The Real Reason You Never Follow Through (And How to Fix It) 

That's how I stopped smoking. I'd tell myself "I'll smoke tomorrow, let's just be clean for today" and I did it over and over again. I'm a no-smoker for 11 years.

It's really interesting because that's totally what I did with video games during my years studying engineering. I later had a hard time getting back into playing games and enjoying them, because I have conditionned myself so much. It's a bit sad sometimes, but maybe now I can understand the why 🤔

I literally noticed when I vape/smoke it deceases my willpower

Procrastinating fun is a perfect description and feels like a much more relatable and easier to understand explanation to what Dr K is getting at! Thank you! Feels easier to say "I'll do that later" than to fight the urges with "NO, we're not doing that NOW.". I'll bet that's how workaholics mentality works. They see having fun as something to be guilty of, so they put it off.

thats so unfair…i wish i could do this. If i did this in college, a lot of my mistakes probably wouldn’t have happened and i could’ve lived a different life…fk me

Huh. Yeah. I came to the realization that eventually I will get tired from being sad. If you're a weeb too, I visualize it as Mirio's ability from BNHA: if he phases through the ground and deactivates his ability, he will be rocketed back to the surface, like a glitch. It genuinely feels like that sometimes; you're sad and then one night of sleep and your mind is back to normal.

🙏

Amazing realization.

Wow 😮

Ooooo I like that

That’s awesome.

That really is awesome, I gotta try it too! Do you think trying a 1-hour session is a good idea for someone who only does about ~10min a day rn, and since maybe 2 months? Also - how do you do your meditations? I’ve only recently started and am curious about your method since you’ve been at it a while now! ❤

@@Jasmine-ll8qu it's worth a shot. Just don't beat yourself over it if it proves to be too much. I'd say to scale up to about 30 mins and go from there, but if you're curious I say go for it. 2 months meditating consistently is great. It's the most difficult part, at least for me it was. So if you've kept it up you're well on your way. I don't consider myself an expert by any means, but my meditations are fairly standard I'd say. I put a mat on the floor and sit 20-30 mins in the morning and focus on my breath or my heartbeat. I mostly observe any thoughts without trying engage it, so I don't get distracted by nor annoyed (like I did initially) by them. Eventually my mind naturally goes into no mind and I do deep breaths and enjoy that state of nothingness for however long it lasts. Some days my mind is agitated but I've learned to let it go nuts if needed. Every day is different, so don't get too hung up on it. Try to find any type of enjoyment is my biggest suggestion honestly.

This was a great explanation. Thanks

​@@Jasmine-ll8qu I used to tell people that I couldn't sit still for 5 minutes, but one day I decided to try meditating for... 3 minutes, and I succeeded lol. Then, for every 5 successful attempts, I increased my meditation time by 1-2 minutes. Now, after several months, I can meditate for 45 minutes normally. Instead of beating myself up for failing to sit for 30-40 minutes, I rejoice in the fact that I can sit longer each week, even if it is just 1 minute, which gives me more motivation. I think we should try urge surfing (or any new technbique) out in the easiest activity where our success rate is almost 100%, and keep adding a very little bit every day.

Thank you for sharing this! I get stuck in random cleaning loops around my house. Feeling that urge, that itch, as soon as I saw something to do. All of it is important/good, so I use that as an argument for doing it, even if I want to be prioritizing something else.

Thank you both for sharing your stories! I have problems staying focused on school work and work in general too. I would start cleaning the house starting from that extra cup on my desk when I'm studying. So for, going to libraries as a first step has helped. I would just look at my laptop when I have the urge to do something else.

I watched this video and was confused what urge surfing really was because it just sounds like "wait it out", so I went to go read the comments. And when I was reading your comment, my brain was like "I have no clue what this person is talking about", and I noticed myself wanting to open up Discord to check any unread messages. But right as my cursor was over the Discord app, I was like "WAIT A MINUTE I CAUGHT YOU BRAIN", and so I paused and took a breath, and finished reading your comment.

It's true. I was a full time alcoholic. The further you are away from the habitual drinking / the more time you spend having mostly good days, the craving stops feeling as strong. It stops feeling like your normal the less it is your normal; and you will physically feel a difference.

Good luck stranger. You can do this for yourself. It's worth the effort; and it sounds like you've been putting that effort in. Give yourself credit for the good days, and try to focus only on bouncing back up after any bad day

distract your craving brain with something else! work, family, gym, look for other sources for that dopamine hit!! You can do it!!! Every time you reach your goal, move that goal up - just ONE MORE consecutive month! YOU GOT THIS BRO!!

@@michaelakc thank you for the kind words, hoping to get it right this time around

ive been there. one thing that helps is to change environment. for first month to live in some village or away fromeasy access stores or bars.

I believe in u, u can do it. Just build consistency for journalism (it's the right word, shut up), while letting the consistency of smoking drop as if the habit of smoking was the habit of cleaning the fridge. Eventually you'll do it rarely or not at all, as it should be.

I read this as someone with a cigarette in hand, in a very similar predicament.

Did you start smoking again, or did you smoke?

@@freshpressedify Great comment

Me too and my body strikes bacj

I used a similar method to quit smoking. But i used a cheat code too, completely by accident too lol. I think it was day 2 of not smoking, and i had this super strong urge to smoke. So in my mind i said fuck it, fine, I'll smoke one but later because i was busy doing something at that time. I said to myself when I'll finish this task in 15 mins I'll have a smoke. As soon as i allowed myself to smoke, the craving disappeared. Then i just didint smoke when i said that i would because i didint even want to. I would repeat this process (with diminishing effect mind you) and it worked

Totally! like you have to give your mind and body time to adjust and adapt too, we're very adaptive but people have to give it time rather than making themselves hurt after one workout, or learning something beguin from the start of it working your way up as it gets harder as you build your knowledge on that concept and then you adjust to the harder and harder levels like in a game how it starts off easy and then progressively gets harder throughout. And with any subject it does that too it's easy at noob level but then gets progressively more complex involving more stuff. I think the biggest barrier of people these days is a lack of patience and not thinking that maybe their school making them constantly jump way ahead when there's all this other stuff before it they have to learn is dumb and unrealistic lol, but they don't get that as a kid or a teenager so they seriously think this is how they should learn, so when they go to learn something they're too impatient to get it done and want to constantly jump ahead. Getting them to focus on how they should do things is tremendously hard until maybe they finally get it that there's no shortcuts. But you shouldn't do something FAR too much either because you get sick and bored of it which may permanently take the curiosity and enjoyment out of it, personally i've always been very sporadic the way i do things i do some then go away, i do some more then go away lol and if i'm not at all feeling up to it i come back to it when i feel okay again i don't force it and get all hard on myself about it. So when i go back to something i also can feel enjoyment from it every time vs if i did it constantly where i know i'll completely put myself off it. I've been working on trying to create a balance with whatever i may learn too and if i do something for 2 days, and then take 2 days off i'm able to go back to it FAR more often vs working on it for 1 week every day where i then don't go back to it for several months. So far it's working and again if i don't feel up to it cos of my anxiety i just don't do anything and chill out until i feel better, which just happened and now already i'm feeling the urge to go back to things🙂doing something in shorter periods rather than longer periods means then you get more done because you're going back to it far more often, and you aren't constantly glued to doing the same thing every day we need spontinasity and different things in our lives, it's certainly not school that keeps you in a constant strict schedule day after day it's not how we really work lol. I feel like i'm breaking the habit and it's hard cos i get obsessive once i get into it but i just tell myself "it will be there in a few days i promise" and i relax and drop it. Sporadic isn't lazy it's just better for us.

I agree with this so much! I have started to make better progress on my goals when I focus on taking small steps rather than making dramatic changes. I remind myself that slow progress is good progress and it is okay that I don't get results I want right away because when the change does come it will actually last instead of burning out.

this is so true. I've been trying to make it to the gym consistently. For a real long time, if I couldn't do the whole workout I had in mind, I would just not do it, and since I work overnight as a caregiver, it can be real hard to schedule recovery and exercise if you don't have access to a 24-hour gym (which I don't). Anyway, I don't know when it hit me, but at some point, I realized if I prioritize the stuff I can do only at the gym while I'm there, like oly weightlifting and do the other stuff like burpees when it's a little more convenient, I get something done rather than nothing, and importantly, it's something I could have done only at the gym. Along with gradually increasing my work capacity with things like commuting by bike ( I don't have a car), I've found a decent arrangement that enables me to work but still find time for the things I enjoy.

Man if there is one thing I struggle with in regards to discipline it’s that I’m always frustrated that progress takes so long. It feels like I’m already really far behind in life and I often don’t have patience for myself. I want to start living for real and I’m almost 30 it’s like I don’t have time for this.

@@WASDLeftClick I feel the same but at the same time schools didn't really teach me anything either so i know i have to catch up, and i feel like i'm constantly playing catch up too but we have to do it. I'm nearly finished learning maths up to at least decimals, percentages and negative numbers then throw in the data stuff like picture and line graphs then scatter plots, after that i'm stopping cos i won't need anything after that. I don't know who will help me paying the bills or other financial stuff when it's just me if i can't do maths, financial stuff requires decimals and percentages so we have to learn things to a certain point to be self-sufficient. However if you want to get into a specific career then you're gonna have to put your head down, but it's far better just learning things by ourselves with how unreliable the education system is, we just can't do things properly or focus they don't let us. But if you aren't then it's still important to learn the things we need to.

perhaps more people are just like you than just you

More likely you’ve just got every type of problem/issue/challenge he covers.

@@georgegray2712 more like I got every problem in the world lmao

@@georgegray2712 All of us appear to be an example of the youtube audience alignment algorithm in perfect harmony.

@@JonDotExe nahhhh lol

While already working on the task.

P

That seems valid. A lot of Dr. K advice seem vague, contradicting, not realistic. I guess it's either the price for making too general of a content; or tackling too many topics, while having specified himself in none or a few.

There's a difference between forcing yourself to not do the thing you want, and allowing yourself to feel the craving, then letting it flow over and through. It's the same thing he talks about with feeling, allowing, acknowledging emotions, but not punching someone. It's a meditative practice.

@@MegaSandraKay You're not really explaining the difference.

> My question is, does the urge ever respond negatively to this by getting stronger? Don't you want to find out? ;-P

I think he said on some other video that the urge becomes stronger if you give in after resisting it for a while in the same instance. Your mind then learns that it has to hit you with that level 9 urge to get that dopamine that it wants.

That's actually kind of genius.

@Sander this is actually correct

​@Sander That actually explains how I was able to get out of my ED. I would deny myself to eat a certain amount of food and would always binge after 1-3 days, for 2.5 years. ...It was exam season and I had to make a choice between passing exams or trying to stick to the diet, and decided to eat whatever until exams are over so I have enough mental energy for studying. When exams ended, my mind had stopped the obsessiveness over food and I decided to stop extreme dieting and wow, even my portion sizes went down and after a year I found that I lost the weight I had put on by the ED binging :DD

I totally understand this feeling of regret and shame even for feeling like you failed yourself. But here’s one very important thing to remember: *You’re still alive.* So you have time to literally achieve whatever you want. The time will continue to tick down anyway. So you might as well get back to your interests, create a schedule to develop and grow the necessary skills. 10 years is gonna go by whether you want to or not, so might as well spend some of these years being happy living a life that is fulfilling to YOU. No apologies. Good luck!💛

I feel you man.

@@5uperM i love your pfp

@@yaoipurpleheart thank you

Yeah I haven't been diagnosed but just talked with my parents about going to get diagnosed. At this point in my life focus is such a problem that I've been missing deadlines and i went from being a very responsible student to now missing every deadline, being unable to create new routines, and finding it extremely difficult to convince myself to live a healthier lifestyle in spite of the many times i have tried. I'm hopeful that i can get medication and learn ways to manage my focus. If it turns out I don't have ADHD I'm not sure what I'd do.

@@judsonhester1407 I relate to that. I tried to deny that I had ADHD or that it wasn’t that bad. I definitely recommend getting diagnosed soon, the sooner you can get to know yourself the sooner you can begin the steps to learning how to help yourself

I think the urges don't feel temporary because they always come back if we keep giving in to them. Only if we observe and tolerate them they will dissipate over time

In the moment, urges are temporary, over hours and days and weeks urges don't feel temporary because we have built habits that reward them, it takes a while to break habits, the point of this technique is that by focusing on the urges and just sitting with them in the moment they can be temporarily overcome and new habits can form.

I get it. I replaced browsing my phone on the bed with reading on the bed. Reading a good, good book can be immersing and I forget the urge to scroll the phone.

UUu!!! OOOO!!!! I dont know if this relates to you, but I had the same problem, I only recently realized why. I didn't acknowledge how I felt, my impulse was to try to ignore it away and I always failed, maybe a would manage for a day or two , rarely a whole week. Felt terrible. I recently watched Dr. K's "You Can't LOGIC Your Way Out of Depression" video, and got reminded of a very fundamental technique which was basically stop, identify how you feel, acknowledge it, and sit with it a bit, try to figure out why you feel like it, and then try to be ok with feeling this way. This FINNALY ended the cycle, I mean I'm still not perfect but my success rate exploded. I think that , at least in my case, whenever I Ignore how I felt, urges included, the emotion/feeling would keep growing and growing until I caved and only then was there relief, but the cost was me not being able to follow thru with anything. Now the relief comes when I recognize what I'm feeling and give it space, which then lets my brain operate from a smother/ more in control space.

@@danethenice so true.

Exactly! 5D chess move by Dr. K!

Im sure that wasn't Dr. K's intention but both viewers and Dr K. benefits. It's a win win

@@sieg8036 his videos have been a lot more clickbaity and the channel even does shorts now. Absolutely what he was trying to do. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, especially in this case

so if im right urge surf means to be aware of your brain and body reactions and thats what meditation help us to do, im getting somewhere

@@chobwazhere4315 pretty sure hes not the one managing the channel

That's exactly my problem. My main "urge" is to think of something else, to think something through, to re-imagine a scenario until it's "perfect", etc. That negatively affects my ability to fall asleep, focus on studying and do something more productive in my free time. So, I think I'm gonna try meditating before sleep tonight and practice doing it.

@@nehalilisays This was my reaction too - like, wait, is it possible for me to urge surf my tendency to ruminate???

Meditation not into cos i have a super carefree side that would just respond to it as doing that other than something else cos it feels so peaceful and stress free lol and once i did in high school and i just felt too good with the big energy boost i got that it's all i wanted to feel and just bask in it lol. Instead i noticed when i just lye back, breath, give my brain a rest for 20 mins and maybe close my eyes for a few mins and just let my thought wander to let all those monkey thoughts out lol i guess my brain has something to say😂then i sit up again and look at it and my focus starts to come back again. I tend to take it as my brain maybe telling me it needs a break and to process stuff a little bit so i give it the time and bear with it. But in the shower or when i get in bed that's when the monkey thoughts REALLY start to come out but i don't mind but it's always took me at least 1 hour to fall sleep until my brain gives up and is like "okay i'm done too sleepy now" lol so why i treat it like a separate entity because who we are and what our brain does really is two seperate things.

This is so true I've got that monkey mind

Thanks for all what you share

I kind of emphasise with that. I have an issue that might be similar and yeah, it's not nice.

Could it be some kind of burnout or reaction to negative experience and you need to rest on some level, perhaps for a long time?

@@alphatucanaletsplay huh, my therapist said the same thing recently. It might be that. I need to figure out how to actually rest though, since even doing nothing seems to drain my energy. Not sure how people do it.

@@crisrodriguez5693 I do it by not caring (in a way). If there's some thought or belief in the back of your mind that is bugging you, you will need to become more aware of it so you can actually ignore it rather than have it stress you out without you being aware of where it's coming from. So, you're not good enough, not successful enough, too lazy, ugly, awkward, whatever : so what? Find it, observe it, so what it, and just live your life. Humans seem to be the only animals that confuse themselves about just being who & what they are.

The irony

It's later, have you watched it yet?

It's a bad habit that i struggle with😂 but I've watched it

wait i don't understand the 20minutr rule you mean surf the urge for 20minutes?

@@srta.carlota696 yes. ‘Surf the urge’

I'm not gonna say there're anything wrong with you because obviously we're stranger. But if I were you I wouldn't say there's something wrong with me, I would say there's something I need to improve. But, do what you do, who cares

@@willie629 Damn thanks, small steps i guess there is a lot to improve

@@lowfidelity5917 I'm glad you find my muse helpful 😁

Also, definitely earned my sub.

Yes, but it might requite less will poeer to NOT give in to the urge but also not do the task, than to keep doing the task. I am skeptical that this works because I think I would be perfectly happy just resting and not doing anything 😄 It makes sense that it is used with heroin and such, when giving in to the urge is worse than doing nothing.

yes !!

Pomodoro technique. Set a 25 minute timer when you start a task and commit to doing that task with your complete focus over that period. Once that is over, take a 10 minute break, then initiate another 25 minute set. It also helps to not focus on the "end goal" or result from you doing a consistent task, but rather focus on just doing the actual task itself. This way you don't get too overwhelmed about your progress and you can treat each day or session as its own little victory rather than becoming intimidated by the journey ahead. Trust the process and that you will make progress.

I have found that starting on something smaller and then working my way up to the goal works way better. It is okay not to complete some tasks as long as you are performing it the best way you know how.

but i think what makes you "not start" something is the same, it's the urges, you're procrastinating either way

​ @Ichiro Suzuki tell yourself that you start just for 5 minutes with small thing

What he describes is a skill, so the longer you do it, the weaker the urges will become over time. It might take weeks or months to notice, but right now you are training your brain to not crave things as strongly and as long in the future. That's why it's better to start with easier things and get to the harder things as you get better. I also think dopamine detox (he has a video about it) is also very useful, because our brains are so used to constant stimuli and being bored is just too hard nowadays. I used to be able to read books at 10 years ols and study for hours and now at 25 I'm struggling to do anything and I think it's because I'm addicted to distractions at this point. 😅

Bro! I just came back from my bitchin' dawn patrol and saw this uploaded 5 minutes ago! This guy is like, totally watchin' me!

Well, if you know you have this issue, you could set a time limit or other target at the start of the activity or work, then regard the urge to continue as the distraction to be ignored.

Kinda to follow up on alpha's comment, you could treat both the urge to overwork and the urge to restrict eating (for the sake of control, not for health reasons), as urges. I struggled with understanding this video a bit, because I'm teaching myself how to be more mindful over all. I think maybe a more helpful way for me to view it is, we have "urges" all the time. Some are more helpful, some are less helpful. The point is to be aware, and encourage the helpful urges, and "surf" the less helpful ones. Only you know which urges are more helpful, and which ones are causing you problems.

You're not supposed to do anything. Notice it, continue doing what you're doing, for one second tell to yourself "this craving will go away in less than 20 minutes I'll focus on Task now WHILE having they craving but not paying much attention to it, If any

@@rafavc5967 I see, thanks :)

@@rafavc5967 Did I understand right, that the difference between urge surfing and fighting your brain is that while urge surfing you are not rejecting your craving but acknowledging and being mindful of it?

@@user-uy3dg6nv9v exactly like that

out of context, i love your pfp :))