HealthyGamerGG - An Honest Talk with @LacyHimself ​

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K is joined by streamer Lacy (Nick) to explore the psychological "city" built by content creators and the hidden traps of professional success. They discuss how to break the cycle of self-punishment and transition from a life of "achieving" to a life of "living". What to expect in this episode: Mental Hardening Through Physiology: Why relaxing isn't always the answer; Dr. K explains how tensing the body through specific asanas (like the tree pose) can help "harden" a permeable mind against external bullying and judgment. The "Cuck Chair" of Isolation: A deep dive into the psychological state of watching life pass you by while stuck behind a screen, and the specific pain of being "nobody’s best friend" in a social group. Toxic Fuel and Achievement: How high performers often use guilt and self-hatred as a fuel source to avoid sliding back into their "old selves," effectively turning their success into a "toxic fuel cycle" that prevents true happiness. Persona vs. Authentic Self: Lacy shares the fear that people only love the "Lacy" version (the successful winner) while the "Nick" version (the 300 lb kid) remains fundamentally unloved and unseen. The Snowflake and the Avalanche: A psychological explanation for why a single hateful comment can ruin a creator's day, exploring how individual "snowflakes" of hate combine into an emotional avalanche that the human brain did not evolve to process. Control vs. Futility: Practical advice on how to stop trying to change the "delusional" perceptions of others and instead focus exclusively on your own effort and the internal domain of your own mind. The 6-24-12 Breathwork Practice: A high-difficulty training exercise (6 seconds in, 24 seconds hold, 12 seconds out) designed to manipulate the parasympathetic nervous system and force the mind into a state of present-moment contentment. Archetypes of Connection: A look behind the scenes at Dr. K’s new Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships, including the five community personas like the "Nervous Novice" and "Forever Alone Alvin" used to build the guide's curriculum. Life vs. Living: Why regret comes from not doing enough rather than failing, and how to find the "eye of the storm" to remain centered regardless of external tragedy or success. Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is here! Order now: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VHG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-O Knoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. All righty, chat.

Let's get started. Welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Alok Kanoja. Just a reminder that everything we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as for educational and entertainment purposes only. nothing is intended to be taken as medical advice. If you have a concern or question, please go see a licensed professional medical concern or question. So, hello everybody. Sorry for the delay in starting. You know, we've been having some stream lag. We're not quite sure what it is. It seems to be resolved now.

I have no idea what's going on chat. Yeah. So people are noticing, first of all, almost at the 7K mark absolutely chat so thank you guys so much for getting dr k's guide to love sex and relationships we are really grateful to y'all for supporting us um and like like i said you know last time we talked and basically every time we talk uh yeah i mean what we try to do here is develop things that are helpful to y'all okay that's that's the goal we're going to make stuff that is to y'all. We're not opposed to sponsors and things like that, but that's not, you know, we don't want to be beholden to a sponsor. We want to be beholden to y'all. So for those of y'all that have gotten the guide, thank you so much. You know, we tried to really get, put together

all of the most useful information and package it very, very neatly so that in a couple of hours, can understand some of the most useful evidence-based approaches to making a relationship work, finding a relationship, what is charisma, what is attractiveness. I think a big part of the guide is actually in teasing apart all these terms, like chemistry, attractiveness, you know, communication, like defining what these things actually are. How do human beings form connections? Where does chemistry kind of come from? That's different from whether you are attractive or not, right?

So chemistry is something that happens between two people. Why do people enter into such bad relationships? It's really simple because no one ever teaches them how to find good ones. Right? We have a bunch of stuff on the internet about, okay, you should look smacks or you should do this or you should do that. No, that's not, that's like giving, like, so the analogy that we use for the love, sex, and relationship guide is like, it's like telling people, okay, do these 18 chess moves and you will win a game of chess. And then this person says, do these 18 moves. This person says, do these 12 moves.

I did both of these. They're not working. So any generic advice will not apply to an individual, the individual that you are or the individual that you're dating, 100%. So instead, what we need to do is we need to teach all the principles, right? How does charisma form? What are the principles of good communication? Not what are the tips, not what should you do to understand.

understand what communication is, right, to understand the theory of chess. And the really scary thing is, like, if you look at something like this, I could slap the younger me. But like, how do you convince the younger you? Would the younger you have even listened? So hindsight is 2020, sure. But, like, how do we solve for foresight, right? How do we get foresight to 19 out of 20? And that's what we try to do here is teach you all this stuff.

And I think it is really hard. I mean, I think that, you know, if you were to tell me, hey, Dr. Kay, like, I can't find anyone. What should I do? You know, I think there is a path to resignation. Fine. Maybe not happening for you in this life. There is a path of celibacy and learning to, you know,

have a engaging, to be child free through choice and have your children as pets. Fine. Right. But if that's not really what you want, then you should learn how to get what you want, right? And be rigorous about it. And this is the problem with things like social media is that if you look at social media,

social media does not select, or YouTube for that matter, does not select for good information. It selects for entertaining or engaging information. And if you kind of think about, okay, like learning math, right? Like, that's a useful skill, but it ain't entertaining. Like, your geometry textbook ain't going to end up on Instagram. So now what we've started to do is we've filtered all of the information about relationships through the filter of what is engaging and what is entertaining, not what's useful. No one is doing YouTube studies on YouTube or Instagram or whatever for people who spend

this amount of actually people are doing this study. these studies, if people spend a lot of time on content platforms, what is the impact on relationships? And it's actually an inverse correlation. So the more time you spend on platforms, the less likely you are to have a healthy relationship. So like, and we kind of know that, right? We know that some of these things are brain rotting. Yeah, so this also kind of reminds me of, of this is. a funny tweet.

A boyfriend who watches porn is the least of your worries. It's the podcasts you have to be really strict about. I'd rather my husband watch porn than Joe Rogan. This is hilarious, man. You know, so this is where like, man, what do you guys think is going on with this? So I'm going to ask y'all before I comment, what is more threatening about watching Joe Rogan? than watching pornography.

Like, what do you all think? It does seem controlling, right? So, so this is where, okay, look, look, look, look. So this is where look, look, look, look, look, look. I love what you guys are saying, but I don't, I don't love it. I love that you're saying these things, but ideology, cringy, manosphere, different views, becoming emotionally stunted. So this is what I'm wondering about.

How does watching Joe Rogan, what is the mechanism of watching Joe Rogan, how does watching Joe Rogan make someone emotionally stunted? Reduces critical thinking. Okay, so here's my... Okay, so here's another question for you all. How is Joe Rogan different

from a social media algorithm? Right? So when y'all say reduces critical thinking, you know, when I'm watching things, so for example, like this post, do you guys think there's critical thinking in this post or this thread? What do you all think? Oh, yay. Woot, we hit 7,000. Thank you guys so much. Okay, man on the street, VIT is unlocked. Porn can be shared with our children cannot. Okay. A Healthy Gamer Institute's already live, by the way. So this is a quick kind of shout out. Okay. So you guys have supported us for years.

And so we started the Institute about two years ago. And that, you know, the capital for that came out of y'all trying coaching, y'all buying other guides. So we are already doing that. This is about H.E.I. expansion. Right? So, and this is what's kind of scary is like offering perspectives that are contrary to her own, right? So this is what's scary. Like, yeah, like, so, you know, pornography is the opiate of the masses. It keeps people relatively content. But Joe Rogan will affect their thinking. And we can't have that. It'll change the way that he thinks. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right? So as long as they're not thinking in a particular way, like, we can manage the pornography, but thinking, oh my God, let's not have them think in a particular way. Okay?

This is a, this is super scary, right? And this is where, like, I know that a lot of people are, you know, anti Joe Rogan here. But, I mean, my understanding is that his podcast is not about pushing back. It's about understanding what somebody is trying to say. And I think when people say Joe Rogan is a propagandist for the right, I mean, Joe Rogan also has been a big supporter of Bernie Sanders for many years. Right? So here's one thing that I've noticed about American politics, which is like really scary.

Okay. This is not my field of expertise, but I've just noticed this. So I think what happened to Joe Rogan is he used to be left leaning and then he became right leaning. Right? That's the perception. Do you guys, do you all, do you all have a sense of how that, happens, how does someone who is left-leaning become right-leaning? He's still left-leaning. Some people will say that. So I noticed something kind of interesting,

right? So a lot of people will criticize the right, and I'm not saying this is true or not true, okay, but like not my area of expertise. The right has a cult of personality. Right? So when someone who is, I once saw a statistic about Republican politician, who had been convicted of sex crimes versus Democratic politicians who had been convicted of sex crimes. And there's a difference. There's a pretty big difference between those two things. I'm not going to even say what it is. You guys can read your own projection into that.

Go look up the studies yourself, okay, to see what the statistics are. So I notice one thing that's kind of interesting, which is that when someone on the left wants to switch teams, the right embraces them with open arms. Like for when Joe Rogan is like, oh, I'm like, I used to be left wing and now I'm like kind of pro right wing. Right wing loves it. They're like, come on in, bro. Like you're on our team now. We're going to make you part of our team.

Then I saw something really interesting. Anne Coulter, Fox News talking head, conservative Republican commentator, you know, who told, I think Vivek Ram Swami when he was running for president. She's like, yeah, sorry, I'm not going to vote for you because you're brown. She says, I think overturning Roe v. Wade is a problem. So one of the champions of the right is like, yo, abortion rights are important for women. And what is her response from the left? They tear her apart.

Instead of welcoming an ally, they're like, screw you. you, where have you been for the last 30 years? You know, and I think, I think this is like there's some really interesting things about the psychology of politics, which people, I think, don't pay attention to or don't realize or aren't trained in. Like, people don't, and I'm not, I'm not even talking about views here, right? What's right? What's wrong?

Statistically, whatever. I'm not even, I'm just saying if you look at the way that these two groups of people behave, it's shocking. It's really shocking. And, you know, I know that there's a lot of like follow the money kind of sentiment. I think that's an, frankly, my opinion is that that's a, it's a really, really important variable in the equation, right? Maybe it's like between 30 and 50% of the equation, but I think that what I've seen

just working with a lot of people is that human beings are fundamentally flawed and they're fundamentally complex. And things like ego, things like insecure. things like some people are sociopathic, but not everybody is. Some people have daddy issues and they're just trying to make it big, right? It's not always about following the money. Like I think a lot of times it is about following the money, but like not always. I think it's a really, really, if your main strategy is just follow the money,

I think frankly it's like a little bit intellectually lazy. I think things are more complicated than just the money. And I think there's a lot of very, very, very, very rich people who are absolute idiots. Like the sociopathic cabal at the top is like somewhat true, but I think human beings are way more. I mean, a lot of these people who are running companies like I've worked with them, they're incredibly narcissistic.

They have more money than they know what to do with. And so actually what's driving them is not money. Like, you know, I mean, for many of these people, in my experience. Okay. Let's hop in with Lacey. Yeah, so what do you go by? Lacey. Okay, Lacey. Awesome, dude.

Or you could call me Nick, if you want to call me, my real name's Nick. What do you prefer? Let's do Nick. Okay, let's do Nick. And Nick, so just, and what are we talking about today, man? Thank you for coming. Honestly, I think, I don't know. I don't know.

I'm nervous. I'm going to be honest. Okay, cool. I'm very nervous. Is that bad? No, it's actually completely normal. So let me just, let's just, I'll explain a couple of things. So first thing is, you know, we are here to just get to know who you are and understand a little bit about you.

The reason we have conversations like this is that I think oftentimes we all face challenges that are shared. And oftentimes just having a conversation with someone can help a lot of people who are watching. A couple of basic simple ground rules. First of all, you don't have to talk about anything that you don't want to talk about, number one. So you can signal that to me in any manner of ways. I am not here to push or anything like that. If I think we're getting into territory that I don't think is a good idea to talk about, I will signal that to you in some way. Other thing is that this is not therapy.

So I'm not your doctor. I won't be diagnosing you with anything. I won't be giving you an adol prescription at the end of the stream. But yeah, I think oftentimes, you know, people come on and we'll get to talking about something. But if there's not a particular topic in mind, that's actually totally fine. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I have a few topics. Sure.

Nothing like super pinpointed, if that makes sense. Yeah. So I think that's part of my job, right, as we'll get to something. So what was kind of on your radar? I had a few things. the first thing I had was just like separating my real life and my social media life, like time management, streaming, how I can kind of juggle that because I obviously spent a lot of time online and streaming and it takes away from my time with my real life

relationships and just real life in general. Another thing was just anxiety. I'm a very anxious person. So, you know, a lot comes with social media and that anxiety definitely affects me in real life. Another one I had was definitely self-esteem and insecurities that I have as a person. Even if I don't admit it, I definitely have some deep down. And... Okay. Yeah, that's pretty much it. We're getting a little bit of, like, audio crackling from you, which do you have any sense of why that would be? Talk for me again? Hello, hello, hello, hello?

That sounds a lot better. Okay. Yeah. I just switched the USB ports. I don't know if that fixed or not. Yeah, I think that sounds a lot better. And I think it is, chat is saying it's not better?

I don't know. Better than before. Yeah, but it's still not 100%. I think it's okay. better better better better better better better better okay we're good we're good okay okay so just to recap lacy you said separating real life and social media um some amount of anxiety around social media things yeah and then self-esteem and insecurity yeah so so any of those that you want to start with whatever you think okay so why don't you tell me this so how did you get into your streamer right

yeah can you tell me how you got into that? Yeah, um, I was basically, I was a Fortnite player and I started playing a Fortnite in high school and I started playing like competitively, but I was never like actually that good. Um, and then I met another streamer because I was like always in his chat and donating his name was clicks and I met your camera turned off for me. Yeah, I don't, uh, I think something is going on. I And then the camera's fine. Here we go. What?

Why are we? There. I think we're okay. You can see me, right? I cannot see you now. You cannot see me. Okay. All right.

Oh, I see you now. Yeah. We're just going to keep going. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I started streaming back in, I'd say it was like 2022, 2023. I met clicks and I was like donating in a stream.

chat trolling him and sending like donations and he invited me to play fortnight with them and then i started playing a fortnight with clicks and he obviously had a huge community um he has a lot of people that watch him a lot of followers and i started streaming because he told me to stream and then i started streaming and i saw people coming into my stream and then ever since then i just have been streaming i started in fortnight okay and so So how long ago was that? That was, I want to say that was 2023. Okay, 2023.

Like the very beginning of 2020, I'd say. Okay. It's when I first started actually like fully streaming. Okay, I'm getting now, now I'm getting some desync. Are you guys getting desync? This is so weird. I'm not, no. Okay, maybe it's fine.

Okay. So, and so you said you started streaming in 2023, right? So it's been about three years. And what's that three years been like for you? It's been good. It's definitely been long. You know, I went from playing video games with not even having my face cam on to then moving to Dallas and being thrown into a bunch of like face content. And then I started doing IRL content. I moved to Miami for about eight months.

And then I joined Faze and moved to L.A. Okay. And how can you tell me a little bit about those transitions? so how did you end up moving to Dallas? Yeah, so I was in college at the time studying law. And my parents were always hard on, not hard on me, but like my dad was very against the internet and how much I was playing video games and he would always like get upset and not angry, but like just caring for me like, oh, because I was very overweight.

I was like, I was probably about 300 pounds at the time. and he just saw like my health declining and I was just playing video games 12 hours a day but then I started streaming and I showed him like my first Twitch paycheck and I was like dad look at this like I made this amount of money this month and I asked my parents if I could move to Dallas and take a gap year off off college

and they were fully supportive they said yes right away they told me that my dreams won't be here forever, but college will be here after a year. So they told me yes. And within the next two months, I had an apartment in Dallas, and my mom drove down from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Dallas with me.

Wow. So they kind of, your dad was really concerned, but they were happy with you. I mean, so they understood that this was your dream. Well, the thing is it really never was my dream until it started to work out. Okay. Interesting. So then you moved to Dallas and what was that like? Honestly, I was, it was terrible at first. I was living in a studio apartment by myself. I was sad. I was alone. And it was like my first time ever showing my face on the internet. And like I said, I was extremely overweight.

So the feedback from people was very bad. Like I had people calling me all sorts of names. You can guess the names, but Twitter, TikTok, just making fun of me. And at the time, I'm just, you know, I think I was, what, 20, 20, 21 maybe? I think I was 20. And I was just living alone in my apartment. Nobody was there. I didn't have any friends in Dallas besides clicks.

And that was definitely hard in the beginning. for sure. What was hard about it? I just felt so alone and I felt like everybody was against me because everybody was just called. Like they were calling me terrible things and I wasn't used to it because I was so nervous to show my face in the first place. And then when I did show it, I was like 10 times worse than I expected it to be. Wow. I expected my chat to make fun of me, but I didn't expect to get posted on Twitter and have thousands of people calling me a fat ass or calling me a whale or say making fun of like the way I look and then

thousands of people on TikTok doing the same thing so at the time it was just all thrown at me and I actually took like four or five days completely off the I wasn't going to stream again ever I was I was I was pretty much about to quit yeah so what what why didn't you um clicks honestly he uh he he talked me out of it I was very very close to quitting I didn't want to stream anymore. I wanted to move back home, go back to college, normal life. But Clicks talk to me and just convince me that it doesn't matter what other people think.

And I didn't get it right away, but I just kind of sucked it up and dealt with it. Can you share a little bit more about that conversation? Like I'm so, because here's what I'm thinking, Nick. There are a lot of people who are overweight. There are a lot of people who are judged harshly for their appearance. Right? And it seems like you've lost some weight. And, you know, in those moments when we feel like quitting, when we feel like giving up, like I'm so curious what Click said to you that made an impact.

Yeah, I mean, I don't remember the exact words. Yeah, of course. I just, I remember him basically saying that I have new potential in streaming. Like, I can, I can make this my life forever. and him saying that if I were to give up now with how far I've come in such a short amount of time and went back to college and just gave up on everything just because some people on the internet are hating

then that would just be dumb and he told me that he's gonna at the time he got me a personal trainer his name was Charles so clicks paid for a personal trainer for me and him to go to every morning and he told me that he would start working out with me every morning and helping me lose weight and

wow Yeah, yeah, he's a great guy. What did he see in you? I don't know. I don't know. Something I clearly didn't see it myself because I was going to quit, but he saw something. Huh. You have, even to this day, you don't know?

What he saw on me? Yeah. I mean, he's been streaming for like seven or eight years, so maybe he just saw, like, the potential to be an influence. because he's been doing it for so long. Interesting. Okay. So it sounds like he really saw value in you that you didn't see. And then it also sounds like he invested, like his time, his money, finding you a personal

trainer to help you sort of realize that potential. Yeah. And so that was back in Dallas. And then you said you moved to Miami for a little while. What did that look like? Well, at first, because I was so sad. and like I just hated where I was living because I felt so alone. He had me move in with him in his penthouse in Dallas.

So he set the room up for me, a stream room for me. And I paid like very little rent. But I wouldn't let him, like I didn't want him to have me move in by myself for free. I wanted to pay rent. I didn't want to just be like leaching. So I was paying very like $2,000 a month to live in the apartment with him. And I was there for about, I think, like six months maybe. And then I started just not enjoying Fortnite anymore.

Like I used to love Fortnite and playing Fortnite, but I just started to kind of fall out of love with it. So I moved over to doing more like real life content, like going out and streaming and Discord. I was doing eDates a little bit. And that just led me to a trip where I was going to Miami for I think it was a seven-day trip and I ended up booking an Airbnb for three months and I just stayed in Miami for like three months then I ended up getting a house and I was

there for probably I think seven months maybe maybe I think I was there for a year I might have been there for a year what can you tell me about these e-dates what is that uh you days basically I would I would get one girl or I'd get like another like a streamer a guy and I would put them on a Discord e-date with 20 girls. Okay. So what happens then? I dragged the girls into the call. They have like a five-minute conversation with the streamer or the guy.

And then there were like elimination rounds. And then the guy, the streamer would pick who his winner was. Okay. Wow. And do you know what would happen after the call? Like would they actually? No idea. Okay.

I think one of them. I don't know. I doubt. I doubt it, but you'd never know. Okay, so it's sort of like speed dating, but on a Discord call. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. But it was just fully for content at the time. Yeah, and so I'm kind of curious, Nick, do you know what led to people being selected as winners?

Like, what were the things that would get people eliminated? Like, I know it sounds like it was a little while ago, but... Yeah, it was questions. So, like, the guys would ask, like, the girls' questions in a line. And then they would answer the questions and then they would eliminate them based off that. But yeah, so what I'm curious about is do you have any insight? And you may not remember. But like what made an answer a good answer?

It depended on the person. Like some people would come in there very wholesome, but some streamers would come in there and ask, you know, some like more sexual questions, if that makes sense. Got it. So, so, and so I guess people sort of matching the streamer's energy was a big part of it. Percent, yeah. Okay. It was just who the streamer or who the person was felt they vibe with the most, I guess. Okay.

Yeah. So it's interesting because I, I just made a guide to love sex and relationships that's like very evidence based. And if you're curious about that, we can talk about it more. But I was like I sort of vaguely knew that this kind of thing was happening. but I just realized, you know, it would be really interesting to look at those e-dates and be able to, I wonder if I could predict based on principles of like attraction and charisma who someone is going to pick. 100% because I used to be, I could.

I could see like, yeah, I would be able to like get in it and see like who the streamer would talk to the most and the way they would interact with them and I'd be like, oh, she's going to win. Interesting. So you could tell ahead of time who was going to win or who was like high likelihood. For the most part, yeah. And did you have a set? So were you just paying attention to like the amount of interaction or do you know more of what was like, how were you able to pick that up? Do you remember? I think it was more just sexual attraction.

Sexual attraction. Interesting. So you could gauge a dude's sexual attraction to a woman. Yes. Yes. Pretty much. I could see like, oh, he's more sexually attracted to her. Yeah, I guess.

Wait, so, so, and let me know, Nick, if this makes you uncomfortable, but I'm, I'm fascinated, bro. So, so how do you know, right? Because, because you're not seeing, you're not like, like, this is face cam, right? Yeah. So you're not seeing like, like, in the trousers. You're not seeing anything below the belt. I didn't see, I didn't see their boners. No, I didn't see.

Right. So, so, what are you seeing in their face? Okay. So a pretty example would be like, like a guy, the streamer or the guy would be like, hey, can you stand up? do a 360 for me. And the girl would, like, stand up and, like, twirl around. And then he'd be like, and then I'd be like, oh, she's going to make you far. Okay, got it.

So you're looking at, I mean, so there's facial expressions. Yeah, and just, like, the way they talk, like, and then after each round, they'd give them a rating. I'm going to be honest, now that I'm thinking about it and looking back on it, it was a very degenerate thing. How so? Now that I'm thinking about it. I mean, it's just, it's, it's discord and guys just basically, you know, it's, asking girls to show their bodies and who they're most attracted to.

Does this happen the other way? Do girls, do females? Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay. Yeah, I had female streamers on. There's a quality. So what, what was it like when a female, what was it like when a female streamer, could you accurately predict female streamers preferences? I, okay, so, um, I didn't do, I did it with a porn star. Okay. Not a female streamer. It was a I did it with. Okay. But were you still able to accurately predict? No. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. I actually know that you say that I couldn't. Yeah, that's so interesting. Yeah. So it's so you had one female contestant or one female that. I had two. Okay, two. Okay. And both are more porn stars? Do you remember? No. The other one was a streamer. And able to accurately predict? I don't remember. Okay.

That's fine. I know I'm getting into the weeds because I'm excited about this. Do you want to go on one? I don't know if I want to go on one. I don't know how my wife would feel about that. Oh, okay. Never mind. Never mind. But I'm absolutely fascinating. So here's what I think is really cool about this is like, because a lot of people like don't know. So literally like there was a clip that, you know, people told me about on LSF where a couple days ago I did this three hour stream on the science of flirting. So, like, this is really fascinating.

So a lot of people don't realize. So they did a cool experiment where they had people flirt and they videotaped people flirting. And they had neutral observers watching people flirt. Okay. And then they asked the neutral observers, if you're seeing a videotape of people flirting, and then you ask someone, hey, are these people flirting or not? Can you guess, can toss out a percentage number? What's the percentage likelihood that someone can detect the absence of flirting,

i.e. if there are two people who are not flirting and they're interacting, how good are people at detecting, okay, these people are not flirting? What do you think the percentage is? I would guess that that males or men guessed that there were flirting more than there actually was. Okay. That's a really interesting hypothesis. I don't remember the gender breakdown, but I will I will go back and check that. So here's what's really cool is like if no one is flirting, people are able to guess that with 84% accuracy.

Okay? So I can tell that these two people are not flirting with 84% accuracy. Here's the really crazy thing. People are only able to detect flirting, the presence of flirting, with 28% accuracy. So flirting is really hard to detect for most people.

Does that sound weird? you? A little bit, yeah. I mean, for me, it's a little, like, I don't know. I feel like I could detect flirting pretty well. Yeah. You may be able to. You could, you could be in that 28%. Maybe maybe that's what clicks saw on you, man. He's like the sky. Maybe. Maybe. No, so, it's interesting. And the funny thing about that is then people were arguing that my wife came into the room and she was arguably flirting with me. I don't think she was. But, and I couldn't detect it. because they thought she was flirting, and I didn't. Which is the irony.

Okay, so that's really interesting. Yeah, so what I'm curious about here is like, like, you know, I'm more interested in being, like, observing this interaction, like, these e-dates. And almost. Also, like, I could host an E-Day and have you host it with me. Yeah, and I'd be really curious, like, I'm sure you must be interacting with chat, right, during this stuff? Yeah.

And so is chat able to predict pretty? well? Yeah, actually, yeah. Okay, so here's what I think is really awesome about this, is that I know this is like fun and whatever, and I kind of got that you were like, hey, maybe this is a little bit cringe. But I think this is like insane, but I think this is actually like how we're going to help people, because this is almost like a laboratory where people who don't know how to flirt, right, who don't know how to attract someone, can literally see 20 people all vying for someone's attention. And you can detect what is it out of these?

This is an experimental condition, right? This is not some social media influencer making a short about, here's how you always get laid, bros. It's like, this is like, okay, let's actually look and analyze what leads to success. You know, and I think a lot of it is. So the chat can learn how to basically, like, flirt with women. Absolutely. Or, well, whoever is doing.

Or how to. Flirt with men. So if we were trying to learn how to flirt with women, what we need is one woman and 20 dudes. Yeah. Right? And to flirt with a dude is we need 20 women and is that kind of makes sense. Anyway, I'm curious about sort of like this almost like running an experiment where we can actually learn something. Which it sounds like a lot of people.

Yeah. Okay. Maybe we'll we'll pick that up later though because we're supposed to be talking about other things. But this is great. So you went to Miami. We went to Miami. You went to Miami. You stayed there for seven days.

What did you love about it so much that made you want to stay for three months? Honestly, everything. The weather, I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania, so snow, cold. I loved the weather. I loved the women. I love the people there. My streams were doing really good. I was just having fun.

Okay, nice. So I'm also guessing that you didn't feel, alone? No, I didn't feel alone in Miami, no. I actually, I met a good amount of people out there that, like, just turned into my, my everyday life. Okay, nice. And so then how, what does joining Faze look like? So I was just streaming in Miami, basically on my own solo, and I got called by Ron. I don't know if you know, stay able to. Ronald, though. He called me, because me and him,

we would play Fortnite here and there at the time. And he told me that he wanted me to come to L.A. to do, like, just meet up, because he was in phase already, to meet up with some people in phase. And I was like, at first I was a little hesitant because I didn't know if I wanted to join an organization because I was doing like very good by myself.

But I, at the end, ended up saying yes. So I went out to L.A. for, I think it was maybe four days. And I met up with everybody at Faze and all the people running it and also got to hang out with the guys and they pitched me on this new phase, this new roster where it was going to be a streaming house, a streaming roster. And how we were all going to, you know, we were all going to have our own thing, our own group. and we were going to own it, and it was going to be ours,

and we could take it to the next level. And I was sold on it, and I loved all the people. You know, I hung out with Jason, Mac, Silky, Adapt, at the time, wasn't really there. Ron, and that was, yeah, I ended up signing. So once again, I'm noticing that someone saw something in you, in this case, Ron, right? So it sounds like y'all were not super.

close? Um, we, we weren't that close at the time now. We were friends, like, just playing Fortnite, but we haven't even met in person. Yeah, I got you. So, so do you have any idea what, what he saw that? Well, it was a mixture of Ron, Rage and K-Song. They were like, do, Rage and K-San were doing a lot of the recruiting for the new group, and Ron told them my name.

So, yeah. Then Ron called me. Um, I don't know. maybe I really don't know. I never really asked for on that now that you say it. Yeah. It's interesting. Okay.

And so now you mentioned, you know, that there's like almost like a separating real life and social media kind of issue. And you're still with phase? Is that right? Yeah. No, right now, no, I'm not. Okay. So, so and is that something you want to talk about the transition out of phase or no? Yeah.

Yeah, we can. Yeah. So what happened there? I'm trying to think. Basically, actually, I don't, I don't think. There's just some legal stuff that. Yeah, that's why I sort of, like I said, you know, at the beginning of the call, like, I don't, we're not here. I would love, I would love, I would love to talk about it, honestly.

That's fine. So, I mean, conversation for a different day. I don't think it's that important. Yeah. A lot of people will focus on the drama. That's why I sort of asked, but like, I just, I could talk about how it affected my mental. to how it affected me. I mean, I'm just trying to get the story, right?

So, like, how you are where you are now, but we certainly don't want to piss anyone off or cause any blowback or anything like that. Like, it's not necessary. I mean, it definitely, it was really, it was really hard on my mental health. Like, I missed Christmas with my family because of there's so much stuff going on.

and it was just it was such a big part of my life for two years and then to just watch like it felt like I'm trying to think of a good at it felt like like we built up this city like this empire and then in the span of one night it just all fell and came crashing down oh my god it it was just I don't I don't even know how to explain how it made me feel I felt like it felt for the longest time like a part of me was missing not having not having the people that were in my life during that time because they they you know worked with phase um so i lost definitely some important people in my life uh a lot it affected our group overall mentally like to the point where there were some days where we wouldn't even see each other because people just didn't people a lot of

motivation was lost for me it just i don't know it really affected me mentally because it felt like a part of me was missing in a way. So, so I'm, I'm hearing that it really sort of, not even necessarily in a bad way, but kind of consumed a lot of your life. Like it became this thing that when the city was being built, you were like one of the pillars of the city. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I would say I, I, like, repped phase more than a lot of people. Yeah. Um, that have been, ever been in phase. You know, I made it like part of my main brand. I wore a phase chain every day.

I got a tattooed on my arm. Every picture I took, I threw the phase logo. A lot of dedication. Yeah, I had a lot of dedication for it, for sure. And it wasn't even the name that I had dedication for. It was just a group of people that were in it that I just truly care about and see crazy potential in. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting a strong sense of like vision.

Like, hey, we're going to build this thing. right? And what I'm hearing that you were really dedicated to was the vision of building this thing that you invested two years of your life into building this thing. It sounds like relationships are really important to you. You built a lot of important relationships with these people. And then when things start, it sounds like things fell apart pretty quickly over the course of a day. And I wasn't sure if I understood that. And then so it's almost like, you know, I'm envisioning a house that has all of these pillars supporting it. And you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of, you're kind of like ripped out of it. And then I'm sort of envisioning what would a pillar, sure, the pillar isn't in the house anymore, but how naked the pillar feels outside of the house. That the house is what gives it. Or almost like everything around the pillar just fell while the pillar was just still standing there.

Oh my God, dude. That's wild. So, so what happened then? Like with you? With me, I mean, it was hard for, for, you know, I took like a two week break from streaming, trying to figure out how to tell the internet, because it's not only something that's meaningful to me personally, but it was also something that about tens and millions of people on the internet were in support of. So it was like, okay, now I have to tell the internet. Now I have to

do this. Now I have to do that. And then it definitely affected me for some time. It felt like a, like I said, a piece of me was just missing. In my content, it felt like kind of like like energy was taken out of me. Like I was just hit with like a like a bullet that like just I was just walking with like almost like I was injured. I don't know how to explain it. But it just took me some time to come to terms with it that it was really over and that I got to move on.

And then slowly, slowly, slowly over time, I saw all the people that were in it start to be like, okay, like it was almost like we were all grieving, but separately. Like, because it was all of us. And we were all going through in our different ways. There were days where I wouldn't, I wouldn't see adapt for days. Or days where me and Ron wouldn't talk for a day or two because we were just, I didn't want to stream. I was in my room.

He was at the beach or doing something. So it just felt like we were all like grieving this separately. But then over time, over a lot of work, we all slowly started to like get over it, come back together and just say, like, are we going to sit here and are we going to pow about this for the rest of our lives, or are we going to make something that we can actually own this time? And then we ended up all coming together and making a new group. And how's that going? Very good, really good, actually. Can you say a little bit more about that? What's going great?

everything. I mean, everybody, it's, it's a lot different energy and a lot different vibes with, with our, our new group, it's named Core. And it's the same people, Marlins here now. And we, everybody seems a lot more locked in, dedicated. We haven't missed a single YouTube shoot. We get to fully direct what our videos are, film our videos, edit our videos. So it just feels like we, the energy is great right now, like the energy is perfect. everybody's very locked in. That's awesome, dude. How long have you all been doing this, the core?

21 days. 21 days. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. So fire has been lit again. Yes, that's exactly how it feels.

It's like, it's like we had this, this resurgence almost where it's like, okay, we got this taken from us. Let's do it right this time and build it ourselves. Yeah. I totally get that. I can see that, you know, the common thread here is just, okay, like, what is making fun content like? What's the actual work that you guys get excited about

and sort of leaning into that without all the structures and really focusing on the joy of the work is when I'm really getting very strongly from you. Yeah. And so you had mentioned, by the way, are you still feeling nervous, anxious? I'm always anxious. I'm just a super anxious person in general.

What does that mean? You're a super anxious person? Just like little, I don't know. I just feel... anxious all the time. Like, if I take a day off of streaming, I get really bad anxiety, just, like, very anxious. Anything in daily life, just anxious. I can't think of, like, a example, but...

Okay. Is it okay if I ask you some questions about that? Yeah. So when you say you take a day off from work, you feel really anxious? Some of these questions are going to sound kind of silly. How do you know you're anxious? I just start to worry a lot and overthink. Okay.

And I get like almost like not nausea, but just like this like like a weird feeling in my stomach to like, okay, you should be live right now. Why are you? Why are you doing this? Why are you enjoying this? You should be streaming right now. You should be streaming this. And why should you be doing those things? I just, it's just how.

It's just the way I think. I think because I stream so much and I've been doing it for so long, I feel like if there's a moment in my life or a good moment in my life, it should be, I should be streaming it or I should be on camera or a big part of it is like if I take two days off streaming or longer three days off streaming, I'm worried that that fourth day when I come back, the people who are watching me three days ago won't be there anymore. So I feel like I got to just stay on. Do you feel like the sand and the hourglass is running out? Mm.

No. Okay. I just think I just think I could put more sand in it. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so because I don't get the sense. You know, sometimes people feel like the sand in the hourglass is running out. I think when you're at a YouTube filming shoot or whatever, my guess is that you don't feel that pressure.

Or do you feel it then? Do you feel anxious when you're making content? If, if, uh, no, because no. No, right? No, if I'm doing something that I know is benefiting my career or my work or my streaming, I don't feel that way, no. But it's more when I like, like if I take a day off and go get dinner and spend a day with my girlfriend, I feel like this guiltiness in my, in my body that I should be streaming.

Or if I take a day off for my mental health and just relax or go for like go driving or go do something off camera, I feel like I should be streaming. Okay. So I'm noticing that is this, so when I think about anxiety, I think about worried that something bad is going to happen. Okay, but now you used a different word. So you talked about that. You're like, okay, if I take three days off when I show up on day four,

will people have moved on? Yeah. Right? So that's what you're kind of worried about in that sense. But then you also said you feel guilty. which is different from anxiety. And a lot of the language that you used was not, it's, this is what's really interesting.

And I'm going to get a bit technical here. So let me know if I like lose you or I need to explain myself better, okay? So when I ask you, why should you be doing something? The anxious person will say, well, because if I don't do it, then this will happen, then this will happen. Does that kind of make sense? Like anxiety is about worrying about things happening in the future. You kind of following me?

So when I ask you, why should you be doing those things? You're like, I'm not sure. So what I'm hearing a lot from you is there's some anxiety, but there's actually a lot of guilt. And what I'm really hearing is that there's a lot of harsh self-judgment, right? That there is a certain kind of Nick who should be making content all the time, who should be doing this, should be doing. There's like, there's the good Nick who's like fucking firing on all cylinders and his hype and like good vibes and good. good energy. We're on day 21. Let's go, bitches. That's good, Nick, right? Yeah. And then there's kind of this, like, I don't know if this word is, I don't, I don't know if I can say this on stream or not.

Maybe this is against TOS, but there's this cuck Nick. Like, you know, like, like, just like, kind of like off in the side, like watching life go by, like not participating, like watching from the chair in the bedroom and like not being in the bed, you know. Yeah. You know, it's No, I know what you mean. Yeah, no, you're right. You're completely right. It's like, it's like I'm, it's like I'm, I feel, and I don't know if it's guilt on myself or if it's guilt where I feel like the people who watch me and gave me this life,

like my viewers and my community, if it's guilt to like, I owe them. Like, I should be streaming this. I should be like, why am I, they, they gave me the opportunity to be at this dinner or be, at this event, why am I, why am I not streaming it for them? What, that makes sense? Yeah, I'm with you. So, so, we're going to, like, lay out a quick answer, okay? Nick, we're going to teach you something right now.

If you're wondering, if it's this or this, the answer is it's almost always both. So if we look at our emotions, there's anxiety, is it anxiety or is it guilt? The answer is it's both. Are you guilty about these people have created this wonderful opportunity for you? you feel beholden to them. You kind of owe them, right? Like they gave you this opportunity. This is what you owe them in return.

This is a relationship that you care about and respect. There's guilt around that. Yeah. I'm getting the sense. So now I'm hunting a little bit. Okay, so let me know if this feels weird for you. No, you're good. So let me ask you something.

Hold on. Let me think for a second. Can I think for a second? Yeah. Okay. So you know when you take a day off and you feel guilty. Do you remember if you felt that feeling

before you started streaming? That kind of guilt, that kind of like, I should be doing more. No. So you didn't feel that way at all? No. I'm not talking about the circumstances. I'm talking about the feeling.

Right? Yeah. I... Yeah, go ahead. Like, you mean like if I was in college and missed a day of classes that I feel guilty? Yeah, so I'm not talking about missing a day of classes. I'm talking about the feeling itself. So I'll give you another example.

I'll try to get because. So I'm going to go back to the, because I don't know if the word cuck is against TOS on YouTube. It's not. It's not. Okay. So like, let's go back to the cuck chair for a moment. Okay.

So did you ever feel like you were in that chair? that's the feeling prior to being a streamer. Like life was passing you by, like you weren't doing as much, right? So I have an idea in my mind, which is I'm envisioning a 300 pound person who's kind of going to college. Dad thinks he's wasting his time.

Life is passing you by. You know, you're supposed to be in college. You're a freshman in college. This is when you're supposed to be parting. This is when you're supposed to be getting laid. Right? Yeah. And I can imagine a scenario

where you feel, like you're watching from the cuck chair as life passes you by and that doesn't feel good. Yeah, when you say like that 100%. I definitely felt growing up like very left out, very isolated. Like, I had friends, but I was, I was nobody's best friend. I was kind of always just like there. And yeah, in college for sure, you know, all my friends are going out partying, coming back with a girl, getting drunk.

and, you know, I was in my chair playing Fortnite for 10 hours. So definitely a part of me felt like, like, damn, I wish I was, almost I wish I was normal. Okay. Can you, does anything come to mind when you were growing up about, I mean, that kind of hits, dude, like this idea of like, I had friends, but I was nobody's best friend. Do any stories or experiences come to mind? I mean, just like, like a perfect example would be the only thing. The first thing that comes in mind is this one time where I was in a big, like I was, I was, I was friends with, with this big friend group.

And like, I would hang out with them all day in school. You know, we'd be sit at lunch together and then came back to school on a Monday. And they were all talking about a sleepover they had over the weekend. and I'm just at the table I wasn't invited and it's like okay so these are all my friends and they they they planned to hang out but purposefully intentionally excluded me from that so it's like okay are you actually are these actually my friends

so it was just situations like that where it was like they were cool with me and I was there and if I was there in the moment they didn't have a problem with it but nobody ever went out of their way to say, hey, Nick, let's hang out. Hey, Nick, come to this party. Hey, Nick, come over. Nobody went out of their way to do that. But so I guess from from from from the way you're saying and me sitting there watching that happen definitely made me feel like I wasn't I wasn't normal. Yeah. I mean, I'm struck by I mean, Nick, you you have a beautiful way with words. I was just there. Like they

They were cool with me, right? There's no, like, beef. They didn't dislike you. Yeah. But they didn't care enough. Like, they didn't miss you. Mm-mm. You know, like, if you were there, like, fine.

If you're not there, like, not a big deal. Exactly. And how did you... This is actually a hard question, okay? Do you remember how you felt about yourself in those moments? Yeah. I mean, I felt like, like, like, I wasn't normal. like I was there was something almost like there was something wrong with me

and obviously you know I was like I said very overweight so I think that was a big part of what I thought was wrong with me because I see all like all them they're all like you know normal and I'm not and I think that was probably the main thing that I felt was just like damn I wish I was normal I wish I was like them And do you feel like now that your weight is healthier? Do you, how can I say this?

So your mind went to weight, right, as the reason for you not being normal. Yeah. Was there anything else in there besides weight that you remember could detect? Okay. And so now that you're at a healthier weight earlier when we were sort of mapping out, you know, what the conversation could look like. You mentioned self-esteem and insecurity. Can you tell us a little bit about what,

it sounds like it's still, you know, you're insecure about a couple of things, which is like completely normal, by the way. Yeah. Can you, do you mind sharing a little bit about that?

Like currently or then? Yeah, current, well, then if there's more than wait, sure, I'd love to hear about back then and currently. I mean, I want to hear it all.

I think it was just, it was definitely mainly weight, but it was also, I think it was also, just like my lifestyle like I wasn't a no I wasn't a normal kid say more about that like they would my friends would all like I said they'd be hanging out or go to a party and I would be in my room playing video games or in my room watching a stream in the cut in the cut chair yeah in the cup chair just sitting there watching everybody else have fun go through life living a quote unquote normal life

And doing all the normal things that kids do, you know, getting in trouble, getting drunk before you're 21, going to parties, having, you know, having a girlfriend. Yeah. And I was playing video games and watching streams and not doing that. Okay. And how about now? I mean, I feel like I'm still the same person, though. Same one. I'm definitely, like I'm definitely, I definitely still, I'm still that person that when, if,

if my friends go out to a club or to a party, I would, I would rather be right here in my chair playing a video game streaming. If, you know, I think that's just how I am. I think I'm more, I'm, I'm a very big extrovert, but at the same time, I'm, I'm very introverted. Like, I'd rather, I'd rather be streaming than doing 99% of other things. And I feel like that shows with the amount of hours I put into streaming. I'm thinking. I do this. It's fucking weird.

Okay. So you feel like the same person. You're still the same person. Tell me about that person. Very insecure, anxious, emotional. very sensitive almost like a little bitch to be honest yeah I get that

yeah I'm glad you said it because I didn't I didn't want to say it no I mean it's true I think I felt it a while ago I think the image of the cuck chair like who's in the cuck chair is a little bitch right yeah

yeah and so tell me what is that person so that person feels a lot. Yeah. Right? They just have a lot going on inside of them.

Mm-hmm. And it's kind of hard to feel those things, right? Yeah. Almost like, but when I'm live, I don't feel it. Okay. And what does that person want to be? Accepted. Accepted?

What else? Fitting in. Like normal. Seen as normal. seen as normal you know it's kind of interesting what what clicks did for you so

you know this is so interesting you may think that that feels very accepting right like he went out of his way saw something in you took you under his wing gave you a place to say you were feeling lonely he's like okay bro come on move in with me so so it's very warm right Like, it's very accepting.

But then there's also part of me that wonders, like, do you actually feel pathetic that he has to go out of his way to do all of these things that you should have been able to do this shit by yourself? That you shouldn't need his help? Yeah, definitely. I definitely did at the time. But now I think that the way my brain works is I'm at a point where I'm at a point where, I have and can't do what he did for me for other people. So it's almost like it repays its dues. Yeah, so this is what's, I imagine this must be like quite confusing for you, right?

Because you've made a lot of progress. You know, a lot of the feeling not normal was the weight, but that has been fixed. It's so interesting, right? Because you talk about being accepted is like that's what you're kind of worried about. And even from the get-go, like, real quick, you know, I was able to hear from you that these connections are really important. Dallas was torture because you were isolated. Faze was great because of the people. Not the org, the people, right?

These connections, Miami, there were people. It's always about people, people, people. Like, that's what really gets you. And even when you talk about feeling guilty for not streaming, you're letting your community down. right so so these connections seem vitally important yeah um and so then what i'm a bit confused about and maybe this is confusing for you too is people probably see you as normal if not normal then exceptional right people it seems like you fit in it seems like you have a lot of people who really value you for who you are.

And yet, when you were 300 pounds and craving, when you found out on Monday morning or Monday at lunch that these guys all had to sleep over and you weren't invited. But now you are invited. People are like, hey, man, let's live together. Let's do this together. We want to do this. Right. And when you're doing those things, you feel good.

How do you understand why you still feel like the same person? Because you said, I'm still the same person. I think it's because I think it's a deeper issue now, like, thinking about it where it's like, in my head, if I wasn't Lacey, if I was still Nick, would, would I still have these people wanting me to come to this, come to that? If I wasn't, you know, the Lacey with millions of followers and people watching daily, would they still want me to be there? Would they still want to be friends with me? And I'm not talking about the people that are in my house because I truly do believe that they would be friends with me even if I fell off today.

But just the general people, would they care if I wasn't Lacey? So I think that's definitely a part of me where it's like, that's still missing. Like I don't feel accepted. My online persona feels accepted. Lacey feels accepted. Not Nick.

But if I wasn't, no. Right? Yeah. That's tough. And this is something I see a lot with. So, you know, it's so interesting. You know, there's like a lot of stuff about like looks maxing nowadays. Yeah.

And so one of the really weird things about looks maxing is people will say like, okay, if I get in shape, that'll give me confidence. But actually what it does is it kind of hardens their insecurity. because if I was unacceptable before and I turn myself into something else, right, if I take the loser and I put them down here, and then I become a winner up here, and then everyone starts to gravitate towards this, this thing is still down here. Does that kind of make sense? Wait, say it again? So you used to be Nick, right? Yeah. And then you became Lacey. And who do they love?

They love Lacey. Do they love Nick? Now we don't know. Yeah. Right? I think there's only a few people in my life where I feel like I'm Nick. Do you like being Nick with them? Yeah.

What makes it hard for you to be Nick with other people? I don't know. Maybe the feeling. of them not accepting me. Yeah. You're afraid of rejection by them, right? Mm-hmm. And so here's the really tricky thing.

Would you say that the people that you feel comfortable with saw through Lacey and found Nick? Yeah. Or did you show them, Nick? I don't know. I don't know the difference. Okay. Yeah, so I know this is getting a bit tricky.

This is great, by the way. Are you doing okay? Yeah, I'm good. Okay. So this is kind of my point. So like when I go back to and we got to talk, I mean, we don't have to talk about your girlfriend, but I'm going to just make a bunch of fucking assumptions about your girlfriend because we haven't talked about her yet. But my guess is that she saw Nick through Lacey.

So, right, so let's say Lacey's a mask. Lacey is a persona. Lacey is something that you've become. It's not who you are. It is what you've become. And we sort of think like, okay, once I become something, isn't that who I am? Well, like, not really, as you've demonstrated because you still feel like the same. person. On the inside, there are parts of you that are the same. And there are times where that

voice is quiet. And there are times where that voice is loud, right? So feeling like when you're taking a day off, we're back to the cut chair. That's the problem with the day off. Now life is passing me by. I'm not doing all the things that I'm supposed to be doing. And when you are being extroverted, right, when you are out there making all this content, you feel great, that now you're on the bed, not in the chair. You kind of see how it's almost... So you're saying like, you're saying like when I'm not streaming, I almost feel like I'm back in that, in that chair watching life go by.

But when I am streaming, I feel like I'm living. Yes, right? And that's how you judge yourself because you're like, hey, man, we know how good it is to live life, right? We craved living life. We worked hard and we got to this place. We did it. We succeeded. Why are you going back to the chair?

You get the anger towards yourself? Like, why are you this way? Yeah. Like, go do the thing that you always wanted to do. It's right there. People are begging for you to come. And you're just rather sit at home and stream. You used to fucking play Fortnite instead of get laid.

Now you're just streaming instead of being out there and doing IRL stuff. Yeah. That there's that harsh shelf. judgment. 100%. And I don't know if this makes sense. How old were you when those

kids didn't invite you to the birthday party? School. Huh? High school. High school. Yeah. So this is how I fell all

throughout high school though is like since even in seventh and eighth grade. Like it was just like I was friends with everybody but nobody was Like, nobody chose to be friends with me. Yeah, right?

So this is what's kind of tricky is, I mean, it struck me when I heard that story about clicks. It struck me how out of his way he went to be friends with you. Yeah. Right? He chose you. And people are seeing something in you all the time that you're confused about. What did Ron see? You're not quite sure.

Right? So, hard question. Okay, so Nick, you're doing great, by the way. And not that you need to be doing great, but, but I'm going to try to ask you some, like, tricky questions, okay? Oh, we're lagging. Okay, there we are. Okay. So I'm going to ask you some tricky questions, okay?

Yeah. What do you think makes it hard for you to see what other people see in you? So Ron saw something, Click saw something. Your girlfriend saw something, too. It's okay if you don't have an answer and let me know if I ask you questions that make you feel stupid because that's not my intention. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Maybe it's that I don't think it's there.

There we go. I don't see it in my, I don't see it in myself. Exactly. Right? So you're confused. Like what, like, because there's that 300 pound kid who doesn't get invited to sleepovers and they're seeing something else. Yeah. And I think you actually sort of know what that is, because I think if I ask you when you are making a piece of content, you know, what are these people seeing you?

I know what answer I'm going to get. They just see a guy who's fun to vibe with. It's not going to be something particularly like, it's not a particular quality. It's not because you're the most handsome or you're the best at Fortnite. There's just this kind of like non-specific acceptance. Yeah. You kind of get what I mean? Yeah.

but you lose sight of that when you're alone, when the self-judgment starts again. Okay? Following me? Are you confused? No, I get it. Okay. So next question is this is going to be a hard one too, okay? Because we're asking you to look at things that you may not have looked at.

So you may not have, you know, it's kind of like I'm asking you to do something for the first time, okay? So on your days off, how old do you feel? Do you feel like the same kid who's back in high school? No, I feel older. Okay, say more about that. I feel like, like, I, like, on my days off, I kind of feel almost like this is what my life's going to be after, streaming.

Hmm. Like, this is like, okay, going to do this, going to do that off camera. This is what my life is going to be like 10, 15 years from now. And how do you feel about that? Scared, I think. Now we're getting to the anxiety. Like, do, like, I don't know, like, am I going to set myself up to where those days are going to be good? or...

I don't know. Or like, am I going to... Like, what's my purpose at that point? Gotcha. Oh, okay. This is taking a twist for me. Oh, why? Is that bad? No, not at all.

On the contrary, that's really good. Right? So now we're understanding what you're afraid of, right? So I don't know if this kind of makes sense. Like, I'm forming calculations in here. but right now what I'm getting from you is that there's a lot of fulfillment through content and streaming and being out there and living life, right? Not being in the chair anymore.

And then when this is all over, this is getting so weird, but like basically are the only two options in the bed or in the chair. Can you, is there a way for you to be content or how do you find purpose? if it isn't streaming, if it isn't making content, if it isn't this kind of stuff, right? Where does that purpose come from? Because in the past, when you were not doing this, it was awful. You felt like a non-person. Right?

And so basically it's almost like, okay, you used to be a non-person, that's prior to streaming. Then you became a person that's during streaming. So on the other side, is it going back to being a non-person? Yeah. I understand. Yeah, that's not, I mean, a problem in the sense, it's not a problem. I think it's a, it's a pathway, is what I would call it. Right?

And there are certain things that we can understand or learn about that. It doesn't have to be that way. Okay. The TLDR there is that, see, your experience of not being a streamer so far has been negative. There has not been an experience of contentment when you're not streaming. Does that kind of make sense? Like, wait, what do you mean? So right now you've got two data points.

You've got high school, 300-pound Nick, and you have Lacey. Let's call them Nick and Lacey. So if you're not Lacey, you're going to go back to Nick. But my point is that when you're done being Lacey, there's a whole other horizon on the other side that doesn't have to be a regression to what you used to be. So as a simple example, do you want to have kids? Do you know?

Yeah. Okay. 100%. Okay. So like, let's say you're taking a day off from streaming and you have an 18-month-old. I don't know if you, do you interact with like young kids? I don't know if you've got nieces or nephews or... Two nephews.

Right? And how old are they? Seven now. Okay. Right. So a couple years ago, if you spent a day off and you, you are chilling with your nephew. Would that feel like a waste?

Yeah. Interesting. Say more about that. Why I think like that. It's terrible that I say it. No, no, I understand. I understand. I don't think we do.

Yeah, I do. It does feel like that to me. It feels like it feels like it's a waste. Okay. What about it as a waste? Like you could be making content. You could be doing this. I could be streaming right now or I could be.

Yeah. content or yeah okay let me ask you does this conversation feel like a waste no because it's on stream and if we were having this conversation privately do you think it would feel like a waste really okay that's nothing against you at all i understand i don't want you to think that that's like i don't mean that in a bad way towards you that's just how that's just how my brain operates now is i feel like a machine almost like if it's not on stream it should be do you like feeling this way no okay good so so now here comes the hard question if i could give you a pill that would make you stop feeling this way would you take it there we go why not wouldn't i wouldn't be as dedicated as i am to it now

I wouldn't be as in the mindset of it. I wouldn't be streaming as much. I would probably start enjoying life more. I'd probably start taking more days off. I would probably start to fall back. There we go. You see that? Yeah.

Right? So maybe I do like it. So let's be clear. It's torture. Right? Because right now what's going on is when you're doing it, it's great. But the problem is that you can't do it 24-7. That you as a human being require days off. That being on social media and, you know, I imagine if I gave you the offer of, okay, let's say I gave you a pill, Lacey, that would make you superhuman to where you never needed a day off, that you could be fulfilling, like you could be making content all the time, that the thoughts and comments of people. wouldn't touch you so that you wouldn't burn out. Right? You'd take that pill in a heartbeat.

Right away. Right. So now I think we've got a tricky situation. I'm going to try to break it down a little bit, okay? So you have, so I think you're somewhat allergic to contentment. Because contentment leads to inaction. And inaction is going back. Right.

So I think what you're afraid of, like the, torture of your days off is like you feel like you're sliding back into that person you're sliding back into nick you're sliding back into being a loser right here's what you are um like there's two versions of you there's nick and there's lacey and you don't want to be nick you know what it's like to be nick and and even the things that that i don't know if this makes sense but like i don't even fully understand it but what i'm going to say is i think there's some significance to your blind spot of not seeing what other people see in you.

Right? So you see Nick or Lacey. But some people in your life, the people who really know Nick, they see something good about Nick outside of Lacey. But you don't know what that is. You're blind to that. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And if you could see that, you could afford to take a day off. Does that make sense? Or is that a bridge too far? That's too far. Okay. I don't get that part.

Let me, let me, let me think. So, when you are Nick, you cannot see your fundamental value, right? Your value comes from streaming. Yeah. Right? So there isn't a fundamental value. Your value is determined by whether you're taking a day off, then you have zero value. We're back to being high school or doesn't get invited to parties.

I'm wasting my life back to the chair, right? That's what it feels like. And then you actually said it also feels a little bit older because then the other thing that you're afraid of is this could be a preview of what's to come. After I'm done streaming, I'll be relegated to a life of just this crap again. With me? So in that moment, you're not able to see any fundamental value in yourself. Correct? Yeah.

Now what's happened is you've put on a map. You use the word mask? Or did I use the word mask? You did. Okay. I think. I'm pretty sure. I think I did too.

But you've created this persona, which is Lacey. Right? And people like Lacey. And you like being Lacey. And I think that actually when you're, this is going to sound kind of, this is going to be hard too. But when you are Lacey, you don't think about being Lacey. You're just you. You're not Lacey or Nick.

And there are times when you are feeling like Nick. You try to be lacy. But when you are lacy, you're not thinking about being lacy. You're not trying to be lacy. You're just being you. Yes or no? So you're saying, you're saying the reason I like being on stream and being lacy is because that's truly me. But I'm scared to truly be me as Nick because I was not accepted when I was younger.

fucking yes now you tell me I couldn't have said it that way you tell me is that true because we don't know right that could just be a fucking fancy formulation but like is that

no that makes yeah you're right right and so here's the really thing so I think there's a blind so what makes it hard for you to just be you as Nick that to me is connected to the blind spot of like what did Ron see in you

you know, what did what did click see in you? What did your girlfriend? I'm sure she saw Lacey or maybe you have doubts about it. There we go. But at first. And then she got to know Nick.

So you tell me what did she see in Nick that made her really happy to be with you? Oh, I don't know. That's what I'm saying, right? So it was this weird blind spot. We're like every, like, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what people see in Nick. I don't. Right. Maybe I really don't know. I'm with you, right? So that's what I'm saying is I think this blind spot is tied to, because other people see something in you. That is not Lacey, right?

So we all know that what they see in Lacey, fine. You're hype, you're this, you're the public persona. But there's a handful of people that's like, hey, this 300 pound overweight kid, there's something special in this kid. Right? It's not just a, you see yourself as a loser playing Fortnite for 10 hours. I got to know if you can hear me. I can hear you.

Okay. So you see a 300 pound loser is playing Fortnite for 10 hours a day. And they look at this guy and they're like, you know what? This is the dude. There's a diamond in the rough here. Like this diamond is uncut. It's an uncut gem. We're going to hit the personal trainer.

You're going to move in with me. They see something fundamental in you. And the reason that you're confused by that is because you can't see it in yourself. Because when you see yourself, you see the, cuck chair. With me? Yep. Okay. So now I'm going to pause for a second. I don't know exactly where to go from here. Do you have thoughts or questions that you want to share? The thoughts that you want to share or questions that you want to ask? Not really questions, no. Okay. Any thoughts?

I guess the only thought I really had is like, do they see a diamond in like, like, uncut in the rough in a human in a like as a person or as a content creator? I think the people that you really see you see you as a human. I think there are people who value the content creator as well. Right. So so so so and I think I think this is where like this is almost like I would even say it's a false separation. because the most brilliant version of a content creator is a person. Those two things become unified at some point, and there's not a separation.

That's a false separation in your head. Yeah. Do you kind of get me? Like, when you're making the best content, you are your most authentic self. You're not trying to be anybody. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, as you're saying.

So, but you're right that, and this is where you kind of get screwed because you used to be a loser and then you became a winner. And now what you've happened is, since people are selecting you now, they're selecting the winner, not the loser. Do you see how, like, almost like that reinforces the trap? Because, so I'll just give you an example. You know, I fully see, because it's like,

I see people selecting, like you said, the winner now. So when the reason I'm winning now goes away, do people go back to not selecting me? Do I go back to being that loser that nobody selects? Absolutely. Right? So this is going to be hard. Lacey, you're doing great, by the way.

Do you, how do you solve that problem? Do you have any idea? It's hard. Okay. I guess just never stop streaming. No, that is the wrong answer, right? Because then you're going to keep selecting. to keep selecting for the winner.

You kind of get what I'm saying? That's the answer that works for you because as long as you keep being lacy, they'll keep, you'll keep on getting the, you'll get the acceptance of other people through being a streamer. So sure, it's a logical answer that if I want to keep getting acceptance, what do I do? I have to keep being lacy. I can't ever stop. Otherwise, I'm going to return, right? The fear of the future.

So here's what's really scary. So why are you dependent on Lacey's acceptance? This is hard. Okay, so I trained for 10 years, I've been practicing for 10 years, trained at Harvard Medical School. This is how I know these answers. So this is hard, okay?

But I'm pushing you because you're doing good, and we're going to push you till wherever your limit is, and then I'll pick up. Yeah. Wait, so what was the question? So. you're like never stop streaming, right? That's the strategy you're using now, right?

When we stop streaming, we're a loser. So we're going to stream forever. We'll feel great every day. Everyone will love us as long as we keep streaming. It's conditional love, right? Your dad thought you were wasting your time until when? He was like, you're a loser wasting your life until you did what? Until I make a career out of it.

Specifically what? What did you do that made him accept you? Support you. Made money. You showed him a check. Boom. Now you're in trouble because dad loves you when what? And I know your dad doesn't,

he loves you all the time. I know that. I can tell. Right? But in your mind. But he didn't love what I was doing. Right? So you got that acceptance from him.

Loves you no matter what. But in order to get acceptance, you had to become someone. you had to show him a check. And now he's on board. Hey, kid, you're wasting your time playing Fortnite, wasting your time playing Fortnite, wasting your time playing Fortnite.

I don't accept you. This is bad. This is wrong. Then you show him a check. And he's like, follow your dreams, kiddo. But do you see how it solidifies the separation of who you are

into the part of the... Yeah, I do, but I also think it was, it's more of a, a, like, coming from a spot of this kid is, like, as a kid, as a 16. 17-year-old kid playing video games 10 hours a day, door-dashing McDonald's and Taco Bell, you're going to get to a point where you're 400 pounds and your life is gone. Like, you have, it's wasted.

Yeah. And so I'm not, so this is important to understand. Loving parents, there's no way, there's no such thing as a perfect parent. loving parents have unintended psychological impacts on their kids. Just because my kid's dad as a therapist doesn't mean that they won't need a therapist one day. Yeah. Okay. So my point is that you've created a structure of disliking a part of yourself, devaluing a part of yourself, and loving a different part of yourself, loving a version of yourself, being proud of a version of.

of yourself. And so now you're sort of like kind of stuck because in order to continue getting your own self-acceptance, because it's not clear that this is about anybody else's, by the way, right? When you are proud of yourself, you are content with yourself, you don't feel like you're in the cuck chair when you're streaming. And you're, and if I give you the pill, hey, if I could make you more content, you'd be like, fuck, nah, bra.

Yeah. I don't want contentment. I want that punishment on my days off because. unless I punish myself in that way, I'm not going to work this hard. Yeah. If I don't have this strong punishing influence, you're going to slide back into, oh, beautifully said, DoorDash, McDonald's, Taco Bell, not 300 pounds. What will you become? What was it, Lacey?

What's it 300. What'd you say? 100? Huh? 400? Absolutely, right? Yeah. You better punish yourself on your days off.

You better feel guilty. You better tell yourself, oh, my God, this fucking loser, dors. Doordashing Taco Bell. F that. Right? I don't know if you feel that way when you dooredash Taco Bell. I don't know if you still DoorDash Taco Bell.

No, I definitely do so, Dooredash Taco Bell. And how do you feel about that? Um, I mean, it feels good when I eat it, but then when I'm done, I feel like shit. Right.

So, okay, good. I think there's something good here. So now the question is, I don't think that you can, is streaming every day, is the solution. It'll be the solution in this. Does that kind of, it'll maintain the system.

You understand the system? Okay. So how do we, how do we break out of the system? You have any idea? Okay. All right. So I'm going to lay it out for you. This could be hard, okay?

But basically what we need to do is we need to do for ourselves. Okay. You need to, basically, it's self-acceptance, basically. So on your days off, right, you have to learn. I know you don't like this. But like, like, like, you have to do for your, yourself what you needed from other people. You have to accept yourself. So, because if the 300 pound person can get the acceptance, then you're fine. Does that kind of make sense?

What are you getting from what I'm saying? Getting that in order for me to, to not feel that guilt and pressure when I don't stream is I have to accept myself like in order. I have to feel like I have to feel not confident, but like I have to feel acceptance for myself in order to feel it from other people. Absolutely, right? So, and this is what I mean about the blind spot. Like, it's really interesting that there's a particular blind spot, which is that lots of people are seeing something really special in you that you can't see.

All you can see is the Lacey version. And here's the really cool thing. when you are making content in your most authentic way, you're not even trying to, all this mess is gone. You're just being you. Right? So actually what you need to do is just be you on your days off.

And that's what's hard because on your days off, you're not you because you're in your head. There's that constant commentary, right? You can't afford, you can't say to yourself, look, I had Taco Bell, and you can enjoy the Taco Bell, and then it's great.

And then afterward there's the guilt, but you can't say yourself, look, man, I'm working out with my personal trainer. I eat. I follow my macros six days a week. Occasionally, I get a little bit of Taco Bell. And like, that's okay. Does that make sense? Sort of. Sort of.

Not really. Not really. Good. Good. I'm glad you're being honest. So what doesn't make sense about that? This is going to be hard. But I'm not, because I'm not doing that.

I'm not, I don't have a personal trainer right now. and I'm not following my macro six days a week. Okay. So now we get to something else that is important. Right? So in order to like, so what's stopping you from doing those things? Discipline. Okay.

Can I think for a second? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to ask you what? So I'm going to ask you a question, Lacey. Maybe the hardest question of all. Yeah. What can I do in this conversation?

What would you like to have done at the end of this conversation? Tell me what's wrong with me. Okay. What do you understand about what's wrong with you? That, I don't know. I think, uh, that I, like, I don't, like, I didn't expect to have, like, a solution at the end, like, for it to be, like, a magic fix. Okay. But maybe just, like, opening my eyes to, to why I am the way I am in.

certain situations. Okay. And what's your understanding of why you are the way you are in certain situations? So after all the stuff we've talked about, by the way, you don't have to, like, if you don't, if your fucking brain is like a colander where we're pouring water and it's just trickling out, that's really not a problem. I'll help you with that. I'm asking what you want.

We'll get there. But I want to understand where you are, what you stitch together. Because I know you've had insights. I've seen it in your face. So, like, I guess that. I guess the way I am, like, in terms of, we already, you already touched on it, but like, why I do get anxious and guilty when I, when I don't stream, why I, like, why do I have trouble separating my offstream time and my on stream time? Why do I have trouble disciplining myself when I know deep down I should be, but I'm not? Okay.

Why am I sensitive? Why do, like, how do I manage the hate that I get? Okay. So now let's talk about the hate that you get just real quick. When someone calls me fat on the playground, what determines how much that hurts? Like if I were to say to you, Lacey, bro, you're pathetic. Your tits are so tiny.

Like, you know, like, oh my God, like great tits are amazing. I love great tits, and your tits are absolute shit. They're like, what, like even less than an A cup, like double A cup? Like what? I mean, see, like, that doesn't, that doesn't really affect me anymore. Very good. Why not? I think, because I've heard it so much.

That's been, my life has been getting called fat for three years now. Oh, shit. thousands of times a day. I came up with the wrong example. I just realized. Okay, I was trying to do something else. But, okay. So, so this is what I was trying to get to.

Sorry. Oh, you're good. Oh, okay, okay. So, so actually, maybe that is the right. So what makes that hurt versus not hurt? Right? When someone insults you, what determines how much that hurts? I think.

it's not even insults that hurt. It's misinterpretations of me that hurt. Okay. What, uh, yeah, that's a whole different can of worms. I'm gonna table. Like, like, like, insults, they don't really hurt as much. They used to a lot, but like, but, because it's like, like, I'm so used to it. Like, I'm used to, to people telling me I'm fat.

I'm used to people. insulting me and calling me names. So I think it's gone to a point where it's like, like if I punched myself in the arm 5,000 times, it's, I'm so numb to the pain at that point that I'm just, I could keep doing it.

So it's like, it doesn't hurt anymore insult me. So Lacey, I'm going to step away from that for a moment because I think that is another dimension of things, which you're not wrong about at all. But I think it introduces like other variables to the equation.

Okay, so here's kind of the point that I was going for, and I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying. I think I've seen this a lot with content creators. But basically, the stuff that I doubt about myself, those are the chinks in the armor for other people's insults. Right. When I'm sensitive about my own weight, when I don't like the way that I look in the mirror and someone calls me fat, that's what hurts. Because I believe it about myself. Right? the things that you, that people insult you, there's absolutely a thing about misinterpretation

on the internet, which really burns out content creators. But for most people, it's like the things that hurt are the things that you're sensitive about, basically. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So going back to insight into what's going on with you, here's what I would offer. Okay.

So first thing is, I'm going to just lay out a couple of things. When we're growing up, we're not as psychologically armored as we need to be. So we're vulnerable, right? So if you look at a child, like a child's immune system is vulnerable, their body is vulnerable, their mind is vulnerable. So in my culture, we say that you should treat a child like a flower, like the most delicate part of the plant. It's not the stem, it's not the roots. It is the part that is the most susceptible to damage. It's also the most beautiful part.

So when you're, and you know, it's really interesting because your psychological hurt from when you were in high school is not that people made fun of you. It's that you weren't a person worth considering. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. So this is also why, by the way, like I think when you're, you. say you got used to it, I think that's an element to it, but I think, oh, here we go, people can call a shit talk you all day long, you'd be fine with it. What would devastate you is if they stop showing up? Yeah. Right? Because then you're a non-person anymore. Like, you're not a person,

right? So, so now your fear, your core fear is of like going back, regressing. Even when we talk about what is the future, again, right? Like I'd rather, I'd rather, I'd rather, I'd rather people have bad things to say than have nothing to say at all. There we go. Right? You're just, you're terrified of being a non-entity. And when you look 10 to 15 years in the future, that's what scares you, is that you're going back to being a non-entity.

Okay? That's number one. Now we get into a complicating issue, which is that your solution to this problem is a really good solution, which is I'm a become somebody. right? And once you become somebody, then people start showing up, then people start accepting you. But if you really look at it, if you really pay attention, your most important acceptances were arguably, I don't know about most important, but there are a handful of really important acceptances that happened before you or somebody. But for some reason, that is not registering.

You see how like that should heal that wound, but it's not registering. And the reason it's not registering is because you're blind to it. Like you can't connect those dots. Once you can connect those dots, once you understand, once you understand how what clicks, once you can see yourself through clicks's eyes, instead of your own eyes, then you will be way better. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Once you can see what he saw when you were 300 pounds. Once you can see whatever that intrinsic thing is, because it's not your weight. It's not your followers. It's something else. But you're not able to see that. And since you can't see that, now you've created a really problematic structure, which is really common.

Which is that you use your negative emotion to keep you grinding. Right? And then you create this persona. And now you're sort of in this like really toxic fuel cycle is what I would call it, where like you beat yourself. up on your days off, and that's good because without those negative emotions, you wouldn't work as hard as you work. And this is what's really a lot of people don't understand. People think that you're motivated by positivity.

That's not true. People are motivated by negative emotions way more powerfully than they're motivated by positive emotions. Okay? Negative emotions, like if you think about, let's say I'm dating someone and they cheat on me once, I can have loved this person for five years. They cheat on me once. five years of love gets washed away with a single day of betrayal.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Right? So people don't understand that this is why it's so successful. This is why it's so useful to motivate yourself by negative emotions because they're actually way more powerful than positive emotions. But now you're kind of stuck because you're in this cycle where there's Lacey and there's Nick and your desire to run away from. Nick is what keeps you Uber productive as Lacey.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Right? So now there's a really tricky thing because there's a part of you that is afraid of giving up your hatred of Nick. There's a part of you that is afraid

of giving up your judgment of Nick. Why, though? Why? Because if you accept Nick, if you allow yourself Taco Bell on your days off, if you allow yourself days off, then you could slide back, right? Yeah. And then when I slide back, I stop streaming,

and then the people who are there, even if it's negative, they're not there anymore. Right. And what are you afraid of on day four? That they're going to show up and call you fat? There we go. No, that they're not even going to be there at all. Your core fear is being a non-person,

to be ignored, right? To not be seen as human. And the ultimate solution to that is to see yourself as human. Because the moment that you see yourself as human, you won't require other people to see you that way. Right? The only things I need from other people are the things that I can't do for myself. I don't need someone to wipe my ass every day. I can wipe my ass.

Right? Does that kind of make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So this is, it's a really common structure, by the way. right so I don't think you're like I think you're doing great honestly and and there's a couple of steps but I think ultimately the goal is to be able because you take the days off anyway right and you just you don't I really no not really okay I mean I mean you mentioned I mean sometimes but very rarely

will I take a day off yeah so that I can get to I mean I didn't take a day off for basically five years so I can empathize with that but what I'm saying is that even on your days off when you're forced to take them, you can beat yourself up over it, or you cannot. Yeah. Right? And I know that's, it's easier said than done. But so that was, so you asked like, you know, I'd like to have understanding of what's

going on with me. That is my summary of how I understand what's going on with you. How do you feel? How does that, how does that resonate? Yeah, no, I think you're right. I just, I still, like, I don't know, like, how to, to, to, you know. I get what you're saying I need to do. I just don't know how to do it.

Like, I don't know how to make myself accept myself. Yeah, I understand. So there are two ways to, there are two answers to this. Okay. One is the more effective answer takes longer, right? There's lots more that can be understood and learned and things like that. And then there is something that we can do, potentially even try today that how can I say this?

There's one solution that is more efficient requires less work but requires more help. So I would say there's like you can work with a personal trainer to get in shape or literally you don't have to work with a personal trainer ever. All you can do, all you need to get into shape is just to walk.

And if you do it enough, if you take it seriously enough, you'll get into shape without anybody's help. So if you want to, we can try an experiment of that may teach you a core tool that will sort of teach you self-acceptance. But it's going to teach you something even deeper than self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is a psychological thing.

But make no mistake, this is hard to do and takes a lot of practice. Okay. You want to give this a shot? Yeah, can I change my headset battery? Yeah. It's about to die. Yeah. Yeah.

Two seconds. Okay. Can you hear me? I can hear you great. Okay. Okay. I can hear you. So what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to teach something now, okay?

There's nothing to do with you. So when you're making content. So I'm going to make the claim that your most content self is when you were being, not trying to be, not trying to be anything, right? You're just being. You're just you. And I would say that your version of Nick. your vision of Nick is not someone who's just being.

He's someone who's literally in his head. So you're thinking lots of thoughts. So that day at lunch, when your friends are talking about the sleepover, you're not tasting your food anymore. You're not enjoying your food. You're not enjoying being with them. Your mind is literally just thinking about how they didn't invite you. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah. And I'm not focused on what's going on. At the moment, I'm just feeling. Exactly. And I would even argue that what you love, about content creation. So you're, you kind of like have to work yourself to get there, right?

But when you, when you're there, you love it. And the reason that you love it is actually because in that moment, you're not thinking about anything you're engaged. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I'm going to make the broad claim

that when you are engaged with anything in life, that is contentment. And when you are not engaged with anything in life, when you are in your head, doesn't matter whether you're having sex, eating food, streaming, right? So you know what I'm talking about, because there are sometimes where you live stream where you see a comment. And now you're thinking, oh my God, now this is, are there other people going to pick this up or other, are more people commenting? You know what I mean, right? Now you're watching chat and you're no

longer vibing with chat. You're watching chat. You're on the alert. The more you are in your head the less content you are. So here's the cool thing. We're going to try to train you to be content here and now. And it's a little thing. Okay. I want you to sit up. Have you ever meditated before? No. Oh yeah. Once, once, once. Okay. I'm going to teach you something that people will call meditation. Okay. You open to learning it? Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm going to be a little bit. We're not going to, we're not going to start easy. We're actually going to start hard because hard will induce the state that we are looking for. Okay? So I want you to sit up straight.

Your spine needs to be straight. Your neck needs to be straight. Okay? I want you to take your hand and I, right hand, curl these two fingers down. Yeah, good. Okay. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to take my right thumb. I'm going to block my right nostril.

And I'm going to breathe in through my left. Breathe in through your left nostril. And now we're going to switch. Block. Yeah, just rotate. There we go. And now breathe out. Good.

Now breathe in through the same nostril. Switch. And breathe out. Good. Now breathe in through the same nostril. Not through your mouth. Switch. And out.

Good. I want your chat to do it too. I know they're talking to you and I know you're reading chat. Breathe in. I don't have chat up actually. Okay, good. Switch and out. Okay. You got the rhythm? Yeah. Okay. So basically the key thing here is that you want to switch on a full breath. So a lot of people will go in and out and then switch and they'll switch on empty. We want to switch on full. It's kind of confusing, but breathe in, then switch. Yeah, it's okay. Yon. Yon if you, wait, I'm just telling, I'm explaining it. Okay. And yawn if you need to, okay? It's okay to yawn. Okay. Good. Good. That's okay. That means it's working. Okay?

Okay. It makes me tired? It balances you. Okay? So when you need, it'll calm you down. This is the practice. I did a version of this practice when I'm working in the emergency room. Car crash comes in.

We have to do something about that. And in the next room, there's someone who's been sexually assaulted. I can't go into the second room with the same energy of the first room. Does that make sense? Like paddles and blood, I mean, chest compressions and all like, you need to calm the fuck down. and then move into the next room. Okay. So now we're going to make it hard.

Okay? So I want you to sit up straight. Now what I'm going to do, how long can you hold your breath? Do you know? No idea. Okay. Okay.

15 seconds. Take a deep breath in and hold it. Tell me when you exhale. Great. Exhale. Okay. Now just breathe. That's long enough.

Okay. So now this is what we're going to do. It's going to be a bit tricky. Okay. We're going to inhale. Actually, let's forget about the alternate nostril. We're making it easy on you. This is what I'm, we're going to do.

No. Let me think. Let me ask you, do you want, how much of a difficulty curve do you want from one to five? Five being the most difficult, one being the easiest. What? You want five? Most difficult. Okay.

So now what I'm going to do, we're going to combine this with breath retention. And I'll walk you through it. Okay. So what I want you to do, so I'm going to have you inhale for six seconds. And I need you to understand you've got to really go try to get as much air as you can in that six seconds. Okay. Then we're going to hold our breath for 24 seconds. Okay. So you made it to 30. Okay. So we're going to hold our breath for 24 seconds. And then this is going to be the hard part. You're going to exhale for 12. Okay, 6, 24, 12. So there's going to be 36 seconds between your inhalations. Okay? And we're going to do this six breaths, three rounds. Maybe six is too much.

We'll do it four breaths, okay, two rounds. I'll walk you through it. You don't have to worry about all that. I'm just letting you know that we're going to inhale maybe two times. Actually, let's just start with two, okay? So sit up straight. None of this elbows business. Okay.

Okay, sit up straight. Second thing, don't go like this when you're doing it. So your hand should be straight. Take your left hand, lay it flat in your lap. Okay? Like palm facing up if you can. I can't. Okay, that's fine.

You got it. Yeah, yeah, fine. Just rest your hand, okay? So now I'll walk you through it. I want everybody else to do this with us, okay? we're going to teach you something cool at the end. Okay, so adopt this. Good.

Fold the first two fingers. There we go. Okay. This thumb goes here. Breathe in for six seconds. Now set this down and hold, baby. Hold. One, two.

Eyes close. Three. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

11, 12, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Go back and, yeah, there we go. And then exhale, 12 seconds.

Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Don't tilt. Stay straight. And now breathe in, six seconds. You used your mouth? That's okay. Okay, good. Okay, good, good.

Dead! Okay, close your eyes. Right now. Close your eyes. And just feel. Feel how good it feels to just fucking breathe, man. Just not have to do this shit. Oh my God.

Okay, good. Now we're going to go again. So now this is what I want you to do. Okay? You wanted five, so we're giving you five. I'm going to torture you one more time. What? Okay.

But when I torture you, when I torture you, when you run out of steam, and when you're like, I can't exhale for 12 seconds. I got to let it out and let it in. What I want you to do is close your eyes when you do that. When you're at the cracking point, good, yawn, excellent. It's okay, let it out. It's good.

Okay? So you don't have to pep up, pep yourself up, okay? When you yawn, I mean, sorry, when you feel that, when you feel at the breaking point, I want you to go ahead and crack, no problem. But close your eyes and enjoy every second of the breaking, right? Because it's going to feel so fucking good. all right but if you're in your head about oh my god i failed i was supposed to do it for 12 seconds it's not going to work you with me i don't want you to judge yourself you know the judgment

so it's fine if you judge yourself you'll just lose it but just just enjoy it as much as you can for as many seconds as you can and you are going to open your eyes when you're done enjoying it you with me? Okay, that's how we know when you're done. I'm not going to tell you when to open your eyes. You'd let me know when you open your eyes, okay? Okay. Give it to me, baby. Good. It's okay. Just, yeah. Curl what you can. There you go. And then in for six seconds. Go. Eyes closed. And two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, there we go, good, straight. 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, 19, 20.

Bring the other hand up and start to exhale. Yeah, other side, start to exhale, slow. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now just float, baby. Go ahead. Tell me. I got mad. Not mad, but like, I didn't make it to 12. Okay. When did you get mad? Six.

Not mad, but, like, I was just like, I could have made it to 12, but I didn't try hard enough. Okay. If I really wanted to hold my breath, if I really wanted to exhale for 12 seconds, I could have done it. Okay. Is your left nostril more open than your right? Check both. Which one's more open? This one's a more open. Okay, we're going to go again. Okay. Okay.

So, good. This is right. So do you see how you're torturing yourself when you fail? Okay, so we're going to try again. This time, I want you to just... So you failed. Why did you fail? Because you wanted to breathe.

Wuss that you are. You wanted to breathe and not asphyxiate yourself. Oh, my God. What effing loser. So what I want you to do is when you want to breathe and you breathe, how does it feel? Good. Okay. Focus on that.

Just let it happen. Go as far as you can. So actually, we're going to do the six in, 24 hold, six out. Okay? You're not failing. I swear to God. This is not, we're not making things easier on you or anything like that, I swear. You got to trust me on this, okay?

So none of the shoulder stuff. I don't like your shoulders. Up straight. There we go. One more time. Let's go. Six in. Close your eyes. Two, three, four, five, six. Hold. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, nineteen, twenty. Bring the other hand up. Let's go. Slowly exhale. Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Two, three, four, five, six, and relax.

Just let that air come in. Just feel that relief. There's that second breath. Oh, so good. There's that third one. Look at how deep it is on its own. Good. What was it like this time?

Like relaxing. Okay. So here's the thing. Did you beat yourself up for not making it to 12 and doing six that I had to adjust the practice for you? No. Okay. Weird, right? So now here's...

You told me six. Good. Good. So here's the key thing I want to show you. In one situation. So this is literally what this practice does. So the first time around, your mind was active. Right?

And it's torturing you. Second time around, your mind is in. active feels good, right? This is really simple. On your days off, you can enjoy what you're doing or you can torture yourself for what you're doing. Choice is yours. Literally, how do you train your mind to do, to enjoy it instead of not torture yourself?

You do this practice. And I don't know if this makes sense. That feeling of contentment that you get in those three breaths, you're not lacy. You're not Nick. You're just a guy who's breathing and it feels good. Okay? This is going to be a little bit vulgar.

I know you have a girlfriend. We haven't talked about what your sexual history is. Maybe you've had an orgasm. Okay. So. Orgasm, yes. When you have an orgasm, you're not lacy. You're not Nick.

I'm just nutting. Right? Before, there's a lot going on in your head. Afterward, it's like, oh, my God, did I come too quick? You know? But during it's bliss. Breathing is bliss. You can literally train your mind by practicing states of simple contentment, simple presence.

Yon. Just yawn if you need to yawn. It's okay. Don't hold back. Don't be what you're not supposed to be. I can't yawn on the stream. Yes, you can. No, because then it makes the chat think I'm tired when I'm not tired.

I'm just yawning. You're not tired. We've activated, we've hyper-activated your parasympathetic nervous system. We're manipulating your physiology. That's why you're peace. Yeah, absolutely. Bro, that's why we do this, okay? Trying to calm you down.

It's okay, just yawn. You'll come back. So here's the cool thing. I did this practice when I was on call, so I'd work a 30-hour shift in the hospital. Doing this practice for about 20 minutes is what let me work through the night. I know you're kind of calm,

like you're yawning and stuff now. In 15 minutes, your energy will bounce back. You'll be really good. Trust me. Okay? And very normal for you to yawn. And other people are doing, if they're doing it with you,

they're going to be yawning too, if they're hyperactivated. Other cool thing about this practice is if you do this when you are feeling tired, it will wake you up. okay yeah see you're yawning this is not when you're when you're tired does this make sense when you're tired you don't chain yawn right you on you on like once and then like 15 30 minutes later you're you're you're chain yawning like that's where we're literally affecting your physiology

we're affecting your cortisol levels we're like we're doing weird stuff here's the cool thing when you're chain yawning, this is the same thing that will chain calm down your mind. Okay? Happens in the body, happens in the mind. Okay? So this is what I want you to do. You're going to work your way up to 6, 24, 12.

Okay? I want you to do three rounds a day. Okay? Three rounds is six breaths. So one round is in, switch out. And then in again. Switch out. So you see how I end on the side?

That's one round. One round is two breaths. Okay? One round, or one round is going to be 46 seconds, 24 plus 16. Oh, sorry. Sorry, 36, 42 seconds. Okay. So six second inhalation, 24 second hold, 12 second exhale.

There's the chain you on. Keep going. It's okay. Your body's rebalancing, okay? 6, 24, 12 times two. Okay. 42 seconds times two. One round is going to be 100 and, sorry, 88, 84 seconds.

Okay. 84 seconds times three is 252 seconds. So literally this is a four and a half minute practice every day. Okay. Do this before. Even on days I'm streaming? Yes. Ideally.

So the goal here is that you are training yourself to be content in the moment. And you have to train yourself. You can't just be content. The thoughts will happen. And then what, the main thing that I want you to pay attention to is, you did a beautiful job. Because first time you did it,

you were beating yourself up. Second time you didn't, you weren't beating yourself up. I don't care whatever reason you come up, but that's irrelevant. What's relevant is like the state of mind that you're in. Okay. Good.

It's weird, right? Yeah, I'm like tired now and I just drank of energy. drink. Yeah. So, main thing to take away from this, Lacey, is this shit works. Doesn't matter if you just drink an energy drink. That's why you're yawning so much, by the way, because it is counteracting the effects

of the energy drink. The energy drink is artificially amping you up. And so there are parts of your physiology that are like, wait, this is way out of whack. Okay? So it's okay. Don't worry. You'll be fine in 10 minutes. You'll be fine.

Okay. What questions do you have? that or in general whatever about this about anything else meaning of life well you said you said that it was a whole other can of worms about misinterpretation and internet hate yeah you want me to explain that okay so here's the big difference so one of these things is within you. Okay? So what happened is you had these series of experiences. You had this thing that happened at lunch when you were in high school. You had your dad's conditional acceptance when they were like, yeah, bro, follow your dreams. It's not a waste of time, right? And I know your dad loves you, I can tell.

We're not trying to make him a demon. It's just these things affect us in ways that we don't realize, that they don't intend. Because he is supportive, right? He's saying, hey, bro, follow your dreams. You can always do college. It seems like you're really on to something here. I get that. then there's all the stuff about, you know, the way that you force yourself to work, you don't take days off, things like that. Okay. So that's like, that's all in you. But if you look at the internet, the internet is a kind of impact on our mind, which has nothing to do with us. This is nonspecific.

Does that make sense? Like, there are certain parts of your psychology that are specific to you. I had a different set of experiences. These are not exactly the same. Okay? In Sanskrit, we call these things some scars, somsara. The other way to think about it is like trauma. So you were traumatized in this way.

You had adaptation to that trauma. That adaptation allows you to thrive, but the adaptations to trauma give us success and cost us happiness. That's the big problem with trauma. Is we learn how to survive. We learn how to thrive, at a price.

And then we get stuck because we don't think that we can have our cake and eat it to. We think that we have to choose, right, in your mind, it's a choice between taking a day off and being a loser or working and being successful. You can be successful and have a day off. But you don't know how to do that yet. That's not your fault. It is not easy to do. It is hard to do.

Sounds like the simplest thing in the world. It isn't. Okay. The thing about misjudgment from others is what I've found as a psychiatrist working with tons of content creators. I'm a content creator myself. I don't know if this makes sense. It's like you can have a specific problem with your lungs that's genetic, like cystic fibrosis. It's a genetic lung problem, okay?

That is specific to you. You can take 100 people, stick them in a coal mine for a year. They're all going to have lung problems. Do you understand how these two things are different? Yeah. What's the difference with the genetic thing in the coal mine? The one person can't control it. Like they were born with that problem,

but the other people just could have not went to the coal mine. Absolutely. So the coal mine has an impact on your lungs no matter who you are. So today what we talked about is the things that are specific to you. If I interview 100 other streamers, by the way, many of them will have the pattern of toxic fuel, but all the stories are going to be individual. What I realize is that the human brain is,

not designed for the internet. We did not evolve with the internet. So there is a particular kind of psychological, how can I say this, injury, which is continual amount of misjudgment. When a human being is chronically misjudged, has nothing to do with them. That has an impact on their psychology. Does that make sense? Right. So if I like... Think. Yeah. So, so, I mean, this is, So just like a coal mine, being on the internet and being a content creator exposes you to some kind of toxic fumes. And managing that, this has nothing to do with you or how you believe about yourself or what your insecurities are. This is just people on the internet make snap judgments.

And human beings really, really, really hate to be misjudged. Human beings hate to be misunderstood. And when you are on the internet, unfortunately, you're in a situation where 9909. 99 people out of 1,000 will not misjudge you. But the human brain doesn't think in probabilities. Like, that's why everyone plays the lottery. Because we don't understand, like, one in a billion chance. That doesn't mean anything to us.

Like, our brain literally doesn't know how to process that. So unfortunately, our human brain doesn't know, like, I'll give you another. So you can have 100 people at school like you. And all it takes is one bully to, like, ruin your day. a 13-year-old kid is not thinking, well, 100 people like me and this guy is just an idiot. That's not how we think. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, so basically, like, there could be a thousand people who don't misjudge me or don't dislike me.

But all it takes is one or two for me to be like, damn, everybody hates me. Absolutely. Okay. So remember, like just like we said, so there's not multiple neuro. So the reason I said it's a whole different can of worms, there's multiple neuro. There's multiple neuroscientific mechanisms at play. One is that, see, we grew up and basically our brain evolved for communities of about 300 people. So if one, and being kicked out of the community means death.

Okay, this is how human beings. Like imagine, you know, a pride of lions or a pride of hyenas, like a pack of hyenas. If one hyena is left to themselves, that's a death sentence. Human beings were basically similar. If you think about chimpanzees, apes, gorillas, right? So like when primates get separated from the pack, like the whole point of being a monkey is like when I'm sleeping, another monkey is keeping watch. So a solo human being in the wild is a death sentence. So human beings are very sensitive to ostracization.

We are sensitive to judgment. And we try really, really, really hard. If you wonder, why is everyone, everyone's like, oh, man, I'm such a fucking people pleaser. Why am I a people pleaser? I wish I wasn't a people pleaser. The reason you're a people pleaser is because if you were not a people pleaser and you get kicked out of the tribe, you're dead. Not being a people pleaser is a death sentence with the way that our brain evolved.

So we are hypersensitive to people's misjudgments. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So how, but, but I, I do understand that. And that's like, like my lingo of that is called one guide.

Like there could be 10,000 people in my stream, spamming Ws and hi, Lacey and how's your day? And then I see the one person who says, kill yourself. and that's the one that I focus on. So how do I, how, not only me, is everybody,

how do you, how do you not care? Like, how do I, like, I see things where I'll see, I'll go through comments and I'll see people, like, say, like, I could just tell Lacey's a bad person. Lacey, Lacey did this,

Lacey did that. Oh, like, like, obviously I've had my fair share of mistakes. I've, like, every human, I've had misjudged I've said dumb things. I've done dumb things. But the difference is mine's on live 24-7.

So even if I know I fucked up or made a mistake, it doesn't matter because now I'm judged based off that for the rest of my life. So how do I get myself to not care about being judged off? Yeah. So this is like this is literally a skill or not, just a skill. There's a set of things when I work with a creator, we have a creator coaching program. This is the kind of mental health stuff that I think there's like a program

for. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through a couple of important pieces. The first is, so Lacey, when you're streaming, how many messages are scrolling across chat per second? I have no idea. Is there like, can I get a statistic of that? Yeah, well, what do you think? Is it a little or a lot. How many the messages when you're streaming, how many messages can you read? And how many do you miss? What percentage do you read and what percentage do you miss?

Probably miss. I'd say I'd probably, I'd probably read, like if I look at this entire chat thing right here, I would probably say I miss it. Okay. 186 messages. I'd say I probably miss, like, most.

Okay, right. But don't you think it's weird that, like, when someone says something negative, you never miss that. Yeah. Right? So it's kind of weird. It's like finding a needle in a haystack, except I always find my needle in a haystack rate is like 100%. It's insane, right? Yeah.

It's probably not practically 100% because we don't realize what we miss. So this is the first thing is the way your biology is designed. So that's the first thing. to understand is that like this is normal. This is not like you're messed up or anything like that. Second thing, and this is really helpful, but this takes some time. Most people who misjudge you don't actually judge you. They are, what they're doing is projecting onto you. Okay. So they have certain belief, they have a well-constructed idea of, let's say, what a streamer is. And all they need is one bit of data to trigger, they're like, oh, yeah, this guy is just like everybody else.

Does that make sense? Like, I'll give you an example, okay? So let's say, like, I'm a man or woman, take your pick. And then I go on a date and then something negative happens. And then what happens? I'm like, oh, man, like all men are the same. All women are the same. Do you understand how that doesn't have, like, that person can't form a judgment on another

person based on just one interaction. Yeah, exactly. Right? That's my point is, but how do I, I don't know how to not care. Because I do care when I see people say things about me that aren't true. Right. So it's like, that's not who I am. That's not true.

Absolutely. So human beings are hypersensitive to false accusations. Okay. So that, so, but my point is that, do you understand how if I go on a date with a girl and I don't hold the door open for her? Or if I ask her, hey, how do you want to handle the bill? I'm not saying that I won't pay for it. I'm just out of respect.

I'm like, do you want to split it? Do you want me to cover it? Like, what do you want? But what someone can do, the more messed up they are, that single statement, they will read into it a lot. Oh, my God. This guy is even asking. That means he's broke, because only broke dudes will ask, right?

This means that the guy, like, doesn't want to, he's just, like, using me for sex. They will start to, like, infer all, they'll make all kinds of, of false judgments about me. Does that make sense? Yeah. So where are those judgments coming from if they're not coming from me? Other experiences. Right? They're coming from them. Sure, other experiences. But maybe some amount of social media brainwashing, whatever. But, and so that's an important thing to understand is that this person, if this person is inaccurate, like that's on them, that's kind of not on me. You can kind of work your way to responding to that. doesn't happen overnight.

But to realize, so one way that I deal with hate and one way that I help other creators deal with hate is to really look at a comment and be like how much of this is accurate or inaccurate. But it's like, you know, if someone has a misjudgment about you,

they're not thinking rationally to begin with. So the ability to correct their thinking, and I'm sure you've tried, takes way more effort than it's worth. Does that kind of make sense? Because now you're combating ignorance not Yeah, but I think it's also just

Like If it was If it was me And if I had a A normal life And like let's just say I went on a date with that girl And she thinks that about me

That's easier to To be like No, that's not me Than when it's amplified Under a magnifying glass By thousands of people Yeah, so that's that same principle. You're right. So this is why I was saying, like, this isn't about you. This is about being a content creator. So what happens is like, you know, I think people don't realize I was stunned. I did a stream about a year ago with someone that I personally, no one's perfect. I think this person has flaws. They came on stream. They were honest and I think trying to like learn some things. We revealed. some things about their psychology that people were like, oh my God, this person is like so terrible.

And then what I was blown away by is this person is coming on stream and they're being like honest and vulnerable and people are tearing him apart because he does certain things that people don't like, which is like fair enough. You don't like him, fine. But then what I was blown away by is someone and how, how like petty hateful some people are. So there was like a Reddit threat about this. I know I'm being vague. and it's kind of confusing.

I'll hopefully make my point soon. But I was like, I don't understand like why people are spending so much of their brain power, like thinking about this. This person is not a part of your life. You can live a completely fulfilling life. Like, you don't have to go shit on this person. And this person was like,

I don't spend a lot of time. But I make it a point every day to drop into this person's chat and call them an asshole. And then I leave. I don't spend a lot of time. I'm just disciplined about it. And so this is like, this is what's hard about being a content creator.

I think a lot of people on the internet believe they're powerless. A lot of people think that there's a power imbalance between creators and their audience. And it's not that there isn't, there is. I think a lot of people grossly underestimate how much power they have to hurt another human being. You can take a look at toxicity in Fortnite, right? Why women don't use voice chat in video games, why some games even ban voice chat is everyone thinks it's all in good fun, but for one person you can really ruin their life. I mean, you can really ruin their day at a minimum. So I think there's, and when this is amplified, so this is the point I'm making is that, so what happens oftentimes on the internet is

someone will like make a joke, right? And then because of the memes, a thousand people will pile on. You kind of following me? But that, so this is where I think people on the internet don't realize, I love this phrase, no snowflake believes it's responsible for the avalanche. Do you understand what that means? Yeah. So like, in people terms, no person, if somebody were to start a massive wave of hate, no person is going to believe that they were responsible for starting that. Right. And so if we look at the damage from an avalanche is small or big? Big.

What is an avalanche made of? Huh? Rocks? Nope. Oh, well, so maybe. I was sort of thinking about snow, right? Oh, snow. Snow avalanche. Right?

A snow. But yeah, an avalanche can be rocks. You're right. And so what is snow made of? Water? Yeah, right? Snowflakes. Droplets of water?

Yeah. Is a snowflake damaging? No. Is an avalanche damaging? Yes. So human beings do not understand. So this is the problem with being a creator. Oh my gosh.

Wait. No, I'm wrong. Snowflakes are damaging. when it's with a bunch of other snowflakes. There we go. Because that creates an avalanche. There we go. But humans can't comprehend that because they think they're just a snowflake.

But in reality, they created an avalanche. Everyone looks at you and says, oh my God, I'm a snowflake. Why is this guy? They see themselves as a snowflake. I'm just posting a message in chat. What's the harm? But when you're a creator, this is what I mean. There's a whole different can of worms.

When you're a creator, you're not getting hit by a snowflake. You're getting hit by an avalanche. And that hurts. no matter who you are. It doesn't matter. Right? So there's a fundamental difference here. So to understand this principle actually helps some. To understand that it is projection helps some. To have, and this is where there's some deeper personal work,

that basically involves dissolving your ego. This gets complicated. But you know how we were talking about Nick and Lacey? Yeah. Those are both like, that's not really who you are. those are both versions of you, right? And the criticism that you get applies to Nick or Lacey. I don't know if you use the bathroom today.

When was the last time you took a dump? Right, two days ago? Okay. Took a dump two days ago. You wiped your ass? Yeah. Okay. Well, no, actually, actually, no, I parlayed it with the shower.

Okay. So it's like you take a shit, you don't wipe, you go right in the shower and just use the water with your hand to wipe, basically. Okay, fine. So, so when you're doing that process, Are you Nick or are you Lacey or are you none of the above? I'm just wiping my ass. Right? You're just a dude wiping his ass, right?

There's no followers. There's no glory. There's no fame. There's no 300 pounds. I mean, sometimes there is because that could be hard if you're overweight. But like, so,

and I mean that not to troll people, but so my point is that I don't know if this makes sense. Like when you're breathing after this practice, you're none of those things. Right? You're just you. and all of those words hurt your ego. They don't hurt you.

So people can say whatever they want to on stream, when you are parlaying into the shower, that's a different person. Does that kind of make sense? And the more that you ground yourself in that person, the more impervious to criticism you will be. So I'll leave you with a story. Okay.

And this, like I said, it's a whole other can of worms. I'm sort of speed running the principle, but like this is a whole. So you heard of this guy, Buddha, Gautam Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, Buddha, Buddhism. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, okay. So, I know I use the classic pronunciation. So this guy, Buddha, right? So Buddha attains enlightenment and he's got some followers.

Okay, so he's teaching about meditation and stuff. A bunch of people show up. and he teaches these people and they're like, oh, you're the enlightened guy, right? So, like, teach us. And he's like, okay, I will teach you. So he's teaching, and then someone's with him for a few years. And then one day they wake up and they're like, you know what? I've been with you for five years.

I've been practicing what you've been doing every single day. And I'm still not enlightened. I'm not even any better off than I used to be. Like, I've made no progress in five years. I have the same problems, haven't progressed spiritually at all. So he spits in Buddha's face. And when he spits in Buddha's face, all of Buddha's other disciples are like, they're about to take him down. They're like, oh my God, you can't disrespect the master.

Right? So they're about to go at him pretty hard. And Buddha's like, no, no, no, no, no. Chill? And he's like, let him go. Right? So the guy turns around and then walks away, they let him leave. And so then all of his disciples are really upset.

Like, how can they let you disrespect you, bro? And he's like, look, there's no disrespect. This is just a karma. This is a karma that he had. I did something bad to him in a previous life. This is just what he has to do. Now the karma is complete. He's gone.

of my life. Okay? It's kind of a different attitude. Like, now the dude's spat in my face and he walked away. I never have to see him again. It's finished. Wipe your hands of it. It's done.

This is what happens when you become egoless. Even the people that come at you, you realize that most people who hate you don't even know you. How can they even hate you if they don't know you? What are they hating? Is there hate? Absolutely. Is it directed towards you?

Absolutely. Do they hate you? They have no idea who you are. How can they hate you? The concept is logically absurd. What they hate is the version of you that they see. And whether they choose to hate that or not, racism is a really good example. If someone's racist, they don't even have any idea who you are.

They're judging you based on the color of your skin. That's it. Is the hate directed towards you? Absolutely. Or there are consequences of it? Absolutely. Do you need to take it personally? Absolutely not.

Is it unjust? Sure. Should you do something to correct it? Absolutely. But do you need to get butt hurt about it? Absolutely not. Easier said than done. The pathway is to remove your ego. And the way you remove your ego is by existing in times and spaces where you have no ego. So the more you spend time on the internet, the more you're judged, the more you're considered Lacey, the more your ego will grow. And I don't mean narcissism. I mean that the more you'll be. like, I am this. The more time you spend climbing rocks without anyone watching, the more time you spend hiking the Appalachian Trail without anyone watching, the more time you spend wiping your ass without anyone watching, when you exist with yourself, the ego starts to dissolve. That is the ultimate solution, right? And then something cool happens when your ego starts to get in control,

you can actually healthily receive the criticism of other people. Because, hey, you know what? It's insane, Lacey. I'm not perfect. If people criticize me, they may have something that's worth listening to. And then you're able to sift through because I don't get butt hurt, then I'm able to sift through. Is this person's criticism accurate or inaccurate? Okay, so my question to that is even if you do, because I do feel like I'm at a point where I can,

and not all the time, but there are some times where I can see criticism and I can see what someone is saying. could be like, yeah, they're right. Like, I need to fix that. I need to work on that. I was wrong. But the issue I have with it in my head is, even if I do take that criticism and I do fix it and I do change in that person's mind, I'll always be the version they just saw and made me out to be.

I can't change in their mind. And whose responsibility is that? Whose responsibility? So let me tell you something. straight man. How old are you, Lacey? 23. Okay, I'm going to say this is a 43-year-old man, not a psychiatrist, just as

one man to another. If you are going to live your life trying to change the living up to the opinions of others, which are fucking delusional to begin with, what? You're going to try to change his mind and he's fucking delusional? You're going to start living your life in a way

to change the delusional perceptions of other people? This is an exercise in futility, friend. You can't control the opinions of other people. You can barely, you can't even control your opinion of yourself. And at least you have some ability to change that. And you look at, you know, so, yeah, go ahead. Did you think that the opinion of myself could be based off the opinions of other people? Absolutely. Right. And as long as those two, as you, as long as you are internalizing the opinions of other people, when you're determined,

your opinion of yourself from what you get from the outside world, then the rest of the world will control your perception of yourself. See, self-esteem comes from you. But you don't have self-esteem. You have esteem. Esteem comes from other people. The foundation of your self-esteem, this foundation of your esteem can be from other people or it can be from yourself. And the more time you spend on the internet, this is what's really scary. This is why narcissism is on the rise. It's really scary. There's a rise of anorexia. there's a rise of body dysmorphia. Looks maxing, I think there's a great paper on this that was published recently, is the inflection point when self-help becomes self-harm. Is the point where looks maxing is right at the cusp of what can be self-help and can be self-harm. So what's happening is the world, we're judging people more than we ever have, because social media allows that. Now I can make a tweet and it gets a thousand likes, and I feel great.

And tomorrow I make a tweet, and it gets 200. likes and I feel shitty. So this is what's happening. We have lost, we are now our idea of who we are is being determined by other people. We have all these influencers telling her, so if you don't have, make this much money, you don't do this and you don't do this, you're a fucking loser. And then we listen to this stuff for six hours a day and we're like, oh my God, I'm, I'm a loser. Right. So, so you're, you're right that you can't change their mind. So now I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to let you in on another secret. This is why there's a whole other can of worms. What do you control in life, Nick?

Nothing. Wrong? I mean, uh, you, uh, you, like yourself. That's it. Do you want to be responsible for things that you don't control? Yes. Yes, you do. And how does that work out for you?

Good. Huh? Not good, clearly. Not good, right? I've seen this. I've seen husbands and husbands and husbands. wives try to make their partner no longer an alcoholic doesn't work. I've seen people try to move mountains. I've seen parents mortgage their houses to pay $60,000 for a rehab that I'm working at

for their kid that they can't afford. It doesn't work. You can't be sober for anybody else. You can't be responsible for anybody else. So stop fucking trying. You can just control this. You can't control. Can you control how well a piece of content does? No. What can you control? The effort you put into it? Absolutely. When you showed up here today, did you know what was going to happen?

When I showed up here today, did I know what was going to happen? No. Is that a problem? I don't think so. Not at all. But if we're not careful, we'll make it one. Right? Your response, the all you control is this.

and so much of our suffering, so much of why people say, oh my God, my life is crappy, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. I'm with you. Your boss is an asshole,

your boyfriend's an asshole, your parents are narcissistic. Right? That's, like, what even, like, at that point, it's just like, what's the point?

Like, what even is the point of life then? It's beautiful. Beautiful. Okay, great. So now we're getting somewhere. Other can of worms, but... So, step number one is understand what you control. Step number two is do the best job possible with what is within your domain.

And that feels amazing. That feels fulfilling. Right? So when I was, when I was an intern, there was a patient in the hospital. I'm going to tell you two stories. Okay, you got time? Story time? Yeah.

Okay. All time in the world. I'm an intern, and I start on night float. So I've got my MD degree, graduate on like May 16th, take about a month and a half of vacation, move. Actually, I didn't move. On July 1st, I'm starting residence. I'm a medical doctor with a degree, but I haven't been like responsible for patients, okay? So I start on something called night float. So basically a bunch of doctors work at a hospital during the day. At night, all those doctors, doctors go home, and then a second set of doctors comes and works overnight. You with me? Okay? So the first night I'm there, the pager starts going off. And every five minutes, a nurse is paging me, this guy's doing this, the nurse is paging me, this guy's blood pressure is this, nurses paging me. And people told me like, hey, it's going to be tough. And I'm kind of drowning here. It's about two or two and a half hours into my shift. This is an awesome guy named Ken,

who's an amazing, he's a second year resident. So he's been doing this for one year longer than I have. So he's like helping me work through it, but he's kind of, he's also overseeing four interns. Each intern is taking care of one floor, okay? So then two and a half hours in, I get a page, rapid response room, this, whatever. So rapid response means like, not like the crash cart, but it's like, hey, some patient is like crashing. They're not crashed yet, but like we need you to show up right now and prevent this from getting worse, okay? Patient is having a seizure. So I run over, it's like four doors down, really close to the room I'm working in. I run in, and there's this patient having a seizure. And there's a nurse there who's kind of freaking out, and they're like,

this is what happened. I'm sitting there, and I'm like, okay, Ken's going to get this page or two, page two. So Ken is on a different floor, so he comes in about a minute later, maybe 45 seconds later. And so he shows up, and then I say, okay, Ken, here's what's going on. Patient started seizing about 90 seconds ago. They've been doing this. This is their medical history. And so Ken sits there with his arms crossed and he says, okay. He's just sitting there. The patient's like, seizing on the bed. I'm like, Ken, first night, I've been a doctor for three hours.

Ken, patient's seizing. Ken's like, okay. Like, Ken, what should we do? Ken's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, I don't know. Push out of hand. He's like, how much? I don't know, one milligram, two milligrams?

He's like, which one? I'm like, well, I guess two, because like one ain't going to hurt him and a her. And he's like, okay then. I tell the nurse, push two milligrams of out of hand. Nurse pushes two milligrams of ad of end. Patient stops seizing. It's fine. Whole interaction lasted maybe 30 seconds since Ken walked into the room.

Turns out that you can seize for two to three minutes without it being dangerous. So Ken knew it was going on. Okay. So in this world, there's only, so much that you can control. And one of the biggest mistakes that a doctor can make, we get trained a lot to keep death at bay, but bro, I'm going to tell you straight up,

I can't stop death. Like, you get that? We work really hard, and we still can't do it. The doctors that get torn apart are the ones that fundamentally do not realize that. You can do all of the work that you want to, but cancer will come when cancer wants to come.

You can do whatever you want. You can make aggressive treatment. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does it. I never control life or death. I only control what I control. And I had the benefit of spending seven years studying to become a monk before I went to medical school. So this transition was easier for me than it was for many of my colleagues.

Many of my colleagues still get torn up about it. So life is about, and here's the cool thing. I know this sounds insane because we think, if you really stop and think about what's the joy of life, the joy of life is in living it. Not in succeeding, not in failing. It's in the living itself, right? It's in doing what you can and knowing like, okay, even though I was panicking, like, I studied for four years.

I studied really hard and I did really well, and this is why. So all of that effort is not about getting awards at the end of medical school. It's about when a patient is seizing, you know what. what to do. And even if you know what to do, the patient can still die. But life is about having that, okay, like this is what I can do and doing it fully. Regret doesn't come from failure. Regret comes from not doing enough. Right? When you go back to 300-pound you, regret doesn't come from Taco Bell. Regret comes from the way that you see Taco Bell. You can eat Taco Bell like once a year. or once I crack

then I'll eat it like four times in two weeks now it's been about two years since I've eaten Taco Bell but when I eat Taco Bell baby I fucking I fucking eat it man I sit there I don't even I go through the drive-thru

because I'm embarrassed to go inside in case I get recognized I go through the drive-thru I get myself two veggie Mexican pizzas and I don't even drive home because they're fucking soggy by the time I get there I sit there in the parking lot

and I eat it with my dirty ass fingers spraying that mild sauce on top, spraying that fire sauce on top, and you enjoy that. You make it worth it. You don't eat it mindlessly. You don't eat it every day because there's nothing else for you to eat.

Then you will feel terrible. If I'm going to eat the Taco Bell, I'm going to enjoy every fucking second of it. That's the point of life. If only we had a Taco Bell sponsorship on the stream. Now you make if you want to talk about to order some Taco Bell or something. No, nope, nope, no, no, no. I'm not actually, I'm not actually, not actually.

This is what you control, right? So you control. That's what life is about. Life is about being in control of yourself. That life can throw whatever rains, shine, hailstorms, tragedy, war, inflation. All that stuff can happen around you. You're going to be the eye of the storm. And when you're in the eye of the storm and you're centered within yourself and you feel contentment from breath.

Doesn't everybody feel like they're the eye of the storm? No, no one feels like they're the eye. The storm is calm in the middle. Storm's outside of it. Oh, yeah. They're way around. Doesn't everybody feel like they're... Yeah, everyone feels like they're...

Yeah, everyone's being thrown about by life, right? No one has control. This is happening. This is having this dating, made of crisis. Dating apps are like this. Women want this. Men want this. No one's in control.

My boss wants this. Right? But are you in control of yourself? Are you waking up every day and doing the things that you want to do? Are you living the life when you, if you were to die to die to would you be content with the way that you spent today? And the beautiful thing about asking that question is a lot of people think that life is just about working hard.

No, it's not. Right? Life is also about enjoying things. So I started working on a book. And it was hard for many reasons. But the book that I want to write is, what will make me happy about writing a book is I teach this stuff on the internet to 10 to 15 million people a month.

But what I realize is I don't teach it to my kids. If I died tomorrow, would I have a regret? And it would be absolutely. And the regret would be that I'm doing all of this stuff. Hopefully it helps people. Who knows, right? Do I know if it helps people, Lacey? No.

Can I control if it helps people? No. What can I control? You can control just what you're putting out, like that you're trying to help people. Absolutely. Right? But what I also can control, what I would regret, is I'm doing all this for other people and I have not done it for my own children. That is not okay. So about a year

ago, I started writing, and I don't know if it's ever going to be published, but it's going to be what I give them if I'm ever terminally ill. Right? That's what life is about. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have more? I just feel like, so basically you're saying the point of life is not life itself. It's not like the things you're doing or what you're doing or who you're doing it with. It's just the enjoyment you get out of it. Like it's just actually living.

Beautifully put. But I would say a little bit wrong there, but beautifully put. Life isn't about the life. It is about the living. Beautiful distinction. And it's not about even the things that you get. Living also means law.

It also means pain. It also means death. It means breakups. And if you are running away from the downsides of life, you will never be in control. Because you have to run away from the hard things. Right? You have to embrace the possibility of failure. That's when you're living.

It's beautiful. They've done studies on, you know, Olympic medalists. Gold medalist, sometimes happy. Silver medalist, almost never happy. bronze medalist fucking happy. Right? So there's a really famous part. You know Michael Phelps is?

Yeah. So apparently when Michael Phelps won his first like eight gold medals for the first time at the Olympics, he had an intense period of suicidality afterward. It's kind of weird. Wait, why? Why do you think?

He just won eight gold medals. Or whatever. He's talked about it publicly, so I don't know the details, but... The only thing I could think of is he if Michael Phelps

felt like he got to a point or the top to where he can't

like you won a gold medal he won he can't you can't go higher he hit like a peak right

so if you've devoted your life to moving upward and you reach the top, where is there left to go? Down. And if you've someone who's devoted your life to moving up so much that you win eight gold medals at the fucking Olympics,

how does feeling, how does going down feel? Like terrible. Absolutely, right? You know what a little bit of what it feels like. What am I going to be 10, 15 years from now when this is all gone? Right. So there's achievement. Fine.

I'm all for achieving. And we don't know. I mean, we'd have to ask him. But I'm not surprised. I mean, I've seen this pattern a lot of times. We even saw it with you. And so life is about living, not achieving. Achievements are good.

I'm not anti-achievement. I work really hard. Right? I've done all kinds of laudable things. One, two. You don't want to base your happiness or your life off of your achievements. Not only do you not want to, you can't. It's impossible because even if you win eight gold medals,

you're going to think, what's it going to feel like to win seven next year? What's going to feel like to win none next year? And then if you do it for two years in a row, can you keep your win streak going? There's a lot of pressure on a win streak. Here's the really scary thing about a win streak. Every year that you keep it, it's harder to keep.

You kind of get that? Yeah. So this whole, all this achievement stuff, and I'm not saying don't achieve, right? So I work really hard. I, you know, I didn't take a day off for five years. And then I also woke up one day and I was like, this is insane. I don't need to be, I should take a day off. Like, it's good for me.

My life would be enriched if I took a day off. I took a day off yesterday. My calendar was open. Our content person put a couple meetings on it. I was like, nope, I'm taking a day off. I'm not working. My day is empty. I'm going to leave it empty.

You can't fill it up with anything. I'm going to take that day for myself. And I took that day for myself. I did a lot of yoga and meditation stuff yesterday evening. I woke up today and I showed up ready to work. And could I have done a lot of stuff yesterday? I did some work. But.

What? I mean, if I work for less hours yesterday, is that going to significantly impact? Is the world going to fall apart? Is there someone who's, maybe if I had made a YouTube video, there's someone who's suicidal who may have been inspired by me and not killed themselves? Is that a possibility? Yeah. Am I responsible for that? No. Right? So it's a tricky balance. Enough for today, I think.

Yeah. Just thinking. Good. Are you still streaming? Yeah. Any last thoughts or questions before you wrap? Before we wrap for the day? No, not today, no.

Okay. Well, thank you for coming, Nick. Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure, bro. Yeah, that was deep. I'm trying to think. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Good luck. I'm going to just go ahead and wrap stream, and then if you're going to be still streaming, right? We'll go ahead. Are you taking a break, or are you going to just go right into it? No, I'm probably just going to go right into it. Okay, great.

All right. Take care, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. W. Dr. K, man. Thank you. I appreciate that a lot. Take care, Lacey.

I'll be having a good day. Thank you. Okay. All right. I love you guys too. I really do. He's a good kid. I think sometimes we forget that these streamers are kids. You know, a lot of them. Not to mean that in a bad way, but I mean, 23 is just so young, dude. Such good people. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, oh, mid-sentence cut off? What do you mean? He ain't doing that breathing? That's okay. Right, so people think he's not going to do the breathing. That's totally fine. People tried to teach me how to meditate for a solid, I want to say, 10, 11 years before I picked it up, right?

So case and point, what's our responsibility is to teach him what we can in the time that we have available. Yeah, some 20, what's actually a tragedy is that some 23-year-olds are not kids. I think the world becomes a better place when 23-year-olds are allowed to be kids. But I see Lafeevonne saying, hey, I'm 23. Yeah, like, I was young at 23. It's a tragedy that some people are old. And some people are just 23 at 23. So insightful for 23.

See, here's what I found. When you work with people who are younger, they're more insightful because they know less. What does it mean to be insightful? insightful is to see, not to know, not to have experience of, to see. And it's really tricky because this is why I love, you know, streaming and working with y'all and stuff like that. Some of y'all are older, totally fine. That's fun in a different way. Because he's not colored by experience.

He hasn't been brain-wrotted by working a corporate nine-to-five job and getting a 3% standard raise while inflation is like 6%. Right? So insight happens without experience. Insight is the flash. Yeah, so what's the difference of being young and being old? So, you know, in psychiatry,

we have a condition that some people have. It's not a diagnosis, but parentification. So I've had some patients that, you know, from the age of eight or nine had to feed themselves. Back when I was growing up, we used to call these kids latchkey kids. So they come home from school on their own. There's no adult at home.

They just have to take care of themselves. Oftentimes, the people that I've worked with in terms of my patients, a larger patient population has sick parents. So you'll have, you know, a parent with fibromyalgia, bipolar disorder, to these diagnoses. So one parent works. Second parent is basically like mentally ill enough or compromised enough, physically ill or mentally ill enough to where they can't function as parents.

And you have someone else being a caregiver of those parents. We've done interviews with people who have experienced this in the past. So from the age of 12 or the age of 13, you become a parent. You parent your parent. So these children grow old quickly. they're mature, they're robbed of their joy in life. They don't get a chance to be kids because they are forced to develop into adults.

And this leads to all kinds of problems. Sometimes it looks like depression, sometimes it looks like immense guilt when they feel like children. Right? So it's like they associate, because in the past, when they were growing up, when I behave like a child, I feel guilty because my parent doesn't...

I want to play with Legos, but my parent needs me to change their wound dressing. So I change the wound dressing. I want to play with Legos, but parent needs to use the bathroom, so I help walk them to the toilet. I want to play with Legos, but parent needs help getting off of the toilet.

I want to play with Legos, but parent needs... The laundry needs to be done. I want to play with Legos, but my younger brother or younger sister is hungry. I want to play with Legos, but my younger brother or younger sister needs help with their homework. And if you play Legos in those moments, you feel guilty. And then your mind forms an association, because that's what the mind does. So the brain does.

Forms associations. So then later on, when I'm an adult, I'm walking through the mall and I see a Lego set, and I want that Lego set. and then I feel guilty. And then I feel anger towards myself to push the guilt away. And then I go to therapy and I say, I'm not depressed. And then Dr. K asks, what are you feeling? And then we get into all this Lego stuff.

And now we're in a fix. Because for the parentified child, who is now an adult, they have a problem because what they want makes them feel bad. So now you're kind of stuck. either you do the thing that you want and you feel bad or you don't do the thing that you want and you feel bad in a different way. So you can feel deprived and proud or you can feel content and guilty, fulfilled and guilty. So lose, lose, right?

So we have to work through that. That's what I mean by old 23-year-old. So that's challenging. Okay, we wanted to show you all something. I want to just show you all something real quick. So some people were asking about this. I'm going to see if I can find. I want to show you all this.

So earlier we showed that... Let me show you all something real quick. So people were asking, because I showed something on stream the other day and people had some questions about it. So I just want to show you all this real quick. Okay. So we showed this thing.

I showed this thing. So when we were making the, by the way, thank you guys so much for crossing 7,000. We've got one goal left and we've got about nine days to do it. If we could hit 8,000, that would be great. But when we were making this guide, we made it a little bit differently. So I showed this on stream and I think people had questions about this. when we were making this guide, this was not, so it started out like this. So here's just notes that I took about relationships.

Okay, how to respect boundaries, how to know when a relationship is wrong, role of alcohol, sexually aggressive forward, what's the right way to interact with a woman, ask for permission, don't take what you want. You know, things like checking in afterward after you have a sexual encounter to make sure that things are okay. So these were, this is kind of like how the guide's started. And then we also... Oh, these are the relationships dynamics notes. Let me show you all this. So this was sort of like the initial sketch. So burnout, connections with humans, things like that, okay? But then we did something interesting this time. We actually collected some data. So we asked people

Oh, I think people like this overlay. So let's do this. So we tried to figure out basically what do you'll need? And so the team came up, did a lot of research with the community, and this is what they came up with. So this is what I showed on stream that people had questions about. So here's who the guide is kind of for. Here's how we figured out what to include. The nervous novice is a young adult with little to no experience in dating sex and romantic relationships.

they may consume a lot of digital information on the topic, from self-help videos to reading related subredits, but are paralyzed by anxiety, fear of rejection and deep-seated worry about doing something wrong. Leads to a cycle of overthinking in an action where they treat dating like a complex system with rules that must be mastered before they can even begin. Feel fundamentally flawed, socially awkward,

far behind their peers leading to feelings of loneliness, shame, and helplessness. Or hopelessness, okay? So primary pain points, right? Here are some quotes. They feel behind. They're acutely aware of their inexperience and romance sex. Right?

So I see specs of improvement in my life, but I do not see general forward momentum. Overthinking and inability to translate knowledge into action. Low self-worth. So here's a huge part that we've learned. in this community. This we learn from having thousands of coaching clients. They have stated goals versus real needs, which are not the same. Stated goals, I want to get a girlfriend.

I want to know how to flirt date. They seek a step-by-step formula to achieve a romantic outcome. Real need, they need to build fundamental self-confidence and social competence. Their actual need is to overcome paralyzing anxiety that prevents them from practicing basic social interactions and to learn from failure and to learn that failure and rejection are survivable. What they ask for is not what they need. Okay. Misconceptions that hold them back.

What progress means to them. Okay. So like these are the kind. So like basically we have this and there's other people. Okay. So forever alone, Alvin, male in his 20s or older. He's deeply frustrated and burnt out from years of perceived failure in the day. dating world. So this is different, right? This is a nervous novice has no experience. This person has a lot

of failure, especially on dating apps. Efforts are futile and has developed a cynical, often statistics-based worldview that dating is a rigged game where looks, money, and status are the only things that matter. This sense of hopelessness is fueled by repeated rejections ghosting and feeling of being invisible or used. While he craves a genuine connection is bitterness, resentment, and black pill-adjacent beliefs create a self-fulfilling prophecy, often making him come across as negative and thus perpetuating the cycle of rejection he despises. Okay? Deep sense of hopelessness or resignation. Exhaustion and frustration with dating apps.

Feeling fundamentally undesirable or flawed. Bitterness towards a perceived unfair system. Stated goals. I want to understand the system. Prove to me this isn't just. all looks in money. Convince me otherwise. What they really need is to process grief and fear from grief and anger from years of rejection. Learn to manage their bitterness that sabotages their interactions. Need assistance to re-engage with dating without the protective shield of cynicism

and find self-worth that is not dependent on external validation from women. Okay? So, right? And then there's Sam the Sexuality Scientist. Seek to understand the underlying mechanics, neuroscience, psychological, behavioral drivers, rather than advice, they want data research, clear, logical frameworks, often neurodivergent. It may feel confused by the ambiguities of human connection, and they consume lecture, slides, and expert content in an effort to solve their relational problems analytically. Okay? So similar stuff there.

Relationship improving Rachel, actively engaged in a relationship or immediately post-breakup, deeply invested in understanding the internal dynamics of a specific situation in order to either fix ongoing problems, heal from past hurts, or decide whether they want to stay or leave. Motivated by a desire for a healthy functioning partnership, Rachel seeks to understand the why behind conflicts, turning psychological frameworks like attachment styles, communication techniques, and trauma-informed perspectives. Okay? So they have their own stuff, and then there's, I think, one more. Yeah. This is my favorite. Consciously connect. and Cal. Approaches relationships, dating, and sex is not just social goals, but profound opportunities

for self-discovery and spiritual growth, highly introspective, and they approach connection with a desire for authenticity, emotional depth, and mutual understanding. They love psychological and philosophical content drawn to Jungian concepts and spiritual pathways to making sense of their own patterns and those of their partners. Their journey is less about winning at dating and more about healing past wounds, understanding their own needs, and learning how to show up as their most authentic self in a relationship. They see romantic life as a mirror reflecting their own internal state, and they're motivated to do the inner work for a conscious, fulfilling relationship.

Okay? So, then we took these ideas, right, took this, and then I was like, they were like, basically like, okay, Dr. Kay, we need you to make a guide for these. people. Like, you have all these ideas. This is fine. But we need to make a guide that'll help all of these people. So that's where this comes in. Okay. So we'll look at like, if you guys look, there's like mechanisms of love, relationships, the sex act, right? Hygiene is critical. Science of seduction. Physical health for sexual enjoyment, male and female sexual problems, pitfalls, associations, ruins relationships, relationships to solve problems, dealing with I'm Not Ready,

dealing with pornography, selecting a partner, social anxiety, meeting people in on-line relationships, getting ready to love. Are you emotionally healthy enough to be in a relationship? Resilience in dating. How do you stay resilient? Okay. So we took all that stuff. We took all my ideas, and then we tried to figure out who is this to help. And there's all kinds of other notes in there about things like, you know, what makes these people engage? with a product, what makes these people actually purchase things. Okay? And so those kinds of analyses are in there as well, right? So we want to make this guide not just from a, okay, here's what Dr. Kay thinks, but here's who it's for, and it's for all of these people. So then what happened is I took

all of the different topics and basically a Venn diagram of these five people and what's in the middle. What's helpful to everybody? So simple things like resilience and dating. How do you foster a healthy sexual relationship? How do you improve your sexual relationship? Important for nervous novice forever alone, right? So when they get into a sexual relationship, they're equipped with the best information that we can give them. Also important for a relationship improving Rachel, consciously connecting Cal. Like, good for everybody. Relationship improving Rachel wants to recover from her breakup in the most helpful way.

Great. Consciously connecting Cal wants to see a breakup as an opportunity for personal growth. And forever alone, Alvin needs to understand how this breakup is not going to lead to cynicism that will sabotage their future efforts. This is how the guide was made. And so what I like about this guide, it is to some people it feels a little bit different. That's because it is. So we have a ton of opportunities for Dr. K's stream of consciousness, which is what we do week after week after week after week. The guide is a little bit different.

The guide is Dr. K's stream of consciousness filtered through what is actually effective for what people are looking for. Filtered through what they need, understanding what they need. And so then this is what's so cool about us as a team. And this is what I want to point out to y'all. So it used to just be like Dr. K stream of consciousness, but like a team of people who understand coaching outcomes who monitor our subreddit, who look at what percentage of analytics on what has been successful in previous guides. For people who refund previous guides, what are their complaints? For people who leave testimonials or offer feedback, what do they love? So it's like all the random stuff that Dr. K is thinking about shaped into things that are concretely helpful for these kinds of people.

Right. So what's helpful for everybody? That's what the guide is. Okay. So thank you guys so much for coming today. We're going to go ahead and I'm going to try to stream. Let's stream. Where is my?

There we go. Let's raid. let's raid Lacey. Clearly, right? Damn, dude. Lacey has 30,000 viewers. Let's go. Team. Okay.

But yeah, thank you all very much for coming today. Check out the guide. You know, we really believe in it. And we've got an awesome stream on Anima and Animus coming up. We're doing deep dive into psychedelics on the membership side.

And let's go. Me. What is going on? Okay, we're going to raid. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.