"I Can't Decide On A Career"
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I quit. I need a job to survive.

So this is a cycle that a lot of people go to. And the problem with this cycle is that it's a cycle. The basic problem with cycles is that we go through them over and over and over again. And if we think about why do we go through a cycle over and over and over again, like fundamentally, like what's going on? So the reason is because a cycle is driven by particular things. The reason that we end up going through this cycle is because we're actually continuously responding to objects.

certain emotional drivers. So for any cycle to continue, it requires an energy input. And the reason that this cycle is so common is because it actually has the same energetic input. Each of these steps actually increases energy in a particular way. And then once that energy reaches a critical threshold, then that energy drives us to action. And breaking this cycle is actually relatively simple, but it can be very difficult.

And what we need to understand is not these steps. We need to understand the arrows. Because what actually propagates the cycle? It's not the steps. It's the arrows. Does that make sense? This is what's moving us from here to here. So think about this for a moment. I get a job. The real money is not that you get a job. It's what happens over here that allows you to not, I can't stand this job anymore.

And if you can't stand this job, what results in the quitting? If you quit, what results in the not needing the job? So oftentimes what I find is that when people are in cycles, what they tend to do is they actually miss the important stuff, right? So I keep on like, I can't find someone. I can't find the right person. I keep on dating the wrong people. And it's like, I'm lonely. I need to date or I date someone. I date this someone. This person.

relationship is unhealthy or doesn't feel right, I break up, right? We can see these cycles. This happens a lot too. Or I got to get out of the house. I go out of the house. I try to socialize. I feel anxious. So there are a lot of these cycles and everyone focuses on these steps, but that's not where the money is. The money is right here. And the reason for that is because when human beings are

If you correctly diagnose a problem, they fix it. If a problem persists, that usually means there is incorrect diagnosis. Same is true for the medical profession. That's how we learn this stuff. If I diagnose you with the wrong thing and I keep treating you, you're going to keep having problems. So if we want to understand what drives us in this cycle of getting a job, can't stand this anymore, quitting, and I need a job, what it is is our emotional response.

We are victims to our emotional motivation, which is why we propagate this cycle. If y'all want to dive deep into the most important topics for our community, check out HG Memberships. The first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk. This is a vasana too. Your mind is vasanas all the way down. So the key thing about detachment is not that you don't have to,

So the first thing, let's start with I need a job. So when you need a job...

So like now I'm like, I have some amount of money. The money starts to run out. The desperation starts to rise. And as the desperation reaches a critical threshold, it triggers a motivational action, which is find a job. The panic signals happen. Find a job, find a job, find a job. So I find a job. I go walking down the street. Do, do, do, do, do, do.

Oh, look, it is a job. So if we look at it, what is it that drives me? What is it that results in a job? It is desperation. So the moment that I have a job, the desperation disappears, right? I no longer need a job. I have a job. I need a job. I have a job. And then what starts to happen? Well, how did I pick my job? Well, I just picked what I needed to because I was desperate. There's no selection of the job. And then what happens is this job isn't great.

So then what happens is like the emotional negativity starts to build up. My boss is not the best. The hours suck. The commute is too long. Negativity piles up, piles up, piles up until I am desperate. I can't stand this anymore. And once again, what is it that motivates us? Desperation. So then what do I do? I quit. Once again, desperation. And now that I quit, what happens? I bake through, I burn through whatever savings I have.

I need a job. Desperation increases, increases, increases. So as long as you are living a life where desperation is driving you, you will accept the bare minimum. It is about getting by today. And if your emotional strategy, if your life strategy is getting by today, you are going to get bodied right, left, and center. You will never build a life that is worth living if your goal is getting by.

If your motivation is the avoidance of desperation, you will never build a happy life. Because your goal is not joy. Your goal is not success. It is, I want to get rid of this. And this, by the way, is the way that our whole medical profession has trained us to be. We have a society that focuses on fixing problems, not building things. We need to fix the homelessness problem.

We need to fix, oh, you have pain? Let me give you ibuprofen. That'll take the pain away temporarily.

Now you're desperate. Take this pill. When the pill wears off, take another pill. When the pill wears off, take another pill. Take these six pills every single day. Don't build health, right? You'll never find a gym in a doctor's office. You'll never find a meditation room in a doctor's office, right? And the most shocking example of this, like I, you know, I talk about this a lot because it just really seared in my mind. I was on vascular surgery rotation and the patient was coming in for the third amputation. And the attending surgeon that I walk, I work with comes in. He's like, pfft.

Here we are again. This guy has literally removed pieces of this patient's feet. And he's like, you know, this is going to keep happening while you keep smoking, right? You got to stop smoking. And she's like, yeah, doc, I know. I'm so sorry. Lops off a piece of her foot, gives her a pamphlet. Here's how smoking is dangerous for you. I was like, my mind was blown. I was like, is that the extent of this conversation? Hey, you know, this is going to keep happening until you stop smoking.

let's activate the saw and remove the foot. I was like, what the fuck? I was a third year medical student at the time. Couldn't say a damn thing.

Burned in my mind. And you can even argue, fairly so, by the way. I'm not blaming the surgeon because it's not the surgeon's job, right? The surgeon's job is to lop things off. It's not their job to do smoking cessation counseling. But they put an order for it. And a nurse shows up while you're in the hospital and gives you some resources. Does a decent job. But this is what happens in our system is we fix problems. We don't create health. We just fix.

fix what is broken. And if in your life you are constantly fixing what is broken, you'll never break out of the cycle because you're not banking anything. So the cycle of desperation continues. Your primary motivation is desperation. I need a job. Let me find something. So how do we break out of the cycle? We break out of the cycle by literally breaking out of the cycle. Okay. So we're going to show you all what I mean. So, okay. I need a job.

So I get a job. When the desperation is at a low, you should keep looking for a job. Okay? I can't stand this anymore. I quit. When the desperation is at a high, I'm going to work with a therapist or a coach to stay happy and in the job while I find a better job. This is how we break out of cycles, right? We literally find alternatives, right?

But the problem is that this is hard. Why is it hard? Well, first of all, the economy sucks, right? So the deck is stacked against you. Let's remember that people who wind up in the cycle are not here because they're stupid. They're here because things are genuinely hard. If a bunch of people find themselves with a problem, right? Like we look at like malaria. Malaria affects a bunch of people in sub-Saharan Africa. Does it mean that they're dumb? No. Does it mean that they're weak? No. It means that there's a lot of mosquitoes with malaria.

If a lot of people are experiencing this in our society today, it means that there's a societal problem. The first of the societal problems is that we are training people to be emotionally responsive, mercurial. We get motivated by our emotions. And this starts very early, right? If you don't study, you're going to fail. Starts very early where we try to incentivize people from fear and desperation.

If you don't do this, you're going to get bullied. Or we bully you because you're not wearing the right clothes. So now you're motivated to dress based on the avoidance of negative emotion. This is how we live our lives, through the avoidance of negative emotion. And people who are very manipulative love this because they realize if I can create negative emotion in you, I can control your behavior. We see this a lot with the men that I work with, or I see this a lot with the men that I work with, where we guilt trip men for providing. It's a man's job to provide.

Happens with women too. With cognitive load and groceries. Oh my God, don't get me started. Right? So we do this a lot. And so the challenge though, is that when we talk about finding a better job, it's not that easy. Because first of all, the economy sucks. It's getting better, at least here in the US. But there's a second problem.

which is that what is it that motivates me to get a job? This is fueled by desperation. And why don't we find a better job? Because when we find a job, we're already exhausted. I've applied to 300 jobs. I'm tired. Now the desperation goes away. I can't motivate myself to find a better job. Let's be honest. It's not that easy. So then this cycle continues. I quit. And then what happens is I feel desperate.

So even this is a problem because now what's happening is our desperation creates the sense that I need a job. And since I have a desperation, I find the first thing that'll come. I'm not selective. And if I'm not selective for my job, what am I going to do? I'm not going to be able to stand it. This desperation here and here inevitably creates a situation that you cannot stand. This is how you break out of the cycle.

What propagates the cycle needs to change. If the driving force behind the cycle changes, the cycle will end, right? So when two people, when there's a blood feud, which we don't have much anymore, right?

Right. But I guess take your your favorite streamers that beef regularly. Right. So we still have something like blood feuds, the streamers that beef regularly. What's driving the cycle of blood feuds? It's vengeance. Right. There's no forgiveness. There's no compassion. There's no admitting what I did wrong. Everyone, both sides did something wrong. But what do they focus on? They focus on what the other side did wrong.

They never own up to their mistakes. I've been in beef with people before. Generally speaking, it goes a long way to say, hey, buddy, I screwed up in these ways. I'm sorry. And then they something cool happens, right? When you apologize to someone, if you're lucky, they apologize back. Yeah, I know, man. I wasn't the best either.

It's like, what the fuck did we just do here? You did this wrong. You did this wrong. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Like, what the? It's that easy. But some of y'all will say, but it's not that easy because I apologize and they say, yeah, screw you. And they don't accept responsibility. Fair enough. Those people exist too. And then what you do is distance yourself. Even when you apologize to someone who does not apologize back, you've taken some energy out of that cycle because you're not aggravating them. And then they'll get less aggressive.

And over time, what you want to do is just don't feed the cycle. Let this plant wither and die, but don't give it fertilizer. And then what you're going to do is find other relationships where people are apologetic when they do something wrong. They accept their mistakes and then your energy is going to go over there. You will literally spend less time thinking about this person. This person may try to aggravate you, right? Because they're trying to put energy into the cycle, but now your energy is somewhere else. You just let them leave them behind. They can have their life.

You're going to have yours. This is how you escape toxicity through forgiveness and distance. Still not as easy as I'm describing. I recognize that, right? This is the sketch of the strategy that works. Going back to the job thing, we have to escape this energy of desperation. See, even if I need a job, if I'm able to be patient and wait for the right job,

Can I manage that desperation a little bit better? When this job sucks, can I build my resilience a little bit? Can I try to improve the job a little bit? Can I seek some degree of help? Can I get some kind of support? We have to change whatever fuels the cycle. And then you all may say, okay, so like we can reduce the desperation. This is where we're working with a therapist or coach or someone like that, right? We have career coaching where they're pretty good at this kind of stuff.

right? Helping you understand where your motivation comes from. Sometimes it just, it's more efficient to work with someone, right? I don't need to ever work with a plumber. I can do everything by myself, but it's just easier to use a plumber sometimes because it'll get done within 24 hours. And if I tried to do it myself, who knows how long it'll take if you DIY it. And we're a society that has still underappreciated the value of working with someone else who specializes in human behavior, right? So you'll see this a lot, for example, like

You know, I gave a talk at Indeed a couple of years ago and they have like a on staff coach and Google has a whole coaching program, I think.

Right. So they have like these internal coaching programs because they figured out like, holy crap, like this actually helps. When I went through my executive coaching certification, like half the people in the room were like HR professionals. So people have figured out this stuff helps. But the main thing to understand is if you're stuck in this cycle, it's usually driven by desperation and you need to break out of that desperation. Reduce the desperation as much as possible.

Now, a lot of people may get confused by that because they're saying, if I reduce the desperation, then I won't act. You won't act in the same way. So once you remove the desperation, it makes space for another kind of motivation. So this is where once you have a job, what do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? Can you start to be a little bit more proactive and take on projects that may be more engaging?

to be more involved at your work, paradoxically to work harder. So this is something that a lot of people miss is that like when you're desperate and you take a job and you're like, oh, your mental lack of engagement is what makes it untenable.

So if you look at studies on health of a relationship, especially within the first six months, what you find is that someone's attitude towards the relationship heavily influences the health of the relationship. The attitude that someone has, if someone thinks, oh, this is a crappy relationship, I settled for this person, the relationship is going to be unhealthy.

Faith in the relationship literally determines the quality of the relationship. It's not the other way around. This is what a lot of people get confused. They think, oh, yeah, I have faith in the relationship because it's good. It's actually scientifically the reverse. I have faith in the relationship that makes it good. I have faith in a job that makes it better. I believe in this that makes it better. And we know this. This is placebo. I believe this medicine work. It makes it work.

Fucking weird, right? So notice the cycle of desperation. Reduce your desperation as much as possible. Create space for another kind of motivation to arise. Experiment a little bit and don't get complacent. Do you guys understand that desperation and complacency are part of a cycle? They're the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin. Once the desperation goes away, what am I left with?

Am I left with joy, drive, motivation? No, I'm left with complacency. And when the complacency goes away, I'm left with desperation. This is not just a problem of desperation. This is a problem of complacency. So pay attention to this cycle. Work on the desperation. Make space and actually put forth more effort. Don't let your effort be tied to your emotional desperation. Separate these two variables. The more you do that, the better things will become. Questions?

So Rockwell is asking, do you think coaching is a hidden gem in a world where people don't appreciate such ones that work with human behavior? So people who do work with coaches may have an advantage in the society. I think that's true. Absolutely. Right. So the coaching outcomes research is not great as a field. But I think that there's a reason why you see a lot of these companies investing in coaching because they have internal metrics which are not published. But even at like so, you know, I did a little bit of work at like Harvard Business School and they have like an internal coaching staff.

at fucking Harvard Business School. Like, it's crazy. So I think that there is an advantage, but we have to be a little bit careful because we don't have large scale studies showing exactly what the impact of coaching is. So we have like our own internal data that we presented at American Psychiatric Association about our core coaching program and specifically around technology addiction. But a lot of this stuff, we don't really have good science, right? We have the start of good science, but it's nowhere near as robust as what we have in the medical field.

Okay, so should I quit my job if I am too kind a person? After I work harder, I get new tasks while other people are slacking since I do it. So this is a really common problem.

Where here I am advocating that y'all work harder. And what a lot of people will say is that I work at a job where there are slackers and I work hard and this work doesn't get recognized. I've certainly worked in places like that before. And this is where there's kind of like a dual approach to this. So on the one hand, if you work extra hard consistently over time, and I'm talking about six months a year or two years.

Because oftentimes what happens is our ego gets in the way, right? So for example, like when you're a medical student and you're rotating somewhere, you think that the residents and interns are like, oh, they don't appreciate my hard work. And like this other person got honors and I only got a high pass. This is unfair. So then being an intern or a resident, you begin to realize that,

Oh, like one medical student is not really aware of what the other medical student is doing. So they think that they're working hard, but they're actually slacking off based on my view. So one of the biggest challenges is that this idea that I'm working harder than my colleagues is,

gets really tricky with ego because the ego will see how hard you work, but it won't see how hard other people work. A really good example of this is you look at any relationship and you ask the person, which one of you like works harder to maintain the relationship? Which one of you apologizes more? Which one of you apologizes first on average?

Which one of you does more of the chores? Most relationships, everyone will say, I do more, my partner does less. This is ego. So there's a big bias that I see a lot where someone will be like, they'll complain and they'll be like, but I did all this stuff and this person got a better grade. That's not fair. It's like, you don't actually know what the other person did, right? And you may not be quite as great as you think you are.

So there's ego that you have to be careful about when you think I work harder than everyone else. It doesn't mean that you don't. I'm just saying that's something you need to consider before you...

you know, judge someone. Second thing is when you work hard, there are two ways to work hard. So one is if you're working hard and consistently, then you need to assess whether the people that are around you appreciate that effort in some way. And hopefully they appreciate it. There are certain skills about highlighting that appreciation, making sure people recognize the work that you're putting in. There's also a very common problem that we see a lot, which is, so, you know, we have a career coaching program where,

you know, like this is a really common problem. Hard work doesn't necessarily correlate with value. Just because you're working hard doesn't mean that it is useful to people. This is a big cognitive bias that people have. The harder I work, the more valuable it should be. That's not always the case. So we worked with Ethan Evans, who is like a senior VP at Amazon, ran a team of like 800 people.

launched Amazon Prime Video. And Ethan was like, you know, the hard work should be in the direction of what your direct report wants. Having a pet project that they don't care about that you work really hard on isn't necessarily great. The third thing about working hard is that I tend to work hard in ways that benefit me. So this is a pet project.

So in 2015, when I was a second year resident, I started asking people about video game addiction. And I started to work on video game addiction. No one really cared. I applied for a chief resident position. Didn't get it. Best thing that ever happened to me. Right? People didn't appreciate the work that I do, but I didn't care. Because this is something that I am building for its own benefit. I wrote a book in 2018.

on video game addiction. A whole book. It's never seen the light of day because it's a piece of shit. Work that I did that was extra has no external value except I learn.

except I gain a competence, which has a ton of value. So it's okay to work hard. I'm a big fan of working hard. I think most people should probably be working harder. I think they should also be working smarter. The two aren't mutually exclusive. You know, people say work smarter, not harder. I don't think it's work smarter and harder. So I think when it comes to working hard, like it can be good, but it needs to be done in the right way.

So the one thing to avoid is if someone asks you to work extra hard in an area that doesn't, that you're not interested in, that doesn't benefit you in any way, and they don't appreciate the work that you do, I think occasionally it's okay, right? If someone asks you for a favor, I think you can do someone a solid help out a little bit. That's fine. And the way that I think about that, people ask me for help all the time. I'll do it. It doesn't help me, but it's fine. I'm going to make the world a better place.

I don't have to get compensated for every minute of work I do. But at the same time, if they're asking a lot and then they're like, oh yeah, we need you to fulfill, do these two jobs. And over time, that doesn't change or they don't acknowledge that, then that's a problem. So I don't think it's about kindness. I think it's about really thinking about, okay, are you working hard? Is that being recognized? And are you growing in some way because of it? Because it can have an additional value. Okay.