Transcription
Today we're going to talk about how to develop consistency in your life as a gamer. Now, if you're a gamer, chances are you're trying to level up your stats like motivation, or discipline, or willpower, or building habits because if you can do all that, you will be consistent.
The problem with consistency has nothing to do with motivation or discipline or willpower. The core problem with developing consistency is that you don't know who you are. You think you are living your life, but you're not living your life. You are constantly spawning into some random dude's life. And it's once you realize this, your ability to develop consistency will become way easier.
So, this was originally a discovery that yogis in the Himalayas made thousands of years ago, that the source of suffering and problems in our life has to do with avidya, or ignorance of our true selves. And this is actually the case in your life too, because you kind of know that you're not the same person every day, right? You may have dreams of, "Oh man, remember that one day, that one week back in March of 2023 when I woke up and I did everything that I was supposed to do? Man, if only I could be like that person." And every day you wake up and you wish you were that person. But the problem is that you're not that person. That you actually fluctuates quite a bit. And if we want to understand how to develop the right consistency in life, we have to understand how to live life.
Hey, just a quick note. A lot of people will ask, "Discuss, what do I do next?" And that's why we built Dr. K's Guide. It's a comprehensive resource that distills over 20 years of my experience, both as a monk and as a psychiatrist, and it's designed in a way that's tailored to fit your needs. So, if you're interested in better understanding your mind and taking control of your life, check out the link below.
So, this is something also that I think gamers will be pretty good at, because you can sort of look at, "Okay, how do we win in a video game? How do we get good at a video game? What are the general principles?" And how can we apply that to life? So, let's start by understanding. So, if you want to play a game and you want to be good at it, you have to understand the flow of the game. You have to understand the kind of direction of the game, right? So, there's the early game, and in the early game, we sort of level up and we prep things so that we can hit our mid-game power spike. And then once we have our mid-game power spike, then it's just about not screwing up and closing out the end game, right? You've got your advantage, then you can kind of close things out.
The problem is that, much like your pub matches, when you're playing your life, there's no [ __ ] inconsistency there, right? Your early game is like, "Yeah, I'm going to like not pay attention in high school. I'm not going to develop good study habits." Therefore, I'm going to go into my mid-game of like college and 20s with a significant disadvantage. And since I have a significant disadvantage, this part of my life is really going to suck. And then I'm kind of going into my late game of like, 31st birthday, and now we have this like trash of like an early game and mid-game. And then we kind of wonder, "Oh my God, like, how, how did I get here?" Right? We're playing the game of life with some like Elon Musk Elden Ring build, which is like, "Hey, I got to level up. Let me just dump a point over here and dump a point over here. Oh, that item looks cool, like I'll start using that item." This is the way that we're living life. There's no consistency because we have no sense of the flow of the game.
And this is the other problem is that if you really stop and think about it, you're not playing the game of life as one person. In fact, that's the whole problem is that you wake up on a different day, and you're actually like a different person. So, the key thing that we need to understand is that if you want consistency, you have to start by understanding that you don't exist beyond today. That your life is actually a multiplayer game where random people are waking up in your life and get to live life one day at a time.
Now, you may say, "But Dr. K, no, these are all these people are me." No, this is the problem. This is what the yogi said. This is avidya. You don't know that this isn't actually you. You're just a random person living this life one day at a time. And that may sound weird, but think about it for a second, right? Because what do you love to do? You love to screw over tomorrow you. So, here you are on a given day, and it's like, "Okay, well, like today I have to like go through the mail, and I have to do laundry, and oh yeah, I have to fill out those applications for college." But do you actually do those things? No. Of course not. Why not? You tell yourself, "I will do it later." But it's not that you that has to do it later. It's that next guy or girl who has to do it later. I'm going to leave this for the noob tomorrow.
And so you spend your life enjoying today, and then you wake up tomorrow, and then who do you get mad at? Do you get mad at yourself? Sort of. You get mad at the dude that came before you, right? Because that person, damn it, why didn't that guy do this crap that needed to be done? Instead, I'm waking up today, and I have all this stuff that this person yesterday did not do. So, if you really stop and think about it, the basic problem with life is that you don't recognize that you only get to live for this moment in time. This is the only time that you get to be in charge. And this is why you are so neglectful, right? Because if we sort of look at it, when people have no conception of the future, when they have no sense of stewardship, what do they do? They screw things over for the next person. And this is exactly how we live our life. "I'm going to do this today because tomorrow me can [ __ ] clean up this mess."
And so the you actually fluctuates quite a bit. And this runs deeper than the mind, right? So, we know that desires fluctuate, emotions fluctuate. The problem is that it runs deeper than that. It's not just at the surface levels of the mind. It's your values, it's your choices, it's the life that you're crafting. You can wake up on January 1st, 2024, and decide, "This is the year that I order a, uh, learn to play a musical instrument." And then you order a musical instrument, and then since you're an Amazon Prime member, it shows up in two days. And two days later, it's January 3rd, and you're like, "You know what? I don't want this anymore." The person that you are has changed.
So, what do we do about this? How do we start to live a life of of consistency if we ourselves change every single day? And this is the first thing to understand is that so far, you've been trying to build a consistent life assuming that you are the same every single day. But the whole point, and you know this, is that you're not the same every day, right? This is why you are so attached to a former version of yourself. So many people in our community are like, "Man, I wish I could go back to being this person that I used to be. I wish I could, I wish I could have learned what I am today. I wish I could have learned that 10 years ago, and then my life would have been completely different." If you really stop and look at your experience of life, you recognize that there's a lot of fluctuation in it.
So, what do we do about this? So, the first thing to sort of really tunnel down into is that if you live a life temporarily, if you're just inhabiting your body for one day, what would your life actually look like? And this is where, chances are, you would kind of screw things up, right? This is why public toilets, people piss on the, you know, piss all over the public toilet because they don't have ever have to use it again. This is why public toilets are such a mess because there's no sense of stewardship because I can leave it for the next person. And if you look at your life and you lack consistency, what's going on there? You are leaving stuff for future you to deal with, right? You don't want to deal with it today.
And people may wonder, "Well, why is that?" And this is where there's an interesting bit of neuroscience that comes in. So, if you look at the human brain, we've evolved to do this, like have this problem with future discounting, which basically means that we, as a human species, this is the way we've evolved, value a dollar today more than $2 a year from now. So, we, our brains are wired, there's a part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens, and it's wired to value things that are immediate more than things that are distant.
And so, if you sort of think about it for a second, right? Let's say I've got two things to do. I want to play a video game. Let's say it's Friday. I've got to play a video game, and I've got to fill out an application. So, my brain looks at this problem and says, "Okay, I've got these two things to do. And due to future discounting, I can do my work today and then I can have fun tomorrow." But literally, my brain values fun today more than fun tomorrow. This is why we fundamentally, as a species, procrastinate.
So, what do we do about this? We have to understand that we are inheriting this life from the person who came before us, and we are custodians of this life for the person who comes next. See, our life is not one where we exist from moment to moment to moment. It's some weird body swap comedy. And in all of those body swap comedies, what happens? This person's consciousness gets transplanted into this new body. And what, what does their life become? Their life becomes a playground of, "There's $10,000 in the bank account. Well, I'm going to buy whatever the hell I want to because this person who will come after, after me, will have to clean up that mess." So, we really have to accept this.
So, I want you all to start living your life as if you're playing a video game, but you're only playing it for five minutes at a time. If you're playing a MOBA game, and someone else is like in the bathroom and they're like, "Oh no, the Q popped, start playing the game for me." How are you going to play that game? Even though you won't get the joy of winning, are you going to start saying like, "Okay, like LOL, I'm going to screw up this person's game, and then they can inherit it five minutes from now, and then whatever"? No. When you sit down to play the game, if you really pay attention, you're going to try to play the best game that you can, even though you're not going to get the joy of winning. Then you step out of the seat, your friend steps into the seat, and then they take over. And when that second person steps into the seat, they are custodians of the game for five minutes. They don't get to see the victory, right? They're only playing for five minutes. They're swapping for someone else. And then that next person plays the game.
When do games go wrong? When someone who stops playing in five-minute intervals, when someone who's playing for the first five minutes, and your enemies feed, then they think, "Oh my God, the game is lost, everything is screwed." And then what do you start doing? You start ining down mid, and you start [ __ ] over the guy next who comes next. And then when you respawn, you're in this game, but you've screwed things up for yourself even more. See, this is the key thing to understand. When we connect our present day to some kind of outcome, we recruit the nucleus accumbens, we begin to tilt, everything gets tangled together, and we actually lose control.
Instead, how should you play a game where you've, you know, gone 0 and two in mid, and things are not going well? "Okay, I am a custodian of this game for the next five minutes. How can I play this game to improve things for the person who comes next?" This is exactly how you should live your life.
So, my bet, my favorite example of this actually comes from outside of gaming. So many years ago, I used to love watching this show called Top Chef. And in this, this, this one particular episode of Top Chef, they had this really cool challenge where they had teams of chefs. And there's a team of five chefs, okay? And they have to make a dish. The only catch is that one person goes into the kitchen, starts cooking for about five minutes, and then they leave the kitchen. The next chef on the team comes inside. It's almost like a relay race, and they have to figure out what Chef number one was thinking, and then they have to sort of continue their process. And then they leave after five minutes. Chef number three comes in, tries to figure out what's going on, and then tries to do the best and move things along.
The interesting thing is that if you start living your life this way, if you start by really acknowledging that you are not the one who gets to live the remainder of your life, you don't get to win at the end. You are just a custodian for today. It will change the way that you live life. Ironically, it will help you actually build consistency. Because if you just exist for today, what kind of life do you want to set up for the person tomorrow?
Now, some of y'all may say, "But, but I don't care about the person tomorrow. If I'm just living for today, why wouldn't I be like the body swap comedy person and just burn through everything?" So, this is where we have to understand another aside. So, this is where self-compassion becomes very, very important. And a lot of people misunderstand this. They really struggle with things like motivation and stuff like that. But if you really don't love yourself, what is the point in making sacrifices for your life? See, we make sacrifices for things that are worth it. So, I can afford to eat healthy today or go to the gym or whatever, if the person I'm doing it for is worth something, right? We sacrifice for those that we love. And if you're in a situation in life where you don't love yourself, why would you sacrifice for something that you don't love? And this is why, if we don't love ourselves, it can become very hard to make sacrifices today for a better tomorrow, because we don't care about the person who's inheriting tomorrow.
So, we've got to be super careful about this particular pitfall. At the end of the day, if you want to live a life of consistency, paradoxically, what you really need to do is recognize that there is no consistency within you. You just get to live today. You don't get to decide what happens tomorrow. Because you've tried that, right? You tried that [ __ ] sometime ago where you're like, "I'm going to play games today. The person tomorrow can do the work." And what happens when you wake up tomorrow? The person is like, "Ah, I'm not gonna do the work today. I know I said I would do it yesterday, but today I'm not going to do it." And you punt things along, punt things along, punt things along.
So, just accept that you don't actually live your life. You are just a temporary custodian. You're constantly spawning into this person's life. And once you start doing that, then ask yourself, "How do I want to live this life today? Am I going to set things up better for the person who's going to inherit tomorrow, or do I want to be a hedonistic [ __ ] and create a mess for the person who is inheriting tomorrow?" And the whole problem is that we end up doing the latter thing because we think that there is consistency, because we think that we can make up for it tomorrow. But that's impossible. If that worked, none of us would actually be here.
So, I know it sounds bizarre, but paradoxically, understanding a little bit about gaming, understanding the flow of game, can help us understand this ancient principle of avidya, or ignorance leading to suffering and problems in our life. We just have to adapt it a little bit for the gamers in our audience.
[Music]