achieve your personal and professional goals. Whether you're looking to improve your focus, resist temptations, or manage your impulses more effectively, this video is tailored to provide you with the tools for success. Don't miss out on this opportunity to empower yourself with the science of self-control!

▼ Timestamps ▼
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00:11 You don’t really listen to you
03:27 Understanding self control
05:22 What diminishes your self control?
10:03 Monitoring conflict is self control
12:20 How to monitor conflict yourself
15:40 Exerting self control

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DISCLAIMER

Healthy Gamer is an online community and resource platform for gamers and their families. It does not provide medical services or professional counselling, and it is not a substitute for professional medical care. Our coaches are peer supporters, not professionally trained experts, and they cannot provide medical service. If you or a loved one are experiencing an emergency, please call your nation's emergency telephone number.

All guests of Healthy Gamer are informed of the public, non-medical nature of the content and have expressly agreed to share their story.

#healthygamergg #lifeadvice #selfcontrol

[DreamingWithEyesWide]

This also explains why journaling is so powerful. Because essentially journaling is all about feeling your feelings and paying attention to the internal conflict. I always feel better and more in control after journaling and this explains why.

[mackprime]

This man puts out life-changing content consistently like it’s nothing

[apostolismoschopoulos]

The 'just do it' explanation was amazing and almost brought me to tears. My parents used to smoke since their 20s. From as young as I can remember, I was always fighting with them ( I was swearing, crying, breaking their cigarettes or throwing them on the trash can) and I remember I used to feel completely ignored and invalidated. I used to feel like a fool. One day they just stopped doing it. Nothing particularly happened. They just never touched a cigarette again. Even when I was in the icu in the hospital, it crossed their minds, but they didn't smoke.
Now I realize, what I was doing all these years is forcing them the internal conflict they were never brave enough to face. And, suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, at 11/1/2018, after 30 years of smoking, my mom calmly said "I'm quiting smoking right now". She didn't have any past 'attempts' to quit it. It was like it clicked in her mind, everything made sense out of 'nowhere'. It was literally nobody: my mom:
After some months the same happened with my father. I remember asking (teasing) him how come he ended up quiting after 10 persistent years of me pressuring him. I remember, he couldn't explain the reasons, it just didn't make sense for him to smoke anymore. He used to take the 'idk' facial expression when trying to explain it. Over the years, they were becoming more and more aware of the internal conflict that was existing inside their minds, and because of that awareness, it got resolved.
This was my parent's 'just do it' story.

[d_chip]

what he is saying is : observe all kinds of thoughts. example: when you want to study, there is thought on your mind "i need to study for exams". observe this thought. then there is an impulse thought follows this: " i don't need to study now. i can study later". observe this thought too. observe this train of thoughts. if you do this, you automatically comes in the path of doing what's needed. because there is no resistance.

[AlicesEntertainment]

With ADHD it’s not a battle, it’s a full blown war every secound of the day. Before medication the only way I was able to do anything at all was in a state of fear, anxiety and adrenaline.

[Natalie-]

Constantly being aware of every internal conflict is EXHAUSTING. What would help is being able to reduce the amount of conflict going on so you don't have to focus on a dozen different arguments in your head just to make individual choices. If this is something you could help with a video on that would be awesome!

[Gabe]

I went from 300lbs to 170lbs in the span of a little over 1 year. Self control was the key and what Dr K said in this video summarizes my experience. I was addicted to food, and one day, I woke up sober. I no longer wanted to be this person and I wanted control over my life.

[feyfiren]

Self control is about managing impulses. The best way to manage impulses is to monitor them long enough to ride them out, which means you do nothing while the impulse persists (you don't act on impulse). Once the impulse switches to something else that you are fine with, you can stop monitoring (and it will switch, that's how impulses work, they generally switch randomly).

[Turtlpwr]

6:56 “if I had the self control to meditate every day, I wouldn’t need to meditate every day”…omg this resonates so much

[Schnabetier]

This explanation tracks perfectly with my experiences:
A year ago, I was in a deep depression. I knew I was depressed, I knew what to do to fix it (get out of bed and start doing things) and yet I couldn't do it.
Eventually I went to therapy, managed to become "normal" again, overcome the depression and suddenly these days self control feels relatively easy.
I was still afraid though, because I hadn't understood the process that makes me now able to be in control, yet made it impossible back then, so what's to stop me from waking up tomorrow and being back where I started? Therapy for me was essentially forced introspection with the help of a therapist to guide me along, so it tracks this model of self control perfectly. In that process I managed to overcome these issues and thus what used to be taken up in terms of mental bandwidth is now available again.
In retrospect I can see that my "capacity for self control" was taken up by avoiding some negative facts in my life, as well as depersonalizing and derealizing to avoid negative emotions, when back then I didn't even notice I did these things.

On a unrelated note:
I'd really appreciate it if we could get links to the relevant research/papers in the description somewhere. I think this video format is much better for the average viewer in terms of digestability, but giving those who want to the ability to read up more on the topic would be amazing. On top of that, it gives viewers the ability to cite the sources to people they talk with about these ideas (or their therapists). I get that it's a big ask as that means additional work to collect and post the research, but I for one would be very thankful.

[nervengewitter]

This actually describes my experience with taking ADHD meds so well. It was not like the impulses to look at my phone, get up and hug my bf, or start thinking about a completely unrelated new topic just stopped existing, I was merely able to notice them first instead of impulsively acting on them. I literally had thoughts like "oh, I see a notification, I want to look at it even though I'm working on something." And then I was suddenly able to resist. It just added this "pause" before wanting to do something and doing it.

[procrastinathor]

When I saw my first video from you, I was like: "no way this is for free." so I am so happy that you have a sponsor now. Words can not describe how much I appreciate you and your work. I was lost and haven't even know it, my life improved so much from that time and there are still miles to go and I am so for it. It still isn't easy but at least it's simple. Thank you so much Alok Kanojia, you are the man.

[vedocorban]

This is invaluable knowledge. It simultaneously explains and debunks the common advice you always get out there of "Don't think and just do it bro!", despite the "just doing it" part most likely having come after a long time of reflection and possibly self loathing.

[Wineblood]

I had to watch this a few times to really understand it and I think there's a part of the explanation that's missing at the end. I would say that increased awareness of the internal conflict improves the definition of the conflict. Remaining aware of the conflict and thinking about it clarifies both sides and going from "this annoys me" to a clearer version which looks like "this part of my life causes X amount of pain for Y amount of gain, and X is greater than Y, so it's not worth it" which I think is where the just do it part comes in. People who reach that level of clarity now have a clear view of both side and there's an obvious choice.

[jennw]

I've just finished a great book called "How We Change (And Ten Reasons Why We Don't)" by Ross Ellenhorn. The title is cheezy, but this book is so deep. He explores all the ways we have this internal conflict. But the eleventh reason is, it's really hard without social support. Even the yogis had Sangha!! I feel like this is so important -- when you have social support, we can find comfort in others.

[eldoriath]

This makes a lot of sense: To be able to adress something you must be aware of it to begin with.

[SWATCommand]

Holy shit, it's like you read my mind. I don't normally write comments, but this video comes at a perfect timing for me and is truly eye-opening. It hasn't even been 2 weeks since I quit weed and yesterday was the hardest to stay away from it. Day 1 to 3 were tough, but day 10 I was really struggling with the thought of taking it. I was literally fighting that internal battle 4 to 5 times within a few hours and keeping track of it in the back of my mind. That is when my emotional awareness took over and I realized was feeling deeply sad and lonely, which was an experience that I haven't felt a long while to such a degree. I watched youtube video after youtube video until at one moment I thought "screw this" and took a few minutes to watch the sunset out of my window( tbf, I live in a pretty lovely environment, lots of mountains and woods). Feeling the heat of the last sunshine of the day and just taking a few minutes to look into the distance really calmed me down. A few hours later I basically binged a whole anime season, which I hadn't done in a sober state for quite a while and it felt amazing. The thought of getting high again appeared in my mind and I took a few minutes break from watching to deal with my internal state again. I was stressing about some work related stuff that I had to deal with today and having to wake up early for it, which made me feel uneasy as I got up pretty late that day and I knew I wouldn't be able to go to bed on time, so I knew I would not get enough sleep. Having processed that, I thoroughly enjoyed the last episodes of my anime and went to bed with a pretty calm mind lol. Actually everything went pretty well today and it wasn't half as bad as expected, I got everything done that I wanted to.

Long story short, I felt the internal process of what you're describing in the video for the first time even though I have known about the emotional awareness procedure for half a year. But only now after admitting to myself that I had to quit weed to truly reach my potential and feel fulfillment in life is when I finally felt what I logically understood months ago for the first time. The road ahead is still very long and there is a lot of stuff I want and need to do, but making the first steps felt very reassuring.

Thanks Dr K for yet another great video and for everyone who read until here! I hope you guys are doing well and I wish lots of strength for whatever it is you are going through!

[chronomirageYT]

This is so interesting, I had so many people who are older than me telling me that the only way to self control is through "stress", which is completely backward but also makses sense. Stress is cause us to panic and go all in on the things we've been procrastinating, which feels like self-control, stress will also disable "real self-control", which is what causes stress in the first place.

[cory]

This lines up incredibly well with ADHD scattered attention, and how meditation is an ADHD treatment. It gives us the capacity to revaluate and stay on task

[samtournesol]

i didn’t have the self control to finish this video