HealthyGamerGG - Addressing All 25 Year Old Thinkers

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Ever find yourself daydreaming about an imaginary relationship? Or fantasising about what you might say to a boss or collegue, or even imagining conversations with other people, but never acting on any of it? In today's episode, Dr. K addresses the problems faced by people like you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh my God, if only I knew everything that I know now then, then I could start living your life. Are, think for a second. You know everything that you know now. You can still start living your life, right? You can start living your life at 25. Oh, but I'm behind. So here we have the 25-year-old thinker. Now let's understand a couple of basic things about the mind. So in some people, their mind is just so, I would say, energetic and out of control. So sometimes our mind, if you really pay attention, yourself, the mind loves to think. And what we find is that these people kind of get trapped in their thoughts, right? So they have imaginary events, imaginary girlfriends, right? They're absorbed. They're unaware of their surroundings, imagines, right? So inner monologue becomes their entire reality. So there are a couple of things to understand about why this happens and what to do about it. This happens because the mind is out of our control. So the mind is an instrument, right? So it's just like any other part of our

body. And the goal of the body is that the body and mind should be controlled by you. The body should control you. You should control the body. Right. And we run into all kinds of problems when people are not in control of their bodies. So like in the worst case scenarios, we get things like incontinence. And so in the same way that we can sometimes lose control of our body, we lose control of our mind. And so if you look at this person, what they're, what they end up with is a mind that does whatever it wants to. And we're going to dive into why it does all of these things, everything is kind of stitched together. But there's one major principle to understand. See, we have to understand what the mind wants. So what does the mind hate more than anything else? What it hates more than anything else is boredom. So in the absence of

stimulus, the mind will run out of energy. See, in order for the mind to gain energy, it must have some kind of stimulus. So a very simple thing. Let's say I'm walking down the street and I see a fight break out in front of me. Oh my God. This is so much to think about. Or forget about walking down the street. If you look at the internet, what do we see all the time? We see drama. Why? Why does the internet love drama, right? Someone particular person does something. Someone makes a post about it. They said, oh, this person is not actually a saint. They did this to me. And then everyone talks about it. And then they react to it and all this kind of stuff. Right? This kind of stuff is going on right now with someone where an article came out that was talking about something bad that they did.

Why does the internet love this? Because our minds love it. Why do they love it? Because if there's a stimulus, then I get energy in the mind. And if the mind has energy, it runs, right? So this is what also confuses a lot of people, that a lot of people are really confused. Why does my mind, why is my mind anxious all the time? I don't feel good.

That's because the mind will take any kind of energy it can get. And anxiety produces a lot of energy. See, anytime you add tension to the mind, any time you try to wrestle the mind, the mind actually loves it. It gets way stronger because you try to control the anxiety and then you wrestle with it for a while and the anxiety comes roaring back twice as strong and then the mind is going again. Right. So the more anxiety we have, the more that the mind activates. So the first thing to look at is what happens to the energy of the mind with all of these things. The energy the mind increases. See, look, what's happening here? Created entire anthologies of imaginary events. Oh my God. The mind has discovered a way to feed itself. This is like an infinite money glit. for your mental energy.

Multiple imaginary girlfriends. Now I can engage with my thoughts. I don't require an external stimulus. I certainly don't require a real girlfriend, right? Because I can create a stimulus by myself. There's an inner monologue that becomes their entire reality. So they get absorbed in the mind. And then as the energy of the mind increases,

they lose control of her. Because now it's like a gigantic bull that thinks whatever it wants to, whenever the fuck it wants to, and screw you. So then we run into a couple of problems. So as the energy of the mind increases, there are a couple of other things at play. So as we become thinkers, we start to become worse at life, right? Because thinking is useful. So when thinking is combined with experience, this is when things go well, right?

So let's say I'm playing a game of League of Legends or Valerent or Dota or Starcraft or whatever, SF6. We're going to pick SF6 today. So I can theory craft all I want in Street Fighter 6. It doesn't actually make me good at the game. And if all I do is I play mindlessly, I'm also not going to be good at the game. If I never think about my games, I'm never going to be good. So success in life comes from the combination of thought plus experience.

But what happens with the thinker is that they don't have any experience. They just have thoughts, right? Their inner monologue becomes a substitute for reality. So the first thing is that the mind loves this energy because this person, this person is a 25-year-old thinker. They've been a thinker for way longer than just this year. become a thinker at 25. They've been thinking more and more and more. And if you're a 25-year-old thinker, you'll notice that this pattern probably started in your teenage years. And then as you grew more and more dependent on thinking, you got worse at life because you started using thought as a substitute

for experience. So then your actual experience goes down. Your actual performance goes down. And then you end up here, right? Oh my God. If only I knew everything that I know now then, then I could start living your life. Arre, think for a second. You know everything that you know now. You can still start living your life. Right? You can start living your life at 25. Oh, but I'm behind. And so now we get to a really, really important problem of this. Okay. So why do we imagine going back in time? So let's think about this, right? So you have all this knowledge now. So start living. But then the thinker says, why not? Well, because if I start living now, then like, I don't know, I'm behind. And this is where we get to a huge problem with the thinker, another major, major, major problem, which explains this

and this and this and this. So generally speaking, the more that we think, the less emotionally connected we become. And as we have negative emotions that pile up, right, because now I've lived a life or I'm not doing anything for 25 years, I'm behind, this leads to negative emotion. Not having girlfriends or boyfriends or whatever, non-binary friends, leads to negative emotion. So not accomplishing anything in life is going to lead to negative emotion. And now this is where we have our imaginary stuff come in. So if we look at studies on things like maladaptive daydreaming, we know that imagination is an emotional coping mechanism. So then what ends up happening is we sort of have all these negative emotions and then we start imagining other things. And while we're

imagining how great things could be, we feel a little bit better. Because in our brain, our brain thinks we can't actually improve. We can't start now. It's too late. I'm too far behind. I can't start dating at 25. What ridiculousness is this? I'm just supposed to, I can't, it's too late.

I was supposed to start dating when I was 15. And if I started dating when I was 15, then I would have gotten my first long-term relationship in college when I was 19. I would have had sex with at least five people by now. And then since I'm 25, I would be able to like engage with other 25-year-olds on the same playing field. But it's too late now. So I'm not going to engage. And this hurts.

And then the negative emotions require something like maladaptive daydreaming or imagination to salve our wounds. But it gets worse than this. So there is absolutely a mechanism of, so let's think about what to add. Okay. So the first thing is that this pattern increases the energy in the mind to the point where it's probably overwhelming. But your mind is never chill, right? Your mind is never bored.

If you look at this, there may be some kind of like existential boredness. But there is not a boredness in the moment, right? So you've gotten so good at your inner monologue and constructing things in your mind that you're not bored. Your mind is occupied. Existentially, you're bored. You're not fucking doing anything all day. So like generally speaking, you feel bored. But in your mind, in the absence of these external stimuli, your mind has created this internal stimulus.

There's always energy in the mind because you've figured out your infinite money glitch of thoughts. There's negative emotions. And then your mind copes. And the next thing that we kind of think about is that as our experience decreases, okay, then we become more incapable. And as we become more incapable, we are left with a choice. And this is the real tragedy of this. So I want y'all to think about for a second what it's like to be this person. See, if you believe that you're already too far behind and that you can't accomplish anything in life, what are you left with?

So the thought of not accomplishing anything means that you feel terrible about yourself, yet. yada yada yada and you can't fix the problem so then your brain looks at this situation and says okay it's impossible to get a girlfriend so what we're going to do instead is we're going to do the best that we can so we'll create this artificial life that will be like a shadow of the thing right we can't get the object itself but we can get a shadow of it and that's the best that we can do so internally subconsciously your brain is just doing what you want it to it's trying to work for you and if you've decided that you can't actually do anything then what it's going to do is create imagine of those things. And let's take a quick look at another example of that. Okay. So imagine success to

cope instead of actually achieving it, right? Has no interest in any career, just wants to think. And this is the most damning of them all. Things are always better in my head. So let's understand that. This is what really keeps people stuck. Because things are better in your head. So when you think about, okay, I'm going to go to a party and I'm going to talk to people and like, I'm going to crack some jokes. And you sit down and you think about how all the jokes are going to go and you map them out and you figure everything out. And then you show up at the party. And then you're in the middle of telling your joke and you joke and you cough a little bit. You choke on your drink. You end up spewing your drink all over this person in front of you and she's pretty cute. And then everyone's like,

ew. And then you're like, fuck. And then your brain is like, okay, well, I guess that's never going to work. So why bother? Let's instead, let's, because it feels good, right? When you're thinking about how everything is going to play out and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to crack this joke. And everyone's going to laugh. And then someone's going to fall in love with me. And then I'm to make out with someone and then your mind is like, let's go. And then while you're lost in the fantasy, you're lost in this emotional coping mechanism. And then when the reality hits, then you're in big trouble because things don't go the right way in the real world as they do in your head.

And so this is really, really devastating. Then the problem is that this becomes true, right? This is not like theoretical at this point. Now your mind has data because things are always better in your head, clearly, right? Because in the head, you fucking manufacture everything. And the reality of the situation is that the real world kind of, difficult and things don't go that way. And so then you sort of feel like anytime you engage with the real world, it's going to, you're doomed to failure. And then the whole cycle repeats. And you're

kind of stuck in your head. The real tragedy about the situation is that the 25-year-old thinker actually works way harder than someone who is successful. This is the real tragedy. They think, oh, I'm lazy. I'm not exerting any effort. And those people out there are so disciplined. They actually work way harder. I know it sounds kind of weird, but let me explain. So, we look at friction, there are two coefficients of friction. There's something called the static coefficient of friction and the kinetic coefficient of friction, which means anytime you start moving something, the process of getting something moving is way harder than keeping it moving. So usually the kinetic coefficient of friction is lower than the static coefficient of friction.

So if I'm trying to like push a box across the room, getting the box to start moving is the hardest part and then it moves on its own. So if we look at life, acceleration, is what takes energy. And this is true in physics as well, right? F equals MA. The force exerted equals mass times acceleration. Velocity doesn't enter the picture at all. Very important to understand.

So at the 25-year-old thinker, what do they do? They start and they stop. Let me try to go do something and then they stop. And they work themselves up. They push, they push, they push, they push. They overcome that coefficient of static friction and they get things moving. But their velocity is not very good.

And they look at other people who are moving along very fast at high velocity. and they think to themselves, oh my God, I'm moving at one kilometer per hour, and this other person is moving at 60 kilometers per hour. There's no way in which I'll catch up. And so then they slam on the brakes, which is also exerting energy. So this is what I've seen as a psychiatrist. The people who move forward in life, it's not about catching up or falling behind or anything like that.

It's simply about not quitting. See, I want to just think about this for a second. How far are you going to get? If you're driving a car and I slam on the gas and then slam on the brakes, and then slam on the brakes, and then slam on the brakes. and then slam on the gas and then slam on the brakes. How far am I going to get? And how much gas am I going to use?

Versus someone who starts slow, just gentle pressure on the brakes, I mean, on the accelerator, right? You start to pick up a little bit of speed, but you're not pushing very hard. This is the real tragedy of the thinker. Is that the thinker actually exerts way more effort because even doing a small thing requires so much energy because the brain is telling you,

oh, you're not going to be good at this. It's better in my head. life ends up sucking yada yada yada blah blah blah blah blah blah and this is what i see in the people who are stuck and this is why i believe so you guys think like oh my god dr k believes in everybody he has such a heart of gold that he has faith in us and i'm so fucking far behind i don't have faith in you because of whatever positive whatever the fuck i have faith in you because of physics because if you start accelerating the same laws of physics apply to you as everybody else in the universe the same laws of psychology apply to you as everybody else this is how i'm able to

to, I feel personally attacked and oh my god, this is me and whatever. Like, why do you all, you guys think I'm actually telepathic? You think, because people are even watching this 30 days from now and they're like, oh my God, this is me. Do you think I am so amazing that I telepathically read your mind in the future 30 days from now? And I have such an amazing insight. Oh my God. How is this guy stretching across time and space to read my mind? Oh my God. No. No. Come on, chat. It's not, I'm not psychic. It's just the fucking, the mind. And our brains adhere to principles. And if you understand these principles, then you can fix your life.

The reason that y'all are stuck, the reason that the 25-year-old thinker is stuck is because they have all kinds of erroneous conclusions, and they have a mind that is not working for them. If you have a car without a steering wheel, or the steering wheel turns whatever the fuck way it wants to go, which is literally what happens in a 25-year-old thinker, right? Today it wakes up and we're like, hard right turn, let's go, slam the gas, let's pump the nitro, hard right turn. And then tomorrow you wake up and you're like, let's slam the brakes and hard left turn. You start, you stop, you go one direction, you go the other direction. And then what does the mind conclude? The mind concludes this shit doesn't work. So instead what I'm going to do, I'm going to sit on my ass and I'm going to think about imaginary things. Because when you think imaginary things, then you control the laws of physics. That's the whole fucking, that's the advantage of imagination. Like you get to control both sides. You get to ask someone out and they get to say, oh my God, even though I'm dating someone. I need you.

I'm so torn because I really love you, but I'm in this relationship. And you're like, oh my God, yeah, that'd be great. You get to control both sides to like, what the fuck? So it doesn't obey the laws of physics. And we get stuck in this crap. So how do we overcome this? First thing is don't quit. Just don't quit.

There's one thing to understand, which is that in this part, your mind is really, really going to dislike it. Because the mind, now, think about what it's got. It's got a very refined, it's leveled up its imagination capability. You're level 100 at the imagination skill. And so the mind, anytime you go to reality, this is the whole fucking problem, right? Is you go into reality and things are always better in my head. So there is a very subtle point here.

But as long as you are expecting things to be as good as in your head, it's never going to work. So interestingly enough, what a thinker needs to do, the first thing they need to do is take the L. You have to acknowledge that for some amount of time, this is going to be bruising. This is going to be rough. Because remember that real progress comes through thinking and experience. And then unless you are practiced, which by the way, and we'll get to practice in a second, unless you are practiced, things aren't going to go well. So I can imagine myself doing a backflip.

If I try to do a backflip, but my body didn't flip the way I imagined it. So how do you bridge the gap between what you think and what reality is? How can you make reality what you think? Practice, practice, practice, practice. And now we see why there is such a gap between thought and reality for these people, because they never experience, they never actually do. so they're never actually practicing. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The one thing that they need to make their imagination a reality is experience. Experience is the best thing for them because they have none of it. And experience will do a couple of things. The first thing it'll do is it'll actually make you better and then your performance will closer approximate what goes on in your head.

The second thing that'll happen is that as you gain experience, the inputs of information, your axioms will change. See, the reason that you feel so emotional bad when you're a 25-year-old thinker is you have this idea of what you should be. But this is theory crafting. It's not data.

And so the other way to move forward, what is the best way to disabuse someone who is theory crafting in a game? Hey, bro, if you think it fucking works, cue up and show us, right? Get to Grandmaster or Champion or Challenger or Immortal or whatever the fuck. Divine, whatever. Chad mode. Sagan-Dies. whatever rank you want. The proof is in the pudding.

And what happens when theory crafters start entering the real world with their theory crafted wonderfulness? They get a reality check. And then they moderate their expectations. And this is the really beautiful thing. See, people who are 25-year-old thinkers think that what they really need to do is live up to their expectations.

That's not what you need to do. What you need to do is demolish your expectation. Because just think for a second. If you had no expectations, no burden of being behind, no idea of what an imaginary relationship could be. If you could annihilate all of that and you could actually start over,

you can do that today. You can start over today. But the starting over that you need to do is not going back in time. It's to annihilate all these fucking castles in the sky that you've built and actually start living life. And then something beautiful happens.

See, once you annihilate your expectations and you're getting your inputs from experience, then the gap between imagination and reality shrinks. See, the pain of the world is not that the way the world is. The pain of the world is your imagination about the world what the world should be and the reality of what the world is. See, once we annihilate our expectations and then we see the world as it is, then we can proceed forward. And this is where if you're not careful, you're going to get black pill and you're like, what, are you saying that the world is all a piece of shit? No, because that's an expectation that is

born of your mind. You'll discover quite the opposite. That the world is actually pretty decent place. So the real tragedy of 25-year-old thinkers is that the very things that they use as solutions to their problems are not the solutions. That's actually what propagates the problem. And even they have some hint of that, right? Because I think over here, there's all this kind of stuff about analysis, paralysis. You know, they sort of figure out that things are always better in my head, and yet they never leave their head.

This creates a huge problem. So step number one, start experiencing. Give yourself data instead of theory crafting. Step number two, stop slamming on the gas and slamming on the brakes. And I will bet you that if you're a 25-year-old thinker, you do this. You know you do this. The frequency of it may decrease, but you do this. You'll get really excited about something.

You'll try something, right? Because this is not working. Even with your 250 IQ, you recognize that this is not sustainable, so you try to go out into the real world. And when you do that, you end up quitting. Slamming on the, because how hard is it to go into the real world? Very difficult. You have to push that gas a lot. And very easy to slam on the brakes.

And the last thing, be careful about which things feed the mind. So anytime you have a thought or a line of thinking that leads to more thought or line of thinking, that is the wrong way to think. This is literally what we have here. See, they have all the observations. Analysis paralysis. What is analysis paralysis? It is thought that leads to more thought.

You think down this way, but that doesn't work. So I'm going to think down this way. And that doesn't work. So I don't actually act. And as long as I don't act, my mind continues to think. You see, it's the infinite money glitch again. The moment that I act, there's resolution. And then I don't get to play with the problem anymore.

The game's over. So in your life, cultivate things that lead to a resolution of thought. Not just an annihilation of thought. I'm not saying go get high and get lost in oblivion. Resolution of thought. And then you may discover something, but I don't know how to resolve my thoughts because there is no answer. Oh, interesting. Maybe you should just try something.

Just do something. Get more data. Because the data set that you have, you can't solve this equation, right? It's y-x equals A-B. You don't have enough data, but fucking 25-year-old thinkers will keep on playing around with it over A equals B. Y-X over B equals A. And they keep on, like, moving around the numbers around trying to figure out, okay, like, Y-X divided by A-B equals one. Okay, that's interesting, right?

And you all keep on playing around with it and you just don't have enough data. and you don't live in the world because you're scared of it and emotions and all the other stuff. So look at the things that lead to resolution of thought and then do those things. And once you have resolution of thought, followed by resolution of thought, followed by resolution of thought, you will have nothing left to think about and you will be done being a 25-year-old thinker. Yeah. So someone's asking, can you give us an example of annihilation versus resolution of thought, please? Sure.

So I'll give you a simple example. Let's say I don't know where my keys are. So I can hypothesize about where my keys are as much as I want. I can get so frustrated about where my keys are, and then I can decide to just obliviate my thoughts by queuing up for a video game, and because in that hour that I'm playing the video game, I'm not thinking about where my keys are. But the moment that I stop playing the video game, the thoughts return.

So when you change your internal state to get rid of thoughts, the thoughts are just waiting to come back. They don't really go away. They just get put on pause. So resolution of the thought is to find the keys, because then there's no thought left. So most resolution of thought, or not most, some of it comes from action, but some of it also comes from acceptance.

So if I'm like, oh my God, like let's say I want to, I need to tell my partner that this relationship is not working for me. It's not that I want to break up, but that I'm unhappy in the relationship. Let's say you're faced with this problem. And so what people will do is they'll run through all kinds of scenarios in their head. If I say this, then they could be upset and then they could be upset and then how do I, how do I say this to them without making them upset? See, that's where the problem is.

See, the moment that your mind says, I want this outcome without someone being upset. How do I make a million dollars without spending any effort? How do I break the news without hurting their feelings? So if you're really careful, this is what paralyzes us. Anytime our mind is unwilling to accept the consequences of our actions, your mind will be paralyzed. And you can find this very, very, very easily. Just pay attention to your thoughts that are dodging a consequence. You're looking for some kind of perfection.

How do I do this without this? Doing this, oh, that's not hard, but I want to do it without this other thing. How do I break the news to them without hurting their feelings? I'm not saying going around being an asshole, but I'm saying that you can't necessarily control the feelings of another person. I'm not saying that you should act without compassion. And so if you pay attention to your mind, all these caveats that you add in your own thinking, you can literally write down your thoughts and you'll see this all the time.

Then what you have to do is accept that that's a potential consequence. And then you have to decide, okay, if I want to act, this could happen. All right, so someone I recently wrote a book, Joe should really check out. It's a good book. It teaches you how to talk to people. Bonus. If you've got young kids or nieces or nephews, because it also teaches you how to teach them healthy video game habits. But really, it's the best guide to communication that I've written so far. And all the communication stuff works for just about any relationship. I wrote this book and someone asked me the question as it was about to be released. Are you nervous? And I said no. And they were surprised by that. They were like, what if it doesn't do well? I was like, then it doesn't do well. See, if I was worried, the right time to be worried about whether the book does well or not is when I'm writing it.

After it's written, that ship is sailed. Right, so the moment that I decided to write a book, I opened myself up to the consequence of writing a shitty book. If you want to avoid writing a shitty book 100%, the best way to do it is not write one. Oh, shocking, look at what we did. We chose not to write one. See, the only way to truly protect yourself from failure is to never try. I'm gonna tell y'all something pretty wild, okay? I have a 0% loss rate in Street Fighter 6.

I have a 0% loss rate in Minecraft. I have a 0% loss rate. I've never lost a game of CSGO. Never. Not a single game. And this is what happens when you're the 25-year-old thinker. You're shooting for that perfection. But that's not something you can get.

So the moment that you act, you open yourself up to failure, and you just accept that. Then you try to do everything that you can to make it as successful as possible. Not everything that you can, everything that you're willing to do, because I could have made the book better if I was willing to make additional sacrifices, but I made enough sacrifices. And so the resolution of thought comes through acceptance. So you just accept. Okay, I'm going to try to say this in as nice of a way as I can, but feelings may be hurt.

Right? So the moment that you started dating someone is the moment that both you all opened yourself up to particular feelings being hurt. Right? So once you board the ship, the waves can be choppy.