Transcription
Today, we're going to talk a little bit about detachment, apathy, and motivation. A lot of people, like myself, will talk about the value of detachment. We'll say that based on all these spiritual traditions, you should detach from the world, and as you detach from stuff, you'll be happier, more content, more free, and sometimes even more productive.
Hey there, thanks for watching! I'm glad these videos have been helpful. A lot of times, I'll read the comments and see people asking, "Well, what do I actually do about it?" which is such a great question. Unfortunately, my experience has been that the resources out there aren't actually that good at helping people create sustainable change, which is why I started HG in the first place. The coaches are trained on a curriculum that integrates all of my understanding into what motivation is, what paralyzes us, and how to create lasting behavioral change. So, if you're ready to take the next step, the coaches are ready to help you build the life that you want. They have helped people build careers, find relationships, build networks of friends, discover what their passions are, and pursue their hobbies. If this sounds like something that you'd be interested in, check out the link in the description below.
But a lot of times, that seems really confusing for people, right? Because if you really think about it, it's your attachment to things that actually gets you motivated and moving forward. Many people get confused by this concept of detachment versus apathy because if I detach from stuff, doesn't that mean that I stop caring? And caring is the only thing that actually keeps me going. A lot of people who listen to others talk about detachment will conclude that, okay, I can't afford to be detached because if I become detached, then I'm going to sit around and do nothing. In fact, this sort of apathetic, nihilistic, mentally checked-out stuff is actually what I struggle with every day. What I struggle with is finding motivation.
So today, what we're going to do is explain a little bit about the difference between detachment and apathy, and in some ways, how they're almost completely polar opposites. We'll talk a little bit about the value and explain why detachment can be so good. Most importantly, we're going to sort of explain to you all the mechanisms behind which detachment actually helps people move forward.
In order to understand this, we have to start with an understanding of how we normally motivate ourselves. Normally, I have some kind of internal drive and some sort of external resistance. A good example of this is that let's say I'm ambitious and I want to accomplish a lot, but I hate my job. This is the sort of situation where I don't want to work; I don't really enjoy work. It's kind of like this barrier that I have to overcome. What allows me to overcome the barrier of the boringness of work, the toxicity of work, and the diminishing returns that I get from putting in effort? What I have to do to overcome the negative situation at work is some amount of ambition.
Some of you may really wish that you were more ambitious, right? Because we see people who are doing the sigma grind set, and they're super ambitious. They will tolerate a ton of pain, and they're like, "Yeah, life sucks because you've got to be super ambitious." So what we sort of do is have this internal driver that we use to overcome the hump of resistance. Then, what happens is there's this little equation that goes on in our head, right? Work sucks so much that it creates a certain amount of resistance, and if I'm ambitious enough, I can overcome the hump of disliking work. That actually leads me to action, which then leads me to benefits like success, money, promotions, and things like that.
This is sort of normally how we motivate ourselves. There's this internal struggle between the world sucking out there and me ramping myself up internally, really juicing myself to overcome those negatives. Another really good example of this, if we want to step outside of work for a second, is loneliness and anxiety. This is something that we deal with a ton in this community. I've helped a ton of patients with this kind of stuff, where it's like, "Okay, so I'm socially anxious, and it's hard for me to make friends." When I go out and meet people, it's like, "Oh my God, it's so painful! I look stupid, I sound stupid, everyone's judging me all the time." Social media definitely doesn't help that kind of stuff.
So what happens is we kind of move out into the world, we get bludgeoned by our social anxiety, and then we retreat. When we retreat, what starts to build up is a sense of loneliness. Some research shows that this is the loneliest generation in the history of humanity. The loneliness builds and builds and builds until it overcomes the resistance from the social anxiety. Here's this barrier of social anxiety; we try to move out into the world, and we get swatted back. Then the loneliness rises and rises until it surpasses the anxiety. Then we're so desperate that we can't afford to be anxious anymore, and then we start moving forward.
If we think a little bit about what drives us forward in life, it's this thing over here, right? It's that level of anxiety, that feeling of loneliness, that desperation of always being alone. This is what we sort of think about as caring. Sometimes, if that stuff gets too toxic or too harmful, what we end up doing is becoming apathetic. If I don't have that driver, so I have social anxiety over here and the loneliness is building up over here, but if I become apathetic, if I mentally check out at work, if I sort of numb myself from the loneliness, that's really what apathy is. I stop caring about life, and then I'm kind of stuck.
That's usually how we work, right? Because if we're apathetic, we're not doing anything, and the only thing that we can use to overcome that hump is actually caring a lot. The more I care about my job, the more that I care about not being alone anymore, the more I'm actually going to motivate myself forward. But this is not really a healthy or sustainable way to live life. In the case of ambition, it results in burnout, and in the case of loneliness, it's so terrible. Hopefully, you all don't know, but unfortunately, chances are many of you do. The struggle between loneliness and anxiety sucks, no matter how you cut it. Even if the loneliness rises to the point where you move out into the world, it's still a painful experience.
So what a lot of people will think is that, okay, I can't afford to give up my attachments. I can't afford to give up the loneliness. I can't afford to give up the ambition because then how am I going to do anything? This is where detachment enters the picture. Detachment is not about detaching from the world; it's actually about detaching from yourself. When we really think about what detachment is, here's the world down here, and here's us up here, and we kind of sit in the middle. I know that sounds kind of weird. What do I mean by that?
We kind of sit over here, and what we think detachment means is that we think it means removing ourselves from the world, right? Like, I'm going to stop caring about stuff. But if you really look at it, what detachment truly means is removal from our own ego. When we remove ourselves from our ego, that's when we actually become detached. Now, what does that mean? I'll give you all kind of a simple example. Let's say I want to dance at a party. I'm hearing the music; the music is fantastic. I really, really feel like dancing. What is it that keeps me from dancing? Because I can hear the music; I want to move. Maybe I don't know how to dance, but who the hell cares, right? Generally speaking, people who like dancing to music don't care if they know how to dance or not. You can still dance to the music and enjoy it.
But what is it that keeps you from enjoying that moment in the world? It's not the world itself; it's your own ego. It's this idea that, "Oh my God, if I start dancing, I will look stupid because I don't know how to dance. People will think I'm an idiot. It's going to be so embarrassing. What will people think?" So in that moment, there you are, existing in the world, and you have something in the world that you want to do, that you really want to do, that you crave doing, that you are jealous of when you see other people who are able to do it, and you're unable to do it. What keeps you from doing it? It's not actually the world; it's not because the music sucks; the music is fantastic. What keeps you from doing it is actually your attachment to your own ego.
This is the thing that's really, really important to understand when we're talking about detaching. We're not moving away from the world towards ourselves; we're actually moving away from ourselves and actually towards the world. This is why people who are detached are able to dance like there ain't no tomorrow. They're able to actually live life to the fullest. If they go to karaoke, they can just sing karaoke and not worry about what other people think. Imagine what would happen if you went to a party and you didn't care what other people thought.
Because if you really tunnel down into it, what is it that when we say care what other people think? What aspect of other people's thoughts do you actually care about? You care about their opinion of you. Their opinion of you is attached to your ego in the way that you're viewed. When a narcissistic person has a big ego, what does that mean? It means that everyone needs to think positively about the narcissistic person.
So this is the key thing to understand: that detachment and apathy, and we'll get into this a little bit more in a second, are actually complete opposites. What we're not removing ourselves from is the world; what we're actually doing is moving more into the world and removing ourselves from ourselves. So what does that mean in terms of that motivation kind of diagram that we were thinking about? Right? Because here's my ambition, here's my feeling of loneliness, and then there's the resistance that I encounter.
So that resistance is things like, "Oh my God, what will people think?" or "I dislike my job." If we look at that resistance that keeps us from moving forward in life, that resistance is usually composed of emotions and ego. What detachment actually does is lower that resistance. The beautiful thing is that once we lower the resistance, once there is no hump to overcome, then we can be driven forward by all kinds of things. We no longer need ambition to act; we no longer need that loneliness to move out and engage with people.
That may sound a little bit weird, but let's tunnel down into that. What detachment actually does is lower that resistance. How does it do that? Let's go back to the social example. I'm really lonely, and I have social anxiety. So let's tunnel down into, okay, what is social anxiety? Social anxiety is the concern of what other people think about you, right? That's what social anxiety is. I'm worried about what other people are going to think. Now, if I stopped worrying about what other people thought, that would be freeing; that would be amazing.
The most important thing is that if I stopped caring what other people thought, I don't need loneliness to drive me to engage with other people. I can engage with other people through all kinds of other things, like, "Hey, that person likes something that I like." That can drive me to form a connection with them. What about the work scenario? Right? Because in work, I genuinely hate the work. So this is where you've got to stop for a second, and you really have to think: why do you hate the work?
If you really talk to people—and we do this a lot, for example, through career coaching—we've worked with hundreds of people now, and we understand why people hate their jobs. A lot of times, the reason that people hate their jobs is because they're not recognized in their jobs. The effort that they put in is not appreciated; they have trouble advocating for themselves, and people are playing politics. Sometimes it's because the job is really, really boring. Even in those cases, why don't those people quit those jobs? Well, because they're afraid of the consequences of quitting a job. What if I don't find another job? What if people won't hire me somewhere else?
So even if you look at each of those scenarios about why we hate the job, what we actually discover is that it's not the job itself that keeps you stuck; it's all of your attachments related to the job. It's wanting to be appreciated by your boss, wanting to be recognized, wanting to be respected by your peers, which, by the way, is what leads you to work extra hard to get that recognition. So any way you cut it, what you really discover is that attachment and ego are really the things that hold us back in life.
Since we're so attached to the opinions of others, we have to start to use these dirty fuels, these toxic motivators like ambition and loneliness, to actually move us forward. Then we get kind of stuck because we believe that detachment means getting rid of our ambition or getting rid of our loneliness, whereas that's not actually what we're saying at all. We're not saying that you're getting rid of either of those. What we're saying is that detachment lowers the resistance.
Hopefully, this is kind of making sense, and I want you all to just think a little bit about what life would be like if there was no resistance to what you wanted to do. If you had a particular desire and your ego didn't say, "Hey, that's going to make you look stupid," or you weren't operating out of fear of consequences or things like that, what would your life actually be like? This is where a lot of people think, "Well, don't I need ambition or loneliness to motivate me?" No, because once the resistance drops down to zero, then all kinds of stuff can motivate you: interest in particular things, curiosity—all kinds of stuff actually starts motivating you naturally.
Why aren't you motivated enough by those things right now? Because curiosity is not enough to overcome the ego. You can be curious about learning how to dance, and hey, you go to a party and you're like, "Hey, let me learn how to dance," right? Let me be curious about this. That's beautiful. But the problem is that that curiosity is not enough to overcome the ego, which is why you don't live a life that is driven by curiosity. You live a life that's driven by loneliness or ambition.
This is the beauty of detachment because it lowers that resistance, it separates us from the ego, and it actually starts allowing us to live a life that's based on things like curiosity and interest, as opposed to desperation, loneliness, or ambition. So hopefully now you're kind of thinking, "Okay, so this sounds pretty cool; lowering that resistance seems pretty neat." So then the question naturally becomes, how do we cultivate detachment?
Now, what we're going to talk about is a Sanskrit phrase called "vairagya." Vairagya is the Sanskrit word for detachment, and there are certain ways that we cultivate detachment. The most important way that we cultivate detachment is actually through awareness. This may sound kind of confusing because in the West, especially, we have this idea that the way to get better in life is to do more stuff. People who succeed are doing more stuff than people who don't. If you want to get ahead, you have to network more, you’ve got to play politics, you’ve got to update your profile on LinkedIn. The more you do, the more you get, right?
This is something that a lot of success influencers and sigma grind set folks say: "Work harder! Have your hustle, and have your side hustle, and have your side side hustle, and your mini side hustle." You've got to do more to get more. Even at work, people will say, "It's the go-getters who get promoted."
So this is the really bizarre thing, but that's actually not how it works. If you talk to people who are lonely or ambitious, what you'll find is that they exert a lot of effort. Even if you're someone, or you maybe have a friend who's stuck at home and struggles with anxiety, if you actually ask that person how much effort they're exerting, they may be self-judgmental and say, "Oh, I don't do anything." But if you actually look at the struggle of their day-to-day life, it's actually really hard, right? Because even going out is like climbing a mountain. These little things that are easy for other people require so much effort from the person who is more attached, who is more engaged with their ego.
This is where it's kind of bizarre, but the source of vairagya, the most important source of vairagya, is actually awareness. What do we mean by that, or how does that work? This is really simple: awareness precedes control. If you've ever had dental work done, this is like the classic example that I use. When you're numbed, you can't control anything. If you can't feel it, you can't control it, right? You can also look at things like, let's say, people who are alcoholic and in denial. They are unaware that there is a problem, and without awareness that there's a problem, they can't really fix it.
But if you talk to someone who's an alcoholic and is going through divorce proceedings and getting written up at work, the amount of effort they're putting forward is actually astronomically high. Every single day that they live is a struggle and a fight. Your spouse is arguing with you, your kids are mad at you, your boss is writing you up—there is so much effort, but there is no awareness. We also know that based on evidence-based treatment of alcoholism, what is the solution? The solution is actually insight or awareness, right? We kind of hear it in places like Alcoholics Anonymous, where they start every meeting with awareness building: "Hi, my name is [Name], and I am an alcoholic." That is so foundational because once you understand what's going on, once you have awareness of not just the problem but the whole system, then things actually become effortless.
There's one really good example of this: I don't know if y'all play video games, but if you're good at a video game, people will look at you and say, "Wow, that is so amazing! You must work really hard to be good at the video game." It looks so effortful, but when you're good at a video game, you actually don't expend a whole lot of effort; it's actually easy for you, right? But the question is, why is it easy for you? Because you understand. You understand the mechanics of the game; you understand the meta of the game. The more that you understand, the easier things become.
This is the key thing about cultivating detachment. This is what the yogis figured out: if you want to live an easy life that also happens to be more productive, then you need to actually start with awareness. As long as we are numb to stuff and as long as we don't understand how things work, we can exert all the effort in the world, and it's going to yield very few returns.
So then the question becomes, okay, how do we cultivate this awareness? This is where there are a couple of simple answers. The first is meditation. Now, some of y'all may be listening to this and thinking, "Okay, so are you saying just meditate?" Sort of, right? But I don't want you all to just meditate. What I want you all to understand is that even if you're thinking, "Okay, meditation doesn't work for me; I've tried it a bunch; it doesn't help with these problems," you're missing the point. What I want you to understand is why meditation works, why we use meditation as the key way to develop detachment.
Because yogis tested all kinds of stuff, and what they settled on is meditation. Why is that? It's because meditation is the practice—literally the practice—where we skill up our ability to be aware. So the first thing is you should meditate. What does that meditation mean? It means just be aware of stuff. The second thing that I strongly recommend that you do is spend time with yourself.
If we're talking about awareness, a key thing that we really want to be aware of is our reactions to stuff because it is in our reactions to stuff that we actually find our attachments. If we go back to dancing at a party, what am I attached to? It's going to manifest in the way that I react when I'm at the party. So if I want to dance and the music is fantastic, and I really want to dance, then notice the reaction that you have within yourself. That reaction will actually give you insight into the nature of the attachment.
We spend so much time trying to overcome that reaction, right? We wrestle with ourselves; we try to overcome and conquer anxiety that we don't ever spend any time just sitting there and observing it. The problem is that effort over that anxiety is not going to ultimately lead to success. What's ultimately going to lead to success is awareness. So notice your own reactions to things, and in that sense, spend a little bit more time just with yourself.
The last thing that I want to share with y'all is a little bit about how you could be reacting to this video. I want you all to notice that when I say, "Hey, spend some time noticing things; notice your reaction to things; maybe try meditating," what is your reaction to this video? There's a decent chance that there are a fair number of y'all that are saying, "Oh my God, he's saying just meditate! I've tried that before; it won't work." So that's kind of interesting, right?
If you've been following me this far, or thus far, hopefully, you kind of buy what I'm selling in the sense that we have these driving motivators, we have these resistances, and we rely on jacking up our motivation to overcome the resistance. Wouldn't it be awesome if we no longer had that resistance? You're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." But once I start telling you, "Okay, all you need to do is be aware," then what is your reaction to that? It's like, "No, no, no, no, that's not going to be enough because I've tried so hard, and it hasn't worked." Exactly! So stop trying so hard.
Notice your own intrinsic reaction because chances are that if you really tunnel down into that—and this is how you want to know how to build awareness—we're going to do it right now. Tunnel down into that: why are you so skeptical that this is going to work? If you tunnel down into your skepticism, there's going to be emotion there, right? There's going to be fear: "What if it doesn't work?" Or it's going to be frustration and regret: "I've tried this before, and it didn't work. I don't want to waste my time." There's going to be all kinds of negative emotions tied to your resistance to doing what I'm asking you to do, right? Because that's what it is; it's the resistance.
What is the resistance? It's emotion. Anytime there's negative emotion, there's ego. So now we see in this moment that if you try to push forward, you'll feel that resistance, and it'll actually be telling you, "Don't do it! Don't do it! Don't do it!" How do we actually overcome that? Notice that reaction. We can do it right now. Notice that reaction: why is it that I'm so resistant to trying this? Why is it that I'm so resistant to meditating? Because I've tried it, and it didn't work. I've been burned; I've wasted my time. I can't afford to waste time anymore.
If you have those kinds of thoughts, what is that? Those are attachments, right? You can't afford it. Oh my God, the only times we can't afford things are when we're attached to things. "I can't afford to set boundaries with my boss. I can't afford to rock the boat in my relationship." When you can't afford to do something, that's an attachment.
I know it sounds kind of bizarre, but the truth of the matter is that detachment and apathy are actually complete opposites. It's the fact that we get confused about that, that we assume that those are the same thing, that we actually try not to cultivate detachment because we've started to build a system of motivation that relies on attachment to overcome our resistance. That's the only way we can move forward. But if you really want to be free of all of that crap and be free from the only motivator being this toxic motivator or dirty fuel like ambition or loneliness or desperation, then you have to cultivate detachment.
The beauty is that cultivating detachment from your own ego allows you to actually live more fully within the world.