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You Should Ignore Yourself More

Channel: HealthyGamerGG
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUsOt5K_uk

Much suffering comes from obeying our impulses and negative emotions; learning to ignore them - resisting the impulse as a distinct skill from choosing the right action - is what the stoics and yogis discovered and is the foundation of impulse control.

Key points

The core problem: obeying impulses

  • Framed from addiction psychiatry: patients conquer addiction by learning to ignore their impulses and desires. Making the right choice today earns no "credit" tomorrow - people manage it for a few days then relapse to square one. This video is about breaking that cycle.

The Bhagavad Gita: Arjuna and Krishna

  • Arjuna despairs on the eve of a civil war, not wanting to kill cousins, friends, and teachers on the other side, and wants to flee the battlefield.
  • Krishna's teaching, framed as homeostasis: if you do nothing about an impulse or emotion, it passes and returns to baseline. Suffering comes from following emotions rather than not reacting. Fleeing the despair would lead to more suffering (the abusive cousins would chase him anyway).
  • Applied example: social anxiety -> avoid the party -> loneliness -> "I'm pathetic" -> the thoughts follow you to the next party. Giving in to the emotion perpetuates the cycle.
  • "Bridezilla" example: those who strive hardest for a perfect wedding often divorce within one to three years; unmet perfectionism breeds resentment that becomes the seed of the marriage's destruction.

Two discrete cognitive tasks

  • Doing the right thing is two separate tasks: (1) resisting the impulse (the burger) and (2) forcing the alternative (the salad). People fail because they focus only on the goal/outcome and never on avoiding the wrong thing.
  • Renovation analogy: you must break down the wall before building the new one. Society is so outcome-focused that "I didn't screw up today" is never counted as progress - but resisting is the necessary first step.
  • Neuroscience of addiction: six discrete deficiencies, one being the ability to resist impulses. Everyone Dr K has seen conquer addiction starts with doing nothing and learning to ignore their desires.

Technique 1: play the tape through to the end

  • Follow the timeline of a desire (an AA / peer-support concept). Example: arguing with a "noob" on Reddit for 45 minutes / 2,000 words (~1/40th of a book), getting downvoted, then spending another hour or two decompressing on games/TikTok - learning nothing. Studying this consequence engages the hippocampus and learning circuitry, teaching you the real price of giving in.

Technique 2: train impulse control

  • Impulse control is a trainable brain function. Meditation: Dr K has his four-year-old sit still while being tickled with a feather, resisting the urge to move - he says their ability to resist screens rose sharply as a result.
  • Trataka (fixed-point gazing at a candle flame without blinking), or any mindfulness/breath technique where you resist itches and shifts, strengthens the brain's capacity to resist impulses.
  • "Organic" practice: at a restaurant, do not order your favorite dish - pick your #2 or #3. The point is resisting the impulse to eat what you want (not forcing a disliked dish).

Why this matters now

  • Technology (cookies, notifications) and even food additives are engineered to trigger desires and cravings, making impulses harder to resist. Ignoring your impulses is the road the stoics and yogis took and the route to control over eating, technology use, and life.

Reception

  • Positive and reflective; many share their own "ignored the negative voice and my life opened up" stories. Recurring insight that focusing outward (on experiences and people) rather than on yourself makes you more open and curious.
  • The top comment (2,800) is a painful counter-story: a man who beat social anxiety at 25 by ignoring his inner critic, then was guilted by family into abandoning it - now stable but depressed, with his mother finally saying she is proud. Replies split between "do you even value her validation?" and warmth; several urge letting go of conditional parental approval.
  • A strongly-liked warning (multiple commenters): do not swing the pendulum too far - silencing the inner voice entirely can erode your sense of identity; better to "let it go in one ear and out the other" than to mute it.
  • Beloved joke: "And Krishna said to Arjun... hey bro, eat a salad," plus a run of transistor/resistor puns ("become a Resistor to be a healthy Transistor").
  • Practical endorsements of the techniques: the restaurant tip (you discover new favorites), still-sitting-while-the-microwave-runs, archers noting they already do fixed-point gazing, and "play the tape through" applied to chores/procrastination.
  • Some pushback: one notes the hard part is impulses NOT to do things (maintaining a sport habit), not just impulses to act; another says people lack incentive to resist because feeding the impulse beats whatever their life currently offers.
  • Several ex-Christian commenters caution that they were already raised to over-ignore themselves; they read the real message as "do not act on impulse," not "suppress all your wants," and stress you still deserve to be happy.