The Real Reason You Can't Stop Self-Sabotage | Dr. K

Summary

The School of Greatness Podcast Summary

Episode Title:

The Real Reason You Can't Stop Self-Sabotage | Dr. K
Host: Lewis Howes
Guest: Dr. Alok Kanojia (“Dr. K”), Psychiatrist, Harvard-trained, Founder of Healthy Gamer
Air date: April 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Lewis Howes sits down with Dr. Alok Kanojia ("Dr. K") to unravel the deep-rooted causes behind self-sabotage, the complicated nature of identity, and why even high-achievers are not immune to inner conflict. The conversation explores the neuroscience behind identity and motivation, the perils of both negative and positive self-concepts, how thoughts shape our actions (and vice versa), and practical strategies for building self-awareness to break free from sabotaging cycles. Dr. K integrates wisdom from Western psychiatry and Eastern philosophy, offering actionable, compassionate advice to transcend self-sabotage and live a more harmonious life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Self-Sabotage, Motivation, and Identity

[01:41, 11:19]

• People don’t lack motivation—their motivation is just directed elsewhere (e.g., to staying home, playing video games).
• Identity shapes our motivation and the lens through which we view the world.
• A “negative identity” (e.g., “I am a loser”) is an adaptation; the brain forms it to protect us from pain and failure. Similarly, “positive identity” can lead to endless striving, anxiety, or even narcissism.

“People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home.”
— Dr. K [01:41]

2. Understanding and Transcending Identity

[03:53, 13:35, 21:44, 25:29]

• We often believe we must turn negative identities into positive ones, but Dr. K argues for shedding identity altogether. All identity (good or bad) acts as a filter.
• Negative identities are often about self-protection; positive identities can trap us into endless goalposts and “achievement addiction.”
• The ideal: a “balanced identity,” being able to step in/out of roles as needed but not confusing them for true self.

“A loser never has imposter syndrome. You get that? ... People only think they're imposters when they achieve things.”
— Dr. K [06:53]

“The goal isn’t to be egoless. The goal is for you to be in control of your ego, not have your ego be in control of you.”
— Dr. K [30:57]

3. How Identity Shapes Perception and Motivation

[08:24, 09:43, 16:47]

• Whether you view yourself as “a loser” or “not beautiful,” you interpret neutral events to fit your identity.
• Motivation is based on perceived likelihood of success. If you don't believe you can succeed, you won't act.

“My belief shapes the evidence. The evidence doesn't shape the belief.”
— Dr. K [17:21]

4. Goals, Action, and Letting Go of Outcome

[40:10, 48:49, 55:33, 59:29]

• The healthiest approach is to focus not on outcomes/goals, but on right action in the present moment.
• Over-attachment to goals can lead to procrastination, self-sabotage, and giving up after setbacks.
• Detachment doesn’t mean apathy; it means peace with whatever outcome arises, and persistence until inner tranquility indicates it’s time to “let go.”

“As a human being, all you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions. And this is a beautiful way to get out of ego.”
— Dr. K [39:54]

“Accomplishing big goals involves taking lots of action. So focus on action, not on the goal.”
— Dr. K [50:58]

“If you have a stumble towards your goal and you are attached to it, you are more likely to give up.”
— Dr. K [55:33]

5. Thoughts, Karma, and Inner Action

[67:17, 70:06, 81:36, 87:09]

• 99% of self-transformation begins with how you respond to thoughts—what Dr. K calls "mental action" and "inner karma."
• Thoughts are not fully under conscious control, but your response to them is.
• Most suffering comes from habitual, automatic reactions—not from reality.

“99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action.”
— Dr. K [67:17]

6. Awareness: The Gateway to Change

[95:47, 103:30, 104:47, 105:21]

• Self-awareness is the essential first step—the more you understand yourself, the less you suffer.
• Suffering is largely a result of not understanding one’s own mind, motives, and patterns.

“Understanding is more important than effort.”
— Dr. K [120:22]

• You are not your thoughts or identity; you are the observer of both.

“You are that which experiences your mind, and no one else experiences your mind.”
— Dr. K [104:42]

7. Healing Mental Illness and the Power of Action

[108:34, 110:44, 113:26, 116:25]

• Most mental illnesses can improve dramatically, though some persistent traits may remain.
• Medication manages symptoms but doesn’t “heal”—true healing comes from psychotherapy, awareness, and learning to respond differently to thoughts.
• The ability to “pick yourself up” after setbacks—rather than avoiding them altogether—is key to conquering self-sabotage.

“Confidence doesn’t come from success, it comes from surviving failure.”
— Dr. K [112:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Motivation & Identity:
  “You have a ton of motivation to play video games. There is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. So identity shapes motivation.”
  — Dr. K [01:41]

• On Imposter Syndrome:
  “People only think they're imposters when they achieve things.”
  — Dr. K [06:53]

• On Winning and Losing:
  “If I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity ... my whole life became threatened with the idea of if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser.”
  — Lewis Howes [34:33]

• On Goals vs. Action:
  “Action happens now. Goal is in the future.”
  — Dr. K [49:03]

• On Detachment:
  “Give up with tranquility. So when you are at peace and you want to let something go, that's when you give up.”
  — Dr. K [61:05]

• On Capability and Belief:
  “Most human beings on the planet are far more capable than they believe.”
  — Dr. K [65:00]

• On Inner Karma:
  "99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action."
  — Dr. K [67:17]

• On Healing:
  “Medication never heals mental illness. ... Medication manages your symptoms. ... Psychotherapy is the best evidence based practice for healing.”
  — Dr. K [109:35–110:56]

• Ultimate “Three Truths”:

  1. Understanding is more important than effort.
  2. Mistakes are a part of your journey.
  3. The results of your life are determined by your actions—most of which happen in your mind.
     — Dr. K [120:22]

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Important Timestamps & Segment Highlights

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:41 | "No motivation" is a myth; motivation is always present, just not always aimed where desired. | | 03:53 | Shedding identity is the ultimate goal—it’s a lens through which we filter reality. | | 06:53 | "A loser never has imposter syndrome." | | 14:09 | The risks of positive identity and addiction to achievement. | | 25:29 | What remains when you shed all identities: “I’m nothing. I’m empty. I’m just an organism.” | | 39:54 | "All you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions.” | | 48:49 | Goals versus actions—why present moment action is paramount. | | 55:33 | Attachment to outcome causes giving up after setback. | | 67:17 | 99% of karma/choice happens inside, in how we respond to thoughts. | | 81:36 | Severity scale: how disconnection from one’s thoughts marks mental health. | | 104:42 | "You are that which experiences your mind.” | | 110:56 | “Psychotherapy is the best evidence based practice for healing.” | | 112:08 | “Confidence doesn’t come from success, it comes from surviving failure.” | | 120:22 | Dr. K’s “Three Truths” (the life lessons he’d leave behind). |

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Dr. K’s Closing Wisdom

• The #1 Skill:
  "If you can train or develop the skill of learning how to respond to your thoughts, you will live a much better life." [122:03-{122:41}]
• On Greatness:
  “The definition of greatness is to lean into being fully you. … You are a unique set of genetics, unique experiences, unique talents. But as long as you're trying to be someone else, you can’t be great.” [126:54]

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Summary Takeaways

• Self-sabotage often stems from adopted identities (both negative and positive)—neither are who we fundamentally are.
• Your motivation isn’t broken—it’s just working toward comfort, safety, or a self-protective narrative.
• Lasting change starts with action in the present, not the pursuit or attachment to distant goals.
• Most of your “karma” or destiny is decided in how you respond to thoughts and emotions, not the thoughts themselves.
• Awareness—observing your mind without judgment—is the first step, but simple ≠ easy.
• True healing and greatness are not about “fixing” or “becoming” someone else, but about fully being yourself, responding wisely to whatever arises.

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Connect with Dr. K:

• YouTube, Instagram: HealthyGamerGG
• Digital Guides and mental health resources at healthygamer.gg

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For more insights, refer to the full episode transcript above for additional context on the nuanced, actionable strategies Dr. K shares for healing, authenticity, and self-mastery.

Transcript

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

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[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games. There is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. So identity shapes motivation.

[Lewis Howes]

He is a psychiatrist, a Harvard trained physician, and founder of Healthy Gamer, one of the fastest growing mental health communities in the world. Dr. K, thank you so much for being here.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. If I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy and they will think of me as a loser as well. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. We need to be defiant in the face of the world. We need to be doing stupid action. Not giving up means being an idiot. Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action.

[Lewis Howes]

How do we improve our self identity if our identity is holding us back?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You know, one of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with like high performers is.

[Lewis Howes]

We were just talking maybe for the last hour about our lives and challenges we've overcome and what we're up to in our lives. And one of the things that I really care about here on the School of Greatness is helping people unlock their potential, okay? Helping people live more meaningful, harmonious lives. Helping people be on mission in their lives, having healthier relationships in their lives, and really living from a place of peace rather than pain. And everyone's gone through pain. Everyone's gone through some type of trauma or suffering or sadness or loss or grief. And some of these things shape their identities. And I truly feel that our identity shapes our view of the world. And it can either support us in creating the life we want, or it can keep us stuck in feeling more traumatized, victim and things like that. And I'm curious, how do we improve our self identity if our identity is holding us back?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I mean, my goal and what I try to help a lot of people do is to get rid of identity entirely. So if we look at like the function of identity, you're spot on that your identity is the lens through which you view the world. So, you know, I've worked with many people who will adopt a negative identity. So the first thing to understand is even a negative identity, like I'm a loser is not actually a negative identity. A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. So I was struggling with gaming addiction when I was like 18 years old and I had hopes, I had dreams. And not being able to achieve those dreams is so painful. So one of the ways that we adapt is we become something that is not capable of success, right? So there are winners in life and there are losers in life, and I am a loser. And that thought comes with a lot of a negative emotion. The mistake that a lot of people end up making is they try to get rid of that negative emotion. They try to think like, okay, I'm a loser, instead, I should be a winner. And there's a lot of value to a positive mindset which we can get to. But like, let's understand the fundamentals. First thing to understand is if you have a negative identity, it is serving you in some way. The human brain, our mind, has evolved with all of these structures. And one of the simplest ways I know you, I'm sure you've had injuries, right? When you have an injury the first thing that happens is we'll form scar tissue. So scar tissue is tough, it's fibrous, and it protects us. So the negative identities that we form help us from facing other things. So if I'm a loser, I never have to try anymore. Right. If I am lazy, it's not my fault, because there's the people out there who are disciplined and the people out there who are lazy. And I'm one of the lazy ones. I'm unlucky. Then the problem becomes that our identity literally shapes the way that we move through the world. So if I think of myself as ugly and I go on a date, my expectations of the date, the way that I show up is going to heavily affect the date, because human beings are empathic. So if I walk into a room and I believe of myself, if I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy and they will think of me as a loser as well. So, you know, if you go into a job interview and you're. You don't think you belong. I see this all the time. It's really interesting. I see a ton of imposter syndrome. When I was at Harvard, I. I would see a ton of imposter syndrome, and you'd think that imposter syndrome is fixed by success, but actually success. We'll get to this. I'm getting a little bit all over the place, but imposter syndrome is actually created by success.

[Lewis Howes]

What do you mean?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I know, it's weird. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. You get that?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You only have. People only think they're imposters when they achieve things. It's really bizarre.

[Lewis Howes]

They don't believe they're meant to achieve.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly right. So when I end up at a place like Harvard, there's a ton of imposter syndrome.

[Lewis Howes]

And these are with the most successful, smartest people in the world.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. And that imposter syndrome is created when the world views us in one way or, but our identity is something else. So the reason we have so much imposter syndrome at a place like Harvard is because you have a bunch of kids who thought of themselves as the smartest kid in the class, and then the moment they get into Harvard. I used to be valedictorian. Now I'm average.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm a nobody.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, right. And then you're with all these. You're with your peers, and suddenly used to be number one. Now you're average. And so you feel like you don't belong because You've never been average.

[Lewis Howes]

And everyone's jockeying to like one up and smarter than. And I know this better than.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. Right. So this is. Identity is a tricky thing. So first thing is negative identity is protective. So if you have some part of your identity that you think is bad that you want to get rid of. Wrong approach. Ask yourself, what is this? What is this identity doing for me? When I think of myself as a loser, how does that protect me?

[Lewis Howes]

You mentioned that it's serving, it's serving you in certain ways, but it may not be empowering you to live your fullest potential.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. And even a positive identity is not going to empower you to live into your fullest potential. So we're into that. Right. So there are identities that we have that protect us from some negative things and then we have positive identities too. So going back to the negative identity, this will shape the way that we perceive the world. So create some kind of filter agreement.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes. So I'm a loser or I'm not beautiful, or I'm ugly, or I'm stupid.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

This identity that we speak and believe to ourselves shapes the way we view the world.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. And it also shapes things like our motivation. So if you were. So this is going to get a bit technical for a second. That's okay. But we get motivated based on an action success calculation. So what our brain does is it looks at what the possibilities are. And if the possibility of success is high, it will be motivated towards it. Right. This is why we'll be more motivated.

[Lewis Howes]

If we believe there's a high possibility

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

to succeed, there will be more motivated. Right. This is why, like, if we sort of think about, you know, if I tell you, oh, hey, can you get me a glass of water? That's easy for you to do because you can do that. You believe you can do that. You believe you can succeed. It's such a simple task. And we don't even think about motivation for getting someone a glass of water because our, our perception that we can do it is like 100%.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So we automatically do it. We don't even perceive that we're motivated, but it's easy to do. Now if I don't believe I can do something and if I can guarantee you that just about every human being who's watching this has something that they're capable of doing, but they don't believe that they can do it. And think about all the things in your life that you can have done that you did not think that you were capable of. And when you don't think you're capable. It becomes so hard because naturally, the part of your brain that is telling you whether you can do it or not, you know, if it doesn't believe you can do it, you have to overcome the limiting belief.

[Lewis Howes]

You're limiting beliefs.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. You have to force yourself. You have to use things like willpower. Right. It's not. You're not really motivated. You have to, like. You're motivated to not try.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And you have to force yourself, but that comes from your identity. And then the moment that you believe that you can do it, it becomes easier to do. The big problem here, and you were asking a question about identity, is in our. You know, if we have some negative identity that will prevent us from doing certain things, it also motivates us to do other things. So this is what a lot of people don't realize. People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games, sit on the couch to watch. Right. And just think about how motivated you are. If anyone pulls you out of that, there is such a powerful drive to return to the couch.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So identity shapes motivation. Then we get to positive identity, where positive identity says, I can do something. I'm capable of doing things. Sometimes, you know, this positive identity can turn into things like ambition. It can even turn into narcissistic tendencies. Right. So narcissism is a particular kind of positive identity. I think I'm great. I think I'm awesome. I'm the best. Other people are not as good as I am. So in Sanskrit, you know, we have this word, ahamkar, which means ego. And there are three kinds of ego. There is a tamasic ego, which is like a negative identity. That is an identity which keeps you inert. It makes it hard for you to move. Then there is the Rajsik identity. This is the identity that motivates you to act. But this is also the identity that I have to do it. And it's not even that I'm great. I need to do it. I need to accomplish something. I need to help the world. I've worked with so many people who are 52 years old, multimillionaires, and are working themselves towards a heart attack because they have this identity. I need to do it. I need to make people proud. I need to have an impact in the world. I want to do good. And so even in service of that, they will have a lot of motivation. But the really interesting thing is that their motivation keeps them from slowing down. I'm motivated to always move. I can't rest.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I can't sit still.

[Lewis Howes]

A lot of high achievers or high performers have that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

That struggle to slow down, to rest, to take a break.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And we all covet them. I want to be. I wish when I woke up in the morning I would flagellate myself. I wish I was so consumed by passion that I could work 90 hours a week, 100 hours a week. I wish I was like that. But those people suffer too. They wind up in my office. So this is where there is, you know, we start with a negative identity that protects us from certain emotions. Then there's a positive identity which activates us. But we are always chasing something. And this is the problem with the positive identity. You'll always move the goalposts.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So you get a million subscribers on YouTube.

[Lewis Howes]

What's enough? When's enough enough?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, when's enough? Right. And you always want more. You always want more. You always want more because that's what the identity. The identity feels activated when it is achieving it is raising the bar that makes you feel really good. And so then the bar now you actually become addicted to the bar, going higher and higher and higher. And we think to ourselves, wonderful. That means I'll get more and more and more and more. But you won't tame peace. You will become a slave to success.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. There's no harmony there.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely not. So then we have the third kind of identity. Satvik Ahamkar. This is the balanced identity, where you have some amount of inertia. It's a balance between activity and inertia. See, we think that inertia is bad, but it's not. There's a balance between stillness and activity. And ideally, what you want to do, in my opinion, is get rid of all identity is remember that the negative identity shapes our perception. The positive identity will shape our perception as well. I've worked with some people who are problematic gamblers and really believe in themselves. I can win. I can win. I'm special.

[Lewis Howes]

They've lost a lot, but maybe they've won some. So they believe.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Oh, no, they've won a lot. They've lost some.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, they've won more than they lost.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Oh, yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

So how's that a problem? If they were always winning and they're

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

not losing because they keep playing because they can't stop.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So, yeah, they do keep winning and sometimes they lose, sometimes they have Catastrophic mistakes. So this is what's really interesting. You know, one of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with, like, high performers is helping people understand that if you're right, 99% of the time, your mistakes are more catastrophic.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Because you're, like, focused on the losses. Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Not just that you don't realize you're making a mistake. So if you're right 99% of the time, the 1% of the time that you're wrong, what is your mind going to be telling you?

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, I made this. Oh, maybe I'm not always right. Or maybe.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And that's why so many people, you know, like, it's. I don't think we cover this enough. We talk about rags to riches. We don't talk about riches to rags. But there are way more human beings on the planet that go from riches to rags than go from rags to riches. And sometimes people make catastrophic mistakes because of this positive ego, because I can handle it, but you can't. There are so many signals telling you to slow down. There are so many signals telling you this is a problem, this is not working out. So many people are telling you not to do it, and even your mind is telling you not to do it, but you can't afford to think that way. It is so scary. No, I can do it because I believe in myself. I can do it. You know, I gotta believe. Don't give up. Keep going. And it can be absolutely catastrophic.

[Lewis Howes]

So how do you know when you should reinforce the belief that you can accomplish, achieve, overcome something that you feel pulled or drawn to do, and instead of, oh, I'm not even gonna try at all.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

You know, how do you. What's the balance there?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It's a problem of perception. So if we look at how identity literally neuroscientifically shapes us, it shapes our perceptions. If I think I'm a loser and someone. I say hi to someone and they just say hi, and they look away. Maybe this person lost their parent this morning. But if I'm a loser, I will take normal data from the world and I will shape it. If I have a positive identity, I will also do that.

[Lewis Howes]

It's evidence reinforcing the belief that I have.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It's actually not evidence. My belief shapes the evidence. The evidence doesn't shape the belief.

[Lewis Howes]

My belief shapes the evidence. So I see something. It could be a neutral event, but then it's shaping the belief.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. And this is a huge problem where there are so many people I work with who are way too nice. And they're compassionate, and they're kind, and they're forgiving, and they get screwed time and time and time again. You know, they think to, oh, every human being on the planet deserves to be loved. So I'm gonna let someone walk all over me.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Walk all over me, or not even walk all over me. It's. I will let someone take advantage of me once, and I will forgive them, and I will let them take advantage of me again, and I will forgive them.

[Lewis Howes]

I feel like I did that for most of my life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

A lot of people do.

[Lewis Howes]

I feel like my. We were talking beforehand off camera, about, you know, how you went through a midlife crisis in the last few years. I don't know if you publicly shared that, but I feel like my midlife crisis was a couple years ago as well, and it was shedding 95% of relationships in my life that I had had, that I felt like were that I needed to create boundaries in those relationships.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But, Louis, when you shed those relationships, don't you become a mean person?

[Lewis Howes]

That's what I believed.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Shouldn't you be a caring person who maintains your. You want to be someone who maintains relationships.

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That's a good thing to be.

[Lewis Howes]

That's what I believed. And then it drained the life out of me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

Constantly giving and constantly giving.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And because you are. This is the positive identity. Oh, I want to be compassionate. I want to be great. Right. We feel so guilty when we step away from our positive identity.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And then that guilt, because I don't like the feeling of guilt. So you know what? I'm going to let this person take advantage of me again. So the goal. How do you tell. Positive identity will shape your perceptions as well. All identity will shape your perceptions. So what we want to do is to see the world as it is, free of all perception. And the only way you can do that is to get rid of identity.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Your identity. You're a hum car. This gets a bit tricky. But if I ask you, Louis, who are you? What would you say?

[Lewis Howes]

Well, my first thought is, I'm a loving, passionate wise man.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, that's what I would say.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, great. Right.

[Lewis Howes]

So I'm a loving, passionate wise man.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So we identify with all kinds of qualities. So I could say I'm a man, I'm a doctor, I'm a husband, I'm a father. And that's all part of my ego. So I don't know if this makes sense.

[Lewis Howes]

I can make the identity. Yeah. I'm a New York Times bestselling author. I'm a podcast. I identify with accolades.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You could identify with accolades, you could identify with vices. But here's the crazy thing. You were you before any of those things were true.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You will be you after all of those things are gone.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So one of the most interesting questions that's, you know, I struggled with is, when did I become a doctor? Is it the second I get my MD degree? So for me it was being on call. And there was one particular instance where there was a I. My pager went off and it was something called a rapid response. So a nurse was like, it's like a. Not quite an emergency. So I go into this room, semi emergency, semi about to be. If we don't do something right away, it's going to be an emergency. So I go into a room and there's a patient who's having a seizure. And so the nurse is there and I walk in and literally like 15 seconds later, my senior resident walks in. His name is Ken. He's an awesome guy. So Ken walks to the other side of the patient and he's like sitting there with his arms crossed. And so I start reporting to him because I'm an intern. I've been an intern for two weeks, finished medical school like a couple weeks ago. And so I say, ken is a 38 year old woman who's started having a seizure. Seems like about 90 seconds ago. And then he looks at me, he's like. And I said, ken, the patient's having a seizure. He said, ken, what should we do? It's like, what do you want to do? I don't know. IV lorazepam, like 1 milligram or 2 milligram. And he's like, which one do you want to do? 1 milligram or 2 milligrams? I'm like, 2 milligrams. It looks like it's a big seizure. And he's like, sounds good. And so what's really scary is a seizure isn't dangerous for like 60 seconds. And Ken is. Ken knows that everything is fine. But that's where, like you know when someone, when you're panicking, you want him to take over. It's like, I've been doing this for two weeks, but I actually have the information. I know the thing.

[Lewis Howes]

You have the. But you didn't have the autonomy yet. You didn't take over.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I didn't take the autonomy. Right. But I had the ability.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And so that's why Ken was awesome

[Lewis Howes]

is awesome, I'm sure, is being a good leader.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Being a good leader by not taking the responsibility from me. And so, you know, that was the moment I became a doctor, but I knew everything before then. If, after I retire, will I still be a doctor? It's a piece of my identity, but I've always been me, even before that. So accolades are not bad. Parts of our identity are not bad per se. They're a necessary part of living in the world, but we should step away from them as much as possible. At the end of the day, in this moment, I'm not a doctor, I'm just me. And what I really try to help people do is move from negative identity to positive identity. That's a step in the right direction. But then we want to shed all of that and recognize that we're just humans. And you are a wise, passionate man. You weren't that before in a weird way, but that's okay, right? Because you had to go through the negative versions of yourself to be the current version of yourself. And if you try to hold on to being a wise, passionate man, you will be in trouble. That too, is a stage.

[Lewis Howes]

So let that go, too.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Let that go. When you're ready, let it go.

[Lewis Howes]

Well, that was more for the giving an answer. You know, you're like, who are you? I was like, okay, I'm a Kai.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And this is where I spent seven years studying to become a monk. And the answer of who I am is nothing. I'm nothing. I'm empty. I'm just. I'm just an organism. I'm just a random set of neurons, tissue, thoughts, emotions, moving through the world.

[Lewis Howes]

And a soul.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And a soul. So that's our purest form.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So identity is of the mind. It's a part of psychology. But. And as we practice these, you know, states of. As we achieve states of meditation, you will feel emptiness.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And emptiness is a beautiful thing because all of your problems disappear. And then when you don't have an identity, see, if you believe that you are a wise man, and then you get some bit of information that is contrary to that.

[Lewis Howes]

You're like, oh, maybe I'm not.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And so then you're struggling, right? Because am I a wise man or am I not a wise man? Here's the crazy thing. You are a wise man, and you are also not a wise man.

[Lewis Howes]

And I'll make mistakes, and I'll.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You will make mistakes, right? And you will make mistakes that will lead to your wisdom, and you will make Mistakes that'll make you an idiot. Yes, I'm brilliant and I'm an idiot to hold multiple identities.

[Lewis Howes]

I know a lot and I know nothing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely right. So that's how we transcend. There's this word that gets thrown around a lot. So I think the ultimate goal is to transcend identity, to move away from all of those things. That all of those things are a. Of. Part. Part of you, but they're not you. Right. It's. It's a part of you, but it's not ultimately who you are. And when you step away from that, that's when you start. When you stop thinking of yourself as wise, then you will be able to recognize your mistakes and you will be able to recognize your wisdom.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Wisdom is a piece of you. It is not you. And so ultimately we're going to step away from all of that stuff.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

In my opinion, if you want to

[Lewis Howes]

be happy, how do you think about identity for yourself? Living in a material, physical world where you have to organize things and strategize the future and bring people together and plan and pay bills and bring in money, present yourself and have credentials and study. How do you think about identity personally?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Great. So this is such a weird thing, but what I want you to understand is that identity is of vritti. Vritti is a fluctuation within the mind. Identity is not an object, it is an activity.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, so I know ongoing and goes away.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, so I want you to literally think about this precisely. Okay. When you're taking a dump, are you a wise, passionate man?

[Lewis Howes]

I still am. I still am. But I'm in that moment taking a dump.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How would I know that you were a wise, passionate man? If I were to just.

[Lewis Howes]

It would be more of a self reflection, of a knowing. But someone else want to know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So in that moment, you're not a wife, you're just a dude taking a dump.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So this is what I mean. So. So your identity literally activates and deactivates. That's what people need to understand. It is. It is a. It is an energetic pattern. So we know this because, like we have this thing in, you know, in psychiatry, we talk about the narcissistic defense.

[Lewis Howes]

What is that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That is when we pump ourselves up when we feel threatened. So if I say, you're stupid, you say, no, I'm not. Here are all the reasons how I can prove to you that I'm not stupid. So that's narcissism. If you criticize a narcissist, they Will put you down, they'll attack you back, they'll pump themselves up. So identity, literally, if you look at, like, as you go through the day, right? And maybe I'll use another example. So I don't know if this is public or not, but I think you've just had a couple kids.

[Lewis Howes]

Can I. Yeah, yeah, it's public, right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So, you know, when you're holding one or both of your daughters, you are just a dad.

[Lewis Howes]

Just present.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You're just present, right. You're not even a dad. It's weird. We think a dad is everything that you do for your kids. When you're holding them in that moment and they're asleep in your arms or you're watching them sleep, you're not even a dad. You were just an organism that is in bliss, observing. Observing, right? You're just in that moment. And when you're doing that, like, someone else will see a dad in you, but in your mind, there's no identity of dad, right? There's identity of dad when they take their first steps, there's identity of dad. When you watch them graduate, there's maybe identity of dad if they get married one day, that's when there's identity of dad. But in the moments that you're with them, there's no identity. So identity is something that turns on and turns off. So for me, and this is what becomes important because we require identities to function in the world, right? I have to have an identity as a doctor in order to be a doctor. I can't let that go.

[Lewis Howes]

So it is important for you to step into identity perfect at different times

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

and then step out of it, right? When. So when someone comes at you, you need your ego. I'm not a positive. I deserve respect. What you are doing is not okay. I deserve better. But this is the key thing. And this, I think, gets misunderstood a lot because in, you know, in these contemplative traditions, we talk about being egoless. The goal isn't to be egoless. The goal is for you to be in control of your ego, not have your ego be in control of you.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So I think about my ego, and my identity is a guard dog. And if I tell it to attack, it attacks. There are times where it gets antsy on its own. A stranger comes in and my ego activates, But I need to take a step back. I need to tell the dog to calm down. You know, this is not. When a patient says, hey, Dr. K, I've been coming here for six months and I don't even Know if I'm getting better, right. And then I say, I am a Harvard trained psychiatrist. If you are not, I have thousands of patients that are getting better. You are not getting better.

[Lewis Howes]

You're the problem.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You're the problem. You are not doing the treatments properly. That's why, you know, it's not my fault. And then that, that naturally arises, the narcissistic defense naturally arises. And there may be times where I have to defend myself, and there may be times where I need to receive that criticism with, perceive that in the right way.

[Lewis Howes]

What? Is there a part of your identity or ego that still gets the best

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

of you every day, all the time? I think for me it's being a loser.

[Lewis Howes]

That's what you believe or think.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, I am a loser. Like, I'm like, literally, I lose every day. I make so many mistakes, you know, Like, I failed so many classes. I had to apply to medical school 120 times to get in. You know, it took me three years to get into med school. Even today, I'll make a YouTube video that sometimes has a million views in 10 days. Sometimes has 100,000 views in 10 days. I am a loser. So here's the other thing. The negative parts of our identity are only a problem if we make them a problem. And I can accept, of course, I'm a loser. That doesn't mean I'm not also a winner. I have both of these things within me. Right. I'm a good. I'm a good husband. Really important. And I'm a bad husband. The moment that I start believing that I am exclusively a good husband is the moment that my wife gets screwed.

[Lewis Howes]

Really?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. I need to accept that at times I'm a bad husband, at times I'm a good husband. No one on this planet is perfect. So there's a lot of data that shows that the more cognitively flexible you are around your identity, the better off you will be. And I don't know if this kind of makes sense. I know it sounds weird and I know it runs kind of contrary to some of the stuff that you may say, but I think you do this right. I think you must, in order to achieve what you've achieved, you must consider your weak parts. You must acknowledge 100%, you know? Right. That if I do not act in the right way, my baser nature will take control. Yeah, of course, there is an addict, a degenerate gamer who lives inside of me. And if I'm not careful, that will come out again.

[Lewis Howes]

Right? Right. There's an importance of Stepping into an identity that is more empowering than disempowering, I believe, as opposed to I'm a loser, there's no chance I'm going to win this game. I'm going to mess up. You know, if I'm having a disempowering identity or belief, it's probably not going to serve me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. So here's if you think you're a winner, it starts to become other people's fault, then you're right that there's a tension because now if you think of yourself as a winner and you get data that you're not winning now, your identity is threatened.

[Lewis Howes]

This is what happened to me also because here, first I was a loser and then I was like, I was picked last on teams, I was made fun of, I was in special needs classes. So all these things, I didn't have the psychological or emotional tools as an 8 year old on how to navigate the emotions of the world and fit into groups and societies and teams. So I just associated, oh, I'm picked last, I'm in special needs, I'm at the bottom of my class, I am a loser. Those I am statements I believed. Then I said, let me work so hard to improve this so that I'm never picked last and so that I'm a winner. And I did that for years and it worked. I started getting picked first, I started being the best on the team, whatever it is, through middle school and high school. But then everything became about winning. It was like, if I don't win then my identity is going to crumble, right? It was like, now I'm a loser. And so my whole life became threatened with the idea of if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser. That way I have to win at everything. And winning. I associated winning with being right. So if I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity like you said, by being right and winning in everything. Sports, business, relationships. Until I hit about 29 or 30 years old and I realized life was not about winning and losing, it was about win, win, how do I create a win win scenario even if I'm losing in a situation? And that became a part of my process was seeing everything from a lens of how do I create win, win, what does that look like? This, this experience instead of I need to be right, I need to win at all costs.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So, so I think there's, it's beautiful because people are probably asking, how do I, how Do I get from loser to winner to beyond? And. And I would even argue that you are doing what I'm saying.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So I. And people can even rewind this and pay attention to the subject of your sentences.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How do I create? Win, Win. The object is outside of you. I am a winner. I am a loser. So when we transcend identity, we don't focus on the ego. We focus on the action. We actually divorce our identity. We become independent of the action. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way in residency because, you know, you get trained to, like, you think as a doctor, like, I save lives. Right. Like, that's what we do.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Save lives. And then you, like, learn the hard way, like, you can't save a life.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. And people die and people die on your table.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

How does that feel not to get off? How does that feel when you're told your whole life, I'm going to go and save lives. And then you see someone, whether it be in residency or you watch someone die after an operation, and you're like, oh, we actually didn't save a life. And these are really good doctors around me. How did that feel the first time? Numb. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So people think it feels bad, but my experience was numbness. I remember. I mean, this is a bit graphic. And so I remember I was doing chest compressions on a guy who was having his third code in the hospital. And, like, code mean, like, so he's having a. An arrhythmia. So his heart was not beating. Yeah, so his heart was not beating the way it's supposed to. His heart was fluttering or fluttering, and so it wasn't able to beat. So he was a rather large dude. And. And I remember, like, doing chest compressions, and what they don't show you in the shows is that, like, sometimes when you start doing chest compressions, people will vomit.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And. And so I remember I had gloves on, and. And all I could really remember was, like, the feeling of the vomit hitting my elbows and then going down the arm and into the gloves. And.

[Lewis Howes]

And it's like in your gloves.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

In your gloves. Right. Like. And it's, like, nasty because, like, we don't like things like gloves to begin with. Like, if you've ever done the dishes,

[Lewis Howes]

the whole reason there's gloves is those dub stuff on your hands and then

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

that it's vomit and there's someone dying underneath you, and. And, you know, so then it's like, I remember the stress, the pressure, because, like, I was pushing and he's, like, vomiting on me. And I'm getting this stuff in my gloves. And like, there's a part of my mind that's like, maybe I should push less. That way he'll stop vomiting on me. But like, no, we're not going to push.

[Lewis Howes]

Trying to save the life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

We're trying to save a life. And so my experience from that was just after. Afterward, I was just numb. Like, I was just like, what the hell was that?

[Lewis Howes]

Did he come. Did. He did hesitate. He didn't make it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Didn't make it. I mean, he was.

[Lewis Howes]

There was no way he was gonna. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I mean, he was gone days before.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And so you just learn real quick, you know?

[Lewis Howes]

And.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And for me, it happened pretty quickly because I'd had this training, right. Like on yoga and meditation and understanding some of these things. But that, that. And there was another patient that came in with a couple of gunshot wounds when I was working a shift in the emergency room. And you learn very quickly that you don't have the power of life over death. You know, you just don't have that. It's not something that you're entitled to.

[Lewis Howes]

You can't save a lot. You could do your best to support life and staying.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

All you can do is act.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So there's a. There's a great principle from sort of like Eastern meditative traditions. As a human being, all you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions. And this is a beautiful way to get out of ego.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. I mean, it's the whole. What's the quote? Around, like planting seeds under. Of shade that you will not sit in the future. It's like, I don't know what that. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So. So it's, you know, the world is a good place when you plant a

[Lewis Howes]

seed under whose shade?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Shade you'll never sit in. Yeah, something like that. Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Like putting in this work that you won't get the benefit from. Yeah. But others will. And the beautiful thing is you have been benefiting from everyone else in history for your life now.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So I think it's more drastic than that even. Right. So this is not doing work for shade that will come. You. You're. You're entitled to plant a seed, but even then, you don't know that the shade will be there.

[Lewis Howes]

That's true.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So as a human being, as a doctor, you don't like, you can do everything. Right. So I work now with people who are like, suicidal and like, you can do everything that you can do. But you can never stop a human being from taking their own life.

[Lewis Howes]

You can try. That's hard as you can go.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And that's the huge part. Right. So the moment that you start, focus on your actions. What can I do? Not what happens. Too many people are held back by their ambitions. They're held back by the target. Because we think to ourselves, okay, like, if I don't have a goal, how am I going to motivate myself? But you have to be really careful about a goal as a source of motivation.

[Lewis Howes]

Should we have goals? Sure. Why do you hesitate?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So let's think about how the goal affects the motivational system. So I think we should have goals with care.

[Lewis Howes]

So we have goals without focusing on the outcome of the goal as part of our happiness.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. So we should be detached. We should have goals, but we should be detached from our goals, from the results. Yeah. So a way to put it, like, I'll kind of give a simple analogy to start, because then we're going to get technical. See, it's okay to want. Let's say I want a fried chicken sandwich. It's okay to want a fried chicken sandwich. But are you unhappy if you don't get it? Let's say you go to a restaurant, you're like, hey, can I get a fried chicken sandwich? You're like, oh, we're out. How do you respond to that?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So one of the biggest challenges for me. So I was planning on becoming a monk and then met my wife. And then that was like, you're not

[Lewis Howes]

allowed to be a monk. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And so I was. I was really, like, struggling internally because I had this idea of, like, okay, I'm going to be, like, free from attachment and celibacy, and I'm not going to be like these other humans who are, you know, falling in love.

[Lewis Howes]

You have all these lustful thoughts.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. No, I need to be better than that. Right. Lust is for animals. I will be greater. So one of my teachers.

[Lewis Howes]

So was it 70 years you studied to be a monk? Is that what it is? But when you were studying to be a monk.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I met my wife.

[Lewis Howes]

You weren't being a. You weren't living as a monk?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No, but I told her I was like, girl, look, I'm sorry, babe. This is a temporary thing. You know, this connection that we have. Like, really, it's. It's temporary. Yeah. Like, I'm. I'm planning on taking my vows. So it's like, it's fine for us to, you know, hang out.

[Lewis Howes]

And this would be my last hurrah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I just want you to know, out of respect, really, I want you to know, out of respect, that I'm going to take my vows a couple years from now.

[Lewis Howes]

Why hadn't you taken it yet within seven years?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Oh, I tried. So at the age of 21, I went to my teachers and I said, hey, I want to become a monk. And they said, being a monk is about giving up your life. You have nothing worth giving up, literally.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, so you have to have something.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly. You're just running away. You're running away. You haven't achieved anything. So first thing you should do is go back, get a doctoral degree.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow. And then give it all up.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And then give it all. Come back when you're 30. And so they let me come back and they're like, we'll continue teaching you and training you, but you don't get to take your vows until you're 30 years old and you have a doctoral degree. Those were their two requirements.

[Lewis Howes]

Then you could give it up and come live like that. But. Okay. Not everyone has done that to become a monk, though. Some people are younger when they become a monk. Right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, these were my teachers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right. So. So my teachers were amazing. They also knew me very well.

[Lewis Howes]

They're like, yeah, you really don't want this.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You know, you don't. You don't realize. And they. They explained something interesting to me. They said that becoming a monk is going to be harder than anything you do in the real world. So if you can't succeed in the real world, you're not going to succeed as a monk.

[Lewis Howes]

You'll fail as a monk.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, right. Wow. So that's how I ended up getting a target of, okay, I'm going to

[Lewis Howes]

become a doctor and do something big that I have to then sacrifice and give up.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. So that was also where then I'll be worthy.

[Lewis Howes]

Then my ego would be worthy to be a monk.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Not quite, but yeah, great joke. So this is what I had at that time. I had the ego of having no ego. I have no ego. Other people.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm so above everything, I'm beyond this.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And speaking of identity, you know, so. So I was.

[Lewis Howes]

That's an identity in itself.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That wasn't. It's an identity where I devalued the things that I had failed at.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So, like, in college, this is pretty classic. I don't know what your college experience was like, but, you know, like, you're into a girl and you ask her out and then she says no, and Then you tell your bros, you're like, yeah, I wasn't that insert.

[Lewis Howes]

Anyway, she's not beneath me. Anyways.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, like, it's like, like, whatever. So we devalue things to protect ourselves. We develop this identity.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. So. So when you're meeting her, you said, I'm going to be a monk. This is for fun for the next year or whatever. But then don't get too attached to me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, right, right. Because I, like, I didn't want to hurt her, you know, like, oh, I didn't want to hurt her.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Because, like, being in a relationship with me, like, when it ends, it's so painful for anybody that I'm with. Oh, my God, my compassion. I don't want to hurt you. From the parting of me.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, shoot. And so. Yeah. And then what happened?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So the first thing is she's, like, amazing, and she knows me well, so she was not worried at all. She's like, you're not going to become a monkey.

[Lewis Howes]

There's no way this is going to happen. You know, like, you're too attached to this medical stuff over here. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So then I went and decided to go to medical school and stuff like that. And it's really crazy because I never looked at my grades when I was in med school. And so I got a call from one of my mentors, and after graduation, he's like, where. Where are you? At the award ceremony. And I was like, I'm. I don't know.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm like.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I'm like, at home. And he's like, well, I'm presenting you with an award. Like, why aren't you here? I was like, I didn't even know I had gotten so divorced from the outcomes of my actions. I just showed up. And even when I. You know, sometimes when I was in residency, you get all these kids from Harvard who are, like, really great, and then they get a B and they're devastated. And I have to do this thing where I try to explain to them, you're not here for grades. Like, you got to understand it. At some point, you're going to be, like, in an elevator, and, you know, someone is going to start giving birth when you're trapped in an elevator.

[Lewis Howes]

And grades don't matter at that point.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And grades don't matter. You don't get to say, you know, and I'm a psychiatrist, but, like, I don't get to say, oh, you're in labor. Like, sorry, I'm a psychiatrist. I can't help you.

[Lewis Howes]

No, you have to do your duty.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You have to. So if you're on a plane, if

[Lewis Howes]

you're on a residency.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Residency in medical school is about, like learning how to be a doctor, because one day someone will depend on you. So it's not about being a great doctor, being at the top of your class. It's about focusing on learning the material for its own sake. And I think when you talk about making things win, win. I think if we really were to do like an X ray of your mental structure, we would see that you would be very focused on action. You'd be altering your perception. Right. You're not going to give yourself some pat on the back and, oh, I'm a winner and I'm a wise, compassionate man, you know, like. Like that. That's not. That's not the copium that you're going to be huffing, which is what the kids say nowadays.

[Lewis Howes]

Huffing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, huffing copium.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, that's what the kids say.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You know, so you're going to be really focused on, okay, like, how do I integrate this data? This is negative feedback. How do I incorporate this feedback? How do I plan on this feedback? There's no you involved. It's almost like you're, like, you know, it's just information coming in, calculation, change in the outside world. And people may think that that feels really sterile, but the other side of it is when you're holding your child, there's no ego there. There's just you being present. And if we look at action, what's really cool about action is action is when you're one with action. That's when you're the most present. So just focus on doing the thing. It is not in your power to have something happen.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

The results, results are out of your hands.

[Lewis Howes]

But focusing on the action today or this moment, the action, the next best action.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. And this is the problem. We were talking about goals. The problem with goals is that goals actually get us away from actions.

[Lewis Howes]

Really?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. How so when is a goal? It's a weird question. I know.

[Lewis Howes]

When is a goal? Well, if you create a goal with a timeline, you can have.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Is there ever a goal without a timeline?

[Lewis Howes]

Some people have a goal and say, I want to write a book or I want to launch a podcast or I want to be in a relationship.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

When do they say when? But when is it? Is it now?

[Lewis Howes]

They don't say when sometimes, but I think if they say when, even if

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I say I want to write a book, it's not today, it's in the future. All goals Are things that will happen. Ideally, all goals are in the future. When does action happen?

[Lewis Howes]

Now or when you take the action?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And when you take the action, when is it in that moment? Exactly. Action happens now. Goal is in the future. Fundamental. I know. It's so weird. We don't ask ourselves these questions. So this is the problem with goals. So this is what's really scary, is the most ambitious goal is the easiest to procrastinate on. I want to write a book. How long does that take? Oh, it takes two years. Okay, so you're saying it takes like 720 days. Why don't we just do a little bit more work in 719? So goals are really sneaky things, and it's not that they're bad. So our frontal lobes require some way to organize time. Organize time? Strategy. Right. So you need that for the sake of a goal. But if you're not careful, a goal

[Lewis Howes]

will induce procrastination because you seem, it's too much work. I can't do it right now. Or it's daunting or.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, if you're lucky, that's what you feel. Because then you know, oh, my God, this is overwhelmed. I need to fix this. What's way more dangerous is, oh, I can take care of it tomorrow. It's not even daunting.

[Lewis Howes]

You never take the action.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You never take the action. Right. So action is completely independent of goal. And accomplishing big goals involves taking lots of action. So focus on action, not on the goal.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

The other really interesting, scary neuroscience thing

[Lewis Howes]

is that what if someone says, okay, I don't have a goal, but I'm just taking the action? Like, I'm learning Spanish every day. I'm taking the action to practice Spanish every day. But if I just said, well, I don't have the goal to learn Spanish and be able to speak it, then why am I doing it? Why am I doing the action if there's no thing that I'm actually looking to step into just for the action's sake?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Great question. So goals serve a function. Once again, the goal here is not to get rid of this stuff. So in order to be a functional human being, if we're pursuing enlightenment, the enlightened person has no goals. They just exist.

[Lewis Howes]

They're just better than all the goals of the world. Their ego is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, they've abandoned all that stuff. They're just chilling. They're not above it all. They're not. Yeah, I know. So. So goals serve a neuroscientific purpose. They organize our frontal lobes. They allow us to sequence out things. So that's good. But a goal being used to sequence things. I'll give you an example. I'm going to the airport later today, so I had to pack. Yeah, but packing has. It's not like it's. It's a goal that I have to do, but I'm not, like, attached to it anyway. It just helps me organize the sequence of events and then I have to take the actions. There's no identity caught up in it. I'm not like, eh, Luis, look at me, trained at Harvard, packed my own undies, you know, I'm great, bro. So this is where goals are important, but we should never have them serve a greater function than what they really should be serving.

[Lewis Howes]

What should they be serving?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Helping us organize action. That's it.

[Lewis Howes]

But when you had a, you know, when your monk teacher said, go become a doctor or do Something and then come back to us when you're ready to give that thing up. And you said, all right, I'm going to go to medical school and I'm going to become a doctor. You had a goal in mind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

You needed, you wanted to accomplish something. Some type of learning experience, credibility. And there was a deadline to when you wanted to accomplish it by.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right, great.

[Lewis Howes]

So how did you navigate the goal and the actions with that?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So beautiful example. Because it's an example of I didn't care that I accomplished the goal. This is the really weird thing.

[Lewis Howes]

You didn't care if you were to accomplish it or not.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No. So I needed to accomplish it. Right. So goals are necessary, but we don't need to get attached to them. We don't need to get hung up. They're necessary steps. Just like packing. I have to pack.

[Lewis Howes]

But you weren't attached to the result.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I wasn't attached to the result.

[Lewis Howes]

If you became a doctor or not, you weren't attached to.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, well, I mean, I was attached, but I tried really hard not to be.

[Lewis Howes]

Gotcha.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. And that's why, like I never looked at my grades. I was like, okay, I'm gonna, like, someone will tell me if I fail. Yeah, like I'll get an email if I fail. And I didn't fail. So whatever. I'm focusing on learning the material.

[Lewis Howes]

That's good.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So I know it's, it's, it's. I love that you're asking these questions because it's so counterintuitive from the way that we think. Here's the reason that detachment from our goals is really. We want goals, we want to be detached. Here's why. If you have a stumble towards your goal and you are attached to it, you are more likely to give up. So your brain says, okay, why are we doing this? We are doing this in order to get this. And now we get a bit of information that, that becomes less likely. So then our brain says, okay, we're not going to achieve the goal. So I see this all the time in the patients that I work with who have early stage sobriety. And so it's really interesting because when they start to relapse, I've been sober for 160 days. I had one bad night of alcohol and now it's ruined. I lost all of my sobriety. What do you think they do the next day?

[Lewis Howes]

Go drink more?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. Now that it's busted, might as well. Right? So the self loathing, like all this kind of stuff. So if you if you want an outcome and something gets in the way, if you have a setback, your attachment to the outcome is going to cause you to give up.

[Lewis Howes]

So when someone has a setback, how do we, how should they process that setback and continue moving forward towards a goal whether they're attached or detached to the outcome?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Great question. Can I give another example for this? So this is also why people don't get started. So like, you know, I struggle with this a lot. Maybe this is something people can empathize with. If you're not sure you can achieve something, it's really hard to get started. So I would, I would do this thing where if I got like, I had like less than a 2.0 GPA, I had failed a lot of classes, so I was like, okay, I need to get straight A's for both.

[Lewis Howes]

But you became a medical doctor and I didn't.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Potato, potato.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So I did this thing where like, you know, since I needed A's, now I, I have like a 1.0 GPA. So I need a 4.0 to balance it out, right? I, I need to have an A. I can't afford to get a B in order to save my GPA stress. So, so then what would happen is if I got a B on my first test, I would drop the class because I can't hit my goal anymore. I'm going to give up. So it's so easy to not get started when we are attached to our goal. Because think about when I'm attached to the goal. I can't ask her out yet, bro, because I need her. I'm so in love. I can't handle, like, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So what am I going to do? I'm going to take her to the airport. I'm going to be there for her, but I'm never going to shoot my shot. I'm never going to take that chance. Friend zone, because I can't afford to lose. I have to win. I want to win. I have ambition, I have goals, I have dreams. And so unless it's going to work, I can't, I can't try. As we detach from the goal, right as we let go, which is challenging, it requires a lot of. There's a lot of emotion to. Towards it. I think a lot of people run away from the negative emotion. How do you act? I think your question was, how do you act? If you are attached to a goal, you accept that on this planet you cannot achieve it. It is not within your power to achieve. You know, there's something that I think is really scary about the society we live in. We've started taking things lying down. So, like. Like, nowadays in society, this is going to sound kind of weird, but, like, when. When we're on the brink of failure, we don't fight with defiance. Right. We're like, okay, if I'm going to lose, then I'm just going to give up. We've stopped fighting feudal battles, and that's so devastating.

[Lewis Howes]

What do you mean by this?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Like, if you're going to get screwed, go down fighting, Go all the way. Go all the way. Even if you. Even if, like, you know, I got my first 40 rejections to medical school, my next 40 rejections to medical school, and my uncle pulled me aside and he's like, bro, this is not working out. Like, go get a PhD. Like, go to plan B. Right? Like, come on, man. Like, your GPA is not changing. What are you expecting? You're an idiot. You're being stubborn. My uncle's a great guy, loves me very much, and it's good advice. Yeah, right.

[Lewis Howes]

You're just repeating insanity over and over and over.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. And so, like, this is where, like, we need to be defiant in the face of the world. Like, we need to keep. We need to be doing stupid action.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You know, like, don't. That's what it is to. When you say don't give up, what does that mean? That not giving up means being an idiot. Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. You know, I was reading about, like, Stranger Things and how many times Stranger Things got rejected.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You know, another good example of this is Harry Potter, like, got rejected over and over and over again.

[Lewis Howes]

Squid Games also is, like, 10 years it took for it to sell.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. Right. So we have to be really careful about goals, because if we attach ourselves to the goal and we get negative feedback, we are going to give up. So focus on the action. Right. And this is what's really important.

[Lewis Howes]

But how do you know when to give up? Like, sure, those things, they had a belief that these things should be in the world. These movies, these books, these things should be in the world. In my medical school, that should be happening. But if it goes 20 years and it doesn't happen, do you keep fighting until you burn everything down?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Here's. Here's. It's so tricky, but beautiful question. Give up with tranquility. So when you are at peace and you want to let something go, that's when you give up.

[Lewis Howes]

When you Feel like I've given everything I can or I'm okay with it

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

not coming into the world, right?

[Lewis Howes]

Like, I still feel like there's something inside of me, right?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So. So, like, this is a lesson I learned when someone has. So I had a patient who was 8 years old, had stage 4 cancer, was in the pediatric ICU. I was a medical student. I wasn't even a doctor then. And then how do you know when to pull the plug? Like, that's where I learned that lesson. Like, you can do everything, but you should be at peace. So if you feel like giving up is a failure, if you feel like giving up is giving into your fear, your internal emotional state will tell you what is right and what is wrong. So if you're giving into fear, don't do it right. You know, even if you're overly ambitious, you want to attain a state of tranquility. That's. That's where you should operate from. This is really important. I want to. Goal is out there. It's in the future. Action is now. Emotion. You have to be careful because we're oftentimes running away. The emotion tries to get you away from the here and now, right? I want to avoid the anxiety. I'm anxious. How do I not be anxious? So instead, what you should do is be. Be as tranquil as possible. Go for a walk, have a nice cup of tea. You know, sit with your thoughts. Stay off of all devices for 24 hours, and take a good, long, hard look at your goals and ask yourself, is it time to give up or not? The answer will come from in here. Don't make a pro con list. Don't do anything like, just ask yourself. So I went to a swami, which is like a monk, and after I failed for two years to get into med school, and I was like, hey, I don't know if I should give up or not. What do you think I should do? And then swami turns to me. He's like, you know, two years is not such a long time in life. Give it another year. He just kind of shrugged, right? So casual, just so simple. And I was like, okay, fine, I'm going to give it one more year. That's what I decided. Luckily, I got into one medical school, so tranquil mind, tranquil. And then decide. Then you'll know whether it's enough. It's not give up. Even that phrasing is wrong. It implies failure.

[Lewis Howes]

It's transition. It's.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No, no. But I think it's the right word in the sense that that's the way everyone thinks. Instead ask yourself, has this been enough? I work with patients who are trying to make it work in couples therapy. And what we get to, what I get to like emotionally is, is this enough? Have we tried enough? Have we tried treatment enough? Is this enough? And if the answer to that question is yes, then let it go.

[Lewis Howes]

There's a question I wanted to ask you about capable versus believing. You know, and maybe this ties to goal setting. At one point you said, I think you said there's a difference between we're being capable of achieving something or living into something versus believing you can achieve it. What is that difference of capable versus belief? And are there times when you believe you can do something but you're not capable? What does that do to someone?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I think belief and capability are two entirely different things. Belief is your estimation of your ability. Capability is your ability. So the gap between capability and there's a gap between what your estimation of what you can do and what you're capable of.

[Lewis Howes]

But when someone has the capabilities but not the belief, then what happens? They doubt themselves constantly. They're insecure, they're afraid. They don't have the skills, the talent, or the ability to do the thing if they worked at it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So I think, I mean, this is something we see all the time. Most human beings on the planet are far more capable than they believe.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So our belief. Let's understand where this comes from. Belief comes from your own estimation. It comes from your data. It comes from your cognitive biases, your perception, your emotions. You know, your fear will try to protect you by telling you that you can't do it. They'll try to trick you into believing that you are incapable. I don't put much stock in belief personally.

[Lewis Howes]

You don't personally, for yourself, Just in general.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

For my patients, I try to help them. Not put much stock in belief. Because let's understand what belief is. Belief is the absence of knowledge. By definition, I believe my keys are in my pocket. I don't know that. So belief is literally a mental hypothetical construct.

[Lewis Howes]

I believe it's possible.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I believe in God. That's very different from, I know God, I've seen God, I felt God. Right. So we'll use this. And I'm not trying to be like anti faith or anything like that, but it's kind of interesting, right? So. And because when I sit with people who do have intense faith, sometimes there's belief and there can be. There's value to belief too. But in general, I think, step away from your own Beliefs in general, what you should be doing is collecting data, not hypothesizing. Belief is in your head.

[Lewis Howes]

So should we not have belief in ourselves that we are capable of accomplishing goals or dreams?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I mean, so I think you should learn. Right. And I know this is like running contrary to some of the language that you use. I don't think we're. I think we end up in the same place.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But I. I think just. Just learn. Try. Okay? You don't believe in yourself. So what? You do believe in yourself. So what?

[Lewis Howes]

Try act either way.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Act. Exactly. Be independent of all of this stuff.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Because what is it that correlates with accomplishment? What is it correlates that correlates with success? It's action. So we use belief. Right. So this is why it's important to take action. Exactly right. So belief helps us take action sometimes, but this is where it's like we can do whatever kind of mental gymnastics you want and end up with action.

[Lewis Howes]

Take action either way, whether you believe

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

it or not, whether you believe it, whether you have goal, whatever. Right. Let's get to the root of action, action. And all of psychiatry and psychology and stuff is all these ways of helping people act. Karma, karma, the actions that you take. Here's something really interesting. What a lot of people don't realize about karma. Karma. 99 of karma is not visible. 99 of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought that is technically an action. Oh, my God. So this morning I was tired. I've been working here for nine days, and I didn't want to go to the gym, so I didn't go to the gym. And then it's a little bit cold outside, but I was like, you know what? I normally swim about 20 laps. And so it's like, I don't feel like swimming 20 laps, but I'm going to swim five. I felt like swimming zero.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It's like, I'm just going to get in the water. I'm going to swim five laps, and then I'm done. I got into the water. It was awful.

[Lewis Howes]

You're like, I want to get out.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I want to get out. I felt really tired. I'm kind of out of shape and, like, haven't had a great schedule. But, like, the way that we respond to ourselves, that's what forms our destiny. Everyone thinks karma is our actions. Out here, it's not the most. Think about how many actions do you take in your head every single day?

[Lewis Howes]

Thousands.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How do you respond Oh, I want to eat this. Okay, I'm going to eat it. Oh, I want to pull out my phone. I'm going to pull out my phone. That mental action, okay, let me pull out my phone. Costs you 60 minutes of your day. A 30 second distraction costs you an hour. The way that we respond to the impulses in our mind, this is the most important action. I believe I can't do it. Are you going to listen to that belief? This is why, like, oh, believe in yourself, not believe. That's not the question. Question is, when you believe something, how do you respond to your beliefs? Do I have a goal? Do I not have a goal? Not the important question. When you have a setback in your goal, how do you respond to that? The problem is that most human beings on the planet react. They don't respond automatic. There isn't awareness of what's going on, there isn't intention. And pay attention to your mind, you'll be stunned. There's a beautiful exercise that I offer people. Pay attention to how many thoughts you have that you've had before. So the crazy thing that a lot of people don't realize is most of the thinking is habits. It's not even logical, it's not real, it's automatic. It's just automatic. It's on repeat, it's on repeat. I'm a loser. This won't work. I can do it. And it's not that these thoughts are good or bad. Right. And I appreciate the perspectives.

[Lewis Howes]

It's not good or bad, right or wrong. It's what's. Is it serving you in an empowering way? Is it helping you to feel more harmony or not?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I mean, I think if people want to be rich and successful, they should ask those questions. You were better at that, Louis, than I am.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

What I'm about is not even the goal of all of that stuff. Is it empowering or not empowering? I would go. I'm going to step away from that. Just understand. So in. In Sanskrit, you know, they have the saying that avidya is the source of dukkha, ignorance is the source of suffering. And this is something, as a psychiatrist, I think is very true. Most of our suffering comes from not knowing what. What is going on, why is this happening?

[Lewis Howes]

Or not being aware.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Not being aware.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So much of our suffering in life comes from our reactions and our automatic patterns. I see this all the time. So can I use profanity?

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay. So one of my clients came to me and asked me, Dr. K, I don't know why I only attract boys. And we talked about it for a little bit, and we realized you attract everybody you choose.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of great people come up to you, but you're not attracted to them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And this is what's so cool. Like, people don't realize when they're suffering in life and life feels hard. I mean, I've worked with people who have had polysubstance addictions from the age of nine. And then you live this way for 19 years and you think there's no way you can get better. You're at the age of 28. You've been struggling with substances for 19 years, relatively young, but your whole experience has been struggling with this. And you think it's impossible. But you just don't understand yourself. You don't understand how you are responding to your impulses. You don't understand why you're using these substances that you're trying to run away from. Something is that is inside you. And you can try to control your behaviors as much as you want, but as long as that black flame that like tar, is inside you, no way that you're going to control your behavior. So understand yourself first. It's not for me to say you should do this or don't do this, or I can teach you how. I can't tell you what direction. That's for you to figure out. You decide for yourself, why are you so lazy? You don't want all the answers from me. Go and explore yourself. Pay attention to your mental actions. Pay attention to the way that you respond to the things around you. I think it was Carl Jung who said, I forget exactly what the quote is, but something about until we make our unconscious conscious, we will look at our lives and we'll think it's destiny even when it's in our control. I'm butchering the quote, but you know, it's crazy how much of our life we actually control, but we just have no awareness of it.

[Lewis Howes]

How much of our life do we control?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

All of the important parts.

[Lewis Howes]

How much of our thoughts do we control?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

None.

[Lewis Howes]

We don't control our thoughts.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No, the thought, the mind generates thoughts.

[Lewis Howes]

How much do we control our mind?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

None.

[Lewis Howes]

So do we have any control over our thinking or our mind?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

We have control over the way that we respond to our thought.

[Lewis Howes]

To the thought.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That's all we control.

[Lewis Howes]

Do we generate a thought or is a thought generated automatically?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

What are you thinking?

[Lewis Howes]

I'm thinking. You're touching my leg.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Did you have control over that? The generation of that thought.

[Lewis Howes]

Generation of you touching me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

The generation of the thought I was thinking. Can you control that happened?

[Lewis Howes]

I can think a different thought when it happens. I can shift the thinking. I can know that's happening and also think about something else.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

But it's all you can control.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So the mind. I mean, this is the problem is we can't. Everyone thinks we can control the mind and they try. It's like trying to swim up a waterfall. So when I do psychotherapy with a patient, let's say I've got a patient who's got suicidal ideation, so they want to kill themselves every single day. So they come in and I can't control their thoughts. They can't control their thoughts. They don't want to be suicidal, but the thought comes, thought comes, thought comes. Okay, so then they don't control their thoughts, but as we do work, we change the thoughts that are automatically generated in their mind.

[Lewis Howes]

You do?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. Right.

[Lewis Howes]

By responding to the thought differently when it comes in.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I talk to them in certain ways, I say certain things to them, and then as I say something. This is why a good psychiatrist is really important. Right. So the whole point of a good psychiatrist is that they can change your mind. You come in, you're suicidal. I engage in an evidence based practice. And I took this principle and turned it into a coaching program because I thought, hey, we're doing all this stuff for people who are suicidal. Why aren't we doing all this stuff for people who procrastinate, who are stuck, who want to write fiction? We can take these evidence based techniques because someone comes into my office and there are thousands of studies. That's why psychiatry is an evidence based practice. They're coming into my thought. There's certain things that I can say, certain things that I can do that will alter their thinking.

[Lewis Howes]

Really?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. Right. So you'll learn this soon enough. But I mean, you're married, but so you know your wife has certain thoughts in her head. She's upset. And you can do things to alter the pattern of her thinking. Sure. Right?

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You can say, oh, tell me what's wrong.

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I love you. Yeah. Or, yeah, hug her. Or. Or you can tell her how she can fix all of her problems.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. And so here, here's the really wild thing. We as human beings can affect the human beings around us. We can affect their thinking.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Which means by definition, her thinking is being shaped by who?

[Lewis Howes]

Me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Which means that from her mind, her thoughts are being generated by the people around her. You actually don't control. She doesn't control her thoughts. You control her thoughts, which is wild.

[Lewis Howes]

And she controls my thoughts.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Or influences them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Influences them. Yeah. There are other influences. So let's be clear. First thing is that thoughts are generated for you. That's why advertising is a thing. Because they figured out, if I can generate this thought in your head, then you'll take action. So everyone is doing thought control and this idea that, oh, I can control my thoughts, bro, you cannot.

[Lewis Howes]

So as a Harvard trained psychiatrist, then knowing that, what do you do to have better, I don't want to say control, but better awareness or a handle around the thoughts in your own mind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay.

[Lewis Howes]

That either support you or don't support you in your life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So. So what we do control is the way we respond to our thoughts, the way we're aware of our thoughts. So I, for example, my ego and

[Lewis Howes]

Viktor Frankl said, you know, it's, it's about stimulus, the space between the stimulus and response.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely right. So, so this is what a lot of people. So I'll give you a really interesting example of this. It's a bit tangential, but. So here's the key thing with thoughts, the key thing that we want to do is have distance from them, which is beautiful, what you said. So I'll give you a good example of this. If we look at mental illness and we rank the severity of mental illness, what we find is the worst. Mental illness has no space between stimulus and response. So when someone has psychosis or is delusional, I've had patients who will say, there is an electronic device in my brain that is shaping my thoughts. This sentence that they say is a thought in their head, but there is no space between this is a thought and this is reality.

[Lewis Howes]

They can't separate observing themselves, thinking or doing.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly right. So the thought is real, it's delusional. It's delusional. And the nature of delusion is when you believe your thoughts are real.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes, literally.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And I'm going to show you this beautiful scale. So there's psychosis, which is the worst. Then there is things like, let's say you have a mood disorder where I think I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm all this, my family would be better off without me.

[Lewis Howes]

Or a level of depression.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Or level of depression. Right. So. So, so as people become really depressed, they believe their thoughts. There's no space between thoughts and anything else. Then as they start to get a little bit better, okay, like, yeah, I feel this way. And there are times that I think my family would be better without me. But you know, I'm beginning to see, okay, maybe that's not the case. Then you're conflicted. Now there's a little bit of space between those two things. Another good example of this is when you have a panic attack, you don't think you're, you are dying. Then you know, less severe than panic disorder is like a generalized anxiety disorder. Right. It's not one to one. You can have that generalized anxiety disorder, but when, when your anxiety is less bad than you're. Okay, like I'm anxious about this, but it may not. I think this is going to happen. Or if I have ocd, my anxiety is something I believe unless I flick off the light Switch seven times. My house is going to burn down. I believe that there's no space between thought and, and belief. It's one and the same. And then I get anxious. Right. Oh, I think this could happen, but I don't, I'm, I acknowledge maybe it won't happen. And then we get to the normal state of mind, which is like, okay, I have thoughts, I believe most of them. I don't believe them. And then we get to you, which is you are very good at training yourself to disbelieve particular thoughts. That's what all, all these questions are. How do you empower yourself? Because you have disempowering thoughts and you choose not to believe them.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Or not. Let's stop me from taking actions in my life that I think are better actions than worse actions.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly. So, but, but that's the key thing there, is that the thought comes up. Oh, hey, Lewis, can I tell you something, bro? You're 40, 42, right. You're going to be 44, 45 when you compete in the Olympics.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Good luck.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How many, I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that's going to work out? Does your mind ever tell you, hey, bro, this is like, you know, you're competing against 20 year olds.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. If you're asking me personally, I think of, man, what about this story that I will get to share. So see the way when this works out, or if this works out. So either way, if it doesn't work out, the story of pursuing something that you care about.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So that's beautiful. So you're doing some cool mental jiu jitsu. You're like a matador. You didn't even address my question. So here's the scary thing. If you go back and you watch this and you look at your face, that fear is in you. I saw it in your face. Sure, sure.

[Lewis Howes]

There's a level of like, I think it's not worth going for unless there's

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

something that's, that's all of the way that you respond.

[Lewis Howes]

Easy. Why would I go for it?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

The way you respond to your thoughts, the way you disbelieve your thoughts. You know it's hard. I know it's hard. I can say it to you. It hurts to hear it. And you say, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. The way you respond to your thoughts, disbelieving your thoughts, moving away from your thoughts. So this is the spectrum of thinking.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. It's almost like being a coach. It's like seeing yourself as a coach rather than being the critic Very good with the thought. Right. It's like. It's rather like I am this thought. There's no separation of the thought. It's like, no, this is me. If I'm thinking it, it's my identity. That's why I wanted to start with identity of, like, if that's who you're identifying as and holding onto it, rather than saying, all right, it's a thought coming in. Let me distance myself and kind of observe it. And do I want to be the critic that continues to reinforce that thought? Or I can hold it there and still take actions and coach myself through it. And that's kind of the process.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Beautiful, right? So if you tunnel down into the precision of what you're doing, you are changing the way that you respond to your thoughts. And now here's the really cool and tricky thing. As you change the way that you respond to your thoughts, your thoughts will change.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But you did not create them.

[Lewis Howes]

No. Oh, really? So we don't create our thoughts?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No. All we do is so think about your. Your mind like a garden. We weed. Right. So we remove. We don't react to that thought, we don't give in to that thought. And over time, it will wither and then as certain thoughts. Because I don't know if this makes sense, the first moment you started believing in yourself was not something you had to choose. What matters is, when you had that thought of self belief, how did you respond to it? You protected it, you got around it. You're like, grow, baby, grow.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You cultivate. When you talk about an empowering mindset, what is the mechanism of an empowering mindset? It is responding to certain thoughts in a particular way, but you still don't control them. So over time, because it could be

[Lewis Howes]

a negative thought comes in, there could be something else, but it's what you nurture.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So. So this is what's really interesting. You know, I had a patient who was afraid that her fiance was cheating on him. I mean, sorry, on her. And so she was like, I want to check your text messages. And so she thought to herself, if I check his text messages, then I'll know that I can trust him. But as she feels the anxiety, she checks his text and she feels reassured. But the next day when she feels anxious. Let me check again, let me check again. Because her brain is learning that the antidote to anxiety is to check it. This is really important to understand. Whatever we feed in the mind grows. We don't control it, but we choose what we feed and we choose what we don't feed. We get to control action, we get to control the way we respond, but we don't even get to control what thought comes next.

[Lewis Howes]

Gosh.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Fingers crossed.

[Lewis Howes]

Now you hope that when you're nurturing and watering a thought, that thought will continue to expand and develop and grow more frequently and will pop up in your mind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That's what we get to control. Right. So that there's tons of neuroscience evidence for that. The neurons that fire together wire together. We have habitual patterns of thinking.

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So when we have. And. And then we can wire our brain to generate thoughts. And literally, the. The goal of my job is to help someone wire their brain so that their brain generates the right thoughts. But I want to be precise here. That doesn't mean you get to control what you think. You can simply plant your garden in a certain way.

[Lewis Howes]

That's interesting. So it's almost like, you know, tell me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing you say is your mind is a blank canvas or it's a desert, and you can start to respond to the thoughts that come to you and hopefully build a rainforest around you or a garden or some type of scenic thing that supports your mind in a more beautiful way.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Spot on with the general. Here's the key difference. I would say your mind is an untended garden. It's not a desert. It's not blank. Because if you think about it, your whole life, you've been giving into certain impulses. You've allowed weeds to grow out of control.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure. Let's say you're a blank canvas when you were born, then maybe. I don't know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, you don't know. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

But at the point of watching this, if you're in your 20s, 30s, or 40s or 50s, your mind is an untended garden.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely right.

[Lewis Howes]

And there might be some beautiful things and there might be a bunch of rocks that you don't want. And it's very. Figuring out how to tend to the beautiful things to create more harmony and peace inside of you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And things that will support your life rather than hold you down.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And the beautiful thing is that when you start doing this, you cultivate your mind. Life becomes easy.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes. Because now even when it's hard, it's easy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. So we struggle with motivation, but think about it. That's because your mind has this impulse over here and you're trying to wrench it over here. Right. Whereas once you start to do the right kind of reinforcing stuff, once you Start reinforcing the right behaviors. Once you start. Once you stop giving in to certain

[Lewis Howes]

thoughts, you won't have them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Huh?

[Lewis Howes]

It doesn't mean you won't have these.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It doesn't mean.

[Lewis Howes]

And so you don't respond to them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

Give in to them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So. So, for example, my ego is, like, really, like, it's really messed up because for years I got bullied. For years I was, you know, I struggled. And then I. I got into Harvard, and then I had an ego about that for a while, and it's still there. So what I do is I. I laugh at my ego. I'm like, there's that ego again. Sometimes I'll have fantasies.

[Lewis Howes]

Harvard psychiatrist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So. So, you know, on. On the car ride over here, I was thinking about how to make this podcast great. That was one of the questions you asked me. How do we make this great? I was like, there's my ego again. There's me trying to be great. Who am I to be great? Right? I'm. Dude, I'm a noob. I'm a failure. I'm a loser, and I'm great. So I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the best that I can. But it is not for me to be great. It is not for me to decide what is great and what is not great. So my ego's still there after all of these years? It's still there. My wife is hilarious about it because she mocks me so much. Right. So sometimes I'll say something really profound in conversation because sometimes I say things that are really proud.

[Lewis Howes]

She's like, oh, wow. Yeah, I should quote that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And I think it's a beautiful way to keep your ego in check.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure, of course.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right? So the way that I respond. So now my ego is not something to be conquered. It's like I'm cursed with it. And I've accepted that after so many years of. I've been meditating for 21 years, and my ego is still there. It's still there in the background. It still sneaks up. It still makes comparisons. There's no. I'm cursed. Ah, so what?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Am I going to let it? Am I going to try really hard to get rid of it? No.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It's there forever. So be it. I don't need to change. I don't need to be egoless. I'm a new. Like, who am I to be egoless? Am I some great person who should be egoless? No. Like, I'm some pathetic pos. Who struggles sometimes and does a good job. And I do right by people. I hold both of those things.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The school of greatness is brought to you in partnership with Airbnb. I've traveled to a lot of big events over the years, and one thing I've always appreciated is having a place that feels like home. Somewhere where you can reset, recharge, and really just enjoy the experience instead of just passing through. And that's part of what inspired me to host my properties on Airbnb. Because it's not just about creating extra income. It's about giving someone that same feeling. A place where they can land. A place where they can feel comfortable and really take in the moment. I like to share my favorite local spots as well. Places to eat, places to move your body. Things that can make the city feel alive. It's a simple way to help someone have a better experience while they're there. And with the FIFA World Cup 2026 coming, thousands of fans are going to be traveling into cities across the country. This is a chance to open your home, be a part of the energy and welcome people from all over the world. And if you've ever thought about hosting, this summer is a great time as we welcome FIFA World cup fans. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host DLPCs with Intel inside are built for the moments you plan and the moments you don't. They're for those all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet is taken. The times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you. Built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for an outlet and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] PCs built for you. If we went back to the. You said there was like a scale of mental disorders, I think you called it, or mental diseases or disorders or I don't know, diagnoses.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And psychosis is I guess like the highest on the scale of severity. Severity. And then maybe mood swings or some type of anxiety, you know, would be.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, so like panic disorders, you know, severe depression. Then like generalized like anxiety. Then there's like the normal level of anxiety. Then there's like the positive dimensions. Right. Of. Of understanding. And the highest dimension is understanding that you are not your mind. That the mind is just an object. It is your mind. We even say it. My mind, my hand. It is an object of its own that does whatever it wants to do. Just like your body. It's like you don't get to control whether you have diarrhea today. Like, your stomach is messed up today, your mind is messed up today. But just like your stomach, you can take care of your mind.

[Lewis Howes]

And so what would you call this? The scale of. You're just making it up. Severity around.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Well, actually, what technically is the scale of attachment to your thoughts?

[Lewis Howes]

Okay. I love this because anyone could relate to somewhere on this scale. Hopefully not many people relate to the psychosis, but anyone watching or listening can relate to. Yeah, I've had depressed thoughts or anxiety or stress or overwhelm or whatever it might be, or a feeling of laziness or a lack of motivation or I've ADHD or whatever it is. How does someone go from having a tended mind, a beautiful garden, or a tended garden in their mind to psychosis or to suicidal thinking over and over again? And is there a way for someone to go back from psychosis or suicidal thinking to a beautiful garden in their mind?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

What is that process of how they got from mood swings to suicide? And how can someone go back? What is that process?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, we're going to teach it to you right now. It's going to take about 30 seconds. Okay? So I want you to close your eyes, Louis, and I want you to observe your breath. I didn't say breathe. I didn't say change your breath. I didn't say take a deep breath. I said just observe it. You're doing that deep breathing thing again. You're breathing slow. Just observe it, don't change it. Can you breathe the way that you were when we were talking? Now you're artificially increasing the pace, right?

[Lewis Howes]

A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So here's the wild thing. The moment you are aware of something, you gain control. Literally, the part of your brain that monitors conflict within you is the part of your brain that is willpower.

[Lewis Howes]

And I was going against what you were trying to have me to do. I was like, no, I'm going to do what feels good to me.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But even then, you're controlling it. So if you pay attention, it is impossible for you to observe your breath and continue to breathe naturally. Impossible. Try it. You'll notice that the moment that you pay attention to it, it starts to alter.

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So in physics, this is like.

[Lewis Howes]

Because now I'm paying attention to it as opposed to just being right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And when you pay attention, you'll start to control it. You can try. I mean, maybe you can do it. I haven't been able to do it.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Because I was focusing on breathing rather than just talking. Right now I'm not thinking about breathing, how I'm just in and out.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So it's really cool. Awareness is the first step to control.

[Lewis Howes]

Why is this thing so hard for so many people who are stuck in their. Their minds that creates so much stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. Why is it so hard then, if it's so easy? Why is it so hard? Where people get stuck for years or decades in this way of thinking, they need addictions, alcohol, drugs, medication, to try to have some type of control over their thoughts or their body, their functions. Why is it so hard?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, beautiful question.

[Lewis Howes]

If what we just did right now, in 30 seconds, awareness. I have it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay. Let's be precise with our language.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I never said it was easy. Okay. I just said it was simple.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Biggest thing to understand, why is it. Okay, the simpler something.

[Lewis Howes]

Why is it so hard then?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

The simpler it is, the harder it is, the more complex it is, the easier it is. Okay. The simplest.

[Lewis Howes]

That should be your wife giving you a little. Sounds so good.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly. Right. So this is a really confusing thing, but if you look at like, you know, a master chef, it's simple for them. Yeah. Right. So it becomes easy at some point. But generally speaking, this is what's kind of really interesting. The things that are really hard are actually the easier things because there's like 15 different components. And then I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. There's a very interesting relationship between simplicity and hard. You know, if. If we took talk about, you know, to be a good dad is a simple thing, but.

[Lewis Howes]

But you got to do a lot

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

of things very hard.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So this is a big thing that we have to understand. The. The simplest things in life are actually the hardest. How do I love myself? It's simple. It's not complicated. It doesn't have 18 different steps. And you do this and you do this and you do this, but it's hard. It's very hard.

[Lewis Howes]

So it takes awareness consistently.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Exactly.

[Lewis Howes]

Which is hard.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That gets to why it's so hard

[Lewis Howes]

when you're distracted and overwhelmed and responsibilities

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

and let's look at why it's hard. The first reason why it's really hard is because we haven't been trying.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. We've never thought about it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

We've never thought. Literally. Literally, bro. I was 18 years old. I woke up on the morning of. I had set my alarm for 7am I had a Spanish final at 8am I set my alarm at 7am and I thought about how when I went to the Spanish final, I was going to be done in 15 minutes because I had skipped all the Spanish classes. I didn't know Spanish. What was I going to do? Stare at a piece of paper for three hours when I didn't know Spanish and I decided not to go? I just skipped my final F. If I just showed up, the professor had told me, if you show up, I'll give you a D. Yeah, just show up.

[Lewis Howes]

I don't know anything.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I don't know. I was so unaware. I was like. I was not a robot. I felt like I was swept up by my mind. I couldn't control my mind. I would plead with. I would beg and hope tomorrow. Go to class, bro. Go to class. Please, God, just go to class. And it wouldn't listen. Why not? Because I wasn't aware. I was trying to get it to do. I was not observing. Right. So my daughter. Here's a great example of just how powerful awareness is. My daughter was trying to close the box of a board game. I don't know if you've ever had this problem where, you know, if it's a little bit off, you can push down and it'll never close no matter how hard you push it. And then all it takes is just a little adjustment.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And then it'll slide right down. Easiest thing in the world. So when we don't understand ourselves, when we aren't aware of what the problem is, then we can exert. This is when you say, why is it so hard? Because everyone is trying to push the door open when you've got a pull. That's life. Understand yourself. Understand how you work. Understand that a goal can actually inhibit your motivation. If you get a little bit of feedback and the goal now feels harder, your. Your mind will tell you, hey, it's not worth investing in now. You have to overcome that. Understand that you actually don't control your thoughts. You can never control your thoughts. Imagine for a moment if you agree with me, if I've made a logical argument and you now understand that you can't control your thoughts. You ask, why is it so hard? Because everyone's trying to control their thoughts. They're trying to swim up a waterfall and you ask why it's hard. It's not complicated. You can't swim up A waterfall. Waterfall. Water go down, water don't go up.

[Lewis Howes]

So when you. When you go to, you know, Harvard, day one, psychiatry training, and. And they're like one on one of psychiatry training. You can't control your thoughts. Is that something they teach you?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No. So the crazy thing going to Harvard is they were teaching me all this stuff and they were like, this is how the mind works. And I was like, no, it isn't. Because I had learned about the mind in India. So they're teaching me what the subconscious is. They're teaching me all this stuff that is just one view of the mind. There's a different view of the mind, which I think is. It's not that their view of the mind is wrong. We use both. Right. But the way that the west studies the mind is problematic for one really simple reason, which is we have no way to actually measure the mind. If we look at how medicine works, how do we learn? How does science learn things? Science learns things through observation. What's going on on your chest? We're going to X ray you. What kind of bacteria is in your blood? We're going to do a blood culture. What's the X ray for? The mind? There's none. There's no way to detect the mind.

[Lewis Howes]

And you can't put a scan on the. A scan on the brain or on the head and get data from the mind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You can't. It's impossible. Right. So how do we know which part of the brain anxiety comes from? Because we do a brain scan, we see some part of the brain is lighting up, and then we ask you, what are you feeling? And we did that a thousand times, and we figured, okay, this part of the brain is where anxiety comes from.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So in India, the yogis did it a different way. They observed their own thoughts. This is the cool thing, because you're the only one I know. This is going to sound like a weird question, Louis. Am I thinking? Am I a thinking being or am I a robot? Do I. Am I conscious or am I just a hallucination?

[Lewis Howes]

In your perception, are you conscious? In my opinion, are you conscious?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How do you know?

[Lewis Howes]

It's based on my perception of the.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

What do you perceive?

[Lewis Howes]

I perceive you in front of me. This five senses. The. You know.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So do you have a sense of my thoughts and my consciousness? Do you have a sense that tells you that?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How? Tell me.

[Lewis Howes]

Belief.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay. Belief is different.

[Lewis Howes]

A perception.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

What are you perceiving? Pay attention. What are you perceiving? Can you see my thoughts?

[Lewis Howes]

You're seeing your actions and your behavior around.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, but I could be empty up.

[Lewis Howes]

Right, right, right. It's true.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You could be right.

[Lewis Howes]

I don't know for certainty.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So this is. This is insane.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I had a patient once in the neuro icu. We got consulted, and so they're like, yeah, we think something's wrong, like, he's depressed. So I. I go to the neuro icu. Guy got hit by a car and was in a coma for a while now. Was doing better. And then I'm like, hey, you know, so tell me a little bit about, you know, what's going on. How's your relationship? He's like, oh, you know, my wife is great. She's here every day. How's your relationship with your kids? Seems like kids are fine. What's your recovery look like? He's like, I'm gonna have to do physical therapy. It's hard, you know, it hurts. But, like, I'm expected to make a full recovery. What's going on at work? You know, my partners are fantastic. They're like, they're gonna cover things for three months, and I'll go back into the office maybe a month or two. So I'm kind of, like, confused, like, everything's going to be fine.

[Lewis Howes]

But he had a level of depression.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, some depression. So I go back day after day after day, because once you get consulted, you're responsible. And so, you know, the last day he's going to be discharged, like, bro, I got to be honest with you. I asked. I come in, I ask you all these questions. You say, nothing's wrong. But when I sit here, when I sit in the room with you, you seem depressed. Can you tell? Like, am I just, like, crazy? Like, what's going on here? And then he kind of starts, like, breaking down into tears, and I'm. And he says, like, you know, it's. It's crazy, but when I was in a coma, I lived a whole life. I had a family. I was married to a different person.

[Lewis Howes]

Come on.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I had two sons, not two daughters. And I realized that that was all fake, but, like, it hurts. Like, they're gone. I'm never going to see them again. Different people, just a completely different life.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. And it's really weird, but, like, you know, when I ask you, do I have thoughts, like, the only person that you know really exists. You could be in a coma right now.

[Lewis Howes]

That's true.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

This could all be a hallucination. This could be a dream.

[Lewis Howes]

Could be.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right?

[Lewis Howes]

Could be.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So these fundamental things Is it a dream? We'll find out at some point. Yeah, I mean, I think it's real, but maybe I'm hallucinating you. Who knows, you know? So Descartes sort of is like cogito ergo sum, right? I think, therefore I am. At the end of the day, you can't tell the difference between a hallucination and a dream, but at least there is something there that is dreaming. Even if it's a dream, even if you're in a coma, there is still someone in the coma. And as we understand some of these basic things, like this is why it's hard, because we don't understand that we're not our mind. You are that which experiences your mind, and no one else experiences your mind.

[Lewis Howes]

You are that which experiences your mind. You are the awareness of the experience of your mind.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Of course, because you can observe your thoughts. Can you see your eyes?

[Lewis Howes]

Not unless I have a mirror.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You are not seeing your eyes in a mirror. What are you seeing?

[Lewis Howes]

A reflection.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

There we go. So what you really are.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm observing it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You're observing. You are observing. I can observe my hand. I can observe my mind. This hand is not me. I own it. It's my hand, but it's not me. Even if, heaven forbid, something happened, I lost the hand, I'd still be me.

[Lewis Howes]

What is you?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That which observes. It's empty, egoless, nothing. It's just the capacity for observation. And so this is what's really cool.

[Lewis Howes]

So it's the being of you that observes everything around you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. So here's the crazy thing. You want to know what you are? You're not a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that thinks you're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that believes. You're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that has watched the construction. You have experienced every moment of your life. That's the only thing that makes you you. Ego is outside of that. We can construct the ego. Well done. You constructed a very healthy ego. We need a healthy ego.

[Lewis Howes]

Feet.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, it's nice. And Raj? Sick. Seems like you're not having problems with heart attacks and stuff, so you may not need to slow down. I'm sure you've learned you're a professional athlete. You've learned the value of rest 100% right? So that's okay. So as we understand these fundamentals, life becomes easier as we start recognizing that. Don't just chase goals. Don't just get willpower. If you're feeling tired, rest. Rest or Recognize. Imagine this. If your brain thinks something is a bad idea, how does it let you know it makes you feel tired? If you really don't feel like doing something, you should really ask yourself, what is my body and brain trying to tell me? I. So sad. People are in a relationship that's been dead for years, and the thought of seeing their partner makes them exhausted. That's your brain telling you something.

[Lewis Howes]

Something's off.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Something's off.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And it's not that this relationship has to end. You don't have to break up with the person, but you better damn well make a different relationship with them.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So you don't have to jump to the conclusions that your mind says. But like, if you're feeling tired, instead of just taking a supplement and powering through, ask yourself, why am I feeling tired? Spend more time with awareness. Then you'll know how to move the box a little bit. And then life becomes easy. You don't have to work so hard

[Lewis Howes]

for someone who's going through a mental challenge. Do you call it a mental diagnosis? A mental disorder, a mental disease?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Depends on what they're going through. You have to tell me what they're.

[Lewis Howes]

Then I'll tell you what I mean. I guess anything from anxiety to psychosis.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay.

[Lewis Howes]

Is that so?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Here, here's.

[Lewis Howes]

I don't want to. I don't want to categorize things the wrong way, I guess.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So if. If something is going on in your mind and possibly in your body that impairs your function, then we call it a mental illness.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So if it interferes with your ability to work, if it interferes with your ability to do school, if it interferes with your relationships, if it interferes with your physical health, if it interferes with your mental health, if your anxiety is so bad that you can't go see

[Lewis Howes]

your friends, you can't leave the house.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Well, it's not that it's impairment to function. If it's really hard to leave the house. Yes. Because so many people with depression are functional and empty.

[Lewis Howes]

Right, right, right, right. So that's a mental illness.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

That's an illness. So if it impairs function, that's the line.

[Lewis Howes]

How do you. When do you know you've healed a mental illness? And can you heal a mental illness without medicine?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

When do you know you. You've healed a mental illness? So what we shoot for in psychiatry is no longer impairment of function. So even if you're depressed, if you're able to enjoy life, if you're able to form relationships, go to Work. If the depression comes and goes a little bit, that's actually okay. That's not a mental illness anymore or it's in remission.

[Lewis Howes]

Gotcha.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Okay, So I personally believe that many mental illnesses can be healed or cured, but that is not something I can say scientifically. So we'll talk about remission because it could always come back. Sure, sure. But in my experience, you know, people will be in sustained remission, and that's very common. The majority of people who have a depressive episode only have one in their life. So then that begs kind of a philosophical question. Is it cured or is it just so dormant and not being triggered because your life is healthy? And are you, you know, does that kind of make sense?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And can. Can you heal a mental illness without medication?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I think so. Without saying it very clear. Medication never heals mental illness. And I think most psychiatrists would agree with me with that.

[Lewis Howes]

I don't think most people understand that. They think medication will heal them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No, medication manages your symptoms. Right. That's why. So if you have ADHD and you take a stimulant medication for a month, it's not like your ADHD is gone at the end of the month.

[Lewis Howes]

So meditation or medication cannot heal your mental illness.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

This I do not believe.

[Lewis Howes]

So. And you're a Harvard.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

There's maybe some exceptions to that. But generally speaking, 90, 99% of medications that we prescribe will manage symptoms. They will not heal anything.

[Lewis Howes]

What heals the symptoms so that the illness goes away? Awareness.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

No, healing the symptoms.

[Lewis Howes]

What alleviates the symptoms?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Symptoms are the fruit of the tree. The illness is the tree. So if we want to remove the symptom or remove the illness, well, that depends on you. So the reason people take medication is because they usually don't have the time, energy or money to do the healing,

[Lewis Howes]

which it takes time to sit there and observe yourself and meditate or do what's yourself. Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And do psychotherapy. So I think psychotherapy is the best evidence based practice for healing something.

[Lewis Howes]

What's the difference between psychotherapy and talk therapy?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Psychotherapy is the broader umbrella of things that we call talk therapy.

[Lewis Howes]

And it's under. Talk therapy is in psychotherapy.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. So much of psychotherapy is talking. But as an example, if you have something like ocd, we'll do something called exposure and response prevention. So if you have a phobia of like, if you're claustrophobic, talking about higher

[Lewis Howes]

claustrophobic, be in that as experiences.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And start to feel calm and peace.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Well, start. No, start to feel terrified and then survive terror. And then realize that terror is not to be feared.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. You're not going to die.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You're not going to die. Right. And you don't die. And then we're going to put you in that situation again and again and again.

[Lewis Howes]

Teach you how to relax.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Not even. Yeah, we're going to teach you how to relax. But actually we don't have to teach you. All you need to do is just survive. Wow. And then you will acclimatize to it. Sure. Right. So we're going to encourage some good neuroplasticity there.

[Lewis Howes]

And that's one of the best ways to overcome fear is by, you know, I guess, exposing yourself to the fear.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely. Right. So for fear based things, whether it's social anxiety, got to go to that party.

[Lewis Howes]

Go to a party. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Go get rejected by the girl.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Go get rejected. But yeah, absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

And know you're going to survive.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And know that you're going to survive. So confidence doesn't come from success, it comes from surviving failure. Right. When you believe in yourself and this is. Right. It's so easy to do. Isn't it

[Lewis Howes]

wonderful?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. No, but, but really like, it's, it's like. So we, you know, we can talk about, talk about your Olympic aspirations and stuff. Right. And it's like, I know, I know you're gonna, you're gonna charge into that because you have failed and you've picked yourself up off the mat.

[Lewis Howes]

100.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. And when I work with patients who have addictions, like their big thing is you really conquer an addiction when you learn to pick yourself up, not when you avoid falling down.

[Lewis Howes]

So when you fail. You know, I've never been drunk in my life and I've never done drugs or any of these things or been high. But I can assume how hard it could be to overcome the addiction of alcohol. For people that have been alcoholics or drinking consistently, I can assume it's extremely challenging without the right tools. Even with the right tools, it's still very difficult. Difficult. I can assume. Again, I've never experienced it. But it's not the person who has been an alcoholic or having alcoholic tendencies that never does it. It's when they relapse and drink and then they pick themselves up and go another 100 days without it or whatever it is.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. So if you think about it, damage control is a skill that you can learn just like anything else. So I think a lot of these can be. It's not clear how Much. It can be healed. So I wouldn't.

[Lewis Howes]

If you are managed.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And so I think for every person, somewhere in the middle. But I think that we have good evidence of healing.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So, for example, you know, some people who have things like ptsd, like, we can sort of, like, rewire their brain and kind of fix that and it kind of goes away. Other examples of this are things like personality disorders. So there are people with, like, borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder where we can like, do psychotherapy with them for some amount of time.

[Lewis Howes]

They also have to want it, right? They have to want.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

If you're resistant to it, you're not going to improve.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So I think they absolutely have to want it. But even wanting it is a tricky thing.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Because it's totally.

[Lewis Howes]

Miss.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. It's totally fine for a part of you to not want it.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. You don't want to face these parts of you. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But there has to be some part of you that is willing to do the work. Absolutely. I've never seen a case. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen. I've never seen a case of it working without the patient.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Just forcing the patient.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But a big part of what I do is people come into my office and are reluctant. So a big part of it is, even if you don't want it, even if. Because people are afraid, they don't come in wanting it. Right. They come in sometimes kicking and screaming.

[Lewis Howes]

No one wants to be wrong. No one wants to be like, something is wrong and bad with me. We don't want that.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes. Right.

[Lewis Howes]

Want to feel like, man, I'm a failure. I've messed up. I've got this thing that I can't figure out on my own. And that's why I have this addictive personality. Or I smoke or I drink or cheat or porn, whatever it is. Like, I do these things that don't feel good, and I don't want to admit that. No one wants to admit that something's wrong with them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. What we all want to do is solve our problems in secret and then come out triumphant.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Right. Or no one even knows we have the problem. I guess it's like, absolutely. We don't want to reveal that to the world because that's shame.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

That doesn't feel good.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But I do think we can heal for the most part. And I think even if we don't, it is in some people's karma to always have a brain that is going to produce Depressive thoughts. We know, for example, that there are some genetic polymorphisms and the serotonin transporters in your brain can be a little bit different. And so if they're a little bit shorter, we're more prone to things like depression. So there are some things about mental illness that are not fixable.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

But in my overwhelming. In my career, I've seen over a thousand patients. There are three that I can think of that I've been basically unable to help in a significant way.

[Lewis Howes]

So 99.9% of patients you've seen improve their mental illnesses or mental disorders or mental stresses into having a more empowering mind that makes them feel better.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And I would even go as far as to say that cure is the wrong target.

[Lewis Howes]

It's improvement. Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

It's.

[Lewis Howes]

Man.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. I think it's. Your life doesn't have to be so hard.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

You don't have to cure it. That's what everybody wants. Everyone wants to be completely free. Whereas I think that's once again the goal. Right. Like, I want to be free of this forever. I think the challenge, and this can be really depressing to hear, is like, yeah, this is going to be a part of you, but just because it's a part of you, it's so exhausting right now. But you can learn to live with it. It can be a part of it.

[Lewis Howes]

You. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I was addicted to video games. It's a huge part of who I am. I had a gigantic ego. It's a huge part of who I am, you know? And I think this is what's really weird. I've had patients will be like, yeah, cancer is the best thing that happened to me. I'm like, what are you. What are you smoking? But this is what's really crazy is life is about all of these things. It's about the good and the bad. To be detached from just wanting good and wanting to avoid bad at all costs. That's when we get into trouble.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

If all you want in life is the good stuff, you will not be in control of your own actions. Be able to embrace that negativity. Don't run away from it. Then you're. Then you have control. Control is about being independent of the responses that life sends your way. This thing sucks. I didn't want to go swimming today. It felt bad. It was torturous. And I.

[Lewis Howes]

Did you do 50 laps or five?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Five.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. You see, you did five, and then you were like, I'm done.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I did five. I forced my ass to get into the pool.

[Lewis Howes]

I thought you were going to say in the beginning, because we never finished what that story was, that you're like, okay, I got there, I did five, and then I kept going a few more. But you're like, I'm just doing what I said I was going to do.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So oftentimes I will do a little bit more. But today was a day where I was like, I did five, and that's enough. Yes, it's enough.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And I thought about, do I want to do more? Do I want to squeeze out one or two more? And I was like, not today.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm good. Yeah. Because you've been on the road for nine days. You've been working, you've been, you know, eating a little extra food here, probably.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And I actually haven't been eating extra food. That's the problem. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

You needed more calories. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I love it. I've got a couple of final questions for you that. Okay. But I want people to follow you. Healthy Gamer GG on YouTube, Spotify, social media, all the places. And I think it's HealthyGamer GG as well. What's the website for you?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. HealthyGamer GG.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of your content, I think you've got, you know, millions of subscribers over on YouTube, a lot of great stuff over on Instagram that I've been consuming. Books, all the different stuff. I want people to go check it out. HealthyGamer GG. And you have guides to mental health.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And a lot of these things are coming out here in the next month or two. So if people want to get more. More of this information, they can get some of your guides to mental health topics on love, relationships, et cetera. If they go to HealthyGamer GG, you'll get the information on how you can get some of these guides. And I think your guides are like, you know, 20 or 30 bucks or something. I think that they're very affordable. So I recommend people going and getting more information on you there. This question is something I ask everyone at the end. It's called the Three Truths. So hypothetical scenario. Even though you are egoless and formless and have no identity, but in the future, you have transcended the world. But in the future, let's hypothetical scenario. You get to live your life in this world exactly how you want to for the rest of your life, you get to create experience, accomplish or not accomplish goals how you want, but it's the last day on this earth for you.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And for whatever reason, all the content you've created is no longer with us in this world. So it either has to go with you or it's eliminated from the world. But you get to leave behind three lessons from all the work you've done or not done or accomplished or not accomplished. Three lessons that you would get to leave behind. I call it the Three truths.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Beautiful.

[Lewis Howes]

What would those be for you?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Number one is understanding is more important than effort. So that one's. And I. I think about this because I. I wonder, you know, if I. I teach all this stuff on. On the Internet and whatnot, but I think about what would I teach my kids? So definitely understanding is more important than effort. I think mistakes are a part of your journey, is another huge one. And I'd say the third thing is. The results of your life are determined by your actions. I know we said that we don't control our. But action is all you've got. So that's the one resource and kind of related to that. This is a huge thing. I think people don't realize that 99% of the actions that you take are in your head.

[Lewis Howes]

Mm.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Literally. So an action, the way you respond to your thoughts is an action.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. So how you think about a thought is an action.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

How you respond to a thought is with another thought. Sometimes that's what people do.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. They think, I'm a loser. And then they respond to it by confirming.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, they spiral.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So when we talk about a thought spiral, that is not controlling our response to thoughts. And literally, literally the most important thing that you can do is change the way and control the way that you respond to what your mind generates. Win, lose into win, win. You did it right there.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah. It sounds like if you can train or develop the skill of learning how to respond to your thoughts, you will live a much better life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Undoubtedly.

[Lewis Howes]

If that is the number one skill that you develop is how to respond to your thinking, undoubtedly. It will influence the quality or lack of quality of your life.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. So it'll change your actions, It'll change practically what your life looks like, and it'll change your peace.

[Lewis Howes]

100%. It'll impact your emotions, too.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

How you feel.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

So do thoughts influence feelings or feelings influence thoughts?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Both. So emotions shape our thoughts and thoughts shape our emotions. So usually this is the key thing is the first emotion we don't have much control over. But what we do with that emotion, that's the key thing.

[Lewis Howes]

Correct me if I'm wrong. I have a belief that most doctors, professors, extremely intelligent, successful academics think more Than they feel.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

They're more analytical than they feel.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

But it sounds like you have this unique experience of practicing yoga, meditation, being with monks for many years and deepening a spiritual. More of emotional practice, I would say in your body as well. Not only analytical, in your mind. Have you been able to navigate the mind emotion connection well. Or do you feel like you still had blockages in your body or in your emotions because you're in your head?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Both.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Right. So I think it never. Never. The work is never done.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And you're always going to have problems and that's okay. So we have this idea of like problems are only a problem if you don't know how to deal with them.

[Lewis Howes]

If you stay stuck in them.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

If you stay stuck in them. Right. So falling down is only an issue if you can't get back up. That's what I have to do. So that's the way I respond if I even hear it in my own head. To avoid myself from becoming a guru. Come. I will give you peace and joy. So what a lot of people. This is really fascinating. There's a lot of information about intelligence. So one interesting question I had is why isn't everyone a genius? So if you think about evolution, right, and the way that our bodies evolve and things like that, well, why wouldn't just everyone be smarter?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, why not?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So it turns out that intelligence is a double edged sword, especially really high. So a couple of really fascinating statistics. If you look at the top 10% of intelligence, those people make way more money than the top 1%.

[Lewis Howes]

Why? Because they're more naive. Also the top 1%, the top 9%, I guess, are more naive.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So if you take the 10 smartest people in a room of 100, they will make more money than the smartest person in the room.

[Lewis Howes]

Room.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So at some point intelligence becomes harmful.

[Lewis Howes]

Ah, because it's a lack of action probably. Right.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Well, it's a couple of things. One is that people who are very smart are actually more prone to depression.

[Lewis Howes]

Why?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Because they realize how screwed they are. They can calculate their problems way easier. Second thing is, the more intelligent you are, the more emotionally underdeveloped you become. Because your brain, you solve all your problems with intellect instead of emotion. So oftentimes people who have high IQ have lower eq. And the reason for this is because if I have, you know, a dominant hand, I'm going to use it all the time and my left hand will become weaker.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

So as, as intelligence becomes your tool of choice, other parts of your Brain will actually be underdeveloped.

[Lewis Howes]

They become more dormant.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

And you need both the body, the emotions, the mind, the body.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. The healthiest way to be is to use the full capacity of what's at your disposal. People with super high IQ are basically one trick ponies. And so there's some stuff that they're good at and some stuff that they're not good at.

[Lewis Howes]

And you want to have a range of skill sets.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Absolutely.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah. I mean, look at you, right? Curious, intellectual, thoughtful, physically on point and nothing emotionally connected.

[Lewis Howes]

Nothing at all.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

And nothing at all.

[Lewis Howes]

Nothing at all. You know, an ego that's formless.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Yeah, not yet, but you'll get there one day.

[Lewis Howes]

I'll ascend to your level.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Descend, descend,

[Lewis Howes]

become nothing. Final question for you. What is your definition of greatness?

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

I think it's to lean into being fully you. If you look at most people, this is going to sound kind of weird, but you pay attention to their head. They're running away from themselves. I don't want to be this. I want to be like this. I want to be like this person. I want to be like, you're not being you. And so then you look at what other people are doing and you're like, oh, this person wakes up at this time. And this person wakes up at this time. If I have time for a story. So, you know, I was in my first, the second, third week of medical school and I saw like all my colleagues would like study a lot, right? So we go to class and they'd be like chugging coffee and it's like 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, they're at the library. And I was trying to do that because I was like, I have all this stuff to learn. It just didn't work. So then I was, I didn't do great on my first set of tests and I was like, I got to figure this out. And I was like, I just can't work like these people. So instead I, I leaned into my yoga training, woke up at 4:30 every day, would study for two hours a day between 5 and 7 in the morning. And then I would go to class, finish class, go home, you know, just do whatever and then I'd go to sleep. So I only studied two hours a day in medical school. And the right two hours of the day, everything goes into my head, it's fresh. My absorption just drops so much when I'm fatigued. I'm not sleeping well because I've had so much caffeine. So lean into who you are. You have a unique set. You're a unique set of genetics, unique set of experiences. You have talents that other people can't even imagine. But as long as you are trying to be someone else, the strategy that worked for somebody else, worked for that set of genetics, worked at that time. You know we were talking earlier about Mask of Masculinity. It's a book that I think every dude should check out. This is the book that should have been, that people should be writing today. You were too early. I know.

[Lewis Howes]

I was right. Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Everyone's talking about masculinity now. You did it before. It was cool and so like you have to lean into who you are. That's how you're going to be. Great.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Can't live anybody else's life. Stop trying.

[Lewis Howes]

Okay. Thanks man. Powerful. Appreciate it.

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Great dude.

[Lewis Howes]

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening. Then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. Royal Caribbean takes next level to another level. Go all in on the world's boldest ships. Filled with mind blowing entertainment, world class dining and the the largest water parks at sea. And just when you think it couldn't

[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

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[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K)]

Hey everyone, it's me, Morgan Stewart and I have a new podcast called the Morgan Stewart Show. Join me each week as I talk about pop culture, fashion, my personal life and just a warning, I'm going to be giving my opinion on everything. I'll also have some really fun guests to join in on the fun. The Morgan Stewart show is out now. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts or watch full video on YouTube.