HealthyGamerGG - Constantly Overwhelmed | What It’s Actually Like to be a Creator Pt. 4

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Dr. K and the Group talk about feeling overwhelmed: why it happens, post-traumatic growth, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm noticing that y'all are sort of almost answering the question from like a developmental psychology sort of way where we're focusing on parenting as to why they were the way they were. But I'm more thinking like on a more existential level. Do you all ever wonder about why your life is the way it is? Hello. Okay, we're alive, all right? We live. We're alive.

Oh, baby. So we're going to hop up. right in. Okay. So welcome everybody. How's everybody doing today? Doing good. I'd be kind of tired, not going to lie. Me too. Polite answer, good.

The polite answer good. Oh, someone's paying attention. All right, Zell. What's the not polite answer? I have a lot of things going on. Okay. To figure it out. So if we're being honest with ourselves, I'm doing

fine, but on the edge. Okay. So would Zell have said that three weeks ago? Probably not on the first day. No, I don't think so. So how... You would have been like, wow, this guy's too real. Yeah, right?

So, okay, so it's interesting because Metric says this person is too real. So how is Zell, like, how have we made him more real? What's changed? Or we didn't make him more real, but, you know, how is he able to be more real? By not being polite just to make everyone else comfortable. Okay. Like, yeah. By opening up a little.

Sure. And what do we have to do that allows Zell to be able to say something like that? We have to bring it up in a, you know, kind of authentic way, right? Yeah. So like Zell, Zell, like, did you all, I don't know if y'all were kind of paying attention. But we're going to teach you all over the course of the next couple weeks to pay attention to all kinds of minimal things. right so zell kind of put his toes in the water did y'all get that sense yeah what did he say do you all remember right you mean for right now or yeah like what did he say what he's like how i was like

how's everybody doing today right that's a polite introduction yeah polite answer i'm okay i'm fine and then he said i'm good and then he was like actually i'm fine but there's a lot on my plate yeah right so he like started off polite just like ash said and then then his smirk, he kind of pointed out. He kind of put his toes in the water. And that's where we've got an interesting opportunity. So if we pay attention, people are going to say things like that. They're going to be like, oh, you know, I've got nothing to complain about. Does that mean you're doing well? And so sometimes what we've got to do is like dig in a little bit, right? And then now we're going to see, because we're going to go to our standard check-in and things like that. But then

the group basically has a choice. Do we want to try to support Zell in a more explicit way. And the group also has a concern because is it okay to ask why Zell is borderline fine. Like what's the, he's at the edge of the cliff. What's the cliff? What's going on in your life? Is this a safe enough place to discuss that? Are we interested in hearing it? Are we okay with Zell sharing it? Right? Make sense? So I think we've also heard from other people. So I'll lay out a couple of other things. So let's say we do explore it with Zell.

We're just going to preempt this. I'm going to give you all a roadmap for today. As we start to ask Zell questions, how is Zell going to feel the more we get into his stuff? Nervous? Good? Why? Targeted?

Yep. Good. Why? We're just focusing on him. Yes. Right? We're putting you under the microscope. Yes.

Yeah. So how do we help him feel? feel like he's not under the microscope? Maybe we make it feel more like a conversation and less like an interview. And how do we do that, metric? We don't interrogate him so much, but find ways to get him to share of his own volition. Okay. That's going to be a goal, Ruby. Maybe we could share how we're feeling back and then ask them if they want to talk about it.

Absolutely, right? So I think metric's right. So metric had pointed out a very good word, interrogation. What are the hallmark? What's the hallmark of an interrogation? Question after question after question after question. If we fall into that pattern, then Zell is going to be, he's going to feel under the microscope. So this is where I don't think it is a coincidence that Zerg girl and Ash were the two that sort of shared how Zell could potentially. intentionally feel. Because I think if we got into y'all's stuff, y'all would probably feel the same way. Right? Yeah. So this is where what we can try to do to take some of the heat off of Zell, is if Zell says something that resonates with us, we can share something ourselves. And then we're going to shift the conversation a little bit towards ourselves. But the key thing is, since it's related to what Zell is saying, hopefully as we share a bunch of different experiences, the group can get an overall, like, global. understanding of like how to deal with these problems. Make sense?

Questions? Yes. We don't necessarily have to do that. I'm just kind of laying that out, okay? So I'm going to be looking to, and I want y'all to understand what's your responsibility here. If it feels like something Zell is saying is resonating with you, you can share yourself. That'll help Zell feel more comfortable, but we still don't want to ask them questions.

And then we'll sort of like as more people start to share, hopefully those people will start to invite questions. Okay. So before we jump into that, what I'd love to start off with if people are okay is why don't we do check-ins? So tell us a little bit about how the last week or two has been for you. I guess we should also do introductions because I think there are some people here that haven't met each other. So I think y'all feel okay with that. So I think especially Zergirl and probably Ms. Ashrox need to, because I think everyone else has met both of them, right? only do that. So just introduce yourself a little bit, Ash and Zergerl. And then, you know,

what you go by, tell us a little bit about how the last week has been for you, ups and downs. And then the last thing is we talked a little bit about homework last week. If you all have had a chance to do it, you can share what you kind of learned. Who remembers what the homework was? one or three expectations where is it rooted from and a couple i forgot the rest but those are the main points of our homework yeah so the homework doesn't have to be followed literally it's not graded we also understand that y'all are content creators have jobs etc so you may not have time for it the goal is to really solidify some of the understanding from the last week and does anyone want to start by sort of sharing a little bit about what do you all take

away from last week. Expectation is the source of suffering. Okay. That's what my notes say. I was just sat here trying to remember last week. I'm like, huh? Yeah, so it's okay to forget, right? We're not.

But also, wasn't that one of the things was like actually paying attention to stuff and like taking small nuances in of when people talk and share? Sure. And so here's the thing. Ruby, even if you can't, when put on the spot, remember what we talked about last week, it's okay, because some of it was sinking in and we'll build on it over time. So expectation is the source of suffering. What do people think about that?

I mean, it's part of Zell's notes, but is that just the wisdom of Dr. K? Or do you guys think that that is like, actually, it's not my wisdom? But, you know, what do you all think about that? I mean, I think I feel like that, but it's not necessarily true. So. Okay, good. Yeah. So good.

I feel like there's good expectations and then unrealistic expectations. Okay. Yeah. That's kind of something that I kind of got from the homework was I wrote down like what my expectation was. But I was like, by writing it down and showing someone else, they could say, well, that's a really good thing. and my expectation was that I'm always expecting myself to be improving and growing and learning and it's something I've had since I was a kid and most people would say that was a good thing but I think healthy expectations is probably the key word when it comes to it because

people will be like oh improving growing learning that's all great not when it becomes anxiety-inducing and overwhelming. So, yeah. Okay. Great. So I think this is a great time to segue into actual check-ins. So who wants to go first? I can go first. I'll take it. I'll take the totem. So, excuse me, sorry, hold on, water. Well, let's see, we chatted last Thursday, and the next day, I was diagnosed with alopecia. I've been seeing a lot of my hair thinning over the last year and a half. So I figured it was going to come to that point, but I wasn't sure. But I felt validated.

I went to the dermatologist and got the diagnosis. I did a scout biopsy. So that's been interesting to recover from. And it's kind of like, okay, black women are affected by this. How do I feel about this new diagnosis? So I'm trying to figure out how do I feel about it? How do I move on with life with that diagnosis and deal with it? Especially after I get answers, I'll have to figure out what's my next steps?

And with the thought of that, I don't want to think negative because it's something that just happened. It's out of my control. So I'm content with it. I feel okay with it. And it's something that's just a part of my journey now that I can share with my community and the world and bring awareness to it, what black women are going through. So that's been the number one stressor of the last week. But I'm finding a balance. I'm just trying to figure out how to make it into a positive thing to share with my community.

And every day since our last session, I've been thinking about expectations. And I say unrealistic for me because my expectations were I expect to do my best and everything that I do. I expect to treat myself with love every single day. I expect to bring energy and joy to every space that I'm in. And I think they're good expectations. I don't think they're unrealistic, but sometimes they can be if I don't feel up to it. So you can have your bad days. And I think it's important to talk about that.

as content creators you can't be happy all the time so i'm trying to focus more on that especially with i'm grieving right now i've been grieving since last year since october so it's like i have a lot of things that i have to work through to be okay every day i wake up every day thinking about my grandma you know um i don't want to cry but it is something that i do it every day because it's affected me single day ever since she passed away and I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. But it's just always things palling up and I'm just trying to set those expectations to wake up and be okay with her passing and try to be happy this day.

So I have a lot to work on. and I think grieving affects people differently, so I'm working through it. And I hope to learn from every single one of you how you do with things because I like how I started off and I was in a good headspace. And then I immediately went to the negative. And yeah, that's kind of how my brain goes. I'll be like, oh, I'm on a high path right now. And I'm like, wait, this is also stressing me out. and I need to think about how to deal with that.

But then I'll run away from it. I'm like, no, it's okay. I'm thinking about happy thoughts about her. It's fine. I'm okay with this. She's gone. So yeah, that's what I'm dealing with on a daily basis and on top of the new diagnosis.

Figuring out how I can do better with it and spread awareness in the best way possible. So I just try to utilize content creation to be the best version of myself, still learning how to be a creator and still learning how to be a better human being all around. So that's where expectations really affect me. Sometimes I have to figure out a balance between healthy ones and ones that are realistic. So didn't want to cry. Sorry. Nothing wrong with it.

Yeah. I think everyone here, is with you in like you know if uh if we're feeling emotional or something you know i think it's better for us to let it out than versus trying to keep it in and being you know quote unquote polite so yeah so thank you for sharing i just did my makeup so you know that's money i don't want to ruin it we're about value so that was a little bit of my homework and how i'm feeling so for the sake of ash's makeup let's keep it possible today. Thank you for sharing us. But not false positive, just genuine positivity, authentic positivity. Yeah. I remembered. And what is that metric? It's it's it's it's

not platitudes and and you know just building people up for no reason when we could actually be supportive for a cause. as opposed to just being like, you can do anything or, don't worry, Ash, you got this. That would be terrible. It sounds good. It sounds good, rarely, but it has no concrete progression. Yeah, like, it's okay to, like, embrace the negativity rather than, like, always running away from it, right? At least, at least that's kind of the perspective that I see.

because like, I know that it is, you know, because when you try to stay positive so much as someone who tends to be positive all the time and that's how people see you, it can be a little, not daunting, but kind of like, I don't know, you just kind of get like an entire new perspective when things aren't always positive. And maybe you are dabbling a little bit in the negative. of a situation. But I think, you know, when, yeah, when it would, when you're able, when you're able, you have the strength to embrace it to tackle it head on, I think there's a lot of like

value in that. I wanted to say, like, you say you always go to the negative. I didn't feel like any of that was you going to the negative. of like I felt that you were just sharing what you're feeling and what you're going through and also by sharing you are doing all of those things that you were saying because by sharing you're helping other people

and you're sharing your story as well which is a very like human and if you were to have hidden those parts away then that would have been the toxic positive and so I really appreciate you for being so open and honest and sharing like you got me all choked out my name means a lot to me as well it's I don't want to take too much time I'm sorry um yeah I think her passing just really shifted my life and I'm still trying to deal with it um if you want more details. My mom was working for my grandma, doing in-home care for her, taking care of her.

So that was her job, and now that that's gone, I am head of household, which I'm totally fine with. But the reasoning for it is like, why did this happen? Really, with her passing, it's really traumatic. I don't want to go into details, but it's just really traumatic. I don't want to cause any kind of visuals for you guys. It just, I just found her. So it's just still an image that pops in my head. And that's like my daily stress pretty much. And I'm trying to work through it. I am going to therapy and talking about it. Um, especially taking care of my mom. That was her mom. So try to stay strong for her and myself is, it's a lot. I think I'm doing good because I'm crying when I can, but not, I feel like I'm not crying

enough because I keep sheltering my feelings and just trying not to think about it. But I think I need to talk about it more and just talk, vent it out. I think, I mean, literally coming back to, you know, today's topic, feeling like you're not crying enough, isn't that like an expectation that you're putting on yourself as far as handling your grief? Yeah. Which might not be, you know, helpful to you, right? Mm-hmm. So I think if you're going to cry, you're going to cry. Like, I remember I lost my grandfather and I, I, I, I,

I was just so weird about it because it's very, I was not close to him at all, but it was something that I was almost expecting to maybe come to terms with him one day because I'd been estranged from him for like about 95% of my life. And only in like the last couple years did I actually like get to talk to him again and then nothing really got resolved. I remember one day in the supermarket I was just buying stuff and it reminded me of him and I just broke down. And I was like, oh, I definitely got to deal with this because I'm, you know, it's like kinking the hose. It's, you don't have control when it snaps, right? So, yeah, I would definitely talk more. And if you're going to cry, you're going to cry. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.

I didn't really say much because I wanted to hear what everyone else has to say. It was like my grandma, I think she's got Alzheimer's or going through some dementia, so it's been really hard to experience that as well. I think you have incredible composure and even just coming here to share that with us and everyone else on the stream, I have a lot of respect for you. Because I know if I talk about it more in detail, I'm going to be a mess. I probably can't even articulate well. I definitely can't right now. I'm like, well, the lashes are staying on, so we're good. You're looking good.

You look great. But, yeah, I just wanted to share that with you all. I opened up another can of worms for myself because that's, it's just, it just keeps packing on and stacking up. And I'll find myself doing really good for two or three weeks. I'm like, oh, we're good. We're great. And I'm like, nope, I'm crumbling again because I'm thinking about her. and how I found her and why it happened.

I tend to question a lot. Why did this happen? Why did I have to do this? Why did I have to find her this way? So that's another thing. That doesn't happen as often, but I tend to question a lot of things that happen in my life. Just speaking into a void. I don't know if anybody else can relate with that.

But yeah. Why did this happen? No answer. You're like, okay, let me try to figure it out. Or maybe it's best that I don't. I just try to do better the next time or whatever it may be. So I am done. For now.

For now. So we'll give other people a chance to check in. So awesome interaction. You know, I think don't worry, by the way, all about sharing too much. Sure. I know that y'all may be concerned, but keep in mind that I'll be keeping track of stuff, right? So that's part of my role here is to make sure that people get the time that they need. And that we also acknowledged right at the, you know, the first group that like particular days we're going to spend a little bit more time on particular people, which is totally fine. I do think it'll be worthwhile if other people want to take a moment to check in and tell us how your week has been if you managed to do the homework, you know, if there were any kind of. takeaways from it or lessons that you learned? Yeah. So since last week, it feels like I've blinked and we're here at Thursday again.

It's been one of those like weeks and I've done the thing that I normally do, which is I can do everything. And I went to a festival at the weekend and I've still managed to stream my same amount hours not really take any time off. So I think like today that hit me because I just wasn't in the right mindset for stream today and I should have probably taken today off. And yeah, then I didn't go to my like pole class. I normally go to like a exercise class before I come here. So I did one good thing, you know, I, even though I paid for the class already, like, I, I cancelled and, and relaxed before coming here, because I knew that, like, coming to talk after, like, knowing that I've overexerted myself and trying to do too much and put too much expectations on myself,

would just end in me being really, like, either emotional for no reason, kind of like a mental burnout or yeah not not focused or not get much out of this session um so I did my homework on stream today just asking chat and I only I picked I only found like one thing to always be improving growing and learning but I think it kind of covers a lot of things and And I realized it's like come from, as a kid, I started dancing when I was three. And I've always been, like, graded as a person on my performance. And the more I started to, like, think about this. So you'd get marks for, like, appearance.

you'd get marks, you know, for, you know, how your hair, how neat your hair was, and your uniform and how you presented yourself and how polite you were and, and all of these things would like, you'd get a grade. And that expectation to be always this shiny, happy performing child, kind of. of like, it fell apart in my 20s when I actually just didn't turn up to an exam and didn't answer the telephone. I actually went to work instead. I decided not to go to an exam and went to work instead and ignored my telephone and, yeah, I didn't do like one of my final exams. Rebellious, 21-year-old. But I still enjoyed dancing and stuff and I really, I really, I really, I realized that I've carried some of that into my life now in my expectations of myself, in my expectations of being able to do it all as well, because as a kid,

I would get signed up to do like a gazillion different dance disciplines, go to this school, do that, get this scholarship, do this thing. and there were a lot of expectations on me as a child that went through into my adulthood, which then I've realised I've carried on into my own expectations of what I'm doing. So yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking about today. But I had an amazing time at the festival, and I danced.

I haven't like, I sound really, like, sheltered. I haven't gone out to like a festival or something and just like I was doing around 16,000 steps a day just dancing. And yeah, just enjoying myself until I like ran out of energy and meeting lots of really nice people. And it was a bit of a wellness festival. So there was like some sound baths in the day. There was some like different things going on in the day. but I just allowed myself to be for a weekend not to be like the only events I normally go to are

Twitchcon streaming events places where I have to be Ruby the streamer and it was so nice to go somewhere where I bet if I asked people there if they knew what Twitch was nobody would know and that was really nice and kind of like a bit of a like I don't want to quit streaming but also it was like oh hang on there's this whole thing out there and there's people out there like connecting and like I know you can do that online but yeah it was a nice it was a nice like quite literally putting my feet back in the mud

experience like you know you can become quite clinical and quite in a little box at your computer and your world like can become like a fish tank online and it's just the same fish like swimming around you check all the same social media and um i can yeah i feel energized but also i know i've done too much and like i maybe should have taken a me day which i'm very i find it very hard to take me days um even if it's a day off um my mods joke like if they see me online like this is a day off, get off discord, like get off, get off here, what are you doing? Like, you better not be working. I'll be like, I'm just researching this and they'll be like, why? It's a day off. I'm like, I'm just going to do a bit of this course over here that I'm reading about. And though, yeah,

I find it very hard to not always be productive. So that comes back to my expectations of it, everything has to feel like it's getting somewhere. But I did nothing a weekend except for dance and that did get me somewhere. So you can, yeah, it's like a reminder that I can have enjoyment and stuff and it doesn't have to be connected to Twitch and my work. And yeah. So yeah, that's my week. So I'm hearing that Ruby was able to get somewhere by going nowhere. Yes. Exactly. That's deep. You should have had some of the conversations this weekend. Well, this festival?

Absolutely. Where you're dancing 16,000 steps a day? Those conversations would have been deep. We may touch on some of those things. Oh, go ahead, sorry. Comment. It's cool how like when you're, when you, I guess, like, envelope yourself in a whole different kind of performance, like, you can get so much out of it, right? Whether it's doing dance or for me.

all throughout school, like singing in choir and, like, connecting musically with my peers. I have, like, some of my best experiences doing things outside of content creation. And, you know, I think, like, a lot of people, especially while I was in school, we're asking me, like, the million-dollar golden question, like, how do you balance having a life and then, like, having content creation? and doing both of those. And I don't know. I don't see it as like a perfect balance,

but it's something that like can be done. And you can't take the time to, you know, invest in those other areas that like personally interests you. So I don't know. Like hearing you share about like your, you know, experiences outside of Twitch with like dance kind of made me reflect on those days and how important it is to like have some kind of outlet or some kind of connection to that other thing that is like really valuable to me or to that other person. I definitely

think it's important. So thanks for sharing that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm one of those people that gets really emotional if I see someone doing something that they are clearly passionate about. It doesn't matter what it is if it's like a creative thing or they're just dancing or they're just singing they don't have to be the best they just have to be like trying to swear really fucking enjoying it and doing it do you know what I mean and I just love seeing people do that and I saw so much of that this weekend and it just like reminded me that everything can get so stuffy and picky and and like yeah with especially online and just like go outside and just sing if you want to touch grass if you want to sing like if you want to dance dance like i sound like i'm giving some big

speech here but like like smirky was saying it's it feeds like a different part of you that some people i think can forget when they speak spent so much time creating content, you've always got to think about what am I creating. But when you go and do those things, I actually have come back and I'm like even clear about what I want to create. Absolutely. So we'll talk a little bit about that. I just want to kind of acknowledge the time.

So we've been doing this for about 35 minutes and we've checked in with two people. So we also have to decide as a group, do we want to. I think it's good to do tangents. We should just be aware of whether we want to check in with people or we want to go off on tangents. How do people feel? I don't mind the tangents personally. And I also want to make sure everyone gets the chance to check in, too. So it's just like internal conflict for me, at least.

Yeah, I'm okay with both. Same. So what I'll do today is let's try to have a little bit more focused check in. Make sure we give everyone a chance to check in. and then what we'll do is sort of like there are a bunch of different useful themes that we can kind of dive into and so then we'll kind of like put that to the group and sort of pick one particular thing so it's also nice to have tangents and at the same time i also think if we do focus the discussion like if we kind of pick something and work with a little bit more intention that we can sort of learn something that we can

kind of take away which also has to be balanced with sort of like sharing and and getting things off our chest and things like that. So why don't we have other people kind of check in? I can go since I was talking just a moment ago. I feel like it flows well. It's kind of interesting for me because I've always like associated the idea of expectations as like this kind of negative idea or negative thought. Like as it's like, you know, if you have too many expectations on yourself, you can burn out,

It can result to all these different things. So, I mean, like, I certainly do put expectations on myself at times, especially, like, you know, being in school is one thing, but streaming as well. But I guess I've always, like, kind of silently nodded at them rather than being like, yeah, like, I have all these expectations and this is how I want to go about it. Because I guess maybe it's on the topic of avoidance, I guess. Just like, I don't know. I've seen it as this negative thing for a while, but I just kind of like put that to the side when I was like thinking about, you know, just straight up all things, you know, to the side because I overthink a lot.

So just putting all that over here and being like, okay, in this moment, like, you know, what are my expectations? And I guess like a couple things that come up. Just I want to, you know, inspire others to like be inspiring with their lives. and the people around them. So I want to make sure I do my best and, you know, uplift both myself as well as others. And then I also, you know, just want to make sure that whatever it is I'm creating, I'm truly having fun with it.

That, you know, because the whole reason I started streaming, getting into contact creation, is because I just thought it would be fun when I was playing Tune Town to share my own experiences with other people. And that was the baseline. That was it. And it's so easy to lose side of it. So I kind of like, not like hammering in this expectation, but just like reminding myself every now and then of like, you know, why I started it, why I started getting into streaming in the first place.

I think it kind of just sets the stage for so many other things, whether I'm doing a charity fundraiser or I'm just, chilling out with my community. You know, it's kind of like the backbone to everything. So, yeah, that's, those are my, I guess, expectations that I came up with. Cool. Thank you for sharing. Who's next?

I can go next. I can share what my weeks were like. Apologies for missing the last time. I was at a work offsite. But past couple weeks, I was going to Pax West in Seattle. and then after that I had to go to work in San Diego, like immediately after Seattle. So it's just been really hectic. And ever since these sessions started, I think I only stream like two or three times.

Even though I told myself I was going to start up streaming again after work, like having a schedule going. But I feel like I've been kind of overwhelmed because I was moving from one city to another. So just setting up my whole station here and then dealing with moving. and then all these events that were happening. And during Pax, Derrude was playing at one of the nightclubs, and I was very excited. I was like, this is great timing. There's Derrude. He's the gamers meme, and there's packs happening, and I was just so tired.

I couldn't even go. I thought that was so sad. The stars aligned for that night, and I just couldn't make it. I went to bed at like 10 p.m. or something. So I'm kind of the opposite of you all that I could not really get back to content creation. And then for this week, I just had so many work meetings. And at the end of it, I was like, I'm so exhausted. I just can't play StarCraft.

I can't really talk or do anything. I'm just going to watch TV shows and veg out or something. I think I just need to get my shit together. So that's been my week. My weeks. Okay. I'm kind of curious. And by the way, so for Ms. Ashrox and Zurgirl, can y'all please just share with us

what y'all prefer to be what y'all prefer to go by in terms of how we should address you oh you think oh sorry miss ash or ash whatever is shorter and easier for y'all those work for me yeah whatever's easier um i think zir girl is kind of a mouthful so kathy is good okay call me kathy so i'm curious when y'all hear kathy say get my shit together what do y'all hear I see Zell smile knowingly. I was going to ask, like, what does that mean? Like, what do you mean by getting your shit together? Because I think, like, it means so, it's, you know, we talked about it,

week one talking about our ambiguity and digging in a little bit. So, yeah. There's a lot more things I didn't mention. I feel like it's kind of macrering my life. Like, I signed up for a new credit card, so I have to look into that. There was all this paperwork that came in. I was like, I'm going to read this later. So I procrastinating on that.

There was a health appointment that I had to forego because another meeting was scheduled. And then just even missing this group session. I'm so sorry, producers. I didn't even give notice because I was just so distracted with everything. So that's why I'm like, okay, I need to be more on top of things, my scheduling, like doing the things that I want. just trying to balance everything. Hope that makes more sense.

Maybe we'll dig in a little bit. Let's dig in a little bit later. Let's give people a chance to finish checking in. I think we've got metric and Zell left, right? You want to go or I'll go? It doesn't matter to me. Okay. I'm okay with it either.

I'll go. So, like, almost two weeks ago, I accidentally damaged a tendon in my foot. that almost made me thought I, like, fractured it or broke it or something, and I couldn't walk for a bunch of days, and it was really painful. I couldn't sleep. But my folks were like, how about you come up here and put your foot up? Because I live on the third floor of a house, and it's all stairs. So, you know, having a wrecked foot wasn't exactly easy to deal with on my own, which it worked out. And I ended up reading four books while it was up there, because I can't

stream while I'm up there and there's nothing else to do. So I felt really good just reading. Because I feel like one thing that died when I started streaming was actually reading. That was actually really cool to get that back. And I was worried that like my reading speed had gone down since I used to, I used to just consume books. And then like initially when I started back up again, I was like, why is this taking so long? Am I stupid now? And then eventually, just the book's just like osmos through my skull or something

so I'm glad I have that back but yeah and then I finally got back Monday no Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday and then I had my first stream back

yesterday after like ages and it felt really good and it felt like I didn't even miss a stride at all so I'm really happy about that and I have I can't wait to just hit the ground running with like an actual working foot. I came back to it.

Anyway. So as far as like expectations and stuff, I think I have a few that kind of messed me up. And as far as like they go against each other. So I kind of, one thing I do is that I expect to procrastinate on anything that I intend to work on. I know that it's not going to happen right away. It's that idea of like, I don't expect to wake up tomorrow and like adopt all of those habits that are supposed to like automatically fix my life. And even then I'm going to wreck that. Like it's going to be even slower than other people would adopt it.

So I'm really good at waiting to the last minute until it's absolutely critical and then like possibly even begging for an extension on whatever work it. was. I'm so good at that. It's a talent and it shouldn't be. So I know that's something that keeps me from seizing opportunities or even pushing ahead for myself. And the other thing is, and this probably goes against the idea of like streaming in general or like putting yourself out there is I thought about this really hard is that I expect to be put down or like made fun of or like I expect a negative reaction from the things that I do and say

in in groups or streams and stuff and it's it's really weird because like I fostered this really caring community and everyone's really nice to me and stuff and it's great but I have a, I always have like these hairs on the back of my neck that go up just ready, just ready for somebody to like be brutal to me. And it's not because I don't trust them. It's a matter of I had to think really hard.

I spent two decades of therapy because of my father. He was an extremely violent man who never adjusted to life in Canada or the first world really after immigrating here. And he kind of saw family as like the wife stays at home, you marry off the daughter and the son takes up your work. And it, it, I was not following his footsteps because I was kind of an egghead. Still am. But he didn't even like the day that I got glasses because I couldn't see. And so. He was particularly violent.

He stopped being violent with me when I got bigger than him. And then one day I just couldn't take it anymore. And I kicked him out of the house when I was 16. And that was the only fight I've ever been in. And I packed his bags for him and threw him out of the driveway, and he's gone. So I don't have a relationship with him or anything. But like those 16 years were constant. like shame and abuse and I think I've sort of internalized that to like you know all these waking

moments of even trying to be happy or or tragic pain or whatever um like I expect somebody to just come out of nowhere and be like well you suck or that's not going to happen or why would you even try because that's how I grew up, right? So yeah. Anyway, sorry to bring down the mid. You're not bringing down the mid. Has everyone gone yet? Oh, I guess it's, I guess it's me. Awesome. So, all right, I, uh, the check-in part. Um, so anyways, uh, right now is just a big transitional period in my life. So it's like the time to start reassessing a lot of things, taking a lot of self-look at stuff. And yeah, it's been, it's been difficult. So just kind of reassessing everything in my life, really, just like from the ground up and redefining myself.

And that's just been kind of the big theme. And like on top of that, it's like I'm starting to think about, you know, working a full-time job again, and, like, making content creation may be a secondary thing. Also, moving sucks, you know, like, when, uh, or Kathy, uh, you were talking about moving, I was like, I hate moving. Moving is the worst thing in the world. Um, so yeah, I, uh, I, just a lot of stuff, physically, mentally, emotionally, everything. So that's my check-in. Um, I know I was being vague there, but, uh, they're just, some. Some stuff I'm not really ready to share quite yet. And then moving on to expectations.

So for me, my expectation is I always want to be the best. Like Pokemon song, I want to be the very best. Like in everything that I've ever done, I want to be the best. Like, oh, I pick up a new video game. I better be like top 1%. If I play like sports, I want to be MVP. If I sing a song, I want to be the best singer at that song. I want to be the best guitarist.

I want to be the best violinist. I want to be the best at everything I do. It's like an all-consuming thing. And I know where that comes from because, like, you know, I was just pushed super, super, super, super hard as a kid. You know, kind of classic scenario, immigrant family comes down to the U.S. And especially being Korean, like the Korean education system is just about grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, being competitive as possible. So, like, I go to school, and then my parents have, well, it was really my mom who had, like,

extra textbooks for me to go into and stuff. I think the funny thing was is that my parents had nothing, no idea how to educate children. Like, my parents had to arrange marriage. They didn't know what the heck they were doing. And so all they knew how to do was to just push me in whatever direction that I was able to go into. And so that turned into, like, me doing something. sports, me doing academics at any rate possible. Like, I was in an accelerated program that was like

meant for a little bit, I think, older kids, but I went in at the minimum age. So I stopped, I did math, I did calculus by the time I was in eighth grade and I did multivariable ninth grade. Like, I was done with college math by the time I went into high school. And then I was a violin competitor.

So I competed nationally in violin. I was less good at sports because I'm not like big dude so I played soccer but even in soccer my my club team made it to state and so did that like it was just competition all my life just be the best be the best be the best and um my parents were just doing the best they could but like you know culturally and just from them to that's a whole other story um with like how my parents kind of didn't know how to do anything. being really and so I sort of had to even though they were pushing me this hard they weren't actually helpful to me right like even though they can throw these textbooks in front of me and say like oh you

have to practice this much violin or practice this much whatever they don't play violin they don't know calculus they just knew that if they just pushed me uh you know you just the kid does it and so for me like part of the expectation is like my own self-sufficient I know, I think it was last week or maybe the week before, we talked about, like, you know, things that I want to work on, which is, like, asking for help. Well, turns out that was a learned, like, behavior for me to never ask for help because I've never had anyone to rely on in my life. And, like, my growing up, I was also very poor. So I knew financially, like, I had to take care of myself. And it's different now. My parents actually are doing pretty decently. Good for them. But, like, I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I, I just, it was always just about figuring out things for me. And so now as an adult, yeah, I just have this expectation. And part of it isn't on my own because like I like being good at things. So I think there isn't just like this forced expectation that, uh, that every like came into my life, I guess.

It just I, I want to be there too. And then like I, um, another expectation is just about like financial stability being, like independent and yeah so that's kind of the nutshell okay to the Korean parents just real fast yeah I mean it's like as classic as it gets and but the devil's I think in the details I think that's the part that was kind of funny about it is just like how much they just didn't actually understand because I don't think they were really ready to be parents like like I said they had arranged marriage and then, like, literally my grandparents were like, have a kid. And so like, nine months later, there I was. So my parents had known each other for a year and a half maybe by the

time they had me. And like, yeah. So when did you sleep? So I also had really bad insomnia as a kid. Like I normally just didn't sleep very much. It wasn't until like college where I started to have a more normal sleep thing. I got sleep testing done recently. It tracks. God, that's crazy. Kathy, I'm curious if there was something that resonated with you about Zell's upbringing that he was sharing. Yeah, the Korean parents, they're just like, oh, why aren't you doing well in school? There's all these people here. They can't even speak English and they're getting better grades than you. I'm like, thanks, Mom. That made me feel amazing. Thanks, Mom. Very cool. Yeah. So it's just tough.

So we've got a couple of choices. All right. So we're almost about an hour in. We've got half an hour left. So I'd like to, wow. So I'm just trying to think about, can I think for a second? Of course. So the challenge is that there's so much to talk about. So I'm going to just start spitting stuff out. So first of all, I want to point something. out. So Metrick was like, sorry for making things like toning down the mood. And everyone was like, you didn't tone down the mood. Like, what did Patrick do to the mood? Absolutely nothing. It's hard. It's hard when you say something and you're like, oh man, who wants to say anything after that? Like, what do you say after that? That's the part. Like, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a lot of you all have said stuff, right? Whether it's kicking out your dad at the age of 16, whether it's, you know, doing violent competitions.

I thought he said violent competitions. I was like, wow, like, real, like, cage match kind of stuff here. I've heard a lot of things about Korean parents, but never, whenever we're quite that. And then also we're hearing about, you know, Kathy has a loved one who's got dementia. Ash has lost someone and has just been given a diagnosis. Like, I actually think a lot of y'all, are bringing down the mood. So here's the wild thing.

Is that okay? Yeah. So I... We have to talk about these things. Right. So we have... Absolutely. Like, we have this reflexive reaction that I'm not allowed

to bring down the mood for anyone else. But I mean, what the fuck do you call it when you have a violent dad that you have to kick out of the house at the age of 16? Like, you know, that's not fun or exciting. And this is the challenge with negativity is we try so hard to block negativity that, like, you don't have to block it. Like, my question is so so many of y'all need to be better. Kathy's got to get her shit together. Ash has to be positive. I try to think about the good things when it comes to my grandmother.

Zell has to be like straight up perfect. Right? And like, is it okay to not be okay? Like, everyone's trying to be okay. And y'all are nodding your heads as if the answer is yes, but I don't think the answer is yes. Like, think about it for a second. Yeah, I was like, like, I had to catch myself.

I was like, I'm about to say yes, but it's so automatic, like something I always tell people, but like think about it, right? Right. So I'm going to ask y'all, does Kathy need to get her shit together? Yes. therefore it's okay it's not okay for her to not have her shit together right doesn't ash need to get over her grandmother who died a year ago zelle or at least well i mean i i would just feel terrible for her if if you know it ate away at her for the rest of her life like i think coming

to term with it in some way that would be great yeah right so so i was like i didn't want to say yes but i don't think get over like feel better yeah i don't think get over is right word good right so So I'm, remember, my, my, my aspect is that I'm purposefully hyperbolic and I want y'all to push back. Yes. Right? But like, I'm almost, I'm very confident that there are times in Ash's life where her mind produces the thought, you should be over this by now, right?

Absolutely. There are times where just like Kathy, she says, I got to get my shit together. There are times where just like Zell, who's. at the cliff, which is not, by the way, thank you for telling us that you're not ready to go into it yet. Totally fine. Really love that limit setting. Right? So like, this is one theme for today.

I think a couple of things. So we talked a little bit about, I almost want to say, like, we can just talk about struggling. Because I think something that we haven't really talked about sort of quite as explicitly. Like, we recognize that people are struggling. But like, what does it mean to struggle? What is your struggle actually? like, can you tell us about that? Another thing that we can talk about, this is also a little bit off the beaten path, not

part of our original curriculum, but we can talk about meaning. And this question of like, why is this happening to me? And there's some very interesting science behind that question and that exploration. It's not something that I had anticipated because, frankly, I didn't know about y'all's backstories. But now that I hear about your backstories, like, there's a lot of stuff to learn about meaning. And like, why was, why did Zell have the parents that he had? Why did Kathy have the parents that she had? Why was she destined to be in a city where Derrude was playing and she was too tired to go, you know? Or Ash, who's struggling with diagnoses and stresses and stuff like that.

And that story, by the way, we haven't heard the full story yet, right? There's a lot more to learn there about relationship with parents and Alzheimer's, dementia. Like, there's a bunch of stuff to talk about. So I'm going to kind of put it to y'all so we can sort of, oh, and then the fourth thing is I feel like at some point we're going to have a, have to have a frank conversation about how we feel about ourselves. So, like, I don't know how else to put it. I mean, I don't know if that makes sense.

I can explain it more if you guys want, but like, I have a feeling that, and that's where we got, I don't know if we're ready for that, if we're, if we've leveled up enough to where we can have an authentic conversation. Because what's going to happen is, if, is we really start to get into it about how we feel about ourselves, the group has to be ready to listen to it and not shut it down. So I'll, I'll put it to y'all in terms of how we want to spend the remainder of the time. We can sort of dig into how we feel about ourselves. We can dig into meaning, we can dig into a couple of these other topics like grief loss. And I even forget what the other stuff that I said at the beginning was.

But oh yeah, just generally speaking like heaviness and that it's okay to be heavy and it's okay to not be okay. What are you all feeling? I want to dive into meaning and how the, yeah, the path of how you want to talk about that among us all here, Dr. Kay. Okay. people have like oh can i ask like because meaning just sounds kind of broad yep in the grand scheme of things so like because are we going to focus it from a content creation

angle or are we going from a general perspective yeah that's a great question so here's what i would propose since we've got only about 20 minutes left what i would really propose is that next week we're going to do more focused dives into meaning in people's experiences. I don't think we have quite the time to open that up. And this week, what I'd probably do is maybe ask a couple of questions. But then in about five or ten minutes, I'd share some perspectives. And I'd offer some kind of like educational stuff about the science of meaning and narrative in someone's life. So if that kind of makes sense, just given time.

So I think we do exploration next week, but we can frame. things this week with some explicit teaching. I think that sounds good. That sounds good to me. Okay. So I'm going to start with somewhat targeted questions, okay? Just a couple of like questions. Why does stuff happen? Like why?

What do you all think? Life. Yeah, because we exist. I feel like one of my friends put it best, like when I was, I always felt like I was on the back foot because it would always go against my plans or things I was trying to do. And she told me, like, life is a thing that happens when you're making plans. So it's just you're basically, you're trying to strategize your next day, but you don't even know if you're going to get hit by a car tomorrow. So like, you're just rolling with it, basically.

Or trying your best to. Yeah, but what determines how life happens? So like, yeah. Okay. So, so that's one perspective. Right. So I'm going to challenge that perspective a little bit. So like, I'm going to put myself in, I don't know if it's just, you know, I'm the child of immigrant parents as well.

So I can sort of, I'm sure that my experience is somewhat similar to metrics because I think we're both Indian. But, you know, I think I resonate a lot with Zell's experience and Kathy's experience as well. And like, I'm imagining that they asked themselves when they were growing up, why are my parents this way? Why can't they be different? Like, did you all ask yourselves that question? Oh, yeah. So what was, I'm curious, you don't have to have the right answer. I really want to know, though, what was the answer that you came up with? It doesn't have to be rational or justifiable or defensible. I mean, for, like, the way I always thought about it, because, like, I feel like I've more or less come to terms with my parents in my, like, upbringing. And,

They just did the best they could based off their own experiences. And I think that's kind of like this cycle that happens, right? You know, where your parents did what their parents did for them in hopes that that was good for them. And then that just kind of continues down the cycle. And then the why a lot of it, I think, comes down to just existentialism a little bit where, like, I think, I think people want their offspring to do well. whether that like the things that they're doing to their children is for that purpose like actual goal or not like that's their intent and so I think like why things happen just kind of comes down to well they want the best for their kids

they just are doing things based off their own experience and knowledge that they have as best they can okay in my experience it wasn't really like that because my Both my parents came from very abusive homes, like from other countries, and they both immigrated at the same time. And my mom made sure to get therapy and come to terms with everything that happened to her, whereas my father didn't do anything to recognize what was going on with him. And it always blew my mind when he was watching TV. We would watch sitcoms or whatever of like happy families. And he could never like understand or at least put himself in that situation like, well, this family isn't like this.

Why are we watching people on TV that are acting in a completely different way? Like it always sort of the disconnect blew my mind. So I mean, I think in most cases people try to do the best for their kids. but for him, I don't know. There might be a little laziness or something. I don't know. Kathy, what about you? Honestly, I don't think I thought that deeply when I was young at that time.

But looking back now, I can see why they were like that. I was a first child. They had no experience. They had me kind of young. Like, looking at other people have children early, I'm just like, I can't do that. I don't have time. I just don't know how to raise a kid. So, yeah, when I was young, I wouldn't know.

So I didn't question myself like that. I'm noticing that y'all are sort of almost answering the question from like a developmental psychology sort of way where we're focusing on parenting as to why they were the way they were. But I'm more thinking like on a more existential level. Do you all ever wonder about why your life is the way it is? I think we're all There was a big bang and then cosmic dust

and then we crawled out of the soup and all that stuff but yeah yeah what yeah okay so I'm noticing that the question

is hard to tackle which is exactly why we're talking about it so let's start with a little bit of science so people are kind of wondering like okay what's the meaning of life right and so I I don't know if you all follow a particular religious tradition. So I have two major biases that I'll sort of share right now when it comes to how I'm going to approach this. The first bias is a scientific one. There's actually like research that we're about to go into about like meaning and how human beings, the role of meaning and purpose and crap like that in people's life and like how you find meaning. Because the cool thing is scientifically we actually kind of have answers around this. The second thing is going to be that I come, I was raised sort of in the Hindu.

tradition, but that really didn't mean much to me. And then I spent a couple years studying to become a monk, and I found the stuff that I learned that's basically sort of a perspective from the karmic religions. So the karmic religions, I'm referring to basically Hinduism and Buddhism and their various offshoot. They have some interesting perspectives around karma and things like that, which if you all want to learn about that, and even some of the things that I kind of teach in terms of the correlation between expectation and suffering, those, that kind of thought originated from that tradition, although you could make strong arguments that it was independently discovered elsewhere.

So stoicism, for example, in Greece and things like that, that these are things that people have discovered in multiple places. So let's talk about science. So when you take someone with trauma, okay? So I don't know if that applies to anyone here. But when you take someone who's gone through a traumatic experience, there's actually some really interesting data, that people who are able to make meaning out of that experience are the ones who do better. So there's research on this.

There's a cool kind of budding field of psychiatry and psychology called post-traumatic growth. So everyone has heard of PTSD. We all know that people will go through particularly traumatic experiences. But the really interesting thing is not everyone who goes through a traumatic experience winds up with PTSD. some of them actually like wind up oddly like stronger, better, more confident themselves. And that's the research into something called post-traumatic growth. And what we've essentially discovered from post-traumatic growth is that when I have a sense of identity, something happens to me.

And it shakes my sense of identity. So for example, if you look at abuse towards young children, so there's some really interesting research here where as a young child, I have impaired. theory of mind. And what theory of mind is, is this the acknowledgement that other people exist. So when I'm like six months old, I don't understand that there are other human beings that exist that have independent thoughts and feelings and actions and stuff like that. So that's what makes trauma so devastating towards kids is because if I don't think anyone else exists and something bad happens to me, who's responsible?

Child feels responsible? Absolutely. And that's evolutionary. because if I'm learning how to walk and I stumble and fall, like, I need to be responsible for that, right? So a lot of things like basic early on, I can't be blaming my parents for, like, not learning how to walk at the age of nine months, otherwise I'll never learn how to walk. 12 months, really, is when we learn how to walk. So there's this kind of impaired theory of mind,

which sort of makes trauma towards children so devastating because in their mind, they're the only ones that really kind of exist. So they accept more and more responsibility. So we sort of, here I am, I have a sense of identity. Trauma happens, shakes that sense of identity. And then if I am able to develop a good narrative around that, if I'm able to find meaning in my traumatic experience, then I will grow from it and I will be less likely to be, like, have PTSD or some kind of psychiatric diagnosis.

And this research comes out of, like, you know, conditions where, like, genocide or stuff like that, where you have massive groups of people who have a shared traumatic experience. And so you've got refugee camps where not everyone develops PTSD, and then researchers will go in and they'll try to figure out, like, why doesn't one person have PTSD? Why does another person have it? So this is why it's really important to find meaning. There's also evidence from psychotherapy that if you want to help people, you need some kind of explanatory system.

So this is where some people may be asking, is there some meaning to life? And the short answer is scientifically, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that your meaning is correct. What matters is that it's internally consistent and relatively comprehensive. So you have to derive some sense of meaning that can explain the range of things and that you can continuously apply. Does that make sense? So, for example, if I'm a psychoanalyst and I love Sigmund Freud and I'm all into Sigmund Freud's various theories about edible complexes and anal phase and phallic phlegs and oral phase, and all that kind of stuff. That's actually totally fine. It's not whether it's like scientifically

correct or not. As long as my system is consistent and can apply to things and people can kind of buy into it, it'll actually be therapeutic. This is why we have so many different perspectives on psychotherapy and they all basically work the same, even though the core belief structures are quite different. So when it comes to finding meaning, what we need to do is figure out, okay, how am I going to formulate meaning. So I personally, for example, I put a lot of stock in the theory of karma. When I work with patients, I lean into that sort of internally. And then I'll try to figure out whether they're open to that crap. If they're open to that crap, then I'll talk about it. If they're not open to that crap, that's actually totally fine. I don't have to impose my beliefs on

them. But in terms of my mind, the reason that I put stock in the theory of karma is it's kind of scientific for me. It's that all causes have effects, and all effects have causes, right? Like, that's, like, to me, a scientific principle, that gravity is cause and effect, physics is cause and effect. Chemistry grows out of physics. That has cause an effect. Biochemistry grows out of chemistry. That has cause an effect. Biology grows out of biochemistry. Cell biology grows out of biology. Cell biology becomes neurobiology. Neurobiology becomes neuroscience. Neuroscience becomes psychology. Psychology becomes human behavior, becomes economics, becomes advertising. And we know that we can have scientific principles. We can deduce equations of economics,

psychology, advertising behavior. So cause and effect kind of happens. And then the question is, does it end at some point? So to me, scientifically, this is a question that you all have to answer. To me, it doesn't make sense that there's an arbitrary endpoint. And in fact, if you look at the history of scientific progression, essentially like we've been able to better explain causes and effects, and now they're even sort of scientific equations for economics, right? So we can sort of try to deduce things mathematically to like interest rates and like raising interest rates and lowering interest rates, and we have all these kind of principles. So the key thing for y'all is going to be to think a little bit about, you know, why does stuff happen to you? And I encourage y'all to think about this,

because until you have an answer to that question, it can feel like you're rudderless. So this is the other sort of scientific finding is it's not that a particular God exists or that the theory of karma is correct or anything like that. I mean, that may be true, but that's like a point of religious debate. We're not really concerned with that. What we do know is that from a scientific sense, if you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on in your life, you need some kind of internally consistent and comprehensive like metaphysical system.

So for some people, that's a particular religion. Nice thing about religion is they package it up for you and it's kind of like a, you know, you just get the whole thing and it's all set. Various downsides to religion. Some people sort of espouse kind of a more spiritual perspective or whatever. I think it's just important to think a little bit about why stuff happens to you. The really cool thing about once you start to explore meaning in your life is that like it helps you through stuff. So remember, we started talking about post-traumatic growth and PTSD. and the key thing is as shit happens in your life, if you have some kind of internal system to make sense of it,

then it'll be easy to make sense of it. And as we start making sense of things, we can start like navigating life, right? So what is the source of suffering? Remember, we talked about expectation, but what is it the root of it? Why do we emotionally, why do we sort of vent our emotions? What does that allow us to do? Y'all remember? Okay, so...

I mean, we talked about... I could be wrong here. We talked about expectations, like being the source of anxiety. Yeah, so even deeper than that, avidia or ignorance is the source of suffering. And so remember that, like, when y'all didn't understand how crap worked, like, generally speaking, you get screwed, right? And once you start to understand the mechanics of a video game, for example, then you can start to perform better.

you start to understand it more, you know how to improve, et cetera. So, and this is where, like, I know it sounds kind of weird, but if ignorance is the source of suffering, and y'all don't have to accept that, it's just a hypothesis, then the question kind of becomes, like, do you understand what's happening in your life? And as we start to, like, explore that, like, why is this happening? And I'm talking on a global level. And I recognize that I've worked with a lot of people who, you know, their upbringing has taught them that asking why is a useless question.

I don't care about the why. All that matters, you need to get an A plus. The why is an irrelevant question. I don't care why. I don't care what you want. I don't care about meaning. You need to play the violin. You need to get an A plus.

You need to go to state championship. You need to do this. You need to become doctor. The whys are completely irrelevant. Like you have to hit the, like it's all about the destination, not the journey. It's all about the metrics and the results. And so this is the thing. Early on, we talked about getting away from results and tapping into our authentic self.

The problem is that if we've been conditioned to focus on results, we need some kind of compass. We can't just ignore all the results and then, like, magically shit starts happening. Right? That's why it's so hard to get away from results because you need some other kind of compass. And what is that compass? It's the meaning. And I recognize that for some of you, this is going to be really foreign. But I don't know how else to say this.

So Ash share with us that she, apparently, if I heard correctly, you know, she, like, found her grandmother who had passed away. And so sometimes when something bad happens to us, we have this question, why me? Why did I have to be the person? And then this is where, like, I don't know to say this, but people will say like, oh, there's no answer. There's no real answer. But that's so damn unsatisfying. Then she has to walk around with the question. imagine for a moment that you actually had an answer.

Someone was like, hey, this is why it happened. This is why it had to be you. This is what it's done to you. This is what it's going to turn you into. And for Zell, like, sure, he was a Chad seventh grader doing like 15 things. But like, look at the legacy that it's left him. And like metric here is tossing out his abusive father, which is, the climax of a TV show that is a feel-good moment for everyone who's watching when it's

fictionalized and romanticized, but it's done a number on him. Right? And Kathy here is beating herself up because she didn't get her shit together. And she has so many opportunities and she can't take advantage of them. And so this is where like we're kind of moving into how do you think about yourself? But this, I don't know how else to say this, but if you want to. if you need, like what we need, what y'all need, what we all need is a compass. Like, what am I doing with content creation?

Kathy's like, I've only streamed two or three days. Like, are you upset about that? Is that okay? And I'm sort of getting from Kathy that she doesn't know. Should she be doing more? Should she be doing less? Is it okay? Is it not okay?

How the hell do you answer that? And so in the vacuum of this internal compass, we fill it. up with metrics. View counts. We fill it up with all the analytics that the world gives us. We fill it up with how much money we earn. We fill it up with the degree

that's on our wall. We fill it up with trophies and all this other crap. Right? Because like if I have nothing to navigate, I might as well go for an A plus because that's where things get measured. But if we want to get away from that, we have to think about our own internal compass.

So what I would want is for Kathy to be able to answer for herself and be content with, is it okay to stream only two or three days? Kathy, is it okay to stream only two or three days? Yes. Do you really believe that? Yes. Okay, great. Done.

Yeah. Right? So, so, so, and this is where like, we got to, we got to figure out, you know, like, how are we going to make decisions? Especially for people like Zell here is thinking about getting a full-time job. Kathy has a full-time job. we can talk about those kinds of things. But as we have all of these discussions, where Ash is trying to figure out how to spend

her time, metrics trying to figure out what he should stream, all you all are trying to figure out, do I expand, do I grow, do I lean into my authenticity or do I play by the metrics? Like, how do we incorporate certain analytics versus being true to ourselves? We need an internal compass. And once you find that internal compass, it makes all of your decision making easier. And if you look at, like in the past when people were religious, we kind of outsize. sourced that stuff to God. We're like, God says do this. We're going to follow that. That's what I'm going to make my decisions based on. And what we sort of know is people who can do that kind of mentally,

as we've looked at the science of that kind of thinking, we found that basically, like, it doesn't matter which God you choose or whatever, right? So I'm sure that people who are religious will have issues with that. I'm going to talking about science here, is that you just need some kind of system. Questions? Does that answer y'all's question? I know we're going to talk more about this, but does that at least answer your question when Ash was saying, like, let's talk about meaning and why, like, what direction we're going to go in? That, that clears a lot of things up, I think. Okay. In terms of the meaning of meaning. Yep. But I'm, yeah. I mean, I think that makes sense. And, like, I was just kind of thinking, again, just, like, trying to answer that question for myself,

but, like, finding that internal compass feels really vague and existential. And my, like, when I'm trying to reason myself with like why things happen. Like my brain keeps just like hitting a brick wall with like, yeah. Yeah, because because and this is, this is, I mean, not trying to generalize here, but, you know, we've got the Kathy, you're Korean? Yes. We've got two Koreans who have a shared experience around this thing. I'm sure that other people, it's not exclusive to Korean people, but like some cultures just

don't care about why. Why is like not an important thing. And so it feels like vague. What I'm saying is that from a scientific, perspective, getting a clear sense of why is like very, very, like, healthy in terms of giving us. So now the question is, how the hell do we do that? Answer is, I don't really know, but we're going to try to figure out. Because like I said, this was not part of the original curriculum. So I'm going to do my best. So we'll figure

something out. Dammit, you're supposed to fix everything. Well, I'm not going to fix it. Y'all will figure it out. You guys are like Kathy's already fixed it, right? She's solid. So here's what I would start with. So I want y'all for homework. I want y'all to write one page. And better if you really do write it out, bonus points if you handwrite it out. And I'll explain why. Write one page about how you feel about yourself.

So when you do this exercise, you can do a separate exercise. Actually, yeah, so we're going to make it complicated. You can sort of ignore this part. So I want you to take two pieces of paper. And on one page, I want you to write how you. think about yourself. Then what I want you to do is as you're doing exercise number one, you're going to have thoughts about things that you don't want to put on page number one. So you're going to get some kind of reflexive answer. Like, oh, like, I'm kind of suss. But you're

like, I don't want to write that. And I want you to put that on page number two. Okay? If that doesn't work for you, that's okay. You can just write one page about how you think about yourself, you don't have to do the second part. But I just, what I'm trying to clue you all in on is that as you do this exercise, you're going to notice, and hopefully you all are trained in this at this point, that you're going to have reflexive reactions. Metrics like, am I bringing down the mood? Ha, ha, ha, metric, no.

Talking about being physically violent and throwing your dad out on the street. No, man, that's totally fine. Right? Like, that's, you know, you're going to have these reactions. And you're going to have politeness with yourself. Ash is going to be like, oh, no, I don't want to let myself wallow in the negativity, which is totally fine. Ash, we don't want you to wallow in the negativity. What we want you to is bring it here.

Let that shit out. You don't have to carry it by yourself. I think that's what I struggle with. Yeah. Right? So it's going to be our responsibility to bring it out of you. Okay. So you're going to keep a problem.

apologizing. And then right now people are telling you, don't be sorry. Everyone's doing a good job of saying how much they appreciate it. And then at some point, they're going to say, you know what? I did want to actually share something. You took my spotlight and that's perfectly okay. One day maybe we'll get there. I don't know if this group will ever get there.

It's okay. We don't have to. No expectations. Not, I was going to say, not taking the spotlight. Like, yeah. When you explain the homework. I was laughing to myself because I've just been internally doing that this whole session. There's almost like a separate, like, the things I really want to say,

and I know with my ADHD, they're like, they're there and then they're gone. And then there's like these separate, like, bubbles of thoughts that I'm like, can't say that. Can't say that. can't say that out loud either like i've literally the homework is like my constant thought process yeah so maybe it'll be easy for you then

we'll see i'll forget by then it's okay so so whatever and i think once again the homework isn't about you know complete it's not about a grade it's to really get y'all just start thinking about this and i think what we really need to dig into before we get to meaning is we have to understand like, who are you? How do you feel about yourself? Right? And that kind of vague stuff. And so here are the reasons to write it. So when I ask that question, based on our conditioning, your mind will produce a reflexive response. Okay? So if I ask Ash, Ash, how do you feel about yourself?

Ash is going to be like, I love myself a lot, which is true and incomplete. So the reason that we write one page is the first half is going to be what you reflexively believe, and that's totally fine. It's all good. It's good that you love yourself. And I'm kind of suss, right? And by the time you get to the end of the bottom of the first page, there's going to be stuff there that you'll have uncovered. Okay? The other reason to write, as opposed to type, is generally speaking, if you write, it'll be slower than typing.

and that way your mind will be working on it for a longer period of time, and you will uncover more stuff. And so next week, what I'm going to try to do, I don't know, I'm going to have to think about the existential stuff because I don't know, like, I can't, I mean, I can teach y'all, you know, a method that works for me, but I think we have to learn a little bit more about who we are before we develop an internal compass. Because I think we've already learned that so far,

so here's what I think we've taken away so far, is that y'all are operating based on a compass for, sure, but it's not necessarily a compass that you picked. It was the compass that was given to you. And in order to find our own compass, we've got to figure out who we are. And point of clarity, does it have to be exclusive to who we are as a content creator or can it be just general? Yeah. So here's, no, I should absolutely be general. Or, I mean, you can talk about contact creation. But here's the, here's the hypothesis here. And this is how. something that is less scientifically valid, but I feel, you know, we just haven't done a ton of

research on it. That when you align who you are with content creation, that's when you become the best content creator. That's a hypothesis we have. I don't know that that's factually correct. Sounds pretty authentic. Right? So that's where we don't want to think about ourselves as content creators first. We want to think about ourselves as human beings. And then we'll translate that. once we take that authenticity and then we apply analytics to it, then we start playing the game of a content creation, that's when we actually succeed. We don't want to ignore the analytics, but we don't want the analytics to be our compass. Does that make sense? We want analytics to, like if I've got five natural impulses, I'm going to let the analytics let me be calculating

on which one of those to invest in, if that sort of makes sense. So we still want to use the analytics. And there's overwhelming evidence that content creators who pay attention to analytics, outperform those who don't. But we don't want them to substitute for an internal compass. Okay? Because the internal compass is essentially a substitute for the compass that we already have, which centers around things like analytics and metrics. So here's what can happen. The first is that our internal, our compass can be conditionally given to us by our parents. right? So like metric, for example, is waiting for people to crap on him. Why? It's because, I mean, we don't know this for sure, but, you know, I'm sure it has, I would be very surprised if it had nothing to do with the fact that his dad was violent when he was growing up and stuff like that, right?

It's because metric grew up in a situation where he learned that no matter what I do, someone is there to crap on me. okay so maybe that's not the case we don't really know we haven't really dug into it yet but so sometimes our conditioning gives us a sense of like a compass of what we should or shouldn't do does that make sense second thing is that when we don't have when we're not centered within ourselves we become more responsive to signals from the external world does that make sense So when I don't know who I am as a content creator and I'm looking for direction, I have things like view counts and sub counts and this person blew up here and this is on LSP and this is going on and everyone's playing this game. And I'm going to use that as a substitute for an internal compass.

We even see this in cases of personality disorders where when there are certain personality disorders where I don't have a good sense of who I am, So who I am is determined by how other people treat me. So if I'm treated well, I am a good person. If I'm treated well, I'm a bad person. And there's no sense of independent identity. This actually happens to content creators because we get so much analytical feedback that we start to value ourselves based on analytics.

So who I am and my value as a human being starts to correlate more tightly with the value of the content that I create. Does that make sense? Those two things get tangled up. So if you want to be a healthy and arguably somewhat successful content creator, because there may be some evidence that the most successful content creators are completely into the analytic side, but they suffer immensely. I don't think that's the case, but we don't really have a good sample size when you're talking about very, very successful content creator. Does that make sense? So we can use external data as a substitute when we don't know who we are.

We oftentimes will make decisions based on how we would condition to make decisions. Summary points one and two. In order to find peace and direction in life, we need some kind of existential approach that is both comprehensive and consistent. When we apply that approach to our lives, we will be able to find a sense of direction and purpose. As we find a sense of direction and purpose, we feel better. about ourselves. As we feel better about ourselves, we become more resilient to external data and aren't influenced by it. And hopefully then we can incorporate it in a healthy way and create the best content. Questions? Okay. I have a question, but it's semi-unrelated. It's more

about just like discussion format just because you kind of touched on this earlier. But like when people say stuff and you have like, you know, those thought bubbles that are like kind of like what Ruby mentioned where I shouldn't say this. Like, I mean, it sounded like we should say these things as like a part of our authentic self, but like also from a respectful slash polite point of view, I'm kind of like, I don't want to say the wrong thing, especially when people are being emotionally vulnerable. And so for me, like, I'm just kind of curious like, you know, how we handle that. Great question. So two things. One is we're just going to have to find what feels right for the group. group. Okay? So I encourage y'all to say something, and then we're going to check in with the group. One thing I feel pretty good about is I'm pretty sure that people here understand that the intentions of everyone else is positive. So until y'all start taking risks, I'm going to have to keep taking risks. Right? So like, and then if I do that too much, you all are going to start to dislike me. So that's something. So you all,

all need to start taking. You mean start. OK. And the second thing is I remind you all to remember what our three values are, compassion, authenticity, and presence. So we always want compassion to come first. So if you're going to say something, I think it's okay to challenge someone else. it's not okay to intentionally hurt someone else. So if I authentically believe that you are a terrible human being, I don't want to say that because compassion trumps authenticity. At the same time, I think that y'all do a good job of like engaging with each other.

And I don't know, like holding hands and singing kumbaya, I do not think is going to help you all that much. What's going to... I mean, we can do it anyway. Yeah, I'm not saying it's... So that has... But what I want y'all to be able to do is to like get into the negative and then acknowledge that it's okay. Right?

Like, so you're not perfect. I don't want you all to strive to help each other to meet perfection. I want y'all, my goal is to help you all be okay, not being perfect. And then to still move forward, we're not saying because sometimes people think that means apathy. We want you to move towards your goals, but move towards your goals not to attain perfection, but because you want to do this. You want to make the world a better place. You want to create content that you share with people.

So that should be the goal. And that's, once again, a bias that I have. Does that answer your questions, Elle? Yeah. Okay. All righty. Thank you very much. Anyone streaming?

I am. Okay. Okay, so we'll toss your rate metric. Okay, thank you. All right. Take care, everyone. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. Okay. All right.

Make sense? We're streaming tomorrow, chat. Questions before we raid metric. People understand what we're kind of saying here. You know, so I think this is like important to understand that, so we can do like a lecture about some of these concepts. But the key thing about group work is that it gives us a opportunity to apply stuff. Does that make sense?

Like it's not enough to say, like, I can share that scientific stuff, but like now the real work happens. And you can take a concept, like you can read 300 pages about finding meaning in your life. But we sort of know, I mean, there isn't great research on this, but there's like a fair amount of research that just reading books or information does not lead to behavioral change. Behavioral change comes from the application of information or the development of understanding. And so if you really want to make a change in your life, you have to do. internal exploration and hopefully some kind of facilitation. So like a lot of people will do the internal exploration and they'll get there eventually. But this is the key thing.

We also know that if you have some kind of facilitator, support, or expert, they can increase the speed at which you make progress. Does that make sense? So it's like you have to do internal work, but like with a guide of some kind. And the guide isn't going to have the answer for you, right? So I can't show up at group and say, okay, this is what you need, this is what you need, this is what you need, this is what you need. And this is the problem with like generally speaking things like self-help videos or advice or whatever,

is that it's not personalized. So like today, we learned all kinds of stuff that we had no idea about, right? So like when metric beats himself up, like, where does that come from? Well, like we learned some interesting information. when Kathy is feeling tired all the time, like, where does that come from? Well, we learn some interesting information. And it's the lack of personal application that gets to just dot, dot, dot, if that makes sense. Right?

Just get out more. Just go to the gym. Just grieve and move on. Well, why is it hard to do those things? Because there's a personal component. So you can understand grief, but in order to apply it to your individual level, there needs to be a translation.