How to Get Motivated Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

Mel Robbins (00:04:00):

Well, did you just not go to class less than a 2.0? That actually takes some work to not do that

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:04:05):

Yeah, so I was very addicted to video games and so played a bunch of games, basically failed out of college, would play for 16, 18, 20 hours a day. And then my parents tried everything. So they tried punishment, they tried being very supportive, and they just didn't know what to do because I mean, even today we don't quite understand how technology affects our brains and it affects us so profoundly. So after about two years, my dad said, you got to go to India. And I went to an ashram, which is a monastery, and I stayed there for three months and decided to become a monk at the age of 21. My teachers told me that I was too young. They told me, you need to go back to school. You need to get a doctoral degree and then you can take your vows at 30. And that too was like, I was like, I want to give up my life. And one of my teachers was like, you don't have anything worth giving up. So if you want to become a monk, you have to go build something in the world and then give it up. Rise to the top of your profession, get a doctoral degree at a minimum, and then give it up if you want to give it. But right now you're running away, you're escaping. There's nothing worth giving up.

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:14):

Well, those monks know how to just drop a bomb on you, don't

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:05:17):

They? Yeah, they really do. So they ended up sending me back. So I would travel for about back and forth for about seven years and learn more advanced practices and stuff like that. Ended up meeting my wife. So it turns out my teachers were very wise. So the whole monk thing was not going to work out and then decided to go to med school partially because she wanted to be married to a doctor, and my teachers had said, you have to get some kind of doctoral degree. So I was like, why not medicine?

 

Mel Robbins (00:05:45):

That seems like a big commitment to try to impress somebody that you are dating. You know what I mean? Oh, I'll go to medical school if you like

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:05:51):

Me. Yeah. So it's interesting because how it would seem, right? So we have all these ideas about you shouldn't craft your life based on someone else's preferences and stuff like that. But I think if you're internally okay with it, I knew I had to get some kind of doctorate degree. I'm very interested in how human beings work. That's what I loved about India. So what I learned in India is like, this is how a human being works from the inside, not research, but the challenge with scientific research is that it's hard to apply to an individual. What I love about this eastern perspective on spirituality, it's like desires. I mean, if I tell you your desire comes from the nucleus accumbens, you can't do anything with

 

Mel Robbins (00:06:34):

That. I would be like, what? It comes from the nuclear.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:06:36):

Exactly. Right. So there's some neurotransmitter floating around in your brain, but it's not actionable information. So what I learned in India was an actionable way to change myself. And then came back, graduated with a 2.5 GPA after five and a half years of undergrad, and then it took me about three years to get into med school. I got rejected from 120 med schools,

 

Mel Robbins (00:06:57):

120 med schools You applied to

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:07:00):

Over the course of three years, like 40 a year.

 

Mel Robbins (00:07:02):

Wow. And you kept going though.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:07:05): 

Yes, absolutely. 

Mel Robbins (00:07:18):

Oh, whoa. Okay. I know we're going to dig deep into that, but I want to make sure as you're listening to Dr. K, you really just got what he just said. When the motivation comes from the right place, you're impervious to all the external things that are going on.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:07:33):

Absolutely, 100%. So ended up getting rejected a lot after two years of applying to med school and not getting in, people in my family were like, Hey, maybe you should think about something else. Your GPA is set in stone. But I said, I'm going to go ahead and do this again. Ended up getting into med school, went to Tufts for med school, and then also had decided to do psychiatry. So originally I was going to do holistic cancer treatment. So I had studied a lot of Indian medicine in India and alternative medicine, yoga, meditation, all that good stuff. But did psychiatry because my favorite organ was the mind and really noticed a lack in the west of our understanding of the mind. We do things based on population based studies. So we can say motivation comes from this part of the brain, but as a human being, how do you take that fact and apply it to your life? That is what was missing for me or what I saw was missing in the field.

 

(00:08:31):

So ended up doing my psychiatry training at Harvard down the street at Mass General Hospital in McLean Hospital was an awesome experience. And then a couple years in, I had this, a pretty large group of people coming to me wanting holistic mental health treatment. So how can I conquer this depression, anxiety or narcissism or sociopathy? Worked with a lot of CEOs and high performers in finance and places like that. And then I realized that there's no shortage of people trying to help this group of people, people who can pay a lot of money for really high quality support and to really unlock their potential or maximize their potential, whatever. But there were a bunch of people who no one was helping, and those are the degenerate gamers. These are the 22 year olds who finished college and never get a job. These are people who drop out of college. These are people who are 25 years old living in their parents' basement and no one's helping them. They can't pay anything. So I started streaming on Twitch and doing mental health content on Twitch and was stunned when we became the fastest growing stream on Twitch for a period of about three months.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:44):

So for the person listening who does not know what Twitch is, could you kind of explain what you mean when you're giving mental health content on Twitch?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:09:50):

Yeah. So Twitch is a live streaming platform that usually streams games. So what I noticed is that in my office, I was having gamers come in and I was teaching them certain concepts. I wasn't actually doing therapy. I was like, here's how your mind works. Here's the effect of dopamine on your brain and your motivation and things like that. And so I just had the same conversation over and over and over again. So what I started doing was streaming conversations on Twitch. So I would talk to people and I would start teaching some of these principles, almost like a podcast where I just like some random person would call in and I'd do q and a, or they'd be like, I struggle with motivation. I'd say, okay, let's understand the neuroscience of motivation. So we'd kind of dig into that. And what I really discovered is that if you look at people today, so we're being so shaped by our environment.

 

(00:10:35):

Other people decide what kind of thoughts we have. So we're seeing companies get better at advertising. We're seeing short form content. So other people are shaping your views about yourself. They're shaping what you think will make you happy in life. So we're bombarded with all of these images of what it means to be happy. Then what happens is there's a deficit. So our brain notices, oh, look at all those happy people over there. I'm not doing those things and I am unhappy. And then they try to sell you something. And so this is where there's a lot of very intentional shaping of people's unhappiness and then selling people's solutions. So as all of these kinds of effects are going on, we don't know how to fight against that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:19):

So true.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:11:20):

And we'll say like, okay, just cut back on technology use. But it's become a part of our work. It's become a part of, it's how you keep track of, I get emails from my kids' music teacher to tell 'em the class is canceled, so you have to stay plugged in. And so we're not equipped with the tools to fight against this external environment shaping us.

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:39):

That makes a lot of sense. And so it's almost as if there are two pieces that we need to really dig into. And the first one is the internal and really understanding, which I think you very eloquently explained to us that you go to school and you learned all of these subsets of skills and knowledge. I'm not even speaking correctly, but you learn all of these subjects, but you don't learn how a human being or how you operate from the inside out. And so I think we're all scared of the way that our environment and tech is shaping us. And where I want to start, especially given the number of people that are following you online and the kind of advice that you're giving on YouTube, I mean millions and millions of people. Dr. K, what are we getting wrong about motivation?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:12:33):

So much. So in the west, what we call motivation, there is no motivation center of the brain. Motivation is an emergent property. So when I say, if I look at you, Mel, and I say, you're motivated, how do I know that? It's because I'm observing some kind of behavior. So there's no one place that motivation comes from. Motivation is an internal drive that comes from emotions, comes from what you should be doing, comes from issues of ego and identity comes from issues of comparison. So there's so many different things that motivate us. This is the first thing is that motivation is not a thing. It is lots of different things. And I think the second thing, the biggest mistake we make with motivation is that we try to increase it. And I know that sounds weird, but let's understand what motivation is. So let's say you're motivated to do something. Is it easy for you?

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:23):

Yes.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:13:24):

Okay. So now what happens is your actions. That's a problem. That's not a solution, it's a problem.

 

Mel Robbins (00:13:29):

Why is it a problem if something's easy for me?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:13:31):

Because you are not in control. So if you feel motivated, you're trying to make your life easy instead of being in control of yourself. So an alternate solution is imagine if you could act independent of motivation, even if you didn't feel like it, because everyone's trying to increase their motivation. So burnt out all the time. We don't have the energy for it. I'm looking to make it easy for myself when my body, my brain, and my mind are sending us signals. Don't do this. I don't feel like doing this. And we're ignoring that. We're trying to. And so then what we try to do is we try to create situations that make it easy for us to act, but this creates a fundamental flaw. How

 

Mel Robbins (00:14:12):

So?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:14:12):

Because if the situation changes and your motivation changes, then you're screwed.

 

Mel Robbins (00:14:17):

So you're basically saying, just take the simple thing of getting out of bed in the morning so the alarm rings and the second the alarm rings. Most of us have some sort of emotion that we feel about the act of simply getting out of bed. Something we've done thousands of times in our lifetime we know how to do. It is relatively simple set of actions to roll out of bed and stand up and start your day. But so many of us are relying on this feeling of motivation, which is, I guess the way that I would describe it is this emotion of wanting to do something and feeling like it's going to be easy. And if that feeling is there magically in the morning, I get out of bed. But if it's not, I don't take the action. So is that a good example

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:15:03):

Of what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly. So let's play that tape through. So that means that if the motivation isn't there, the first thing that happens, your alarm rings and then your cognitive willpower starts to drain because you already have to overcome something, right? So you start the bed, you start waking up and getting out of the bed tired, you don't feel motivated,

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:23):

Correct?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:15:24):

So that makes a lot of sense. But the crazy thing here is that if we look at motivation, so this is where if you think about it, what that means is that your wants control you. So if I want to do something, then I'm motivated. And so that means that what I want to do controls my life because those are the things that I do. So now the question becomes what's better for you to be in control of your wants or for your wants to be in control of you?

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:49):

I think I just got something. So you were addicted to video gaming. It's what caused you to fail out of college. It's also in many ways what drove you and inspired you to speak to all of us about the brain and about understanding your internal drivers and yourself. And if you look at it in the negative, all addiction begins with wanting to do something and allowing your wants to be in complete control. I want to eat that thing. I want to drink that thing. I want to play that video game. I want to just have sex with somebody that I don't even know. I want to ignore that obligation. I want to do this. And so when you start to live a life where your wants and your desires in the moment are controlling what you do and what you don't do, you're out of control. Is that what you're saying?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:16:38):

A hundred percent. Not only are you out of control, you'll be unhappy. If we look at addiction, there's a couple of fundamental problems with wanting stuff. It just doesn't work. So first thing is if we look at addiction, we know that there are uniform pathways of addiction in the brain. And all addictions do two things. One is they give us pleasure, and the second is that they take away pain. So if you look at all addictions, and this is true of opiates, heroin and social media, video games, they activate this part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is where our dopamine reinforcement circuitry is. Dopamine does a lot of things. It also does movement. But if we look at our drive towards something, the nucleus accumbens gives us three things. It gives us pleasure when we get something, and it also gives us craving.

 

(00:17:25):

So if you think about eating a cookie, it's delicious. Let me have another one. So this is where we're in a huge, there's a fundamental problem with dopamine and gratifying our wants. The second thing that all addictions do is they suppress our negative emotional circuitry. So if you look at eating a cookie, if I'm having a bad day and I eat a cookie, I feel a little bit better. I'm feeling burnt out, I'm feeling tired. Let me hop on my phone, let me browse social media for a little while. And it pushes the tiredness away for a time. But when you get off of your phone, do you feel energized? Do you feel like now it's time to now I have the energy to go and cook a meal and go take care of this stuff and send an email to my boss? No, all you're doing is delaying your tiredness.

 

(00:18:12):

And this is what we see with addictions is that they suppress our negative emotional circuitry. And in my case, what was going on is I was failing out of school every single day. I was skipping class. It got to the point where I had so many absences that the max I could get was like a 70. If I got a hundred percent on all of the rest of the stuff, I could get a 70 in the class. And so what we see in addiction is as your life gets worse and worse and worse, the only way you can manage that pain is by utilizing the substance, or in my case, playing video games.

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:44):

Well, I think this is a really important explanation as we dig into this concept of motivation. And Dr. K, you've already said like, gosh, we get so much wrong about it because I think what happens for so many of us, and you've certainly been there, whether you're at a state where you would say you're addicted to something that is slowly ruining your life, or you are just in one of these negative spirals mentally where you feel unworthy or you feel not good enough, and every day you wake up and you're like, today's the day I'm going to work on my resume, or today's the day I'm going to exercise. And then you see yourself, just like you said, I was failing out of class every day. You see yourself every single day failing at the simple things you want to be doing. And so Dr. K, what else? What do you want us to understand about motivation as we start to look at what I think most people struggle with, which is this feeling every day that I'm not able to follow through on some of the simple things that I really want to be doing, but for whatever reason, I'm not motivated to exercise or eat healthy or make that phone call?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:20:00):

It's a great question. So let's understand a little bit about where motivation comes from,

(00:20:50):

The problem though is that emotions vary. That's the way they're supposed to be. They don't last forever. So if I can have the perfect wedding day, it does not mean that I will have the perfect marriage. I won't be happy for the rest of my life because I have this one perfect day. Our brain has this very natural principle of homeostasis, which means that we experience joy and then the joy goes away. Then what we end up doing is chasing those things that bring us joy. That would be great, except there's another principle in the brain of tolerance. If I eat one cookie, it's delicious.

 

(00:21:25):

If I eat a second cookie, it's not quite as tasty. If I eat a third cookie, now I'm feeling full, true. And even then, oftentimes if I think about getting that cookie tomorrow, it's not going to be as good as the first time I have it. So now we're kind of stuck because our motivation is going to wax and wane with our emotions. We're trying to cultivate these past experiences over and over again to try to keep us motivated and it just doesn't work. So what can we do? 

(00:22:13):

Now, this may sound weird because oftentimes in life we are conditioned to focus on outcomes. So I don't care how much I care what your GPA is, I don't care how healthy your company is, I care what the stock price is. So in our life, the way that our life is structured right now, we're all focused on outcomes. We're focused on goals and things like that. And everyone may think, well, yeah, duh, right? That's the way that it should be. But if you stop and think about it, we have a society that is increasingly focusing on outcomes, and we also have a society that the human beings are increasingly burnt out and lack motivation, and those two things are tied. So let's understand a little bit about why. So if we're not going to focus on outcomes, then how the hell do we get motivated?

 

(00:22:56):

So let's understand another thing about the brain. So our brain does this thing called an action success calculation. So what it does is anytime we're thinking about doing something, our brain knows, okay, what's the likelihood of this to succeed and what's the likelihood of this to fail? And the problem is that if you're trying to cultivate motivation and you put in a lot of work and we're focused on the outcome and things don't work out, then I won't reinforce the behavior. So if I say I'm going to study really hard for a test and I don't do well on the test, what does my brain learn about the value of studying

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:34):

That it doesn't help.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:23:35):

It doesn't help.

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:35):

So is this one of the reasons why so many of us give up, either going on a healthier diet or going to the gym and working out because you're not seeing the results, so you start to go, this isn't working?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:23:47):

Absolutely, absolutely right. So this is a really fascinating principle from motivational interviewing. So if we look at behavioral change, we have one evidence-based technique that helps people change their behavior, which is something called motivational interviewing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:02):

So what is motivational interviewing?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:05):

It is a way to talk to people that increases their motivation.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:09):

Oh my god. So can we use this with people in our life too, not just with ourselves?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:13):

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So we're going to

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:15):

Learn

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:16):

Not just with people in our life. I mean, I'd say we do it in psychiatry with other people. The beautiful thing is you can do it with yourself.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:22):

Oh my God. Let's go.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:23):

Okay, so let's understand. So this is the beautiful thing about motivational interviewing. We figured out that most human beings are conflicted. So I want to go to the gym. I don't want to go to the gym now before I go to the gym. The pain of going to the gym is a hypothetical. The pleasure of staying home is also a hypothetical. So when we start out, neither of these two things are realities. So I think about the gym, I think here's the cost, here's the benefit. But it's a hypothetical,

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:52):

Right? Right. I haven't gone,

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:53):

I haven gone. So

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:54):

I'm just making it all up

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:24:54):

My mind. So as I go to the gym, what happens to the pain induced by the gym

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:00):

Lowers Because I'm going in right

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:25:03):

On the contrary. So when you go to the gym, as you start going, as you move towards the thing that is difficult, the hypothetical pain becomes real.

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:10):

Oh, I see what you're saying. You're

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:25:12):

Right. So as I actually start, I can think about working out that's not painful. Actually working out huffing and puffing, I want to stop. My body's like, don't do this. My knees are hurting. The pain actually increases. So anytime we move towards an action, the pain increases. The reason we want to engage in the action is because at the end of the pain is some kind of pleasure. There's some kind of outcome that we're devoted to, and then we hope that the pain will be worth the pleasure, but our brain doesn't see it that way. What our brain sees, and you'll notice this if you're thinking about something in your life where you think about doing something and it's going to be painful, but when you start to do it, it's actually painful and it actually decreases our motivation. So moving towards our goals oftentimes comes at a cost before a benefit.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:00):

That makes a lot of sense. So just so I can break this down, so everybody's tracking intellectually, you can know you want to do something, but you are going to think about what it's like to get out of bed or think what it's like to go to the gym or think what it's like to work on your resume. And because it's going to require you to move toward the pain before you get the payoff, motivation decreases as you move toward this thing that you really want to do. Got it.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:26:28):

Absolutely right. And this is also presuming that the reason for your motivation is the positive outcome. That's why we're motivated. I want to be healthy. I want that sexy beach pod. But the problem is that when we actually engage in the behavior, when I go to the gym, I don't get a sexy beach pod.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:42):

No.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:26:43):

So then my brain is looking at this and it's saying, wait, what the fuck? Why are we doing this? Correct. This is just pain. There's no benefit. Yes, this is dumb. Yes. And then we wake up the next day and we're like, our brain is like, don't do that thing. And then we all get confused. This is why we need to separate ourselves from the outcome because our brain makes this calculation and says, this pain in the gym today is not worth the payoff today, obviously. And then it's going to turn around and it's going to say, don't do this thing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:12):

What's so fascinating is you are revealing the mechanism internally that's at play that most of us are unaware of. And so we are engaged in all of this sort of mind battles with ourselves to try to force our, we're calling ourselves lazy. We're saying that we're this, why can't I do this? When you're simply saying, honestly, this is how your brain works, you're not going to see the result right away. You're wired to move away from the pain, and so you cannot focus on the result because that is not going to get you through this little contradiction in your brain.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:27:48):

Yeah, absolutely. Beautifully said, right? So what I would say is we are spending our whole lives swimming upstream. Instead of understanding our motivational circuitry, we are trying to conquer it. Instead of utilizing it, we're trying to fight against it and overcome it. So instead, understand how your motivation works, and then you can craft your life so that action becomes easy and outcomes will improve too. There's tons of data on this. So now let's start by understanding that I have this positive goal

 

(00:28:18):

That comes with a reward. And when I think about working on my resume or going to the gym, I'm looking for that positive reward at the end. I'm not really anticipating the pain. So instead, what we want to do is we actually want to let go of that goal, and in motivational interviewing with someone who's addicted to alcohol, here's how this looks. So people will say, I want to be sober for a year. I will say, you can't be sober for a year. It is impossible to be sober for a year. Literally, you cannot do it. People will be like, what on earth are you talking about? You can't be sober for a year. If I said, Mel, get up right now and be sober for a year, could you do it?

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:55):

I don't know. I don't know.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:28:57):

Sober for a year is not an action. You can't do it. It is not an act. Do you get that? It is an outcome.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:05):

Oh, hold on. Okay. You're right. When you said be sober for a year, my little brain went 365 days, not drinking. Okay. Box, check box. And I jumped to, I accomplished it. I totally fell into your trap. Dr. K.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:29:23):

Absolutely. Right? So if you think about it,

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:25):

Well, I do want to break it down because I think the person listening and myself, we are so hardwired to think about the things that we want that you're trying to get us to understand that we've got to interrupt the way that our brain jumps to the end and start to think a different way to make this work for us. Is that what you're saying?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:29:48):

A hundred percent.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:48):

Because I think half the people listening are probably going, well, I'd like to find a significant other. I'd like to lose weight. I'd like to have a million dollars in the bank, all goals and outcomes. And that is what is keeping, you're basically saying that kind of thinking keeps you stuck swimming upstream and not able to activate what you need in order to act in the way that you need to act.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:30:13):

Beautifully said. So I'd love to add a couple different points to that. Let's just tunnel down into that. Okay, so now remember that if I go to the gym, you asked about follow through. So if I go to the gym, it's painful. I don't see the yield today. So then where does the motivation of going to the gym come from? So the motivation of going to the gym comes, you wake up one day and you look at yourself in the mirror and you're like, I'm tired of looking like this. You're driven by negativity.

 

Mel Robbins (00:30:37):

Yes.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:30:37):

So this doesn't work. So when your drive to go to the gym is pain, so I don't like the way that I look, I'm unsatisfied.

 

(00:30:45):

Our brain gets confused because we're moving away from pain into pain, and our brain is like, this doesn't make sense. So this is why people don't have follow through. They pendulum, I'm going to the gym this week. I'm not going to go next week. Because you're always listening to your negative part. You're saying, I'm unhappy with this. I'm unhappy with the amount of money I make. I am trying to resolve my unhappiness by engaging, and I'm unhappy with the amount of money I make. So I'm going to work harder at work, which is not a pleasant experience. So we keep on ping ponging between negativity and negativity.

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:19):

This actually makes a lot of sense. I was with somebody last night who has been in a job for two years where they keep promising promotion. This person keeps delivering what they're supposed to do, and it's not coming

 

(00:31:30):

Yet. There's a lot of like, I can't stand this situation, and yet I dunno what to do about it. One week I want to quit. One week I'm working harder. And it is this pendulum thing that you see and from the outside you go, why don't you just get another job? But from the inside, you really do see somebody trapped between one situation that's painful, which is trying to double down in a job that's not working, versus the other situation that's painful, which is organizing your resume and putting yourself out there and looking for a job. And so that to me makes a lot of sense as to why we swing between these spurts of exercising and not eating healthy and then not drinking and then not.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:32:11):

Absolutely. So if you look at the mechanism of that, and that's a beautiful example. What we find is there's no actual fluctuation. You are following through 100%, which I know sounds weird. What you are following through with is you are always moving away from your negativity. So on this particular day, I want to be recognized. I don't like being unrecognized. I feel undervalued. I'm moving away from my undervalued. And then on the next day, you're moving away from something else. So you keep on running away from the negative things in your life and you stay stuck. You are still being controlled by those desires all the time. So consistency doesn't come, doesn't come from obeying whatever emotion you're feeling in the moment. That makes perfect sense. We just don't realize we think about that in terms of things like love. So today I fell in love.

 

(00:33:01):

Tomorrow I fall out of love. Fair enough. We don't think about that in terms of professional life, that it's all just listening to your circuitry instead of your circuitry listening to you. The point of the human body, the human brain and the human mind, these are all instruments to serve you. You don't exist for their benefit. They exist for your benefit. My arm, my tongue does not dictate what I do with my life, and yet we let our brains and our mind dictate what we're doing with our life. It's absurd. The key is to focus on the action, not the outcome. When the mind thinks about action, the outcomes improve. And when the mind thinks about outcomes, sometimes you get there, sometimes you don't. You get into this motivational problem. So kind of going back to my life, I decided I'm going to apply. That's what I'm going to focus on.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:47):

And you're talking about the fact that over the course of three years, you applied to 120 medical schools until you got in,

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:33:53):

Until I got in. And people think like, oh, doesn't the first 10 failures weigh on? You don't. The next 10 failures weigh on you, because that's how most of us live our life, right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:01):

Yeah.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:34:02):

But the beautiful thing is, if you think about it, what is the difference, Mel, between applying to the first medical school in the hundredth medical school?

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:10):

Well, when you think about the actual action, there is zero difference because you are filling out paperwork, you are organizing a bunch of stuff, and you're hitting submit.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:34:22):

So then where does the difference come from? You're a hundred percent right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:24):

Your emotion and the stories you tell yourself about the difference between the first application and the hundreds.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:34:30):

So I want you to think about this. The action is exactly the same. The only thing that is holding me back is the weight in my mind that I have failed 99 times before. That is not reality. That is a thought in your head that is telling you that you have failed 99 times. As long as that is the way that your life is working, you will never be in control. Because if my mind wakes up, some people say 20 is too much. Some people say that 20 failures or 20 denials of a job, I feel weighed down. For some people, they can tolerate 40. For some people, they can tolerate 60. And the people who quit after 20 look at the people who try 60 times and they say, I wish I could be like that. I wish I could follow through. I wish I could have more discipline. They're all doing it wrong. Each action that you take in life is individual. A

 

Mel Robbins (00:35:17):

Hundred percent. I am constantly astonished by the number of people who write in because they feel like they're either too young or too old to do the things that they want to do. And for me, as a 56-year-old woman who launched this podcast 18 months ago, I just go, well, I just put my head down and just focused on the simple things every single day that lead to launching a podcast and all of that garbage that you're telling yourself like, I'm too young, or I'm too old, or I'm too this, or I'm too that. It's complete fiction. And the action proves the action is actually the only way that you prove that crap in your mind is a lie.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:35:57):

Yeah, beautifully said. And I think the challenge is that we are so conditioned to thinking that our thoughts are reality.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:05):

So how do I use motivational interviewing to tap into this wiring inside me in an effective way? Dr. K.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:36:12):

So great question. So if you want to be consistent every day, step number one, abandon every day.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:19):

What?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:36:19):

Abandon every day. You can't, can't do something every day. Focus on today.

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:23):

Okay?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:36:23):

You see how deeply it is?

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:25):

Yes, I see that I'm screwed.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:36:27):

So I'll give you a great example. When we think about every day, successes become failures in my mind. So if I say to myself, I'm going to meditate every day, and I meditate for 39 days, and day 40 rolls around, did I meditate every day? Mel, have I succeeded in my goal? You did for 39 days. It's still a failure because you didn't do it on the 40th. So now I'm looking at 39 days of success, and I'm calling it a failure because I didn't do it on day 40. Crazy,

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:55):

Crazy.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:36:56):

I work with people who are addicted to substances. So my day job was an addiction psychiatrist, and these are people who will be sober for 48 days, and then they will have a relapse, and then this is no longer sober and becomes binary. And then what does the brain do? The brain says, what's the point of resisting alcohol for 39 days? If we're just going to drink on day 40, we demotivate ourselves. So what we want to focus on is the action, focus on the present, focus on doing the thing.

 

Mel Robbins (00:37:24):

And so if you're waking up and you want to use this tool in your life, and there is something that you would like to make more consistent, which is still not a thing, because I see how quickly I default to, I want to do it every day. I want to be more consistent. I want to lose the weight. I want to make more money. How do I use this technique to get myself to focus on what I need to do today? Dr. K, 

Mel Robbins (00:37:54):

Negative. Meaning what?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:37:56):

Meaning that if you're thinking about going to the gym, let's say you want to go tomorrow, so what you want to do is tomorrow when I wake up, I'm not going to feel like going to the gym, mentally prepare for the

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:07):

Difficulty.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:38:08):

So there are studies that show that predicting or anticipating the difficulty is a very, very important part because then you're not caught off guard by it, right? You're not thinking, see, when everyone thinks about going to the gym, they're thinking about the positive. They're not thinking about the negative. And then when they run into the negative, the pain of actually going through the act, their brain gets confused because I'm thinking about this as a good thing, but my experience of it is as a bad thing. So the first thing that you actually want to do is anticipate the difficulty of the action that you want to take.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:40):

And that makes a lot of sense to me. I can give you, as you're listening, example, I've been doing a lot of the cold exposure climbing into a, I hate it, and I do not try to motivate myself, so to speak, or get myself all hyped up. I'm literally like, this is going to blow. I'm going to do it. It's going to be 90 seconds of my life, and I'm just getting in the damn barrel. And there's something about saying it that it's almost like this sort of internal resistance lowers what is happening in your body when you use this. I'm going to have a healthy dinner tonight and it's going to suck, and I know I would rather have a delicious, juicy, whatever, cheeseburger, but I'm going to just eat the salad and the clean protein, and that's going to be that, and that's what I'm doing. What happens in your brain when you do step one, Dr. K, and you anticipate the negative?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:39:32):

So the first thing that it does is it doesn't let you get caught off guard. So you're changing your expectations from a positive thing to a negative thing. And what we know about human beings and expectations is nothing basically lives up to your expectations. So we have this imaginary capacity in our brain, and no reality will measure up to that. So the interesting thing is if you look at something negative and you say, this is really going to suck. You don't want to tell people who are getting injections and stuff like vaccines that this is going to suck. But you can tell people, Hey, this is going to hurt for a little while. You just want an accurate representation. Don't try to pump it up and don't try to let it down.

 

(00:40:07):

The beautiful thing about that is that once you kind of bypass all of this positivity and stuff, when you actually do the thing, it's usually not as bad as you expected. The other thing that you're doing, which is very, very important, is you are taming your brain. You're telling your brain it's not about motivation because motivation is about gratification of the brain, right? It's like, I want to do this thing and I want to feel good. It's all about positive. It's about getting that reward at the end. It's about the outcome. We are separating. We are divorcing the action from pleasure or pain or anything. We are learning to be independent of pleasure and pain. I say, I'm going to do this. That's what I'm fucking going to do. I do not care what my brain wants. I do not care. It's fine. We're going to do this. You do it. And this is what happens. You're separating yourself.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:56):

I love this, Dr. K, I want to make sure you got this because this to me, this is something you have to understand. I even want you to visualize it. This makes so much sense to me. Now that you have taught us that motivation really is about pleasure and craving and drive and all that stuff over here. And when you say step one, I am just going to anticipate the negative. I'm going to tell myself, this is going to suck. I'm going to focus on what I'm doing today. And by doing that, you are literally cleaving like a separation between pleasure seeking part of your brain

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:41:32):

And pain avoidance

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:33):

And pain avoidance to literally activating the ability to see that something's not going to be enjoyable, but you're going to do it anyway. Absolutely. This makes so much sense. You're basically flipping the switch on the part of the brain that activates to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't want you to do that. And going, I see this coming. You can take a nap because we're going to go and have the healthy meal.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:41:53):

Absolutely. So this is where in Sanskrit, there's also this concept of detachment or

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:58):

Ragga,

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:41:58):

Which a lot of people think will mean apathy and a lack of motivation, but it's actually quite the opposite.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:03):

What is detachment?

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:42:04):

So detachment is divorcing ourselves of the outcomes of our actions. So to focus on the action itself, instead of worrying about the outcome,

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:14):

You're basically saying that there is a superpower in life in putting all of your energy and focus and resources into what you can do right now. And you can be committed to something in the future, but you can't focus on that. You got to focus on the actions and what you can do right now. A

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:42:34): 

Hundred percent. So you call it a superpower. This is where I would say this should be the default state. 

Mel Robbins (00:42:48):

I control what I am going to do next.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:42:53):

That's it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:54):

That's it. I can't control anything that you're doing.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:42:56):

Hundred percent

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:57):

Can't control anything that anybody outside these windows in downtown Boston are doing. I can't control what you're thinking or how you feel. And in many ways, I can't actually control the emotions that come up because they're just rising and falling or the thoughts that rise and fall. But I can with practice, focus on what action I take next. That's it.

 

Dr. Alok Kanojia (00:43:23):

So it's crazy, right? So if you're listening to this podcast right now, I want everyone to stop for a second and think about what you literally can control. It is the bounds of your body. That's it. I see this, especially with women, because they're responsible for their husbands, they're responsible for their parents, they're responsible. We put so much responsibility on women for the people around them.

 

(00:43:45):

So here you are stuck in this world where you are trying to get everyone else to fall in line, but it is impossible. And then we get so bent out of shape to get my boss to do this, to get my son to do this, to get my parents to do this. We're trying to control everything around us, and we cannot control it. It's physically impossible.