Rakesh Wadhwa:

While going through emotionally low phase in your life, how can you be in distractible?

 

Nir Eyal:

There are only two potential solutions. Either fix the source of the discomfort. Or learn tactics to cope with it in a healthier manner. So this is really about understanding what is in your scope of control. What can you do something about? And if you can do something about the problem, you absolutely should fix it. So if it's a difficult home life situation or a business problem, if you can fix it, I want you to fix it. Because that discomfort, that emotional discomfort is telling you something, it's a signal that something needs to be fixed. Now you can't fix every bad feeling. Right? Sometimes the only other answer is to learn tactics to cope with it. And so that's where we use these other techniques like the 10 minute rule. There are many others also like reimagining the task, reimagining the trigger. Re-imagining your temperament, lots of other tactics we can use. But it's only one of those techniques - fix the source of the problem or learn tactics to cope with it in a way that leads towards traction rather than distraction. And what we find is. That agency, that autonomy, that feeling in control is a huge factor in human happiness. So the more you are indistractible, the more you do what you say you're going to do, The more you live with personal integrity. This is how we get out of those low points, right? Depression is actually defined by stay where people feel that nothing they do matters. Nothing they do will change the situation. That's what it means to be depressed. And so the way to get out of that is to start feeling, wait a minute, I can affect change. When I say I'm going to do something. I do it. If I say I'm going to exercise, I do it. If I say, I'm going to spend time with my kids, I do it. If I say I see I'm going to work on that book, I want to write, or that project or that business, I'm trying to pitch.

That's what I do. This is exactly how we get out of those low points in our lives.