HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K Answers Your Difficult Voicemails

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K dives into real voicemails sent in by viewers—many deeply personal, sometimes challenging. You’ll hear him respond in real-time, offering coaching, empathy, and razor-sharp insight. It’s honest, human, and often very powerful. Highlights include: Live coaching on issues listeners brought in anonymously Emotional moments where people shared things they’d never said out loud Dr. K’s balance of compassion and practical advice If you’ve ever avoided talking about something hard, this episode shows why sometimes speaking up and someone listening can be a turning point. This Episode on YouTube: http://bit.ly/4nDHMTW HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG 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

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Auk 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.

So welcome to Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Alok Canoja. Just a reminder that although I'm a psychiatrist, nothing we discussed on stream today is in 10. to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. If you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. So today, happy Friday, everybody.

We, yeah, so today we're doing something super cool. I'm super excited. We're going to listen to a bunch of voicemails sent by people in our community, and then we are going to try to answer them. And the cool thing about this is that many of the voicemails that, so a lot of people submitted voicemails. There's just no humanly way to get to all of them. So first of all, if y'all submitted voicemails, thank you very much. What we try to do is pick the ones that we thought resonated the most with the challenges that people in our community face. I hope to get

through a lot of them today. But as you all know, sometimes I'm a touch long-winded. So I apologize if we don't, you know, get to too many, but I hope we'll really get to a lot of them. But I think that like the problems that people are dealing with in our community are, I don't not to say this, the problems that people are dealing with in our community. So our hope is that, you know, the voicemails that we're going to share with you all today, that many of the things that these people have questions about will apply to you as well. So we're going to do some classic old school. Dr. Kay is going to show up and just talk about some stuff and hopefully we will learn something. Okay. So let's get started. I'm going to do this. And let's listen to our

first voicemail. Hi, Dr. Kay. I'm Cherry. I used to be a hikikamori, a complete shudden. I didn't have any education, nor was I working. I spent years hiding through life through gaming, internet, and substances. I pushed everyone away because I felt like facing reality felt impossible. And I just isolated myself. Now, three years ago, I chose to start over and now I'm working two jobs, I'm studying full time, I've rebuilt my life from scratch, basically. And I've made meaningful relationships, repaired my relationship with my parents, and I even have a healthy relationship with my boyfriend, and I even treat myself with compassion. But when I'm overwhelmed, there is this voice that creeps in, it tells me to shut down, disappear, go none, hit the reset button, and there is a part of me that still listens. Maybe it's because the chaos and self-destruction feels familiar or safe.

But how do I stay connected to this life? And especially when the urge to escape feels more like home than healing I'm trying to hold on to. Or how do I stop self-sabotaging myself? Thank you. Okay, great. Oh, okay. So this is awesome. So first of all, thank you, Cherry, for submitting a voicemail.

I think this is awesome because, like, this is what we set out to do. I don't know if you all realize that. But, like, you know, there are all kinds of people who have all kinds of struggles in the world, right? People are hickokicamori's, their shut-ins, and they're not in education. They don't have jobs. They don't have relationships. They're basically kind of shut in and playing video games. watching anime or whatever, not that there's anything wrong with those things in isolation.

And then people start to put together their lives. But the challenge is that if you're someone who puts together your life, the old you doesn't go away. Right. So we have this idea that like when we have a period of our life that we really struggle with. So I've seen a ton of patients who struggle with addiction. You know, we have all, like we have this way of existing in the world. And then we have this concept that, okay, like, this is the way that I'm living now. But if I fix my life, I won't slide back, right?

Like, once I progress, like, that's the problem. We have this idea of progression and leveling up. We're like, once I gain XP and I fix this problem, then the problem is fixed. We don't ever think, like, okay, I'm going to get up to level 10. And then on a random weekend, I'm going to start. the backslide down to level one. And so Cherry's case, I think, is really common of someone who struggled a lot, put together their life, and yet there is a part of them that wants to get rid of self-sabotage,

give up the life that they've built, which is so positive, right? And we can kind of hear it in her voicemail because she kind of says, like, hey, like, there are times where even though like this is what I want, there are parts of me that don't want this. There are parts of me that want to retreat. There are parts of me that like kind of want to give up, get myself shut in and things like that. Okay. So the first thing that we've got to understand is that anything that we do is actually a solution,

not a problem. Any human being anywhere on the planet that is engaging in a behavior is not creating. not creating problems. That's not the way that the brain works. Right. So the brain, like, even if we look at some of these drastic things like self-injurious behavior, why does a human brain want to engage in self-injurious behavior? It runs contrary to our concept of what the brain is for, right? The brain doesn't do things that mess up your life. The brain is designed to fix things in your life. And what we discover, if we look at studies of self-injurious behavior, is that basically self-injurious behavior is a way to regulate our emotions, to stop the tempest inside our brain.

We can do it by creating a very, very localized experience of pain somewhere on our body. And what you'll notice about people who engage in self-injurious behavior is that it won't be harmful to the organism. So they'll even do things like cut. And the way that they cut is very interesting because they cut at the surface of the skin. where the nerve endings are maximum, but the damage caused to the tissue is minimum. So what they're literally trying to do is increase their experience of physical pain

to get out of their head. So we look at self-injurious behavior and we think, oh my God, this is a problem. For that person in that moment, it is a solution. Now, the problem in life is that many of the solutions that we engage in create problems, worse than problems, maybe even make problems, yeah, make problems way worse. So the first thing that we've got to understand, if you're someone who is in the process of putting

together your life, you'll discover that there is a weird pull back into degeneracy. There's a weird sense of like, oh my God, I'm doing everything that I wanted to do, but there's a part of you that longs to go back to square one, right? We always complain like, oh my God, I'm back to square one. How did I get here? You got there because there's a part of you that wanted to be there. Sometimes. Okay.

So now the question becomes why. And in order to understand why we want to go back to square one, we have to understand what it's like to be a hickokomori. Why do people stay shut in? What do they gain from it, right? What is the life of a hikikikamori? So generally speaking, the reason that we, whether we're a nini, a hikikikikamori, a nigh, a neat, you know, like there are all kinds of terms that are sort of culture-bound, but there's a common sort of root to this,

which is that these are strategies to protect ourselves from the outside world. Right. So if you think about a hickokomori, like the outside world is not a fun place. It's a place where I have to work, and that's not fun. It's a place where I have to deal with other people, and that's not fun. It's a place where my emotional armor is insufficient to protect me from the emotional damage that the world inflicts. Every day I go to work, I work really hard, people treat me like crap, I come home, it's not like I work towards anything, right? I'm barely maintaining my subsistence, like I'm not progressing in any way. I feel ashamed of myself.

People don't treat me with respect. It's not like my friends are super proud of me. even my parents, you know, when I get back from a long day of work, my parents are going to be like, oh my God, why don't you do something with your life? Why are you working a dead end job? Right. So this is our experience of life. So the reason that we become hickokomori's is because when we look at the experience of life, it is incredibly painful. And so over time, we discover little lessons. We discover that, okay, if I don't go to work, if I just quit my job, I don't get yelled at my boss. I don't have to do boring stuff. And it's like my parents, like whether I go to work or I don't

go to work, if I don't go to work, my parents are like, oh my God, when are you going to get a job? And then if I go to work, it's like, oh my God, you have such a dead end job. You're not going anywhere. You should do something more, go be a doctor. So if you sort of think about this person's experience of life, whether they go to work or they don't go to work, their emotional experience is not any better. And in fact, going to work makes it worse. Because if I'm going to get yelled that by my parents in either case, why would I subject myself to eight hours of boring labor in this additional manager and social anxiety from customers or whatever? Right. Like, I once worked with someone who decided to quit their job because they were tired of stopping

people from stealing. And they're like, this is like, I'm trying to stop this person from stealing. And then like, then like, they get mad at me. And then like, I don't know. I get nervous and I don't know what to do. And it feels stupid to call the cops. And then if they don't do that, then their manager yells at them. And it's like, they're like, I'm not getting paid enough for this. So they just kind of piece out. So what happens in the brain is that there are all kinds of negative experiences. And then the brain learns to problem solve.

So how do I deal with shame? How do I deal with my parents yelling at me? How do I deal with the social anxiety of leaving the home? And the brain figures out in the same way that if I feel hungry and I eat something, I feel better. If I'm thirsty and I drink something, I feel better. If I feel all of these negative experiences and I stop leaving the house, I stop going to work, I don't engage in education. Why?

Because when I try to do school, I suck at it. Maybe I feel stupid. Maybe I look at other people who are doing better than me. Maybe I get made fun of. Maybe the teacher doesn't like me. So the brain is sitting there looking at our life and trying to think, oh, my God, this is painful, painful, painful, painful. What do I do?

and so it retreats. Now, once you start to put together your life, here's the big problem. That learning hasn't gone away, right? So there's still, for many years, your neurons have repeated this behavior. They've learned this lesson over and over and over again. You have become an expert at avoidance. Right? And when you become an expert,

at something, the brain tries to utilize that as much as possible. It's like if I'm a fighter who's a grandmaster with a pole arm, my brain is going to be like, okay, I'm not going to try to cast a cantrip because I'm way better at this skill. And this is the challenge of trying to recover from a life where things were like where you were a hickokicomori or something like that, is that as you start to move, as you start to put together your life, your exposures from the. outside world increase. Now you have a boyfriend, which is like great in many ways. But that also means you have to meet their parents. Now you're working to jobs. And you may have

built up some degree of tolerance of going to work, but now there are larger and new emotional frontiers. Now that you've been working two jobs, you're up for promotion for the first time. What does that evoke? Right. So what starts to happen as we start to build our life out is the emotional challenges don't go away, right? So the first emotional challenge was like, okay, I need to go to work. So you start doing that. And then you get used to that one. But then what happens is there are all of these additional emotional challenges. As you progress in life, in some ways, things don't get easier. You just get better at dealing with them. Actually, what happens with most people is things get harder in life. Does life get better? Yes. But life also

continues to get harder. Now you have a boyfriend, now you potentially have in-laws, now you have to think about someone else. Now you have two jobs. Neither boss cares about the other one, right? They just want to make sure that you are doing their thing first. So when I was finishing residency, I sort of, like, I was interested in complementary and alternative medicine. And so that's not like a full-time job somewhere. So I went to a couple of different Harvard teaching hospitals and tried to set up like basically two or three part-time jobs. I was going to do some part-time complementary and alternative medicine inpatient

consults at a place called McClein Hospital. I was going to have an outpatient clinic, so some inpatient work and some outpatient work at Massachusetts General Hospital and there was a third place called the Benson Henry Institute where I was going to do program development and research.

So I went to one of my mentors and I said, look, I've put together this plan, it's awesome. It's basically I'm going to be doing complementary alternative medicine all the time. And none these institutions can support a full-time person. So I'm going to three places, and I'm going to do like basically 50% of a job in three places. And my boss told me something really great that stuck with me. He's like, this sounds great, but you're going to run into a lot of trouble. And then I said, why am I going to run into trouble? And he said, because none of your bosses is going to give a

fuck about your other bosses. Right? All they care about is your productivity there. And it's like, you're here to do this job. We want you to do a great job at this job. And this is Harvard. So even having a part-time job there means you're having a full-time job because expectations are super high. So it's like you've got to be really careful about this because if you have a crunch deadline for a research paper, the people on the inpatient unit don't care about that.

They have patients who are hospitalized. They want you to come see them. And when things are falling apart on the inpatient side and you've got an outpatient schedule and you're not and you try to, you take a break for a week from a conference, the outpatient schedule doesn't the outpatient people don't care about that all they know is that for one week you're not earning revenue you're not generating money for the clinic that's what they're going to see they don't care that you're doing something productive over there they're paying you to generate a certain amount of FTE here so as you progress in life you face new challenges

and as you face new and unfamiliar and scary challenges you have this programming in your brain that wants to return to your protective behaviors. Because if you disappear, if you stay at home, if you engage in video games or anime or whatever, if you forget about the world for 12 hours, 16 hours at a time, then that works, right? That is what your brain has learned makes the bad emotions go away. So even as we start to progress in life,

the echoes of our past behavior will continue. So how do we deal with this? This is super cool. We don't have to do much, honestly. So the key thing here is that whatever we do engage in, neurologically, will strengthen overtime. Right? So if I, like, need my blankie to go to sleep,

it'll be hard to sleep without my blankie. As I become more dependent on my blankie, I need my blankie. But the cool thing is that if I stop using my blankie. The first night, it'll be really hard for me to sleep. The second night, it'll be really hard for me to sleep. The third night, it'll be hard for me to sleep. But then it gets easier over time. This extinguishes. So any behavior that worked for us will slowly extinguish over time. The desire for those behaviors will slowly go down over time. I see this all the time in patients

that I work with with addictions. We're at the beginning when you're like taking a break from alcohol, you're thinking about drinking all the time, all the time, all the time. And then overtime, five years later, six years later, eight years later, most of my patients will say, I don't even think about it. It doesn't even cross my mind. So there is a natural extinguishing process that goes on in the brain. So the main thing that you need to do, if you're putting together your life, but there are echoes of your past bad behavior that keep on popping up in your head, what you need

more than anything else is patience. recognize that every time you don't give in, it gets weaker. And every time you do give in, it gets stronger. And this is why it's so hard to break in the first place, because you gave into it. And it grows, right? So you feed it. You give it what it wants. And whatever you give into in your mind will grow, right?

You're reinforcing that behavior. So whatever you feed will grow. and if it wants something and you give it what it wants, it'll grow. And the cool thing is this is true of good things too. So the more that you practice patience, the more that you practice compassion, these parts of your brain will actually strengthen. And it'll be easier to be patient. It'll be easier to be compassionate.

The last kind of perspective to take here, which I think is basically consistent with the neurological one, is a karmic perspective. So every action has an equal and opposite reaction. All actions have consequences. And when I give in to my avoidant feelings, those avoidant feelings will grow. I am sowing a negative karma. It's not really negative.

We make that value judgment. But if I give into avoidance, I will become more avoidant. If I give into avoidance and don't deal with my problems, don't substantially try to improve my life, then what kind of life will I inherit, it won't be a good life, right? If I don't put effort into improving it, it won't get better. And similarly, when it comes to karma, every time you give into something bad, you are signing yourself up for a future struggle against that thing. That is the karmic perspective, also completely consistent with neuroscience. Right? Every time I eat fast food, I am developing a craving. for future fast food.

So if you guys want a really powerful technique to deal with this once and for all, the goal is not solving this problem in this moment. It is not resisting now or giving in now, giving into avoidance, or not giving into avoidance. It is recognizing that every moment in your life, you are signing yourself up for a future problem or a future easy life. every decision that you make today is going to inform the life that you inherit tomorrow. So literally the other day, I ate something unhealthy. And it ruined my meditation for the next 24 hours. The moment that I choose to give into that desire for a veggie pizza from Taco Bell,

which is my one indulgence that I engage in, maybe a couple times a year, it like ruins the next 24 hours. It's like, Gigi, Gigi. But I'm Indian and I love it. it and I grew up on that shit. And yet it has consequences. Right. So what I want y'all to really think about is when you're dealing with a problem,

how am I being shaped for tomorrow? What is this doing for tomorrow? If I give into this thing now, what kinds of problems will it create for me? And on the flip side, if you're someone who has put together your life, recognize that all of these habits are still there, they're decaying, very, slowly, which is totally fine. Right? So they'll continue to decay slowly, and as long as you don't give in to them, they'll

basically die down and disappear entirely. Okay? Taco Bell is like, it's so good and it's so bad. I was, I don't know if you all remember this, but Taco Bell canceled the Mexican pizza as a product, and the Indians in the United States went into revolt. It's funny, because I hadn't had a Mexican pizza for years. and then after they canceled it and then like eight or nine months later

they like they brought it back and they were sold out everywhere and so I had one celebratory and then and then you know now I've had them like maybe I don't know they brought it back maybe two or three years ago

and now I've had maybe like eight or nine of them and like sometimes they disappoint but not usually yeah it's terrible for everything not just the digestive system my digestive system can handle it man I'm a degenerate gamer my gut bacteria were

were built off of land parties, Mountain Dew, and Taco Bell. Okay. Yeah, I read the chat intermittently. Aditya. I see you, Aditya. I see you Adir. You should be studying,

nah, Aditya? Come on, man. Okay. Next one. Hi, Dr. Kay. So I'm a woman of color living in a predominantly white country. And I've kind of internalized the idea

that I'm less desirable because I don't fit. the Eurocentric beauty standards. And every single time I interact with a white person, whether that's romantically or not, but especially in dating contexts, I feel like all they see is someone who is another and not someone they genuinely desire to connect with.

How do I start to unpack this internalized racism and stop it from eroding my self-worth and ability to form healthy relationships and ultimately not live in fear and feel comfortable in my own body. Okay, this is a great question. So, this is a case of someone who is a person of color living in a predominantly Euro, it sounds like they're living in like a Eurocentric kind of place, right?

So maybe they live in Europe. And they feel like they don't fit into the beauty standards that are common in that region. and so if you're someone who doesn't fit into traditional beauty standards and you go out into the dating world and you may date particular people, all you can sort of see is like the, how can I say this, the non-attractive version of yourself, right? So when you move out into the world, if you don't meet, traditional beauty standards, you kind of see yourself as unattractive. And maybe you have plenty of evidence to believe that you are unattractive, right?

So we know that there's something called pretty privilege, and we know that if you are physically attractive, all kinds of things become easier for you. So there's probably some real world evidence of that, right? It's not all in your head. At the same time, even though it's not all in your head, the whole problem is that once you experience these things, something starts to grow independently within your head. Okay?

So let's take a look at this. So let's understand how the mind works with internalizing racism, which I wouldn't even focus on the racism part. I don't think that's, I know it's kind of weird, but. So I don't think this, it matters what, it doesn't have to be racist, right? The whole point is that when you are treated a certain way, you will internalize that.

So if you grow up in an abusive household and you're told you're stupid, you will internalize that. If you grow up with a sibling who's the golden child and you're the black sheep, you will sort of carry that with you. If you grow up in a situation where you are viewed and treated based on the color,

and treated based on the color of your skin, that is what you will internalize, right? You can grow up anywhere. whatever, the way that people treat you is what you will internalize. So here's you. And then you will interact with various people. And then they will react to you in certain ways. So they'll react to you, let's say negatively, let's say neutral.

Okay. And then those reactions then end up entering your mind, right? So you learn. And this is like, this is normal. This is healthy. This is adaptive. So if I learn, for example, that like, you know, this is why peer pressure is a thing. If I learn that human beings value a certain kind of like physical appearance or like a certain kind of shoes.

And if I get those shoes, then I will be treated differently. So all of our life, this is what I want you all to understand. We are interacting with the outside world. And we're receiving information. We send something out there. they send something back to us. And this is how we learn. Now, as we internalize things, there becomes a huge problem. Because what we internalize is not correct. And what do I mean by that? What I mean is that we have a cognitive bias, especially towards negative things. So the moment that I have

a seed of inferiority, once I start to feel like I am not pretty. Once I start to feel like people are judging me based on my race. Here's the problem. We have a negative bias. So if there are three people and I interact with all three of them, and two of them treat me positively, and one of them treats me next. negatively, it's not a one-to-one.

So these don't cancel out. We don't think to ourselves, oh my God, like two-thirds of people like me. Two-thirds of people are not racist. Two-thirds of people think I'm fine. And so that's okay. That's not what we think. What happens is this outweighs these two. So then what happens is I start to feel more inferior.

And the more inferior I feel, the greater my cognitive body. bias gross. So then this creates a cycle that results in things that are very similar to this voicemail, where people then start to perceive themselves. So let me show you all, let me pull up a paper real quick. It'll illustrate this. So here's the paper. So let's understand what happens. Okay. So this is affective eye contact and integrative review. So we listen to this voicemail, this is about my perception of how other people perceive me. And it becomes internalized racism. So how do we deal with that?

So the first thing that we have to understand is this process of internalization and what's literally happening in our mind. Okay. So when someone looks at us, we have a perception of another person's attention. And this is what's really interesting. When someone looks at me, I'm. I do not see what they see. I see what I think they see is the way I view myself.

Right? So I know this is kind of confusing, but like this triggers something called self-referential processing. So this is kind of confusing. So let's say I'm over here and someone looks at me. what do I imagine they see? Because I don't know what they actually see. What I actually think they see is the way that I see myself.

So these two things, this thing over here and what I see when I look in a mirror, let's say here's a mirror, both of these things are the same. So when I feel like I am ugly and someone else looks at me, I don't consider whether this person thinks I'm ugly. I don't see myself through their eyes. This is what I'm trying to get to. When someone looks at you, you don't see yourself through their eyes. You see yourself through your own eyes.

This is what happens. Like literally, we trigger, when someone else is looking at us, we trigger, what that triggers in our brain is the way that we think about ourselves. So it is self-referential processing. This is why I can go through a whole party with spinach in my teeth and be totally fine. And then the moment that I realize I see there's spinach in my teeth, now I feel like an idiot. Even if no one else can see it. I see it in the bathroom that is well lit and we're all outside and there's like some dim lighting and some cool like, you know, party lighting and some disco light or whatever.

No one can see the spinach in my teeth. but that's not the way that I see it. So if you're struggling because you feel like you are being judged, there are absolutely racist people out there, 100%. And countries can be racist, or majority of people in countries can be racist. There are absolutely beauty standards that people live up to,

or sorry, that people expect, right? There's like an accepted beauty standard, which is a particular way. And there are also these two mechanisms. So if your question is, how do I fix this? There are two major things that you need to do. One is be careful about the cognitive bias.

And what do I mean by that? When you go through the world and you interact with three people, at the end of these interactions, you will feel like no one finds you attractive. But if you go back and critically examine these interactions, you'll find that much more of them are positive than you originally realized. And this is like literally how cognitive bias works. This is what we do in psychotherapy.

So another example of this is let's use the case of narcissism and cognitive bias. So I hang out with this person. I hang out with this person. And then I end up thinking, oh, my God, both of these people are really mean and they're terrible human beings. and they did really bad things. And if we go back and we examine things with a narcissist, what we'll discover is that these two people were not necessarily bad, I'm the bad one.

Right? So this is the case of narcissism where there's a cognitive bias as well. But the cognitive bias in narcissism is I'm going to blame everyone else and I'm not at fault at all. And the cognitive bias, when there's low self-worth, is that we are going to filter out information that supports our self-worth. So this is what's kind of weird, but see, most human beings do not use evidence to form their view. They use their view to shape the evidence.

Evidence doesn't shape my view. My view shapes the evidence. This is why there are so many people who are convinced. Vince, they're right, even when they're wrong. And when you tell them something that is contrary to their belief, then they will discard it. So I would bet money that if you're a human being who is dealing with racism, even listening to my explanation, you will say, Dr. K, you don't understand. The beauty standards are this way. I know what my life is like.

You're wrong. This doesn't work. It's not in my head. This is a real thing that I deal with. And notice what's happening. You immediately discard what I have to say. And if you immediately discard evidence that moves in the opposite direction, where will you end up? I'm not saying that racism isn't real.

Racism is real. People are racist. There's systemic racism. And not everyone is a racist, unless you're in like a highly racist country or something like that. So that's possible. but generally speaking, just because racism is real, that enhances this effect. It doesn't deplete it. So you internalize that and then you start to see yourself through their eyes.

So the first thing that you have to do is be critical. And one of the biggest challenges that I faced as a therapist, as a psychiatrist, is when I have a patient who lives in a world where there is real racism, but they blame most of the way that people respond to them as racism. So just because the world is racist doesn't mean that you can't be an asshole. Both of those things can be true at the same time. And just because racism exists in workplaces doesn't mean that anyone who gets promoted above you is getting promoted because of racism.

And this goes both ways, by the way. It's not like black people, white people, brown people. it's like a lot of people will say like, oh my God, this person just got hired because they're a DEI hire. Like I've had white people come into my office and tell me this. And then as we critically examined, they discovered, oh, no, they're not just getting hired as a DEI hire. They're getting hired because they're doing better than me. It's like wild. The flip can also be true.

Just because a white man gets promoted and you don't, that doesn't automatically mean that the answer is racism. How do we know if it's racism or it's on you? We have to do this exercise, right? We have to be critical. And critical does not mean the first thing that pops into your head. Critical means let me try to find as much evidence as I can. Let me take a fine-toothed comb, go through my life and try to find as much contrary evidence as I can. To look for it.

To steal man the argument. And when I'm working with patients with depression, we'll explore a little bit about, okay, everyone thinks you're a terrible human being. Help me understand how you know that. Well, they said this and they said this and they said this. And I was like, okay, like, is there any evidence? Is there anyone that doesn't think you're a terrible human being? Who are they?

Well, this person got me a birthday gift. And this person calls me and asks me how I'm doing. And this person is always down to hang out. The problem is that that information is automatically filtered out of your brain. Automatically, the moment that you ever, low self-worth and you trigger self-referential processing, all of these things start to happen. So it's a lot of work. Now, the second problem that we run into when we do this, is not the second thing we need to do.

Second problem that we run into is cognitive dissonance. So if I grow up thinking I'm ugly, and y'all may have been in this situation before. Right? Where you grow up thinking you're ugly. I certainly was. Like I got bullied a lot, never had a girlfriend, never went on dates when I was like in high school, middle school, et cetera. Right? So I grew up thinking I was ugly. And then what happens is like if I encounter people who don't treat me like I'm ugly, it gets really confusing.

So one thing to understand is the brain values certainty more than good. the brain would prefer a known bad quantity to an unknown good quantity. So as you engage in this, there's going to be a lot of pushback from your brain. And sometimes it takes years, right? So another good example of this like cognitive dissonance thing is people with borderline personality disorder who have a fear of abandonment. One year into a relationship, they're like the person, is like, hey, I want to marry you.

And they're like, oh my God, you're going to abandon me. So at the two-year mark, it takes two years of positive information with zero abandonments to improve borderline personality disorder in 50% of people. 50% of people, after two years of a committed relationship, they're still, they still have the fear of abandonment. They still think their partner is going to abandon them. At the drop of a hat, they're just waiting for the shoe to fall. And it takes something like 16 years for this number to get to 95%, 98%, something like that.

It takes 16 years to get rid of that fear of abandonment. And that's like this person hasn't abandoned you for 16 years. Actually, that's not technically correct. This is 16 years later, so it's not clear that you've been in one relationship for those 16 years. it's not it's a slightly not slightly a significantly inappropriate interpretation of the evidence but 16 years later this is apples and oranges is what i mean to say 16 years after you get diagnosed with borderline personality disorder 95% of people are better that's the technical term but that's how long it takes right so you have to get contrary evidence for years and it happens naturally

So if you focus on it, if you engage in this practice and you are aware of the cognitive dissonance that you're going to face, then it happens way faster. If you get into therapy for borderline personality disorder, you can get better way faster. If you are intentional and careful about the way that you interpret other people's reactions to you, you will get better way faster. The other thing is remember, this perception is heavily influenced by self-referenced by self-referential. processing. So the problem here, we can call it internalized racism, but I think it's like more, it runs even deeper than that. Internalized racism is just one form of it. And the real issue is low self-worth. So I would bet money that if I had the opportunity to talk to this person, and I ask them, tell me about you. The number one thing that they have trouble seeing is their

own beauty. The number one thing that they, like, their self-worth is in the pits. And that's not their fault. There's a decent chance of the reason their self-worth is in the pits is because they don't live up to the standard Eurocentric beauty standard. But here's the other crazy thing. I know it's wild. There are a lot of people out there who live up to the beauty standards and even are the people who are at the front of the pack determine the beauty standards, are on the covers of magazines, are on TV shows, are popular streamers who also don't believe they're beautiful. In fact, there is even some data that the more you are, you... This episode is brought to you by Redfin.

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like it's wild, right? So you can be someone who doesn't fit the beauty standard, someone who does fit the beauty standard. In both cases, you can have low self-worth. And you may ask me, well, hold on a second, Dr. Kay, how is that possible? And now y'all tell me, how is this possible? The only way it is possible is if the problem is in your head. The problem is an issue of cognitive bias. Right? If we say that factually these two people are very different in terms of the beauty standard. The only explanation is that your individual contribution is major. And now you may ask yourself, hold on, Dr. Kay, but aren't there beautiful people who don't have low self-worth?

And the answer is absolutely yes. So now we get to something super fun. What is the difference between a beautiful person who believes they're beautiful and a beautiful person who believes they're ugly. What's the difference? Their mental calculations, the way they perceive the world, the way they perceive information, right? So it comes down to what is in you. That's the difference. Are there people who don't meet a Eurocentric beauty standard and are confident in who they are and are able to engage in healthy romantic relationships? Yes. Are there people who don't live up to the Eurocentric beauty standard and struggle with self-worth and can't engage

and healthy relationships? Also, yes. And if both of these people live in the same society, the objective amount of racism that they experience is in roughly the same ballpark. So then what accounts for the difference? The difference is what is in your head. And that is the only thing that you can control.

So focus on the roots of your low self-worth. When did you first start to believe that you were not beautiful? And when I work with people like this, I'm shocked. Because oftentimes the root isn't in the way that they were treated in a racist fashion. Oftentimes the root is in their own household. The way their parents view them. Oh, my God, you're dark-skinned.

Oh, she's so dark-skinned. It's going to be hard. Oh, don't wear this color. Your skin is too dark. It starts there. So you'd be stunned where the seeds of these things grow. Is the fertilizer, the water, the sunlight, is the society you live in? Fair enough.

But you'd be amazed. And this is also why people get stuck in this pattern is because they're thinking that they're confusing the root with the fertilizer. And if you want to fix your problem, fix it at the root. Now, there are absolutely cases, I mean, like I grew up with a lot of racism. Got bullied every day. Ha, ha, ha. You're a Hindu. You worship cows?

look, I'm eating your God. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Your God is delicious. His hamburger is delicious. That's why I grew up with that crap too. So being in Texas with barbecue and brisket, that's just going to happen. And ignorant people. So the key thing here is like, I know it's hard, but if you want to get out of this, you have to understand this really important principle.

Focus on the root of yourself worth and be critical about the way that you move in the world. And don't just accept the default interpretation that. your mind makes. It's okay. I mean, I'm fine with that experience. Traumatizing like yes and no. Like there's another, you know, important thing here that I'm okay with the difficult upbringing I had.

Like in many ways my upbringing was great and many ways it sucked and that's okay. It made me a person that I am I don't regret it or wish it was different in any way. So I appreciate the good vibes, but it's all. all right. Hi, Dr. Kay. My question is related to your live stream with Mr. Who's the Boss. I'm overthinker myself and the video resonates strongly with me. My issue is that whilst I am similar to Mr. Who's the boss and I overthink a lot, I don't have the same kind of drive to achieve like he does. It seems like he overthinks in order to solve his problems, but I feel like I overthink and then eventually decide that it's all too much effort. I often find myself coming to a place where I believe

there are no right answers. Maybe I'm being too detached or thinking too much about the big picture rather than personally. I'm not really sure. It's making me feel stuck and leads me to inaction in both creative and work endeavors. Thanks so much. I'm a huge fan and I meditate every day. Now, thank you to you. Cool. Okay. So really, really fascinating. okay. This is a case of someone who overthinks, but their overthinking leads to a paralysis of action. And if you all listen to our Mr. Who's the Boss interview, what y'all also heard is that Mr. Who's the Boss overthinks a lot, thinks a ton. But somehow he's able to take that overthinking and turn it into productivity. And many of us will overthink, overthink, overthink, and it will paralyze us.

It will lead to things like procrastination. It'll lead to things like there's no right answer. Right. So we'll overthink. And then we kind of get to this conclusion. Right? So like we overthink. So these things kind of come together.

And if you stop and think about it, it's kind of weird. Because if there's no right answer, it doesn't have. matter what you do. Right? You can just do whatever. There's no right. There's no wrong. So just do whatever. It's like when I go to a restaurant and I look at the menu and it's like, eh, nothing, there's nothing, there's no like great thing that appeals to me. In theory, I should be able to act very easily if there is no right answer. So here's the key thing to understand. over thinking is a tool. It is not a direction.

So I want you all to understand that your mind and your capacity for thought does not give you direction. It's a car. It's not a map or a compass. This is very important to understand. So if we look at human behavior, If we look at the way that human beings work, thought is not a goal.

It is not a place that you start. It is a mechanism to help you achieve a goal. Right? So if I'm here and I want to go here and I'm trying to problem solve, then the thought will help me get there. But the thought doesn't give me the direction. This is already determined by something else. else. So thought is a mechanism. It's a tool. And the difference between Mr. Who's the boss and many other people is that his tool is harnessed. So here's the other thing about thought and overthinking.

So thinking is a lot like cultivating a garden. Where if you have, if I have like a plant, right, and I have a plant over here or whatever, I have all these plants. if I don't prune the plants in the right way, they will just start duplicating all over the place. These will be weeds. Right? So one thought leads to another thought, leads to another thought, leads to another thought,

leads to another thought. Like, that's just what's going to happen. They're going to just keep spiraling into more and more thoughts. And then despite all of the thoughts that you have, there's never any, like, conclusion, right? That's how you end up with there's no right answer. Because you can think about things in this. direction or you can think about things in this direction. And both of them can work. Should I break up

with this person or should I not break up with this person? On the one hand, or which person should I date? Should I date this person? Should I date this person? I like this person for these things. I like this person for these things. You make pros and cons lists and frequently pros and cons lists don't change behavior. So the difference is that if we're not careful, overthinking will induce procrastination. Because I see things, I can do it this way, I can do it this way. Both options are doable. There's no right answer.

And we think that if we find a right answer logically, then that will create motivation. There is no stupider thought in the history of humanity. To think that if you find the right answer, you will act. For evidence, Your Honor, I submit exactly. Exhibit 1, which is the behavior of the human race. Everyone knows you shouldn't smoke. Everyone knows you should exercise. Everyone knows you should eat a ton of fruits and vegetables.

Everyone knows you should go to bed on time. Everyone knows logically that you should work hard. You should balance things. You should be resilient. You should meditate every day. Everybody knows all of this. We all know what the right answer is. And yet no one does it.

to believe that logic will lead you to action is stupid. If that were true, the world would be a different place. It is actually the other way around. Action induces logic. I decided I'm not going to vaccinate my kids. Once I make that decision, then I will have all kinds of logic for it. The other big problem with logic is that human logic is not logical. What is the apparatus that determines our logic?

It's a sack of meat inside our skull that is tightly connected to our default mode network, our sense of our identity, our amygdala, our limbic system, all of these things. If you have someone who's very, very angry and you tell them that they are not logical, they will never believe you. If you have someone who is hopelessly depressed, and you tell them, you have many reasons to live, they won't believe you. Literally, if we look at the brain, the logical circuits of our brain are influenced or even controlled by our emotional circuitry. As our emotional circuitry becomes more active, our logic shuts down. So whether you are logical or not logical depends on the strength of the balance between your logical circuitry and your emotional circuitry. There is a war between your logic and your emotions. And depending on which way this goes, right, is the alligator eating this way or is the alligator eating that way?

That will determine what's really going on with you. So what happens with people who are overthinkers is they have a very powerful mind that has no direction. So it's like if I take a husky And it has nowhere to run Nothing to dig up Nothing to eat and I leave it trapped in the house What is going to happen in my house? It's going to tear the house apart

It's going to tear up my pillows It's going to poop all over everything It's going to be a mess So what I tend to see a lot Is there a lot of people out there Who have very powerful minds And since you have a problem powerful mind, you leverage it a lot, you start to lean into it a lot, you specialize in it,

you feed your mind all kinds of things, right? So you're like feeding your mind like video games and like theory crafting and ask philosophy and like metaphysics and like quantum mechanics without a PhD. I learned my, y'all bitches. I learned my quantum mechanics on Reddit. I don't need no PhD. I got my degree from the University of the YouTube. That's where I got my the School of Hard Knocks on YouTube. And so once our mind has nowhere to go, it starts to become like a garden overrun with weeds. There's no cultivation of thought in the right direction. The mind just runs in a thousand different directions.

And when you have weeds that propagate all over your garden, it's not a garden anymore. It becomes like a jungle. And this is what our life becomes. It's procrastinating. We're procrastinating. We're not doing anything. we just have all these thoughts, and they're just like going all these different places

and like, yeah, like the weed can infect over here and I can think like, oh, this is a good thing to do, this is a good thing to do, I could do this, I could do this, just a completely unregulated mind. So there are two things we can do. If you are an overthinker, the first most important thing that you can do, that make things very easy, is give your mind a direction.

You have to give it a direction. It can't give you a direction. If I take my dog for a walk, it's going to take me for a walk, but we're not going to go for a walk, walk, we're just going to randomly go wherever the dog feels like. Right? So if you want to cultivate a garden, you have to do the cultivation.

The vision and the direction have to come from you, not your mind. Now, then you may ask the question, what are you and what's your mind? So we'll get, I don't know if we're going to get to that today. But that's like a lot of these fundamentals that we teach, right? So what is the self? What is the nature of self? We have a lot of awesome deep dives into ego and stuff. Check it out on the main YouTube channel.

There's also a lot of like advanced stuff on the membership. side that's a little bit more comprehensive and complete. So we have some cool lectures that we can show you all in a second or I'll show you all the links and stuff. But the first thing is the direction has to come from you. So where does direction come from? Direction comes from emotion. Direction comes from purpose.

Direction comes from within. Right? So this is where it gets a little bit tricky, but wanting something, having a desire is a short-term direction. because the moment that you fulfill the desire, the direction will disappear. Right? So to really stop and think about a vision of life. So when we were designing our coaching program, what I really tried to focus on is what is the North Star that'll create the right kind of behavioral change?

And it turns out that purpose is the most important thing for us. Not the most important. One of the three or four most important things. And so our focus was not on reductions in depression and anxiety. Those get to drop between 20 and 40 percent after about 16 weeks of coaching. Main thing is sense of purpose and direction goes up by 68 percent in our pilot study. Because if you give someone a direction, then all of the tools are moving in the right direction. Right?

If I have like a house full of kids, they're going to tear the place apart. But if I say, hey, we're going to go play football. Let's all go outside. And then if you can organize all the children, then they'll, like, be productive. So in that way, you have to really think about, okay, what am I doing here? What do I want? What's my purpose in life? In the moment that you do that, and if you look at Mr. Who's the boss, he has a very

clearer direction. So the overthinking becomes a tool instead of a hindrance. Now the question becomes, how do I discover what I want in life? So this is where if you want to know what you want in life, you have to know who you are. Okay, so I'll give you all, let's take a look at this. What the hell does that mean, Dr. Kay? So purpose comes from within, oh, I mean, literally. So here's what's going to happen.

Here's a human being. And then we have the world, which is sending them signals by this game. Look this way. Become an alpha. eat at chilis eat at Taco Bell get mad at this political party this political party is bad

we have the world telling us what we want all the time now the problem is that if we look at the brain anytime we satisfy one of these desires right so let's say

the world tells me to eat more Taco Bell and I eat more Taco Bell but then like once I'm done then I'm just not doing anything. And then I'm like, okay, maybe I'll eat at Chili's. And then I'm not doing anything. Once I become an alpha, then I'm not doing anything. So if you sort of think about it, like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense.

It's like so simple. But like, if your direction life is coming from the outside, the moment that you check that box, you will stop moving. Or the moment that something else dominates your attention, you'll move in that direction. I want to be a millionaire. It's like, yeah, that motivates me. I want to be a millionaire until I see an advertisement for a video game. So then you get pulled by your senses in a thousand different directions.

And then we call this procrastination. What is procrastination? Procrastination is an absence of movement. Or procrastination is a movement in one way. I started studying and then I stopped studying. I was going to study, but then I played video games. If we really look at procrastination very technical, it is not an absence of movement.

It is movement in a very diffuse way. We are dispersing our energy. Instead of being a laser beam, we're a light bulb. One can cut through diamond. One can illuminate stuff. Huge difference. One can see and one can do. See, this person is really great at watching other people do something, isn't it?

So your mind should be one-pointed. So there are two ways to do that. One is to practice Dhara, which is to literally practice one-pointedness or focus of the mind. The second thing that you can do is look for an answer from within. Look for the answer that comes in here. What do you want? Now, you have to be careful because this stuff will infect your head. And you'll think, oh, I want games.

I want women. I want men. I want money. I want this. That's all through the senses. So look for a direction that does not come from a sensory organ. If you heard about it, if you saw someone else have it, if you got told about it, it doesn't work. That's outside stuff, literally, like technically.

Doesn't count. Look within. Now, how do you look within? Simplest thing is to sit in silence until you hear something on the inside. best way to do it. So what you'll find if you sit in silence, we had a great membership's lecture on the Anahat Chakra. If you all are interested, this is a good thing to do.

It's the heart chakra. So if you do heart chakra meditation practices, you will discover what you want in life. And once you have the internal drive, then you will have consistent action. Then the mind becomes a tool, right? Then you have a GPS destination, and then the car will start consistently moving in the right direction. Otherwise, we're just driving around in the parking lot.

So you can sit in a place where it is quiet. And what you will notice, close your eyes, what you'll notice is you will want all kinds of things. You will want to move. You will want to stop. This will feel like a waste of time. You will want all kinds of things, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting. But if you engage in those wantss, you can. even try it if you want to. What you'll discover is it won't help you in any way. It'll just

alleviate a temporary thing. I feel like moving. I feel like stopping. I feel like playing a video game. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to stop. I'm going to play a video game. Tomorrow I'm back to square one. It doesn't actually move me forward in any way in life. So you sit in silence until you get something from the inside, an internal drive. And how long does that take? I don't know. Depends on you. Just sit in silence, silence, silence, silence. silence until you discover. Now, many people will require some degree of drastic investment in this. So in my case, I found silence by traveling to India and staying in an ashram for 90 days. Dedicated practice for 90 days. You don't have to do that. But then you should sit in silence for an extended period of time in your daily life.

Find time to be quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. And then your senses, the desires of the senses will leave, and what your Dharma is, what your purpose is, what your calling is, comes from within. You are called from within. Desires and sensory organs don't give you direction. Or they give you temporary direction. So if you're struggling with overthinking,

find who you are, find that internal voice, find that internal purpose by just being silent. If you'll want more technical stuff, check out the Anahat Chakra lecture. Let me just pull these up. because I'm mentioning a couple of things. So there's a lecture called deep dive into the heart chakra and self-compassion.

So we go into stuff there. There's also stuff in Dr. Kay's guide about heart chakra meditations. We've taught some of these things on stream. I think there's some stuff on the YouTube channel. So you all can check that out too. Okay? Let's move on. Hey, Dr. Kay.

I'm honey. First of all, I'd like to thank you. Thanks to what you do. I'm now in a position in life where I achieved many of the things I set out to do two or three years ago. After being stuck for close to five years, I finally recently relocated to a different town. I got a new job that I studied for over years in my off time. I'm very grateful for what I have, but I'm also still moving. I'm now making small steps in being a content creator to hopefully someday be an inspiration for others

and living proof that anyone can do it. But one of my remaining challenges is that I still have these big ambitions in life, where at the same time I understand intellectually that I do not control the outcome of any of my efforts. But how do I reconcile these two things? How do I accept that I still have goals in life and detach from them at the same time? I cannot reconcile these two things emotionally. Thank you for listening. and I hope this will help someone else too.

Cool. Awesome, honey. So first of all, huge shout out to people in the community doing good stuff in their life, right? That's what we're here for. Makes me so happy to hear when people are like, you know, I was floundering for a couple of years. And then I studied things in my own free time. And then like I, you know, got a job now. I've moved.

My life is moving in the right direction. Great, dude. That's why we're here. So thank you all so much for putting in a time and effort makes me feel like I'm doing good work here, which also makes me feel motivated to keep doing the work that I'm going to do. So huge shout out to Honey. Now, Honey says, okay, Honey's moving in the right direction, right? And many of y'all are now. We're not the same set of degenerates that we used to be when we started. Although if you are still in the same

place you started, that's okay. Be patient with yourself. And if you're new to the community and you're a degenerate, welcome. You're 100% welcome here. Okay. Stick with us. for a while, apparently we're onto something. And this is what's actually really cool about this. It's kind of wild, right? But here's the thing. Change takes time. And the cool thing is now we have, like, we've been around long enough for people to change.

Where we're like, we're kind of sprinkling some fertilizer into their life. They're making, they do most of the effort, right? Like, you can't just watch this and then like wake up tomorrow and be transformed. It doesn't work like that. But we've been around long enough to where. people can actually like implement some change in their life. Like, and since it takes time, we're starting to see those changes. A lot of people are getting a lot better by just hanging out in the community for a while,

meditating every day, like whatever. And y'all will notice, by the way, that they're, they're, you all will notice certain threads, right? So like some people, even though it's hard, will start acting. Some people will meditate every day. They start doing these things that feel insignificant, but you don't realize what it takes to actually move yourself forward. A lot of the work that will move you forward is not something that your mind thinks will move you forward. Anyway, so cool.

I'm glad that you all are getting better. Now let's talk about Honey's problem, which is, okay, got some of my basics down, got a job, I moved, I'm moving in the right direction. I have certain aspirations. I want to help other people. I want to be a content creator. I have these ambitious goals. And yet, I know intellectually that I can't control them, right? just because you want to be a successful content creator who helps other people on the internet

doesn't mean that you can be right there's no way to control that so how do you manage or balance the ambition of wanting to achieve a goal with the reality that you may never succeed because if we think about it it's tough right because if i want to achieve something that ambition, that drive for success, motivates me to act. But if I think to myself, hold on a second, this may never work out, then that destroys my motivation. How many people here are motivated to dig for pirate treasure in their backyard? Not very many. How many people have done it? Why don't you do it? Because you think the likelihood of success is low. If I were to tell you, oh yeah, yeah, you know that guy who lost that hard drive? He threw away a

hard drive that had a Bitcoin wallet that has like 30,000 Bitcoin. And to this day, this guy is like apparently wandering through dumpsters looking for a hard drive that has his Bitcoin on it. If I were to tell you, hey, that Bitcoin is buried in your backyard, then maybe you're motivated. Right? And then if I gave you evidence that made you think that maybe it's in your backyard. So like the more that the likelihood of success increases your mind, the more motivated you are, which is neuroscience, by the way. So we're really careful is animals that the likelihood of success determines our motivation towards something. So how do I retain some ambition, but also acknowledge that maybe it won't work?

And this is where we got to, this is cool, right? So now that you all have a couple of the basics, let's go a little bit deeper. Who has the motivation? Who has the ambition? Right. So if you pay attention, honey, says intellectually, I know that I can't achieve everything that I put my mind to or maybe even anything that I put my mind to. So if you all want to understand how to reconcile conflict within yourself, you have to understand that the conflict comes from different places. Where does ambition come from?

I want to help someone else. I want to help a lot of people. I want to be a content creator and help a million people on the internet. Where does this come from? So you can strive to help a million people on the internet. That comes from the ego, usually. You can have an... This is what I sort of...

I don't know how to... It's going to be hard to explain. So first thing to understand is there are multiple dimensions within us. There's our ego. There are unfulfilled desires. and these will transform into ambitions. So first is like, where does an ambition come from? Okay?

Well, let me try to. This isn't going to be tricky. We're going to do it, chat. Okay? I'm going to do our best. So I have an ambition. Where does ambition come from? So sometimes ambition comes from, I am deficient.

If you believe this about yourself and you achieve your ambition, ambition, I am no longer deficient. So I see this a lot with people who are like obsessed with being virgins. They're like, I am a loser, right? So I am a loser. And what they do is they make an association with getting laid. I am a winner. Right? So I don't know if this makes sense, but they tie this with this. But like, this is not. technically correct. Right? There's like, it's in your head.

There's something called object relations in psychiatry. We associate things with other things. How do we relate to the concept of being a virgin or getting laid? What do we attach to that? I know plenty of people who think they're losers and get laid every day. And I know plenty of people who have never gotten laid and don't think they're losers at all. So we go through life, assuming that the associations in our mind are.

true. And you all can think for a second about who those populations are. Many people I've met with absolute chads never gotten late. How can that be? How can we have these? So this is the key thing. This is not about objective truth. This is about what your mind produces. This is the associations that your mind makes. So oftentimes, if I feel like a loser, I have an ambition to get swall. right? But that drive to get swole is like, I don't like the way that I look in the mirror. I feel embarrassed about going to the beach. So I'm going to get swole so that I can no longer be deficient. So the ambition serves as an antidote to something that is missing within you. So this is oftentimes where ambition comes from. We're trying to correct something because if I can be a

millionaire, then that means that I'm good in some way. And now we can see why ambition doesn't jive with detachment. Oh, you may never succeed. Well, why does that matter? Why does it matter whether you succeed in your ambitions or not? It's because if I can maybe never get swole or if I can never get laid, then I can never be a winner. Do you all understand this? The real problem isn't that you can't get laid. It's the meaning of that. If I can never get laid, I will forever be a loser. Do you all see that? Does this sense? I got to check in with y'all. You've got to tell me if this is making sense or not. Otherwise, I've got to explain it again. Right? It's not getting laid that's important. It's that failing your ambition destens you to stay where you are. And as long as you are

debt, like, as long as this structure exists like this, there's no way to reconcile ambition with the possibility that you will fail. You can't do it. If this is a the logical structure. So what do we have to do? Break apart the logical structure. Separate out the moment that I am a loser and I am a winner, the moment that this becomes segregated from Virgin Laid. We're fixed. Fixed. Fixed. So I can still want this. I can have an ambition towards this. I can work towards this, I can expend effort towards this, and I can even accept this may never happen. But I will be a winner anyway. See, when can you afford to throw in life?

Right. When can we afford to throw? We can afford to throw in life. We can afford to fail in life. When we can literally afford to fail. when I'm ahead and I can fountain dive or whatever, right, I can start teabagging or whatever kind of negative toxic behavior in a video game, I can start throwing feeding away kills when I'm ahead, when I've got stuff to give up, when I've got stuff to lose, that's when I can

throw. So the whole point is you don't need to succeed in your ambitions if you've got some of of that buffer of self-worth, then you can afford to fail. And this is the hardest thing in life is that being able to afford to fail is how you succeed. And we've seen this, right, in the entrepreneurship space. Like, I started a company. And I could do that because my parents could give me a CEP Capital, right? the earliest member of my board was like a senior VP of finance or CFO at like Microsoft or something

like that. Right. So if we look at it, you can afford to take chances. You can afford to have your ambitions fall short when you are not dependent on your ambitions. When can you buy meme stocks or invest in crypto? When your bills are paid and you've got a 401k or retirement or whatever, that's when you can afford it. So the key thing is that. is it's fine to have ambitions, it's fine to have goals.

First of all, understand where does this ambition come from? Why did I develop this ambition? And even for a lot of people who have altruistic goals, I want to make the world a better place. Like, I think that's a wonderful goal. But you still have to ask yourself, how would I feel about myself if I made the world a better place? Would I feel like, man, I did good?

good. Now my life is worth something because I've helped other human beings. And if you didn't make the world a better place, would you feel like, oh my God, I've wasted my life? Because if that's true, and that matters to you, then helping other people is also about yourself. The right attitude, right in the sense that this is what I found works for me, is I'm going to show up and do my best. I have no ambitions. Like sometimes I have ambitions. And anytime I discover I have an ambition, I try to get rid of it. Like, this is dumb. So even with today's stream, like, I'm motivated by excitement, by showing up. Like, we're going to have some fun today. And if y'all get helped, do I think it's going to help? Like, if you ask me, like, do I think

this is going to help? I would say yes. But I don't know if y'all can tell. I'm not trying to help anyone right now. That's not like what's in my mind. What I'm excited about is, like, I like how this stuff works. And I want to share this with y'all. I think this is fun. fucking stuff is cool. I love talking about it. I love unpacking this stuff. This is in a weird way. It's a, it's a selfish kind of thing, right? It's kind of, I don't know if this makes sense. Like, I'm doing this because it feels right for me. Which in a weird way is the best way to help the world. Not to fulfill an ambition. Like, it's like, oh my God, like, I'm going to save the universe. Array, Bhagwan, I'm going

to be great. And it's like the more altruistic you become. It's so. easy for ego to sneak in. So just get rid of all. Like, what the fuck, man? We don't want to deal with that crap. I'm a show up. Maybe I'll play Dota. Maybe we'll talk about Expedition 33.

Maybe we'll save someone's life. Like, I am here now in this moment not to accomplish anything. Do I have an intention? Do I have a hope? Do I have an organizing principle? Yes. But no ambition. If I discovered an hour from now that I'm not even live,

and that my internet has gone out, and that I'm just talking to a camera, and y'all aren't even there, I would laugh my ass off. And then I would take the rest of the weekend off, which is what I'm planning on doing anyway. I didn't help a single human being. Maybe there's something I would have a conversation

with the content team. Hey, can we salvage this in some way? Do we have a recording that maybe we can upload you used to? I don't want to waste my time, but it's not going to be like, oh, my God. Oh, I put all this effort, and it didn't work out. Oh, no.

Right? I'm going to hang out with my kids. I'm going to eat something good. I'm going to enjoy myself. And it's like, look, I did what I could. Right? We checked everything. We, like, tested everything.

We fucking test everything every single time. And it always breaks every single time. Like, what can we do? So I don't know if this makes sense. Just, like, shift away from ambition. Look at yourself for a second. Where is this ambition coming from? What do I want to be?

Separate these things out. Learn to be, like, happy in the moment. be present in the moment. Just do the best that you can. So, you know, there's a great, I'll leave with this last thought. There's a great, like, kind of principle in medicine, like in medical ethics, where it's kind of this concept of like a good Samaritan, where like, if you're a doctor and someone is having a medical emergency and you try to help them and you're not like, you don't really know how to help them, but you do your best.

Like, you're basically in the clear. Like, even if things end up, the patient ends up or the person ends up dying or whatever, you're like basically in the clear because the medical establishment is basically like, look, we recognize that not all doctors are trained in all things. And as long as you kind of do your best, like, that's what we care about. It's about what's your intention, not what's your ambition, not what you tried to achieve, where were you coming from? And the last thing I'll tell you, if you struggle with ambitions, the last very simple thing

is in your mind, are you thinking about where you are starting from? An intention comes from here on out. Intention starts with you and moves forward. Ambition starts at the end and comes back to you. This is a goal. It's over there. It's not about where I am. It's about where I want to go.

And so if you want to get rid of ambition, stop thinking about where you want to go and think about where you are. could I have done better at helping y'all today? Undoubtedly, undoubtedly, there are a thousand things I could have done to do a better job today. I could have read a bunch of papers. I mean, I read a lot of papers. But there's a lot of things I could have done. But that's not what I'm focused on.

This is where I am now. This is what I can offer right now. I can muster up something today and muster up something. Is it going to be the best? Let's be honest. And it's like, okay. that's what you get, right? This is the best that I can give you today. And the beautiful thing is like, when you do that, like this is the ultimate mind fuck is that you end up doing really good.

That's what's so confusing. The more that you let go of the ambition, the better you do. And people are saying, I see Chuck Clean is saying refund. And it's like, sure, you know what? I'll give it to y'all. Whatever y'all, the entrance fee for y'all to be here today, I'm going to just Venmo y'all back, okay? I'm not talking about YouTube ads and stuff. Ad revenue, I can't refund back. That, y'all got to talk to the platform.

But in terms of, like, what I'm charging in this moment right now, maybe we'll paywall this in the future. Who knows? So that doesn't apply to future paywalls. I know y'all. I know you guys are going to punish me for this. Right? You want to refund?

Consider yourself refunded. Okay? No, so here's the thing. So Cody is saying, spoiler, you're the best. No, no. This is what y'all, okay, I know it's funny. But seriously, I am not the best. The methodology leads to the best.

That's the whole reason we're here, right? It's like, if y'all get this, this is like a different, it's like everyone's playing life with a certain kind of meta. And there's like a whole different meta that you can play life by. And if you like understand this other meta, it's like kind of O-P. So if you are struggling with ambitions, recognize where these ambitions are coming from, recognize the associations with the ambitions, and focus not so much on the goal, but what you are doing here and now.

That's how you end up as a bum at the age of 50. Look, man, I think that this is going to be like, so this whole endeavor is like the ultimate age-like milk risk. you know, here I am spreading all this BS. And then like five years from now, maybe I'm divorced, maybe I'm addicted to crack or something like that. And then like everyone's going to look back and be like, oh my God,

or maybe I've become a spiritual guru and there's a sex scandal. Right? Like, and it's like, oh my God, we knew all along. This guy was full of it. Like that's what I'm terrified of. But it's like, hey, if we end up becoming a spiritual guru and having a sex scandal, like that's just the natural,

arc of brown people. I'll grow up my beard, grow up my hair, start wearing robes, get a ranch. We'll just complete the karmic cycle. And then everyone can judge. And everyone, you'll be a Netflix documentary made. And it's like, that's how you know you've made it as a spiritual guru when someone makes a documentary shitting about you. But the cool thing is, that's what the rest of the world is going to think about me.

But for those of y'all that are here, you guys know, I don't know if you'll know this, but if you talk to people who were there with like Rajneesh and Osho and actually like were there when it happened, not the summary, not the edited documentary designed to tell a narrative and a story. If y'all are there when it happened, you know. You guys know what I mean, right? Y'all are here now. even if I get into trouble a few years from now, you know, like y'all,

you could still benefit from this. Okay? All right. Yeah. See, this is the cool thing. When you're witnessing it, it's not history. It's alive.

History is what happens after it's dead. Okay. And don't worry, y'all. I'm not ambitious enough to become a spiritual guru, so we'll be okay. Okay, maybe one more. Hey, Dr. Kay, hope you were doing well. I just had a question.

I have been struggling trying to get into a relationship. I've been single for nine years now. Last time I went on a date was six years ago. Do you have any advice for someone that is struggling trying to find a partner? I feel like I've been chronically single for the past nine years and stuck in dating purgatory. I've tried dating apps, speed dating, singles events, discord, also just going out to bars. I feel like I struggle with meet women with the type of hobbies I have. Video games, movies, trading card games, just to name a few.

I also don't have much female friends who could potentially introduce me to a partner. Over the past two years, I've been self-improving, trying coaching, losing weight, building confidence, which did improve my life overall. I also been stuck in the dreaded cycle of deleting and reinstalling dating apps. This leads to burnout and frustration and taking long breaks from trying to date. My full-time job and hobbies do help distract me from the dating burnout, though. I just feel like I'm stuck in my dating life. Love the YouTube content, by the way. Keep up the good work.

Okay. So this unfortunately is like, you know, people are saying like ha ha, ha, scripted. But I mean, this is like, this is the story of our generation right here. It's like you can, you know, because here's the thing. When we say you work on yourself for dating. So like, oh my God. And this person is, right? So it's like, this sounds like they're exercising.

Sounds like they're developing themselves. They're like in coaching, like whatever. They're like putting their life together. And yet, like this doesn't magically happen. So this is something that I feel like we sort of fail at time and time and time again here at HG. Because we're like, we try to talk about dating and relationships and like whatever, right? We try to help you all with this. But I honestly don't know the answers.

So I think this is the one place where the world is just so different now. Like all of the normal systems that allow human beings to mate have fallen apart. we've lost third spaces. Genders feel terrible about each other, right? So a bunch of women feel like all men are dangerous. A lot of women have negative experiences with men. A lot of men feel like women are aloof and you can't, like, we don't know what to do. Like, do you ask a girl out or is that like predatory?

So like you can't just ask someone for their number. You can't approach women anymore. But they certainly aren't approaching you, right? So it's like, if you approach then. you're a predator, and if you don't approach, they're like waiting for you to approach. So it's like, no one knows what to do anymore. It's a huge problem. So I do think that it's so interesting because in the voicemail, I heard a couple of things

that I think are potential things to do, but I'll be the first to say that advice on dating may not translate. A couple of things that I have found is that if you are struggling, you are struggling, you're to date. Your platonic relationships become really, really important. And I think this is a huge mistake that a lot of men make when trying to date women is that they focus exclusively on the romantic angle. So there's a lot of resentment about being friend zone, being in the friend zone, etc. And I think it's like completely fine, you know, because a lot of people will also say like if, if you go out with someone and someone says, hey, I want to be friends. And you can say, look, I'm not

look, I have plenty of friends. I'm not looking for more friends. That's a completely appropriate response. But I don't know if that actually moves you towards your goal. So I think that I don't remember the precise statistics on this, but I think that I think there have to be statistics that first of all, a lot of women that I've worked with will develop romantic feelings for platonic partners of theirs, which I know is to the great frustration of many people who have been friends-zoned and waiting for someone to change their romantic feelings. I know it's like, it's a bad strategy. And at the same time, that's how a lot of it works for women. There are many women who, once they start to feel comfortable with you, once they start to feel safe with you,

then they can start to feel vulnerable. Like, I remember that, you know, I had a crush on a girl. we were friends. She was also friends with another dude. And then after a few months, she started dating him. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? Like, you know, because we all started out as friends. So like, it happens. And sometimes you're just on the short end of the stick.

And that's how it is. So if you're doing kind of a couple of basic things, right? I think the next step is really to engage in female friendships. I think this is the number one thing that most men lack. Engaging in female friendships. does a couple of very important things. The first is that if you don't have a lot of experience with being around women, if the presence of a woman makes it hard for you to talk,

if a presence of a woman makes it hard for you to feel confident, if you transform into another human being when women are around, or triggers all the 4chan in-cell narrative in your head or whatever, the first thing we need is exposure therapy. Right? So spend time with women, who, and then you will discover something really cool. Okay? I don't say this on Fortune.

Women are just human beings. They're just human beings. Genitals are a little bit different. Hormones are a little bit different. Body fat percentage is a little bit different. But for the most part, they're human beings. Basically the same. Most of us are the same.

Got a heart, got two lungs, got one stomach, got one esophagus, got a small intestine, large intestine, descending colon, transverse colon, sigmoid colon, ascending colon, like we got all the same parts. We have a hippocampus, we have a limbic system, we have amygdala, we have a nucleus accumbens, we have frontal lobes, we have occipital lobes, we have somatosensory cortex, we're basically the same. And then something cool happens, because once you start to spend time with humans and you see them as humans, then you don't see them as women. you see them as humans. And then that will change the way that you relate to them.

It will change the way that you connect to them. And there are studies on dating that show that, like, men are much more likely to engage in transactional relationships. So we tend to think about relationships as transactions. And so I think that, like, if you're struggling to date, take a step back from dating and focus on friendship. Because there's the second thing that I found, I don't know if this is anecdotal or not. I don't know if this is sexist. But holy shit. There are so many women that I have in my life that love to set people up.

Like, I don't, like dudes, I've never had a friend who has been a male friend who has been passionate about setting up two people that we know. Never, not a one. So maybe it's my selection bias. Maybe it's the dudes that I hang out with. I don't know. But like women that I know, they're always trying to set people up. And I think most of the time they're terrible ideas.

It's like this is such a terrible idea. These two people, they're not good for each other. They're not going to find each other attractive. Like, it's not going to work. They're completely, like they're a terrible match. But sometimes they still persist. I don't know why. Am I wrong here?

Like, what's y'all's experience, right? So men and women in the audience. What are we talking about? Okay, so no absolutely true 100%. Okay, so like this is the thing, right? This is great. Golgi baby. Also, holy based.

What an awesome name. Golgi baby? Like, that's awesome. Do you like Golgi apparatus? Like sell bio, let's go. Right? So a woman can be a good, as good wingman as a bro. I think actually nowadays women make better wing men than bros.

Right? So here's the key thing. The experience of women in the world today is that men are dangerous. That's the common experience, right? This goes back to the man versus bear in the forest. Like, oh, my God. And it's like, oh, my God, people got so pissed off. It's like, we got pissed off.

We feel offended as dudes. But like, hold on a second. Try to understand why they say this. Instead of getting personally affronted and blaming the women, let's try to understand what, like, what is it? like what happened in your life where you'd rather be with a bear than a man? And then, you know, the converse of this, by the way,

is like, as a dude, would you rather share your emotions with a woman or would you rather share your emotions with a rock? And dudes are like, I'd pick a rock every single, I'd pick a rock. I feel more comfortable. I'm a fucking psychiatrist who's married.

I feel more comfortable sharing my emotions with a rock than I do. Like, that's why I meditate. Like, why don't think I went to India? I went to India to avoid talking to my girlfriend about my emotional problems. Right? So here's the thing.

Thank you, Jula. Female friend is a green flag. Female friend is the ultimate accessory for a single male. And here we are. We're all so thirsty. We've been so polluted by fucking only fans and whatever parasycial relationships and TikTok things and alpha males and whatever the fuck

that we didn't realize the ultimate male accessory is a female friend. And if you've got two, that's a bonus. It's like, wow, these women consider this man to be non-threatening. Like, that's a green flag. So this is where there's like, there's some, you know, we've got to be careful about a little bit of these conclusions. But if you look at the way that a lot of male, female mating in mammals works, oftentimes what will happen is that males will compete.

There's intramail, males don't compete, there's intramail competition, and one male will rise to the top, and that male will then be selected by a female. So the dudes, like, fight internally. But when it comes to, like, humans, things are a little bit different. And oftentimes, I think what's happened is what a lot of men think, is that they think, like, these reflexive wiring of I'm going to become alpha, I'm going to be number one out of the men, and then women will like me.

They're like playing into this biology, which makes sense. It's like biological if we're talking about prides of lions. Like, that works with lions. Here's the crazy thing. The cognitive difference between lions and wolves and humans is like kind of big. like kind of like not even the same there's no nation of dogs there's no nation of lions like if we look at their cognition and our cognition there's like kind of a difference like there's a difference there and so now what's going on is not only is there a cognitive difference between humans and animals

I know it's wild but there's also an evolution a very rapid evolution of dating. So we have this like sub one birth rate in South Korea. That has nothing to do with like core biology. This is where if we look at human beings, the societal impact, cultural impact, personal impact of life on your mating choices is gigantic. If things were biological the way that many people in the red pill space think they would do, we wouldn't see things like that.

You can make arguments against it. I could make an argument against it. So the key thing is if you're struggling to, like, date right now, I would start with platonic friendships. And then you have a cool thing. Okay? So I had a buddy who was looking to date. And he had a couple of female friends.

And so I told him, I was like, hey, bro, you know what you should do? Just ask your female friends. Just ask him to set you up with somebody. Now there's another thing that people are saying is like, so here's the problem with having female friends is that if you have a female friend, the likelihood that a man develops romantic feelings for female friends is very high. So this is another huge issue that we have as men. So I just saw an interesting study that came out that Takatsubo cardiomyopathy is twice as likely

or more in men than women. and this is like dying of a broken heart is something called Takatsubo cardiomyopathy. So literally, and there's a, I think we did a video, I don't know if it's out yet or not, but there's a lot of studies that show that literally like the blood pressure changes, the cortisol changes, the inflammation changes in men are far greater than women after a breakup. 69% of divorces are initiated by women. People may think that means 31% are initiated by men. That's not true.

15% of divorces are initiated by men. and divorces are mutual. So our biology is different. Okay? So here's the key problem, is that with men, when we form an emotional bond with someone, we equate that to romance, romance, basically. So we are not regularly forming emotional bonds

without romantic or sexual connections, unless they are parts of our nuclear family. So then what happens is we don't know that like you can, you don't have to get the combo meal. You can order just the fries and just the drink without having the hamburger. We don't know how to do that. We've been ordering combo meals our whole life. And the second that you give me fries and a drink, I'm expecting that hamburger. Like, I don't know.

It confuses me. And part of the reason for that is because dudes don't form deep emotional bonds with other dudes. And one of the big reasons for that is homophobia. It's like back in ancient Greece, being gay wasn't even gay. It was like apparently normal. It's like even if you're hetero, you do some gay stuff. And now it's like, even if you hug another dude, that's gay. Like, what?

So what started happening is we started limiting emotional vulnerable contact with other men. And we sure as hell wouldn't like cry with girls. kindergarten, that's a mess. Right? And it's like, like, locker rooms have become gay, which I think is terrible, because like the whole point is that like a locker room is a place where dudes can be dudes without judgment. And the whole point is that it's, I mean, I guess if you're into it, maybe it's sexual.

But I think the whole point of it is it's like a man cave. It's like man space where man can man spread. And men can mansplain each other. And I know that a lot of. dudes get upset like, oh my God, we get upset that women complain that we mansplained. What the fuck, guys? Let's be honest. We manisplain each other all the time.

It's not mansplaining. We just do that to each other. Anytime one of your friends says something, you correct them and you tell them why they're wrong. Like, what the fuck? Like, that's just something that we do. It's not directed towards women. We do it to each other all the time. 4chan is not the internet's locker room.

It's some weird, I understand the analogy, but it's some weird perversion of that nice safe zone. Golgi baby, yeah. It's like a safe place for dudes. And then what happened is we started calling the safe places for dudes gay. And then we stopped going there. And then we stopped forming emotional connections. And once we stopped forming emotional connections,

we didn't know how to form emotional connections without sexuality. And then every once in a while is the other thing. We also had closeted homosexuals. And so then what happened is like a bunch of dudes, like we're going into locker rooms and they were getting horny. And then they were like all kinds of problems. And then the reaction formation towards that, Then they avoided the locker locker rooms.

They started projecting onto other people, calling other people gay because they didn't know how to manage those feelings because they couldn't form emotional connections with people. You can't go to your homie when you're 12 years old and be like, hey man, I think I'm gay. Like we didn't used to be able to do that. Right? So then there's all this weird reaction formation going on. And then like, you know, I don't know. I got off track. Going back to this poor guy who wanted some help with dating.

So I'd say two things. One is like focus on forming platonic female friendships. Number one. Will that work? I have no idea. Let's be honest. I don't have data to support that. But I think we have got like a lot of good kind of like theoretical extrapolation stuff.

Having female friends is a green flag. It'll teach you how to be like, feel normal around women. And then if you feel natural and confident, that will increase your attractiveness to women that you're attracted to. Maybe you can ask them to introduce you to their friends or whatever. Like women will hang out with each other. can start socializing. You need to socialize like a little bit more broadly. Second thing is this person is our traditional gamer. Loves hobbies like video games and anime and whatever.

Tabletop RPGs, whatever. And like girls like that stuff too. I'm a dad. I live with three women. We all play D&D together. They all love it. Right? So girls can play D&D and enjoy it.

It's our favorite activity. Both of my daughters love D&D. Now my wife loves D&D. Also, it's weird to DM your wife. Not something I was mentally. prepared for. It was really weird. But it's cool.

She, like, complains that I give her the shaft all the time. I don't mean, I mean, I've got so many. She complains that I go over the thing. Okay. No, I mean, like, literally, she's like, she's one of these players that always whines about treasure.

You know what I mean? She's like, you're like, you're giving our daughters fun magical items, but I'm not getting any fun magical items. And it's like, well, like, she's kind of right because it's like, we've been married for 25 years and there's like a seven year old and I want to make my seven year old

like we put our seven year old like you know we put the daughters first so it's like if there's a good strawberry and a bad strawberry we give the kid the good strawberry and we eat it's not a Freudian slip it's not a Freudian slip that's like literally and so then she thinks that like you know I'm giving her the shaft on treasure and then so then she becomes one of these players that complains about not getting enough treasure all the time and just to appease me my wife, I cave as a DM, and I just give, now she has like, she's gotten four magical items. Like, she gets the most magical item. I just give her extra magical items. And then that just reinforces the behavior and she keeps on complaining. So now it's like, it's weird. Like, I thought I was like,

you know, I'm a good psychiatrist. I'm a good DM. But somehow the situation is getting out of hand for me. You guys get what I'm saying? Like, it's really weird. So I'm getting better at it. I'm getting better. Okay. Don't cave. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, it's and then but it's also like challenging right because as my the responsibility of a DM is to make sure that your players are having a good time and getting good cool treasure is part of having a good time okay should we do one more chat oh yeah second thing i was going to say hobbies i got okay i'm like losing it it's been a long week streamed a lot today did a lot of work um so other thing is that i i think this is where like expanding your hobbies is really important so i

got into art recently, like over the last two years, I've like fallen in love with art. I didn't understand art. And I found that the kinds of connections I form with people is expanded drastically. So I'd say that like, just because you like something as a hobby, there's a learning curve to other hobbies. And if you get into other hobbies, like if you get into hobbies that are not even like women's hobbies, you know, we don't have to get into, I don't know, like buying makeup. Like, you don't have to do that.

I don't know if that's a hobby or I don't even know what a female hobby is. But, like, getting into more, like, gender-neutral hobbies, like hobbies, like, hobbies that are not traditionally, like, gamer hobbies. Like, get into art, do some kind of physical thing, like, learn a sport. Like, start playing pickleball. Like, do this kind of stuff. And so if you want to find a girlfriend, you have to go to places where girlfriends are found. Okay, for those of you all that submitted voicemails and you didn't get a good answer, my apologies.

Hi, Dr. Kay. In the past year, I moved to the U.S. from Canada to get married. Due to that whole process, I had to quit my job back in Canada and have been unemployed for a year. I'm currently trying to find a job in my field, which is tech, or even navigate to a completely different profession if I can. But I'm struggling with what I think is a burnout phase. I believe in stems from trying so hard to overachieve when I was younger because of having

strict Asian parents. You know how that goes. I think growing up this way, I developed a fear of rejection and I seemed to get easily discouraged. It stopped me so many times from applying for jobs and putting in the effort to job hunt. My question for you is, how should I navigate starting all over again here in my mid-20s and how do I stay disciplined and productive in my job search while not letting the rejections and a fear of failure stop me from trying? Thank you so much for your time.

Okay, this is great. Really common problem. right so this is a case of someone who moved countries has been looking for a job for a year but seems like they're not like looking super hard they say that they're experiencing burnout so let's first understand what do they mean by burnout how do we know we're burnt out so my guess is that they feel a lack of drive lack of motivation don't feel like doing anything thing, no energy. And so if you feel this, you think like, oh my God, I'm burnt out.

Makes sense. And then we learn a couple of other things. Strict Asian parents, right? Pushed to overachieve. So here is the dream of the strict Asian parent. If I'm relentless with you, if I push you to overachieve, At some point, that'll set in. You'll get conditioned and programmed to always be a hard worker.

And the cool thing is that sometimes it works. So when strict parents push you to overachieve, one of two things happens. One is that you get conditioned, you internalize, the harsh standards, internalize high expectations, like that happens, or something else can happen.

You get stuck with external motivation. This isn't a case of burnout. I mean, maybe it is, who knows? This is a case of someone who was always, externally motivated, right? So when this poor kid was a kid and then there was like a book that they had to study, what pushed them, what moved them in this direction, the parents? Right. So there's no internal motivation. There's just outside pressure inducing you to action. And this happens all the time. So when that outside pressure, you,

goes away, the action goes away. Very simple. Your motivational system has been programmed to rely on external pressure to motivate you. If there is something in the environment that is pushing you to act, then you will act. So I think there's another interesting thing here. They moved and it sounded like they got married, right? So I wonder if another issue here is if they were single in the the United States and had no means to support themselves, would they be motivated to act more? If there was an external pressure of lack of financial support, lack of home and place to live, then would they be motivated, probably? I'm not saying it's bad that they're, maybe they are, maybe they're broke and don't have money,

maybe their partner is broke and doesn't have money. Who knows? We don't know that. my point is that there are absolutely cases of kids who get programmed to be sensitive to external motivators. And so if you move to get married and, you know, like, I mean, I was dating. My girlfriend supported me for a year. Didn't motivate me very much. And then there are times where, like, in a relationship, like, she quit working for a year and I was working a lot and that was totally fine supporting things and things like that.

So like restoposity and taking, being supported by your partner for a year, I don't think is a bad thing. I'm just saying that as a motivational system, if you have a motivational system that is driven by external forces pushing you to act and you leave home and your parents are no longer breathing down your neck and you have a partner who is kind and loving and supportive and it's like, you know, apply for a job. I know you'll get it in the end. There's no rush. So there's no rush, there's no pressure. If there's no pressure, you don't act. So how do you stay disciplined? How do you develop motivation?

You have to understand the difference between internal motivation and external motivation. So, this is wild. The first thing to understand is that if you are externally motivated, you cannot be internally motivated. You can't, you literally cannot be both. Okay? Now, this may sound confusing. So let me show you. I'm working on a full lecture about this, but I think this is the relevant part.

Okay, so on what motivates a detailed review of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Let's look at neuroimaging. Okay. First, extrinsic reinforcers have elic amygdala, ACC, ventrometrial, preforces. frontal cortex, orbital cortex, ventral stridal or nucleus accumbens activity in healthy subjects, but was associated with higher self-reported extrinsic motivation, but lower self-reported intrinsic motivation. Here's the thing.

I know I said a bunch of random stuff. Do you all explain it in a second? Extrinsic reinforcers activate these parts of the brain. That's what you all need to understand. Okay? So when we activate these parts of the brain, they're associated with higher extrinsic motivation. I'm motivated by things like my parents, by deadlines, things like that, lower self-reported motivation. Okay, here's the key thing.

Intrinsic motivation was associated with deactivation of the amygdala. Extrinsic motivation is associated with activation of the amygdala. This is another piece of evidence linking neural deactivation to intrinsic motivation. So here's what I want y'all to understand. understand about motivation, first of all. If you've been programmed by overachieving parents, there's a part of your brain like the amygdala, which get, when it gets turned on, we are extrinsically motivated. When it gets turned off, we are intrinsically motivated. It's the same. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation do not come from different parts of the brain.

They come from the same part of the brain. If it's turned on, it's extrinsic. If it's turned off, it's intrinsic. Wild. Now the question becomes, it gets even weirder. Okay? Gets weirder. What is intrinsic?

Or what is extrinsic motivation? Here's the next thing. Because for those of y'all that have been around for a little while, you'll know, what is the amygdala do? Y'all remember? What is the job of the amygdala? The amygdala gives us anxiety, fear, negative emotion. Now, here's the question that I have for you.

When I ask you, are you extrinsically, if I were to ask you, would you describe anxiety or fear as an extrinsic motivator or an intrinsic motivator? Would you say that emotions are intrinsic or extrinsic? Boom. Y'all are saying intrinsic and you're wrong. Okay? Let's look at this. This is wild. Let me find this.

So within this framework, environmental features, as well as an individual's internal state or memory, determine... This is not the sentence I'm looking for. Damn it. Okay. Yeah. Here we go. Hull's drive theory posited that all behaviors were performed

to seek or avoid avoid primary biological states including hunger or pain. Okay? So basically, what we discovered about extrinsic motivation, so this is kind of like,

it's so weird, is if we think about I'm motivated. Okay, so just think about this. Let's say I'm me, and I have overbearing Asian parents. What part of the brain does the overbearing Asian parent activate?

Fear. Right? The parents are looking at me. Alok? No girlfriend. No video games. I'm going to throw you out if you do this. If we think about I have a deadline.

I have ADHD and I have a deadline. What part of my brain does this? activate my fear center. What is the, my best, my most productive state that I can muster up is last minute panic. I work so well in last minute panic. And it's so painful and activates my amygdala. I feel terrified. But then I finally get my shit together. Emotions, hunger, thirst, are extrinsic motivators. Not intrinsic motivators. This is why everyone's like, oh, how do I internal motivation? How do I get internally motivated? And what they don't realize, I want you all to understand this is really important. When I have fear, how does the brain solve for fear?

If there's a monster chasing me, rar. I don't even know what that is. A monster chasing me, and I run away. This is mediated. My responses to the environment, I am here. And there is a hot dog. here, I can't draw a hot dog. And I feel hunger. Is this an intrinsic motivator or an extrinsic motivator? The hot dog alleviates the hunger. Emotions and biological drives are fixed by the environment. As long as you are extrinsically motivated,

you will be a victim to your emotional circuitry. Your emotional circuitry, because when I'm afraid, so this is another great example of this, right? there's like the loop of loneliness and social anxiety. I'm lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely. I think it's internal motivation. Then I act. I go and hang out with people.

And when I go and hang out with people, when I go hang out with people, then my loneliness goes away. But then my social anxiety increases. And how do I deal with social anxiety? I leave this environment. The solution to my emotions is what is surrounding me. I am motivated by my circumstances.

If I'm alone, then I'm motivated to meet people. If I'm with people, I'm motivated to be alone. So the biggest mistake that people make with extrinsic motivation is they think that extrinsic motivation is about things outside of you. But really, all of our emotions are literally neuroscientifically extrinsic motivators. So then you may wonder, well, hold on a second. What the hell is an intrinsic motivator? here's what constitutes internal motivation.

So several models in the mid to late 20th century, several models underscored the importance of novelty seeking, interest, and autonomy in driving intrinsic motivation. So if it's a reward, if it's an emotion, if it's a change in your biological state, these are extrinsic motivators. If it is new, if it is interesting, and if you are in control, it is an intrinsic motivator.

So I want you all to think about this for a second. If my motivational system is driven by extrinsic motivators, then when I am idle, what am I moved towards some amount of interest, some amount of novelty seeking, right? That's what actually internally drives me. So if you're someone who's like thinking to yourself, how do I force myself to get a job?

That's the whole problem. So even if you think about the words, how do I force myself? Think about whether that is autonomous or not. Even in your motivational system, you are not practicing autonomy. You are trying, you're the guy who's whipping the donkey and you're the donkey. You're like trying to whip yourself into action. You're trying to whip the apparatus that is your brain and your body into moving in the right direction. That's not intrinsic motivation.

You're trying to whip yourself. It's extrinsic motivation. Not going to work. Cultivating internal motivation involves autonomy, first and foremost. The more that you feel like you are exercising control in your life, the more naturally internally motivated you're going to be. If I tell you read this book, the only way you will, I'm removing. removing your autonomy. Will you read it or not? That depends. Am I going to give you a million dollars? Am I going to give you an A? Am I going to give you an F? Am I going to kick you out of the house?

If I take away your autonomy and I put some external pressure, then you'll do it. But if I say, here's a bookshelf, take your pick, you are much more likely to read it. Right? You're going to pick. It is your choice. So internal motivation is about making your choices. Stop and think for a second about how can I exercise control in this situation. Not what do I have to do? How can I be in control of my life? Don't ask yourself what you want. That word is so tricky because many biological drives like hunger and thirst can turn into wants in your mind.

Don't think about that. Don't worry about what you have to do. Don't worry about what you want to do. How can I exercise control? What can I do in this life? What direction do I want to move in? Do I want to be someone? So when I work with people, practically this is what it looks like.

What do I want to say about myself at the end of the day? When I look back on today, what am I going to feel proud of? Not what is good for me, not what is successful for me, not what do I need to do? What can I look at myself and say, hey, I feel good about this? This is me, exercising control in my life. So this is what I would say if you're trying to find a job and stay disciplined. It's not even about discipline. It's like, okay, every day, what are you going to be?

What kind of life do you want to live? Then you live that life. Do you want to be someone who has applied for four jobs today? Do you want to be someone who has spent four hours doing what you dream of doing, moving forward? And then you look back on that. It's not about the rejections, right? So the cool thing is this makes you impervious to rejection. because rejection doesn't determine your motivation.

Acceptance doesn't determine your motivation. You are living the life that you want to live. It is about the autonomous control of your life. So I'd be super concrete about what do I want my life to look like in this moment? At the end of the day, at the end of the week. Am I happy that I am moving my life in the direction that I envisioned it to go? Not what does the world need me to do, not what should I do. not what makes me feel pathetic.

Anything that is emotional, any removal of a negative emotion is not in the right direction. It still traps you in the external motivational system. It's reinforcing that system. So it's like what, that's the bulk of it. It's about increasing your autonomy. The more autonomous you become, the more you will shut off your amygdala. And this is the cool thing. If you shut off those parts of the brain, I don't know if this makes sense.

the default state of motivation for human beings is intrinsic. If we shut off the brain, intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation comes and messes up your autonomy, and that kind of makes sense, right? You're naturally, it's like, we wanted to make AI to do our laundry so that we could make art,

not make our art so that we could do laundry. Like, what? We were, we were, trying to develop AI to increase our autonomy, not further the current system, which has us trapped in doing rote behavior instead of autonomous creation, right? So focus on autonomy. Think about what do I want? What kind of life do I want to live and move in that direction? Very practically, what I would do is set some kind of target for the kind of where, you're going to do.

So it's not even about finding a job, because that's externally motivated. It is about being someone who did the work that you can be proud of. It's like, am I proud of what I did today? Am I happy with what I did today? Can I look back on today and be like, you know what?

I fucking, I knocked it out of the park. Give yourself, and by the way, that emotion, that feeling doesn't even come from the amygdala and comes from none of the circuits of the brain that are involved with extrinsic motivation. comes from a different part of the brain entirely. Completely different system.

It's not dopamine, right? So the systems of external motivation are also dopamine. Ventral striatum and nucleus of cummins is dopamine. Pleasure, craving, reinforcement. This is a more serotonergic part of the brain. This is more default mode network, not activated in extrinsic motivation. So decide for yourself, not for anyone else and not by anyone else. you decide for yourself, how are you going to live the next day of your life, the next week of your life, the next month of your life, and move in that direction.

Even if you fall short, the more that you think in that way. So as you fall short, you'll notice negative emotions will crop up, right? If you set a target for yourself and you fell short, negative emotions crop up, you feel ashamed. If you give into that shame, if you try to get rid of the shame, then you're still externally motivated. And then if you feel ashamed, you'll act. And if you don't feel ashamed, you won't act. It's a terrible way to live life. To require shame as the fuel of your action is like a lose-lose situation.

So we need to disable the whole circuit. Be autonomous. So set a target that encompasses the life that you want to live. Then when you wake up in the morning, you're not going to feel like doing it. And then ask yourself one question. do I want to be a person who does what they feel like or does what they intend? And in that moment, you can make that choice. And it's as simple as that.

Not saying it's easy. It's as simple. What if the target is unrealistic? If you think the target is unrealistic, you are still operating from an extrinsic motivational system. you're losing the point, missing the point. Because realism or not realism is a measure of outcome. What determines the realisticness of it, the environment?

You'll see that? It's such a brilliant question. It shows us how much we've been programmed in this way. Because we've been programmed. Why is everyone using ChachyPT in school? It's because school stopped being about learning a long time ago, and it started being about grades. You know, I once had a student who listed their coursework on their resume and the relevant things that they learned in their coursework. They had like a couple of classes, and they said, this is what I learned in these four classes.

Like they learned some cool stuff. They really liked the classes. They learned a lot. What do you all think the advice was when we're giving feedback on this resume? remove the coursework. No one gives a shit what you learned in a class. Everyone cares about your GPA

and what you've accomplished. Not what you learn. And it's like, when we have advice like this, what do we expect students to do? It's wild. It's like we blame students for like using chat GPT all the time. And it's like,

but like even universities don't give a shit about teaching. How much do universities pay teachers? This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget. From luxury to family rides.

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What do we value? And then we're surprised when we've created a system this way. And then all of us, foolish humans who grew up in these systems, have been conditioned in this way, and then we struggle. and life is hard because I've moved to the U.S. I'm away from my parents and I no longer have to do anything so I'm not doing anything. You're not burnt out. You're free.

And when you've been pushed to do a ton of things that you didn't want to do and you finally have freedom, you're relaxing. Maybe we can call that burnout. So what is our solution here? Our solution here is to equip you with the, understanding of how you work. And once you understand how you work, once you understand where external motivation comes from, where intrinsic motivation comes from, then I hope it will help you break the chains that, like, control your mind.

And you're struggling against them, but you don't know how to break free. Actually, you don't need to break them. You just need to unlock it. That's all it takes. You have to break anything. Okay? I know DeNaris Stormborn. We're not going to ask you to do, like, a ton of stuff.

right? So like you do what you feel inspired to do and we'll pick up the ball. And the cool thing is sometimes it even works. So I saw this like someone posted this yesterday. It's like I've been in coaching for almost 40 weeks. Somehow I got fit, finished writing a book and released a video game. This is wild. I'm 32 in all my life. I've been saying I want to write. I want to make video games. I should really put my life together and never actually did any of those things. I started coaching mostly out of desperation because of infinite therapy waiting times. It felt very nice to have someone to check in with me every week, talk a little bit about what I did or did not get done during the week, a little bit about my feelings. Now I lift my head, not even a year later, and there's a pile of work behind me. I'm fulfilling my major lifelong dreams. I'm in shape

and I'm optimistic about my future, despite being quite apt due to years of sewing bad karma. Wild. If I were to say what the number one thing was I got out of coaching, I'd say absolutely the power of, discovering the power of consistency. I did not drive myself super hard. I didn't overdo it and burn out as I used to do. I was mostly just enjoying the process and moved step by step. This was posted one day ago. I fucking know that if y'all just, you guys can do it, man.

You can do it. This is not like, I've been wanting to write a book. I've been wanting to release a video game. I want to get in shape. and you think since this has taken in so many years you've made so little progress so then you think oh my god it if it takes me five years to do this much it'll take me 40 years to do that much that's the whole thing is no that's not how it works it only takes a long-ass time if you do it inconsistently if you do it inefficiently it can be done And this is not like a plugged ad.

This is some fucking guy or girl in our community who's been in coaching for 40 weeks who's just like, hey, this helped me. That's why we built this. Because in the back of my mind, this is what I talked to you all about yesterday. In the back of my mind, I'm sitting there, I'm like, I don't know if watching YouTube for a year is going to get you to write a book and release a video game and get fit. can watching my dumb ass stream do this it can help

and for those of y'all that are like okay i still don't want to do it fine can't afford it we get it 40 weeks of coaching is a big investment there's a reason that we believe in it though the reason we believe in it is because of the thousands of people who go through the program by the way this is exceptional your mileage is like probably in the top of quartile, for sure, top 5%, 10%. But I don't really, like, this is not what I'm, I'd be happy with like 30% of this.

If you'll get to 30% of where this person gets to in one year, I'd consider it a win. Like that's, that's an outcome that I'm happy with. If you're like, hey, I got a third of the way to fit, I'm two thirds through writing a book, and I finished a third of a video game in one year, I'd be like, that's great. I'm happy with that. we're not even shooting for this I think if you shoot for this you're going to end up with something

that doesn't work as well it's like this is like this person's doing good but that's on them and so what we're working on now is like something else that addresses these problems

of I don't even know what I need I don't know where to start there's too much information some of it is crap what works for me how does my mind work how does my body work how do I be consistent

how do I be externally motivated how do we be internally motivated And like, I have read thousands of scientific papers over the last five years. Thousands. I go through like 10, 5 to 20 a week. So it's like somewhere around 500 a year, probably. And like we're trying, because there's so much information out there. But it's like we figured out, we figured out, we figured out that if you are extrinsically motivated,

it means turning on these parts of the brain. And literally, all you have to do to be intrinsically motivated is shut off. You don't have to do anything. You just have to stop doing something. That's it. And the internal motivation will come on its own. Stop having emotions. And your intrinsic motivation will naturally rise.

I know it sounds crazy. And you're like, but Dr. Kay, I don't... Numb emotions is not deactivation of the amygdala. That is activation of the amygdala with suppression, completely different. And y'all are saying stoicism pog. Yes, that's what's so cool. So I think we can do this, y'all, because the Stoics figured it out on their own. The yogis figured it out on their own.

The big difference between the Stoics and the Yogies is the yogis gave us a how-to manual that had a lot more practices. I'm done. I'm going to take the day off. I'm done. I'm baked. I'm fried. But I had a blast. Thank you all so much for getting your voicemails.

I wanted to answer, oh my God, one, two, three, four, five. There's five more that I wanted to get to. but that's okay. We fell short. And for those of you all that submitted, thank you all very much. I loved this. So also let us know, like, did you guys like the voicemail thing? Because it's not, you know, two hours talking to one person.

It's like 15 to 30 minutes on six things. Right? So if you guys like this, then like, here's the thing. Please don't be upset that we didn't get to your voicemail. And please keep sending them even though we'll never get to them. because what we want to do, like, there's just no way to fix that. I don't know how to fix it. We can't get to everyone.

And if no one submits it, this would not, for those of y'all that submitted, like look at chat's reaction and look at how much people benefited from this. And I'm sorry we didn't get to the rest of y'all. I guess we'll do this more. I don't know exactly what's going to happen next. I never know what's going to happen next. That's the downside of this fucking philosophy of like, oh my God, live in the moment, act from here, don't think about goals. And then that has some downsides, which is like, what's happening at Healthy Gamer this year?

No one knows. And it's like we practice what we preach, okay? At least we're good there. And some of you all are understandably frustrated because that's not how the rest of the world works. The rest of the world is like, we are going to get 14% market share from 11% market share. And we want to continue to increase profits by 8%. We increased profits by 8% last year. We're going to increase by 9 this year.

There's stockholders we like it. Therefore, we are going to put ads in the ad-free program. Now people are paying for money, and we'll put ads in the ad-free program, because then we can charge $20 a month for ad-free, and we can generate ad revenue. We don't fucking work like that. And that comes with some plusses and some minuses. So, yeah.

Take care of all. Thanks for coming. 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. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take.

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