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Dr K (Bad Habit Addiction Doctor)- The Truth About Dopamine, Addiction, Pornography & Masturbation

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

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  • Control Yourself First
    • You can only control your own internal state, not the external environment.
    • Mastering your internal world makes external challenges easier to manage. Transcript: Alok Kanojia And what I try to do is help people understand themselves. Because one of the harsh lessons of the world that we live in today is there’s lots of stuff happening around us that affects our lives that we have no control over. So if you look at fundamentally, you know, there’s like war, there’s inflation, there’s like a dating and mating crisis, like whatever. There’s AI, there are all these like existential threats, but like you as a human can do nothing about any of that. All you can really control is like the bounds of what’s in here, right? That’s like literally the only thing that you have control over. And so one of the lessons I learned very early on, I spent years studying to become a monk, was that if I can learn how to master this, then the rest of the world becomes way more manageable At a minimum and hopefully incredibly easy. Steven Bartlett Is a step one in understanding that this is all we can control and taking control of just this? Is there a first step? Absolutely. Alok Kanojia Yeah. The first step is trying to control things outside of me and failing miserably time after time after time. Check. Because I think it’s wild, right? So I think it’s like most people will try to get their boss to do something, try to get their boyfriend to do something, try to get their girlfriend. And forget about boyfriend, girlfriend. This person that I am texting, right, try to get them to respond. And we spend so much of our energy trying to shape the world to fit us. And this has also been the direction of like technology too, where we don’t want to change anymore. We want the things around us to adapt to our environments, like air conditioning. I don’t want to change my tolerance to heat. I want to change the entire space that I live in to be more comfortable for me. And this is creating huge problems because I want to change the environment to suit my preferences. You want to change the environment to suit your preferences. And then we have to be in the same room. So this is why we fight over where the climate control is. Steven Bartlett And what’s the risk there then of us having this focus on changing our external environment? Obviously, we’re going to fight, but is there any other risk in that? Is it just going to be that me and you, our relationship’s going to fray when you want a certain temperature and I want a different temperature? Alok Kanojia That’s a huge problem, right? So I think if we look at like conflict in the world, it is two groups of people wanting the world to be different. So I want the boundaries of my country to be here. You want the boundaries of, you want to move that line somewhere else. And this is literally why wars start. So I think that what we spend a lot of time and energy in is trying to shape the world towards us, but that is not fundamentally possible. And so instead, like, we could be investing that energy into ourselves, learn how to craft myself into, let’s say, perfection, loaded word, which carries a lot of stuff. But the moment that you do that, things become really, really easy. Things become really easy. Yeah. So I think if you look at like, you know, there’s a ton of research that shows that, you know, happiness, productivity, success, all of these three things like come together. So one of the biggest mistakes I think people make in society is like they talk about work-life balance like that’s wrong. Work-life balance implies that you have to make a sacrifice for the other thing, right? That these two – I don’t think that that’s actually technically true. If you look at the way that society really, I mean, the way that a human being really works, people who are happy with their work will feel happy and they will work the best, right? The outcomes from their productivity will be higher. This is not a trade-off that we need to make. The biggest problem is that most people are forced to make trade-offs and then what they try to do is they try to find the perfect job. And this is what’s so silly, right? People will say, do what you love for work and you’ll never work a day in your life, right? Like people will say, like, if your passion becomes your job, like you’ll never work a day in your life. And then there are other people who also say, you know, keep your passion as your passion because the moment it becomes your job, you’ll start to hate it. And that’s like, how can both of these things be true? It’s, and it kind of is like, there’s no way to win. So I think that’s where like winning happens internally. And once you start doing that, there’s tons of research about flow state and things like that, that once you become happy internally, even in terms of relationship success, you know, If you carry a lot of unhappiness with you in a relationship, it won’t work well. So internal work, like, will manifest outward. And I don’t mean that in a spiritual sense. I mean that, like, in a—I mean, that is true. But in, like, a very concrete sense, right? If you show up at work and you feel happy, like, people will like you more. You’ll be more productive. Steven Bartlett And so is there a second step? So I understand I tried to control the world. I wasn’t successful. Step two is to focus that energy inwards and take control of my internal state, which is difficult because it feels to us like we’re very much being dragged often by our temptations, The dopamine receptors in our brain or something. Yeah. And we have a bad night’s sleep. We wake up in a bad mood and then we have a bad day. That’s how it feels. So so and I think if we sort of think about it, right, so it’s like, you know, I started my car this morning. Alok Kanojia I looked at the gas tank. There was only a little bit of gas left. And then I ended up on the highway without any gas. I ran out of gas. Right. That’s one follows the other. Like, that’s how it feels. Right Like I just, I left and I’m like, oh no, I’m running low on gas. And then I run out of gas. That’s what happens logically, right? So how do you fix that problem? Steven Bartlett Go to the gas station. Alok Kanojia Absolutely. The whole problem is if I ask you, what is go to the gas? What’s the equivalent in that analogy for a human being? No one knows. Like, right? So if I were to ask you, okay, you wake up, you slept poorly, you wake up. Now you’re in a bad (Time 0:03:09)
  • Diagnose Before Treating Addiction
    • Diagnose the root cause before treating pornography addiction.
    • Understand why addiction happens to target effective solutions. Transcript: Alok Kanojia With first principle. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment, right? So in medicine, the quality – this is what a lot of people think. Doctors are about treating people, right? Medicine is about treating things. But actually 50% or more of our training is in diagnosis. So you have to the problem. And this is not just true of doctors. This is like if I have a plumber who’s coming to my house, whether they can fix what the problem is depends on whether they can find the problem, right? What’s actually causing the leak, then you replace that. So that’s true of life in general. So if you have a problem like pornography, the first thing that you have to do is understand why you are addicted to it because that’ll show you what you need to fix. And with pornography, I think there are basically (Time 0:10:28)
  • Porn Calms Emotional Brain
    • Porn suppresses negative emotions by calming the emotional brain center.
    • This effect makes pornography a powerful but problematic coping mechanism. Transcript: Alok Kanojia Right? So this is where if you kind of look at like the way that our body and our brain are designed, it’s like if the opportunity for sexual relations and procreations is there, then we’re going To push everything else to the side. So anytime we watch pornography or we get sexual stimulation, our amygdala, which is our emotional circuit of the brain, experiences negative emotions like fear and anxiety. It’s also our survival center of the brain. And you turn on porn, that part of your brain just gets suppressed. And this is why a lot of people don’t realize what a pornography addict looks like. A lot of people think it means like, I’m watching porn and masturbating a lot, but most pornography addicts will watch it and not even necessarily masturbate. Or they’ll watch it for hours throughout the day and aren’t necessarily masturbating during that time. And that’s because once you have that stimulation on the side, it’s kind of like aromatherapy for your brain. It’s kind of suppressing your amygdala. It’s kind of calming you down because it has that neurologic effect. The reason that it has that neurologic effect is because sex is so important, right? So these circuits of the brain are very powerfully activated. (Time 0:12:07)
  • Dopamine Drives Addiction
    • Orgasm releases dopamine, which reinforces craving and motivation.
    • Pleasure from addiction drives future addictive behavior through neurocircuitry. Transcript: Alok Kanojia And motivation. So when we secrete dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, it doesn’t just do one thing. These three functions are fundamentally tied together in our neurocircuitry. So if I drink this and I enjoy it, I will want it tomorrow. That’s like, there’s no way to escape that effect. So when I gain pleasure from pornography, I am buying myself craving. I am buying myself motivation towards it. Steven Bartlett In the future. Alok Kanojia In the future, 100%. Right? So it’s behavioral reinforcement. And then what happens is, so these are the two fundamental pieces at a neuroscience level. (Time 0:13:40)
  • Lust Overrides Rationality
    • Lust suppresses rational brain parts, leading to ignoring red flags.
    • Post-nut clarity returns reason when lust subsides after sex. Transcript: Steven Bartlett Got you. Alok Kanojia We don’t want to be rational in that moment because rationality would say, yeah. And that’s literally what happens. So we have circuits of the brain that will actually inhibit and shut off the rational parts of our brain. And this is where we get to post-not clarity, which is this experience that many men have, where after you finish the sexual act, you feel like very clear headed, right? And so then what happens is now what’s, and why is that? That’s because the lustful parts of your brain were inhibiting, like literally inhibiting and shutting off the thinking parts of your brain. Steven Bartlett And once the lustful part shuts off, then we start thinking again. (Time 0:16:24)
  • Porn Lacks Emotional Bonding
    • Porn satisfies sexual drive but fails emotional connection needs.
    • This partial satisfaction reduces motivation for real relationships and creates emptiness. Transcript: Alok Kanojia So there is so much there. So now we’re getting, I mean, if you want to go into that, that’s the societal element, right? So there is the neuroscience of pornography addiction, what it does to your brain. But there is a fundamental societal issue which is driving men towards pornography and also addresses this kind of thing where relationships between men and women are getting harder. And as relationships between men and women are getting harder, there’s a part of the brain, more often the male brain, that is getting starved for something because we no longer have Sexual connections, emotional connections with women. And so when we get hungry for something, then the brain will try to find what it can to satisfy it. Steven Bartlett Right? Alok Kanojia So there’s a part of our brain that, you know, that drives us towards procreation. But oftentimes in a real relationship, it comes with a lot of other things. Yeah. Right? Yeah. The problem is that when we’re, and this gets a bit technical, but when our brain wants something, it usually wants a whole package. So for example, like if you feel hungry, you don’t want calories. I want to eat this and I want to eat this and I want to drink this and I want to have some of this, right? So there are lots of different things that my brain wants or my body wants. And they’re usually all, they all come together in a real healthy way. Sorry, in a natural way, which is why it’s healthy. Not that natural is healthy, but that’s what we’ve adapted to. The problem with pornography is that it gives us a slice of what our brain craves. And the problem is once it gives you a slice, once you get that sexual gratification, your emotion, your emotional connection is not met. You have no bond. You have no feeling of safety, nothing like that. Oftentimes you’re filled with like regret and all kinds of guilt and things like that. (Time 0:20:15)
  • Dating Crisis Rooted in Psychology
    • Young men struggle to date despite efforts due to deeper psychological issues.
    • Social structures once forced interactions that helped development; now options allow retreat. Transcript: Steven Bartlett Men and women right now? Women, I think, don’t need men as much as they used to. And I think this is in part because of this whole sexual revolution and the pill and feminism and all these things, which has tremendous upsides. I think that women and men are having less sex. They’re getting married less. Men’s attitude towards women has become a little bit more resentful in certain pockets of the internet. They perceive relationships with the other sex to be disposable more than ever before. Alok Kanojia Men’s view? Steven Bartlett I would say both. And I think in part that’s because of dating apps, just the perception of choice. The feeling that if you don’t work out, there’s another thousand people on my phone that I could give a shot to. I think the equation of a relationship, when we think about the investment it takes for it to work and what you get from it, people now perceive the equation not to be worth it. Okay. Alok Kanojia I think there’s a lot of great stuff there. So you’re like a fully formed adult man, right? Steven Bartlett I think so. Yeah. Alok Kanojia Yeah. Like you’re like a man. You’re not like a kid. You’re not like a, like a dude in early stages of development. You’ve like, you’ve got a career, you’ve got a relationship, you’re buying a house. (Time 0:23:13)
  • Extinction Event for Some Men
    • Many men face an extinction event as they fail to procreate.
    • COVID accelerated social isolation, increasing social anxiety and reducing mating opportunities. Transcript: Alok Kanojia Did you hear about this? So like people would ask this question on Twitter to women. It’s like, would you be rather be in a forest with like a bear or a man? And like women feel safer with a wild bear than they do with a man. So I think people are picking up on this like existential, and I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but there’s like an existential like cry coming from men, which can manifest as anger. I think we’re also seeing reflections of this like in South Korea with like dropping birth rates, right? Where like men are getting really, really angry. They feel really entitled. And I think this is where it’s important to understand a biological difference and we’ll get to what I think is going on. So a woman does not need a man in order to pass her genes along, right? So I mean, like literally, I know it sounds weird, but like if you’re a woman, you can just go to a sperm bank and you can get pregnant. You can just have a child without, you can also argue that it’s easier for women to find a man who is willing to impregnate them than it is for a man to find a woman willing to carry their child. But I mean, literally, we live in a society where women can just procreate if they feel like it, and men cannot. So there’s a fundamental power balance there. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just saying it is what it is. So I think what we’re starting to see is actually like a mass extinction event. We are seeing natural selection for a group of men who have no options. (Time 0:27:45)
  • Practical Steps to Manage Porn Addiction
    • Schedule pornography to one daily hour to limit consumption.
    • Use urge surfing and alternate nostril breathing to regulate cravings and reduce stress. Transcript: Alok Kanojia Treating pornography addiction. So the first thing is that, I know this sounds kind of weird, but the first thing that I recommend people do is schedule their pornography usage. So pick one hour of the day where they watch pornography. So if we look at like one of the problems with pornography, it’s that it invades all the cracks in your life. And then over time, what it does is it widens those cracks. So the first thing that you’ve got to do is like move it to like one part of the day. I know a lot of people are fans of like cold turkey and like, you know, sobriety and things like that. I think for the digital addictions, that’s harder. So log out of all of your devices, restrict it to one hour of the day. Next thing that you need to do is anticipate what are going to be the hard parts of your day. So what are the parts where you’re going to feel really bad about something? And what’s your plan? What’s your alternative in those moments? So the other really tricky thing about the brain is that when we are suffering, we cannot create new solutions. So usually when we get attacked by something, our survival instincts kick in, our reflexes kick in. Reflexes and innovation are at two opposite ends of the spectrum. So you have to innovate before you need to use it, right? We need to have a fire hydrant in our house before the fire starts. We can’t go finding a fire hydrant. That’s a big mistake that a lot of people make. So your emotional regulation techniques need to be practiced, whether that’s meditation. I really like something called urge surfing. So urge surfing is something that confuses a lot of people. So if you have a desire, Stephen, like do you want anything right now? That house I’ve put an offer in. Okay, great. Or I’m getting a little bit hungry, so maybe some— In either case, if you don’t get those things, the desire will disappear over time, right? So if you don’t get the house 40 years from now, there may be a seed of desire left, but you’re not going to, like, want that house 40—like, you know, that’s what’s really confusing for People is people don’t realize that if you do not give in to your desire, it’ll disappear on its own. And people sort of know this if you’ve been hungry, and you’ll notice that you feel hungry, but if you don’t feed yourself, the hunger goes away. It’ll come back because it’ll get recreated stronger by certain signals in your body, but the desire disappears if you don’t give into it. So urge surfing is recognizing that you don’t need to conquer your addiction. You need to wait it out. So if you have a desire for pornography, the desire will start, it’ll increase, it’ll peak, and then it’ll disappear on its own. Any addictive substance. You just need to play the waiting game. So it can help to have an emotional regulation technique. So the technique that I recommend for most of my patients is alternate nostril breathing. So there’s something about our nose that when we change the way that we breathe, it alters our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and causes us to calm down. Anytime we have an urge for something, we feel unsatisfied. When we feel unsatisfied, it creates stress. Stress causes a spike in cortisol. Cortisol will then activate our nervous system. So when you want something, it’s like, I want it. So you need to just calm yourself down. So alternate nostril breathing is a great way to do that. We start that by taking your hand and do this. Okay. And then thumb is out. Great. Then what we’re going to do is take your thumb, block the right nostril, breathe in. Now with a full breath of air, switch. There you go, breathe out. Breathe in through the same nostril. Switch. Breathe out. Switch. Out. Switch, out. We’ll do one more. So breathe in through the same nostril. Switch, and out. So if you do that practice, you’ll notice a couple things. One is that one of your nostrils is more closed than the other. That’s completely normal. It’ll alternate about every 90 minutes if you’re healthy, okay? So this practice, if we sort of think about it, what were we talking about again? Steven Bartlett Carmen. Exactly. Alok Kanojia Right? So this practice is interesting because it forces our attention. If I just tell you to take deep breaths, that doesn’t work well because the mind can continue to be engaged. Right? The mind can think about whatever it wants to. We can talk about marriage. We can talk about your house. We can talk about what you want to eat. And if I’m just sitting there meditating, observing my breath, it doesn’t anchor the mind. So alternate nostril breathing is really good for a couple of reasons. The first is that it requires you to pay attention. And if you’re concentrating because we’re doing all this weird stuff, right, you’re kind of screwing up, that’s the point. Because then you’re not thinking about something else. So then something really cool happens. I feel like watching pornography. I do this for a while. Which one? Which one again? And then you do it for a little while, calms down the physiology. You’ll feel a little bit calmer. And now the urge has disappeared. It’ll come back. It’ll come back stronger. But your brain has learned an alternative. The whole reason we get trapped in a cycle of addiction is because we have one solution to one problem. The moment that we create a second solution, a lot of things change. Now, we have to train that a little bit ahead of time. It’s hard to do that for the first time when you have a craving. So you need to practice it for like maybe five to 15 minutes every single day. As you get good at it, if you have a craving for pornography, you can use that practice. (Time 0:47:20)
  • Willpower Means Staying in Conflict
    • Willpower is the brain monitoring internal conflict during temptation.
    • Keeping internal conflict active prevents addiction from winning. Transcript: Alok Kanojia They think willpower means winning the internal conflict. That’s technically not the case. If we look at the part of our brain that exerts willpower, it is the same part of our brain that monitors internal conflict. If you are internally conflicted, that is your willpower acting. That’s you fighting. That’s the willpower itself. So as long as you are monitoring your internal conflict, the only way an addiction can win is when you leave the ring. Literally. Are you saying keep the conflict going? Keep the conflict going and you will win 100% of the time. And if people have struggled with addiction, they’re going to know in the back of your mind, you make a decision and then you pretend to fight for a little while. You’ve already decided. And then you feel really good. You’re like, oh yeah, we’re going to just do it because some justification happens. And then you stop the fight. And then you don’t even do it right away. You don’t do it like right away. You’re like, wait, and then it just happens on its own. But if you really pay attention to your internal process, you’ll see that going on. (Time 0:54:32)
  • Addiction’s Spiritual Growth Path
    • Addiction can be a spiritual journey that fosters growth.
    • Embracing pain rather than seeking less suffering helps to overcome addiction. Transcript: Alok Kanojia So I think an addiction is like a karmic—it’s like signing yourself up for a boot camp when you’re getting born. So you like come into this earth prone to addiction, and then if you conquer that addiction, you will be a different person. And so I see a huge karmic kind of thing where like, we are given these addictions to spiritually grow, right? So when I lift a weight, it’s not easy, but it makes me stronger. So I think we sometimes forget that the mind doesn’t wear out. Can you challenge what I’m about to say then? Okay. Steven Bartlett So the way that I would think about it is that you would, something might happen in your life now you might think this would happen in a past life or in some other form some kind of early trauma I guess your dad screams in your face that you’re a piece of shit when you’re three years old and because of that i don’t know you develop some sort of addictive behaviors to deal with the Stress and the dopamine the cortisol that’s running through your body so that becomes domino number two. Great. And then you struggle and battle the addiction. It ruins your life. Leave me one domino, okay? Okay. It ruins your life. Your partner says she’s going to leave you because of this addiction that you have. So you decide that the pain of making a change is greater than the pain of staying the same. So you go to rehab and you go on the journey, you overcome it. And maybe there is still a hole or a gap. There is. You will not overcome it. Alok Kanojia The scenario you described, that person will relapse. Okay. Steven Bartlett So, okay. Alok Kanojia So, so the scenario that you said, okay, was you realize that the pain of not giving up the addiction hurts more than the pain of giving it up. That’s not going to work. So the moment that if you say, okay, the consequences of the addiction are so high that I have to give it up. The reason that doesn’t work is because you’re being forced. Steven Bartlett Right? Alok Kanojia So if the goal of this is to give into myself and reduce my total amount of pain, if it’s a calculation to reduce my pain, I’m still giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain. You with me? Yeah. If I’m giving into the part of myself that wants to lessen pain, the addiction will continue. Not 100%, but that’s like honestly my clinical experience. The way to beat it is saying, fuck it, there’s going to be pain. I’m going to embrace that pain. I don’t need to run away from pain anymore. I don’t need to choose the lesser evil. I’m going to choose the greater evil because it’s the right thing to do. Surrender. Surrender and challenge, right? So that’s what’s kind of confusing for people. Surrender. Surrender in this case means allowing yourself to walk the hard path, not being trapped by I have to lessen the pain in my life. (Time 1:00:03)
  • Find Your True Inner Why
    • Evacuate desires learned from external sources to find your true why.
    • Spend silent time with yourself to listen to authentic internal motivations. Transcript: Alok Kanojia And the reason is exactly kind of what you described, is that there are some things in life that are painful, but we choose to do them. And we have to be a little bit careful because if we’re delaying gratification, then we’re still giving in to desire, right? It’s just like my desire for $10 instead of $1 means that I’m going to work two days and then I’m going to get $10. But it’s still greed that’s driving us. So the thing about dharma or duty is it allows us to choose hard things. So the analogy that I use, if someone is like pointing a gun at me, I’m going to run away from it. Gun means death. It means disability. It means all kinds of stuff. Someone points a gun at my kid, I’m stepping into that path. No question. No doubt. And it makes sense to everybody, right? Gun bad. But when doing dharma, gun is easy. Like I’ll take that gun every single—if a bullet leaves that gun, I want it to hit me. And it’s that simple that once you discover what your dharma is, then all of the difficult things in life become easy. The things that if you’re chasing fundamentally greed, I want something. I want money, but I don’t want to work. Why is that such a problem, right? Because I’m always chasing my own betterment. So I want money because I want this. But then when I start to work, it feels bad. So I want to go home. So I’m always being pulled by my wants, being pulled by my wants. But if you ask me, do I want the gun? Do I want to step into the path of the gun? No, absolutely not. I want to run away from the gun. But dharma allows me to do the things that I don’t want to do. It activates a different circuit that allows me to embrace difficulty. So that’s what the why is. Now, go ahead. You know what I’m going to say, which is like, how do I cultivate dharma? Excellent. The reason dharma is hard to cultivate is because we don’t know what we want. Instead, we know what the world tells us to want. It’s like, if you think about the things that you want, how did you learn that you want those things? Because you saw somebody else doing it. Like an advert. I saw the waffle or the Oreos in an advert. Absolutely, right? That’s why advertising is an industry. Because we’ve figured out as human beings that I can control your wants. So when I work with, like, young men, used to be young women, it’s slightly different, but this is a bigger issue for, I think, women maybe 10 years ago. Somehow it’s gotten better. But for young men right now, if I ask them what they want, they want what they see. Also true of women. It’s balancing some. But like, I want to be, I want to be like, I’m going to start a podcast. I’m going to be like Steven. I’m going to get ripped. I’m going to buy a house. I’m going to get a girlfriend. I want this. I want, want, want, want, want, want, want, want. None of those voices are coming from you. They’re not dharma. So the first thing that you have to do is evacuate anything that you want that came from outside of you. Steven Bartlett Sometimes it’s hard to tell where it came from, no? Because it almost feels on the surface, because when you just said then, I want a house, I’m like, fuck, do I actually want that house? Or is the reason I want that house? Alok Kanojia Yes. So this is the problem is that when we want something from the outside, we internalize it, right? So this is like, if you say you should do something, right? Everyone in the world is struggling with what they should do. That’s not what you want. Otherwise, you would use the word want. So should is externalized expectations that we then internalize. Even a lot of our desires are of those kinds of qualities. So it didn’t come from you. You weren’t sitting there still on a mountaintop and be like, ah, I want that house. And then the question, so first thing you have to do is if you like saw someone getting it and you wanted it, that’s not really what you want. But what you will find is that that triggered something deeper within you. So that what you saw someone else when I, I don’t know if this kind of makes sense, but like the things that we gravitate towards connect to what we really want, but it’s a version of it. So when I see like, you know, a sexy dude with a sexy girl, and I say, I want that, that’s not, that’s what I think I want. And this is the whole problem is I’ve worked with tons of people who’ve gotten what they wanted, chased these things, and we’re still unhappy. You get the first girl, and then you need the second, and then you need the third. And it’s like, what are you even chasing here? That’s when you get to the psychological root of like, okay, what I want is to feel loved. I want to feel secure. And this is where people get into a lot of trouble because if I want to feel loved and I craft myself into something that cannot be denied, I’m rich, I’m famous, I’m handsome, and then someone Chooses to love me, then I’m fucked. Because who do they love? Do they love this crafted version of me or do they love the loser me? I don’t know. And then their marriage has all kinds of problems. So the external desires that you have will, if you follow them within yourself, you really ask yourself, what about this do I want? Why do I want this? What is the thing that is hungry within me? Because oftentimes, even when you get the girl, you’re resentful towards her. You’re like, oh, you rejected me when I was a loser, but now you want to date? Okay, let’s go. Let’s have a transactional relationship where I’m going to get laid and I’m going to ghost you. Steven Bartlett I did that. Yeah. I did that. This girl I met when I was 18, when I was a broke, I was a loser. And she was not interested in me. And then a couple years later, she’s interested in me when things are going well in my life. And it was exactly what you described. It was like there was a part of me that knew that this was, I guess I was resentful towards it. Absolutely, right? Alok Kanojia And so even getting what you wanted back then doesn’t satisfy you. So your dharma is what I would say is like that’s one thing. So look at the things that you want. What do they track back to within you? And then the last thing that works really, really, really well is to be silent, to try to find as much quiet as you can, to remove all the external influences and just see what comes up. Because the things that the whys always come from within. (Time 1:22:11)
  • Mind as an Unfriendly Place
    • Most people find their own minds a negative, uncomfortable place.
    • This discomfort drives avoidance behaviors like pornography use. Transcript: Alok Kanojia Because if like, you know, I experienced this a lot where I would play video games all day. And then if I went to bed without falling asleep this torrent of negativity would come up. Anxiety, regret, guilt, shame, whatever. And so if you sort of think about it, like being with us is normally a very negative place. And the reason it becomes a negative place is because we suppress all this negativity. So my mind becomes an unhealthy place to be. I don’t want to be there. It sucks being me. That’s why we get into pornography. Because in the in-between spaces of my life, if I have to sit with myself, it’s shit. I’m worried. I’m guilty. I’m pathetic. There’s this existential crisis. AI is going to take my job. And it’s not just negativity. It’s also positivity. I should be using AI. I should start an AI startup. I’m not doing this. I really should be doing this. Right? If you just like sit with yourself, you’ll notice there’s all kinds of like trash desires and wants and ambitions and want to teach people lesson. And oh my God, the world is such a terrible place. It’s like, it’s just not a good place. (Time 1:31:22)