HealthyGamerGG - Ethan Evans Pt. 1 (@EthanEvansVP)

Episode Date: February 4, 2020

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He was my idol, right? He's my father. I'm a young kid, a boy. And here he is like, I'm like, dad, what happens when we die? And he's like, well, you cease to exist in your body, wroughts.

So, Ethan, what are you feeling now? Now we're getting somewhere. Now you're feeling. Now the armor's coming down. What is that? What are you feeling when you talk about your dad? When you tell that story, you become animated.

I feel abandoned. Right? I feel. vulnerable again. I see more. I see anger. Oh, yeah. Yeah, fair.

Of course. One, two, three. Hi, I'm Ethan Evans. I'm happy to be here. This is going to be fun. My whole community is waiting too. So we're all good to go. Is that better?

Keep talking? Yeah, sure. Let's see. What should we talk about today? You were asking about the weather. It's cold here. We've had a ton of snow. It's skiing time at the end of the day.

Oh, where are you located? Seattle, Washington. Actually, I know you through Devin. He and I were lucky enough to be in the same city. It's how we stream together. Oh, cool. Very cool. Okay, he's too loud.

Oh, now I'm too loud. Okay. All right. A little loud. Okay. I think we're good now. So. Okay.

Sweet. So, yeah. So we're talking a little bit about sort of stress management and burnout. We're talking about workplace stress. Yeah. Not so much burnout, but I'm an executive at Amazon. And so I wanted, I thought it would be a good topic for us to talk about about how people could handle their stress at work. And of course, people would love for you to advise me how to be a less stressful boss for them.

Okay. Like what can executives do differently? And then I have my own stress issues. I'm happy to share. Okay. And learn about. Because we have this time and we have next Friday, too. Yeah.

So I think the first thing is, oddly enough, what I do on Twitch is not actually what my area of experts. What my area of expertise is is what we are talking about. Yes. So in my day job, I do some work at different kinds of corporations, investment banks, startups, hospitals, in sort of stress management programs and sort of helping people optimize their performance, manage stress, things like that. So this is, I love talking about this stuff because it's kind of right up my alley. So why don't you, yeah, go ahead. That's, that's, that's, that's what I thought would be good is this is like your sweet. beat spot. And yet I also think, because the stream I do on Twitch is like what Devin does a lot.

We're trying to help people build their careers and be successful at work. So it's not classic gaming at all. And stress and managing stress is a lot about having a successful career. Absolutely. So. And having a successful career is also about managing stress. Yes, true. Yeah. So I tend to work best when I use actual like scenarios as opposed to abstract examples. So can you just tell me a little bit about what you find stressful or what people in your workplace might may find stressful? Sure. Yeah, I thought a lot about this. So Amazon is famously known as a difficult workplace. And we have a number of leadership principles, one of which is called high standards. And the leadership principle reads, Amazon has relentlessly high standards,

standards that others may find unreasonable. And so as a leader, I'm supposed to hold people to this, and also my managers also hold me to it. So then being specific, like a specific situation, would be performance of a program I'm working on. I'll have to be a little circumstect about, you know, financial details and stuff. But if a program isn't hitting financial goals or isn't hitting growth goals.

You have a ton of stress because you know you're going to be asked about it. You know you're going to spend time writing long explanations of why it is. And culturally, it is common for leaders to still express disappointment. To say, well, okay, you've explained it all, but it's still like the fundamental problem is it's still not good enough results to do better. And often their feedback is more you go, do better, not I can help you. Okay. So, so I think, so this is, so this is, your culture sounds a lot like, um, the culture of, you know, top tier academic medical centers. Yes. So, so, so, you know, I think any,

anytime you go to sort of the top of a field, if you're talking about like a place like Golden Sacks or a mass general hospital, which are amazing institutions, they have a very sort of outcome oriented approach, right? And results are what matters. So like in the world of academic medicine, research funding can be very cutthroat and whether, like, you get, you live or die by your grants. And if you don't get a grant, you don't have a job. And it can be very hard. And so that's just sort of the culture because it's a culture of performance. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And that's our culture, too. Yeah. So the first question that I have for you is, does a culture of performance lead to the best performance.

I don't know. The thought would be, of course, it does, right? The performance is important and that you're setting the standard and that you're talking about it. And so a culture of performance should create performance. That would be the idea. That's generally what people think, right? Which is why they have cultures of performance because they believe that if we have a culture

of performance, then people will live up to the standard that we set. And it's all about meeting standards. So let's just talk about you for a second. Okay. When have you done? When do you do your best work? So, huh, I love how you put me on the spot. I actually do my best work outside of work, like not in the office when I can get clear thinking time. I do the best work in my lounge chair sitting over here in my house. Okay, so let's just think about what that means. You say I do my best work when I get clear thinking time. Yeah. Right. So the question is, what are the risk factors for clear thinking time and what are the risk factors for unclear thinking time? Okay. So what leads to unclear thinking? Distractions. Sure. And mental pressure or feeling attacked or judged because then you're spending your time on your emotions and on how you're going to get yourself feeling attacked or judged. And then you're spending your time on your emotions and on how you're going to get yourself feeling bad. better so that you can focus on the actual work.

Okay. So when you're thinking about how your boss is going to respond to your work product. Yeah. What does that do to your thinking? Well, it adds stress. It can add clarity in the sense that you can reason through like, okay, what does my boss need? If I think he's going to respond this way, can I address that? that. So it can add clarity. But particularly if the feedback from a leader is negative,

it can also just get you churning and cycling on. Absolutely. I feel judged. I feel inadequate. So just to be clear, like if we're talking about those feelings, do those put us in a clear thinking mindset or an unclear thinking? Unclear. Unclear. Absolutely. Right. So if we stop and we actually think about you, you do your best work when you're thinking clearly, which is sort of a no-brainer. And the interesting thing is that you sort of talk about sitting particularly in a lounge chair. So there's a space that's sort of like a stress-free space where you're not actually concerned about how your bosses are going to respond to something. So you can actually devote yourself to the thing that your bosses want you to do. Yep.

Right? You can devote yourself to the work as opposed to devoting yourself to performance. Yes. What do you think about that? Is that agree, disagree? Let's think about caveats. restate the proposition once. So you do your best work when you have a clear head.

And when you have a clear head, you're not actually thinking about performance. In fact, what I would say that a clear head is for you is that you're not worried about performance and you're worried about the task at hand or the actual work. There's doing the work and then there's whether the work lives up to standards, right? It's like creating a good product and whether my boss is going to be happy with. These are separate things in your mind. Yep. You should be focused on doing.

the best work, not what people are going to think of it. If you focus on the work product, you get the best work. What is Amazon's work culture? Well, it's hard to generalize 600,000 people, but Amazon's work culture has a lot of review. Another principle we have is called dive deep. And so leaders, including myself, were expected to audit others. We're expected to dig into what they're doing. And then my leaders above me are expected to dig into and audit what I'm doing. Absolutely. And so you can anticipate or expect being audited. Yeah. And so that puts, the culture is one where you end up thinking about the standards, not just about the work. And how do you think that impacts the work? That's the operative question. To the, I think,

So I feel like you're fishing in a sense, and I want to give a dual answer. Fine. Overly stressing about it lowers the quality of work. Being aware of the standards so that you know what the goal is has value. But when that tips over into fear or worry, it becomes a distraction. Yeah. So I think you're sort of right that I'm kind of fishing for something. And in the sense, I think in my mind, that's the right answer.

So I think one thing that we oftentimes forget about stress is that we use the word stress to actually mean distress. So there are two types of stress. There's you stress and distress, but we've lost that distinction. Yes, use stress. I've heard that term and know about it, but you're right. I never hear it. And so that's just because we sort of forget that like, okay, so when you have capabilities and you have a task, the relationship between your capability, in your task results in a number of different things. If the task outweighs your capabilities,

you're in distress because you can't handle it. If the task is too easy, then what happens to your performance? You become bored and you may do the task okay, but your motivation drops, your engagement drops. So would you say that your effort towards the task and your success at the task, if the easier the task gets, what happens to the quality of the work that you produce? Does it just get higher and higher? No. I think it flatlines. If the task is really easy, you sort of take it to a limit and then you move on and you

look for something else. Absolutely. Right. So that's kind of weird because if we're saying that the difficulty of the task is like a, like if we talk about a slope, right? And if, and this is our capability. and here's the difficulty of the task. That as we go too high, our performance drops.

But interestingly enough, if we go too low, our performance actually drops. Yep, makes sense. That middle zone is what's called use stress. So this is when the body and brain are literally primed to where, so you have a certain amount of stress hormones that are active. So one example of this is like adrenaline, where adrenaline causes you to literally lose your peripheral vision and focus on a narrow perspective.

So like literally if you look at the stut, the physiology of the eye, when you have adrenaline at a high level in your body, normally your peripheral vision is actually about 180 degrees, which a lot of people don't realize. Right. And then as adrenaline increases, it narrows down to a field of view of 30 degrees. Yep. And so you want. I've experienced this. Yeah. So at 180, it's easy to become distracted because you're seeing this over there and you're seeing this over there.

But if your adrenaline level is too high, then you also get this sort of tunnel vision where it's easy to lose perspective. And when you talk about an unclear mind, I think you're kind of hitting it right on the head where you know, you want to know that people are going to be checking your work. You want to know that your bosses are going to be expecting a lot from you. But then you can easily collapse down in a tunnel vision where you start worrying about that. And then we tip into the distress. We tip into non-optimal performance. Yeah. And I think the, I've thought about that, right, I've been at Amazon 15 years. I've had a lot of time to think about the culture. I think a lot of the culture, and I think this is common in workplaces, leaders lead through a scarcity mindset where they

believe that if they say too much positive about your work, you'll get lazy. In other words, if they're not constantly pushing, you won't do it out of your own motivation. You're only doing it because you're being challenged. And the result is most of the, in many cases, I hear this not only see it, I hear it a lot. Most of the feedback is, okay, that was great. Now here's 12 more things that could be better. Right? In other words, when something gets evaluated, it's one good thing about it.

and then 10 possible improvements. Yeah. So I think that's, you know, I understand how that works because I think that's also how the cultures of like most top end companies or institutions in their field of function. Okay. And at the same time, I don't believe in my experience, I think there's another way, which is actually better.

Tell me more. So this is sort of finding that area of use stress where, The degree of stress that you have actually primes your mind enough and gets you to, I think a good example of this is the flow state. So you stress facilitates a flow state. Yes. So you can't be bored and get into a flow straight. You can't be panicked and get into a flow state. That there are good studies that show that optimal work product comes from a flow state.

But I think the culture that Amazon has, and it's not my place to judge, but we're talking about it. I'm not saying it's good. I think it's common. So MGH is the same way. Harvard Medical School is the same. way, is that they have a very performance-oriented culture that oftentimes tips people into distress and imposter syndrome and these kinds of things. And that at the end of the day, someone who is, that that's not going to be the best work product. That I think that like the best

work product comes when you have an employee who's actually inspired to do the thing that they want to do. And you do have a certain amount of kind of oversight that keeps people honest. Because there's also studies that show that if you really give people a free reign, they're going to start slack off and they're going to work just as hard as they can to, like, not get fired. So both of these things are true. Yep. And I think it also depends on what level you're talking about within an organization because I think that when people have demonstrated a high degree of internal motivation and value

with, like, putting out, like, they demonstrate personal pride and doing good work, I think you can be more encouraging. because they're going to have that natural, for lack of a better term, like neuroticism. So in medical school, for example, medical students are highly, highly neurotic, which is how we get there. So we worry a lot on the inside. We're afraid that we didn't study enough. We're afraid that we're not going to do well enough on the test. Our neuroticism is already high enough and it strives us to be successful in the world. It's not a negative trait in terms of performance. But once you get to medical school, you would be amazed at how much you can get a medical student to perform because their neuroticism is already high. they don't need it from their boss.

In fact, encouragement lets them do better. So, like, when you say, hey, like, I can see that you learned a lot about lysineapril and ACE inhibitors, that's awesome. I think this patient is really going to do better because you kind of know this information.

It's really useful information. And then, like, what's that, like, what they're going to do is go home the next day and they're going to be, like, since they're so starved for positive reinforcement, that is going to reinforce their behavior to be like, tomorrow when I go to work, I want them to say that again.

And I want them to say it again and I want them to say it again. That's like an endorphin hit, right? Positive feedback in a high performance culture. Yeah. And I think, interestingly, I don't think we do a very good job of that in corporate America. In other words, what you're describing in the medical school is actually more positive than what,

And of course, I'm generalizing. I'm speaking for my own experience and not on behalf of the company, but I see some leaders do better than others, but overall, there's an opportunity for improvement there. And that's what I'm interested, both in sharing with our audiences and also your advice on how we can change corporate America a little bit over time. Yeah. So I think let's, I'm going to take a step back.

That's really useful to know. So first of all, you know, the main. question is, does the culture of performance actually lead to optimal performance, right? And my answer, I think that while we see it widely amongst corporate America and top-tier institutions, so I think that the data sort of would imply that the answer is yes. I think there's a lot of interesting work happening at like HBS and other places where I do a little bit of work here or there. Right. That suggests otherwise. So like I know that when I go to actual like investment banks or private equity firms, and I teach them how to meditate and I teach them sort of a different

way to look at things, their performance actually improves. So like their metrics get better. And what I mean by that is, so I think the real challenge here, so Ethan, let me ask you a question. So first of all, a couple questions. One is that I can like kind of talk and if that's good in what you're interested in, I can continue to do that. So I was going to explain like one very important nuance that I think a lot of corporate America doesn't understand. The other thing that I can do is ask you more personal questions about like your specific stress and because I think we're going to we can get a lot of rich information there. I don't know what you're interested in or what you signed up for. So I did sign up. You know, I've watched a bunch of your shows because I co-streamed

with Devin like you did in the past. So I'm perfectly happy to, talk about myself and reveal personal, you know, my own struggles. Since I'm an executive, I'm not sure that's always the most helpful to our audiences who aren't always there. I don't know, but I'm happy to do that. So I'll let you be the judge of what's most effective to help people, because I know that's your goal, as well as mine. You can also just talk a little bit, if you want, I don't have any problem having a bit of a lecture. Okay, sure. So I'm going to explain one concept, which I suspect may lay the foundation for our discussion, may or may not. And as it crops up, and then I'll start asking you more personal questions.

So I'm going to just lay a little bit of a foundation with like a five-minute segment. So a clear mind does the best work, right? Yes, totally. So one of the biggest problems that clouds a mind is attachment to particular things. And so one of the goals of meditative practice is to be detached from the outcomes of your actions. So this is a Sanskrit word called Vairagya, and they believe that peace comes from Vairagya. So just to give you an example, you know, if I like a girl and I want to ask her out, I can torture myself all kinds of ways about whether she's going to say yes, how to get her to say yes, things like that.

Some of that could be calculated, like I could do certain nice things. I can dress a certain way. I can get her flowers, whatever. So there is some value to sort of that, that kind of self-flagellation that I put myself through. But at the end of the day, the best course of action is probably just to ask her out with confidence and then let her decide. Right. I don't try to control whether she says yes or whether she says no, but that's not how we actually operate. We try to control whether she's going to say yes or say no.

And in the process of controlling how another human being reacts, we took. torture ourselves so much. Yep. You with me? Yeah. It's the, it's the rain, the reign acronym from meditation. What does that mean? Rain is, uh, recognize, acknowledge, introspect and then non-attachment.

Yeah, perfect. Right. So Vyragia is that last part. Yeah. Where you ultimately, you kind of say in the funny thing is that if you think about like what kind of person is going to say yes. So like I realized this in my own life shockingly. So, you know, I had a very unsuccessful.

dating life until I sort of entered into a relationship and then really stopped caring because I was in a relationship. Right. And then started hanging out with people and then suddenly like women are treating me very differently. And I was trying to think about like why is that? The most extreme of which was, I don't even know if I should share this because I don't want this person. But so one day I was on call at the hospital.

Right. And someone that I had worked with showed up intoxicated at 2 in the morning. Okay. And was playing Pokemon Go. And I was like, woman, what are you doing here? Why? And she was just, and so then I was like, look, I'm busy, but it was great to see you. Have fun catching your Pokemon.

And then, you know, as much as I don't, I mean, I have to think that people don't just show up at the hospital when you're working. Like, they know you're on call. Right. know it's the middle of the night. And so I have to think about like, how does that happen? Right? Did I suddenly magically become more attractive? I don't think so. I think what happened is like I started just behaving with confidence. And that actually like gets the outcome that you sort of want. But the more that you worry about the outcome, the harder the outcome is to attain. Totally. Yeah, yeah. That over analyzing an analysis paralysis, uh, those things cripple people.

It happens a lot in public speaking. Absolutely, right? So when public speaking is another great example of like the goal is to just go up there and talk about what you want to talk about, don't worry about the thousands of people. So one bit of advice that I got about public speaking is pretend you're talking to one person. Don't talk to an audience. Talk to one person. Works really well. So the challenge, though, is a lot of people say if I become detached from the consequences of my actions, doesn't that mean that I stop caring?

And this is a big challenge where people say like, but caring about the outcome is what has driven me to succeed so far. So like if I stop caring about the outcome, doesn't it mean that I'm not going to be successful? And the short answer is no, because there's a difference between apathy, which is not caring and detachment, which is detachment is giving it your all and not worrying about the consequence, not being paranoid about the consequence. It's a hard duality to do. Absolutely. It's a hard duality. Absolutely. So I suspect that when we come to, you know, this is just because I've done a lot of kind of corporate consulting and stuff.

And generally this conundrum comes up where people recognize that fear of consequence and a particular consequence is what has allowed them to get to this point. But that like they can still perform, but it causes them intense personal suffering. And it's my hypothesis that intense personal suffering. doesn't actually lead to optimal performance. And that when I talk to more and more people like you and I ask you, when do you do your best work, it's not when you're suffering. It's when you're devoted to the action at hand and you're calm and you're thinking clearly. Well, it's flow state. It's me high, chickset me high and flow state for sure. So let's talk a little bit about your personal, any questions about that so far? Not for me. No, I got it. Okay. So let's talk a little bit

about your personal situation and kind of what you find stressful within the bounds of what you can kind of talk. Yeah, of course. The thing that stresses me out the most, I guess, is you, every human, well, I don't know, I will talk about me. I want credit for good intentions. And what that means is when I bust my ass on something and I attempt to do my best work and it falls short, I already know that. And so I want help fixing it, not. repeated pointing out that it didn't meet the bar. And so my highest stress specifically comes from feeling misjudged. So here's an example I can talk about that's outside of work, but very crystalline. I had a doctor's appointment and the doctor had two offices, small medical procedure,

It doesn't matter what. I was getting, well, it's getting something removed off my skin. But I went to the wrong office because they had two offices and I confused the office. So I was there on time, but at the wrong office. And so as an example, you can excavate that has nothing to do with Amazon but shows the problem is I just beat myself up. Like, oh, my God, this has to be rescheduled and he's a specialist and it's going to take three months to get back on his calendar. And how could I be so dumb as to go to the wrong office? and I just got into a very, because I'm a high performance person, I was down on myself

for having done something so foolish or small as to pick the wrong doctor's office. And the same thing happens at work where you have total right intentions, you do everything, you set up the appointment or you do the work, you deliver the work, and then it falls slightly short or there's a good intention but small mistake. And basically, in our workplace, added to my own maybe recriminations on myself would be workplace negative feedback of like, well, you know, you've made an error. And we need to make sure that you know you've made an error because we're busy setting the standard, the performance culture. Okay. I see a little bit of a fork in the road in terms of talking more about you because I think a lot of this. So I think that so I mean, do you want to talk about the workplace and stress or do you want to talk about you? Like I kind of want to talk about. I want to talk about I thought that would be a good. I think it's a great. Yeah, it's great. Well, I thought it would be good about how to manage stress. And I think because I think most of the stress comes from inside or sell. Absolutely.

It's yes, other people may add to it or attempt to add to it, but how we process that determines how much it impacts us. Beautiful, right? So that's the fork in the road that I see is I think a lot of this comes from you. It has nothing to do with Amazon's work culture. Like, although Amazon's work culture probably like is synergistic with it, but this comes from you. Okay. Let's talk about that. I want to fix me.

So how long have you been beating yourself up for making silly mistakes? Oh, geez, my whole life. Okay. Yeah, I know. My family, particularly my father did that. So going all the way back to like childhood experience, my father was very down on himself for simple mistakes. He believed that there was no such thing as an accident, that there was only careless. And so I grew up in a culture. And the classic example we talk about my family of this is his coffee cup, our family coffee cups had saucers. And if he spilled coffee, bumped his cup so that coffee went over the edge into the saucer, he would say, oh, what an idiot. What a complete fool. And that was his judgment of himself for having spilled coffee, which you're like, oh my God, you'd, you know, wipe it up, throw it out. Like, who cares?

But I grew up in a family culture where there wasn't any such thing as a mistake. There was only carelessness. So that's kind of interesting because you're talking about your dad modeling. Yes. Self-criticalness and sort of a lack of compassion or forgiveness or a lack of acceptance that everything isn't perfect. Correct. And that life sometimes has a certain amount of randomness to it. But in his mind, there's no such thing.

his randomness, there's just a lack of preparation to account for randomness. Right. Right. Right. So that's him. What about you? I definitely internalized that. But did he say that about stuff that you did?

Oh, yeah, for sure. Like what? So I grew up on a farm and we used to have a lot of power tools and sharp things. And his advice to me all through my life was it's not if it's when, meaning it's not if you cut yourself, it's win. And so eventually, when I was 17, I was out cutting brush and I cut the end off my thumb, like just a little chunk. But I didn't know how much I'd cut off. So I ran into the house, like holding my thumb inside my hand. And I said, Dad, I need you to take me to the hospital.

I cut off part of my thumb. And he started a lecture. Like, he started to say, I've told you, and I told you this was coming, and how could you be so stupid? Now, I was, I was older at that point. I was 16. So I was mature enough to say, dad, you can yell at me later. We need to go. And he was able to cut it off at that point.

So, you know, he had enough rationality like, okay, that's a good point. But his initial instinct was lecture me on carelessness. And so I think that carries forward. How does it feel to tell that story? Well, knowing, you know, I have my audience on your audience. How does it feel? It feels embarrassing, right, that that was the environment. Because we're trained not to share we, I don't know,

I am trained not to share internal feelings. family skeletons. So to talk poorly of your father or an experience you had, it's embarrassing. It's humiliating. Who's being humiliated? I don't know. I feel humiliated. Like, I feel that, whether I should or not. I feel like, oh, I'm part of a family that had flaws that was not, that had this weird behavior. And so that's embarrassing. Yeah. So I think that feeling makes a lot of sense. How did you feel when your dad started lecturing you? At that moment, I felt shocked. I felt like, wow, this is inappropriate. And that's in fact why I was able to interrupt it. Because what led to a lot of my career success is I'm very process and outcome oriented. And so I was able to prioritize and say,

yeah, but I felt. Sometimes I interrupt people when they're talking, right? Go ahead. Okay. Please. So when when someone is lectured, you for a mistake that you know you made, how do you feel? How do I feel when I'm lectured for a miss? I feel bad. I feel doubly bad because I already know. Okay. So what is bad?

So bad is an umbrella motion. What is the emotion underneath the bad? What is it that you're feeling? The feeling I'm feeling is inadequate that if I had done better, not only would the result have been better, but now I would not be getting too. hold that the result was not good. I wouldn't be getting lectured. Okay. So I think there's inadequacy, which is what you put on yourself. Right. I think there's another shade of an emotion there, which has to do with the interaction of reporting. Okay. Right. So, and once again, I'm fishing.

So I have a hypothesis. I agree with that. But there's a second feeling, right? One is, you know you fucked up. That's the inadequacy. That's the carelessness. That's what you give yourself. Okay. So you want to know what the other feeling is. There's another feeling. When you want to be. When you walk into the room and you have to report to your superiors that the program that you're running isn't up to par. You felt inadequate the night before. You realized it wasn't there. There's another feeling when you go in. There's a fear of being judged. So there's fearfulness and or shame because you're about to expose your feeling of inadequacy to someone else. Uh-huh. And remind me again, what were you feeling as you told that story? Humiliation.

And what were you afraid of? Exposing that your family was not. Exposing the family weakness, yeah. Yeah. Do you think those are related? Of course. Particularly when you draw them out that way. Yeah.

Well, because I, and I think a lot of people, but I project, I try to project competence. I try to be competent and I wish to be viewed as competent. And so when I have to admit to an error, I do. it, but it puts a hole in my shell or image of competence, at least to myself, even if not to others. Absolutely. Okay. So, so I know, I mean, I'm sorry because I've, there's certain theatrics to what I do.

But I think that when you were telling that story, you were not just experiencing emotions from the present. I think you were experiencing the emotions of that moment because that's what happens when we remember things, right? You replay. Yep. Right? So I think there's a certain amount of humiliation that you feel because you're air.

wearing your dirty laundry on stream. And there's a certain amount of recalled humiliation because that's how it feels. When someone tell, like, just think about this for a second. When I cut off a piece of my thumb. Right. And I go to someone and they say, hey, dumbass, you cut off a piece of your thumb. Right? Like, humiliation is at the top of the list for how you feel.

It's like, yeah, I know. Right. That's exactly right. And you're telling me that, like, your biggest problem is, you know. is that like you don't get credit for trying. Your biggest problem is that like, you know, you know you messed up. You know it's not good enough. You don't actually have a beef with that because you know given time and support,

you will fix it because that is what you fucking do. Yes. You will fix it. I will fix it. It's just why can't other people see that? Correct. You nailed it. So then the question becomes, where does that come from?

Right. So the only person who is concerned about their image, the maintenance of their image, is the person who doesn't actually have confidence in themselves. Okay. And the weird thing is that you do have confidence in yourself, except for the times that you don't. Of course, yes. Does that make sense? Yes. Like, because I know, I can tell already that, like, I know that you get the job done.

Like, I know that you will double down and you will make sure that given time, like, you just have to account for certain variables, market forces, changes in X, Y, Z, you will get it done. Right. And so I know that you're confident in yourself, but something happens. Something awakens within you that makes you feel the same way that you did when you cut off your thumb and your dad is lecturing you. Yes. And even in that moment, there's that feeling of humiliation. And then there's the, there's like the functional executive at Amazon, Ethan, that was already alive at the age of 16 and says, hey, dad, you can lecture me later.

Right now, this shit needs to get taken care of. Yep. And even now, when you feel that humiliation, when you walk into that boardroom, there's a part of you that's like your 16-year-old self, which says, this just needs to get a dress and it'll be okay if you guys just cut me some slack. And then there's the part of you that feels humiliated, right? That's right. Let's just think about it. Yeah. I've definitely had that experience at work also.

They're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. What is that? You said so much there, but I don't, I didn't understand it. I don't know people understand. You went, oh, what is that? That's it. What is that?

Well, it's, for me, the, uh, was I do it to myself. And at some level, I'm choosing to feel the way I feel. I'm choosing, I know I can get the job done, but the process of having other people give me feedback or be skeptical of that. fact for a minute hurts. Yeah. Absolutely. So let's dig into that, right? Because you said something about, I forget your exact phrasing, but you were saying

something along the lines of that, you know, when you know you're going to get it done, but they don't see that. So you have to try extra hard to like feel like, use the word shell, I think. Yeah. Right? That's right. Can you share that? Can you just say a little bit more about that? I think that's important. So because of our performance culture and because of the patterns you've observed, you know and can

predict that when a mistake has been made or something isn't going as planned or isn't achieving goals, that feedback about that is coming. And so there is absolutely a psychological process of armoring yourself, putting up your shell, whatever you want to call it, and say, okay, I know we have a leadership principle again, or it's talked about a lot on Amazon, it's been written down before called vocally self-critical, where we expect leaders in the company to acknowledge their mistakes, and we call it vocally self-critical, where we expect them to actually talk about, I and my, team's performance was not good enough, itemize how, because the concept is make sure that we don't

call things good when they're not or that we don't have defensiveness about performance. In other words, the goal is whether it works or not. The mental goal is that we want leaders that can introspect and accept the fact that it may not have worked or may not be meeting goals and can then take steps to address it. But vocally self-critical has unfortunately built into it a bit of a public abasement element, right? Like it, uh, and I don't know, I don't know how to disentangle those two. Yeah. So I think that, you know, once again, that's kind of a cultural thing where I think that, you know, being self-critical and having like external audits and things like that are a healthy part of becoming better at your job. So in psychiatry, for example, we have something called supervision.

So in supervision, what happens, you can have peer supervision. So a group of psychiatrists will get together. Right. And like one of them will present a case. They'll say, like, okay, I'm working with this case. She has anxiety. This, this, this. I've tried this.

I don't know what's going on. It doesn't seem to be working. So we also vocally share our shortcomings in terms of work performance. Yep. And we also are inviting people to actually audit. So usually if you do a really formal supervision, like you'll write up between three and five pages about a case from start to finish. And you'll hand it to someone and say like, okay, I started this medication at this time.

I did this at this time. I did this at this time. Right. Oh, I guess I'm sorry, my, I'm speaking. speaking too loudly. That's okay. You're excited. I do the same thing. So, and so what happens is there's also like an audit process. Yeah. There's also a self-critical aspect to it. But I think that something has happened

in y'all's culture where it does become shaming in some way. Yes. And that's that's both what I experience myself personally and at work. And I think it's true of parts of the culture. And so I'm looking for how to address that for myself and ideally, at least for my section of the culture. So let's just take a step back away from culture because I think that's a longer conversation. Let's focus on you for a second. When did you start putting your armor on? I definitely put on armor very early in my childhood. I'm the youngest child. My house was combative. verbal no didn't have physical abuse but verbal arguments amongst siblings and parents was common and so um uh so i developed a very thick armor the result of which is as an example i can generally uh do things many people can't if you and i were to meet and you were to yell at me like

literally yell at me or get red in the face or shout or I could mostly turn that off and it might hurt later, but I could experience it and not run from the room or be broken down or because I'm used to that environment. Yeah. I mean, it almost sounds like a dissociative capacity. Yes. I don't know all the right words, but that is correct. I can I can just sort of leave the room mentally and be like, okay, this is going on. How does it feel to say that? Well, I've talked about it with, it's not new to me to discuss it because I, I discussed it with other professionals, but it's weird. I will admit, I have a certain, I value it and also don't want it. Because I know it's built up from adverse experiences, but I also know it's utility in a crisis. Very good, right? So there's a certain amount of almost pride and comfort. in it. Yes. I got what I thought was just a hint of sadness. Sure. Yes, there's a, it's cut me off

from people. In other words, I've been described as cold in certain, I've spent my whole life at some level adapting, because when I left my household and went to college, I, having grown up on a farm, you could even say I was poorly socialized or relatively few social interactions compared to others, I didn't understand that the whole world didn't interact that way. So like I would resolve conflict by shouting or by getting animated and I had to quick and I'm a big guy. You can't necessarily tell, but I'm six to. I also used to be heavier. And so I was I was obese basically. So I was about 280 pounds and I was kind of a huge guy. And so when that huge young man got fired up, other people were like, what the hell is this?

And so I had to learn to dial back like, oh, the rest of the world doesn't actually interact by shouting an abuse newsflash. That's impressive that you were able to, because a lot of people aren't able to rewire like that. Lifetime journey. Lifetime journey, right? I'm 50 now and, you know, that's a 20-year-old me that had to learn those lessons. Ethan, can you tell me about your mom? Sure. My mother, so I'm the youngest.

And so both my parents have passed away essentially of old age at this point. My mom died last summer. She was very critical. And specifically, at some point, I don't know, my late 30s or 40s, I said, mom, you never actually say you love me or you love your kids. And she said, yeah, I can't. My mom never did it for me. I can't say, I physically cannot say I love you.

So that was an interesting. And for my mom, nothing was ever good enough. She was the matron of the family, the stronger personality. And yeah, so she drove people very hard. I think the best in short, well, I'd probably given you everything you need to know by saying she felt she couldn't say you loved you loved you. But what do you think I need? What is that? Well, I mean, just enough information about my mom.

What does that tell me about your mom? It tells me she had her own issues, right? That she expressed that her mom had never expressed love for her, very unusual. usual for that generation, my grandfather actually divorced my grandmother, which in the 1920s and 30s was unusual. And so in reconstructing it, my mom doesn't, did not have a positive relationship with any male in her life. Ethan, what is, what does all this say about her son? what can I understand about her son from understanding who she is? That's a question I haven't thought about.

Yeah, you've thought a lot about this, haven't you? Oh, yeah, sure. So I should share, I guess, I'm an insight junkie. Like, in other words, what I specifically mean by that is I was excited to talk to you not only because I think it's good Twitch and good for my community, good for yours, but because I'm a lot of always interested to learn more about myself. Yeah. And so like my whole team yesterday is a different, I'll come back to your point, took the disc test together yesterday, my whole leadership team, about 30 of us in a room going through personality profiles, because I'm always looking for more insight. So I said it's been a lifetime journey to modify my behavior. That is true. And so what you're

seeing is, yes, 30 years of working to understand why do I behave like I do, what part is valuable and innate and I should keep and enhance, and what part should I control or filter? The relentless pursuit of positivity and growth. Yes. And the relentless part is fairly strong there. Like, I over index on it. Yeah. So we'll, so the, you know, the, the, the, the unfortunate, thing about the relentlessness is that it's fueled by a sense of inadequacy. I agree with that. Yes, I'm aware of that. So that's a problem, right? So then, then like, so now we get to Vyragia in apathy. Because the question is, if we take away your sense of inadequacy, what happens?

Uh, so I'd like to think I've matured to where I'll continue to work on being. If I could take away your inadequacy with a snap. of a finger would you want me to in this moment? Yeah, totally. I am because I believe I I still do a lot of the things I do. I have inadequacy is not my only motivation. So I don't fear collapse into inaction because my only motivation is covering my inadequacy. The inadequacy is deep and real. But I've matured, no, I know that. But it's it's, it's, I've matured. enough to where I want to be, I want to contribute positively to the world because I have skills and value I can offer and not because I must in order to validate myself.

Good. So that's Dharma for anyone who's curious. You guys just heard it. Okay. And but let's kind of go back to this. So we kind of, so you have a tendency to kind of abstract and explain things to me. Yes. I intellectualize. Yeah, very much so. Right. And I think the challenge here is going to be that you have, you don't actually give me data, you give me conclusions. Okay. So that, that's sort of a double-edged sword because when I ask you a little bit about where does this come from, you already have the perfect story. You're like, oh, it's this story. And you also, you said it's a very interesting thing when you related the story about the coffee cup. This is the story that my family talks about. Yeah, okay. Right. So it sounds like this has been

well-discussed, Moldover, Chude. So the challenge here is going to be that we have to get to the questions that you haven't asked yourself yet. Okay. Go for it. Once again, is this one, which is what does that say about her son? So you were talking about your mom as someone who's incapable of saying, I love you, who has never had, so many, like, analytical.

It says about me, I feel unloved. Right? I was always seeking, it's the same thing at work. I'm seeking positive feedback and I have an endless desire, an unmet desire for it. Like I'm a black hole of wanting more positive feedback. That's what it says to me. You're so good at sterilizing how you feel. You're a black hole for wanting positive feedback?

Like, I didn't know black, like, what are you a black hole for, Ethan? Feeling love. I want, yeah. I'm glad you can say it. You see how your mind did that? Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what you're driving at about sterilizing, but I get the point that I step away from using the words of deep personal emotions. Yes, right, which is back to your dissociative capability.

Okay. Right. So like you step away and that's also how you feeling? You feeling okay? Yeah, I'm fine. Okay. Yeah, I know. I mean, I feel a little bit of anxiety, but nothing that's distressing me.

Has that changed recently? in this talk? Yeah. Is that the same anxiety you felt at the beginning or is it changing? There's a little bit of anxiety about addressing, feeling deep personal emotions and talking about them. Yeah, because it's vulnerability. It's vulnerability to talk to you and to anyone about deeply personal.

Not to anyone, but... So that also, I think, is a great intellectual... analysis of yourself. So close your eyes for a second. Okay. Tell me what you feel. What is that anxiety? What is, because it's not anxiety, it's vulnerability. Okay. Right? That's what you feel. Okay. And tell you what about it? What does it feel like physically? It's in the pit of my stomach, uh, there's a tightness. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a tightness in my stomach about, uh, that comes from feeling exposed.

Eyes closed. Yeah. And feeling exposed. Good. Yeah. Right? So you don't want to feel exposed. There's a part of you.

So that tightness in your stomach is kind of fear. Yeah. It's fear. How long, how familiar is that sensation? Have you felt that hit in your stomach before? Yes. Do you remember the first time that or an early time that you felt it? I certainly remember the first time I can consciously remember

of feeling afraid, I don't know if I felt a pit in my stomach. Those those were fear of physical things. Okay. So do you remember feeling this sensation in particular before? Yeah. I think the earliest time would be when I was five. Okay. We're talking about this sensation, right? Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about when you were five, what happened? Um, when I was five, and it's a dramatic memory I've kept all this time. I first got an understanding of the concept of death. And I became afraid of what it meant for the world to go on without me. I had this, I had this sense of like, oh, one day I will end and the world will continue.

And that was a fearful of realization for me. So that's the first thing I can think of where I'm like, oh. What did you do with that? feeling. Did you talk to someone about it? I went and talked to my dad about it. And what did he say? So I asked my dad, what happens when we die? And he gave me a scientific answer. He said, oh, well, first your heart stops, then your brain stops. And I interrupted him. I said, no, no, no, dad, what happens to me? and he said, well, some people believe there's a heaven. I believe you're just gone, roughly.

Do you remember how you felt when you said that? I don't remember clearly. I remember time after, like I can't tell you what I felt at that instant. Sure, of course. What I felt in years that followed was, wow, that's horrible. Um, that's not a feeling. That's a thought. That's okay. I continue to feel afraid. Um, right? I'm, I, uh, I continue to feel afraid of non-existence, um, of losing that sense of myself. And that drove, yeah, well, that's going into what happened after. But I felt worried about that concern. And in fact, that was an origin of my

disassociative ability because that thought was scary enough for me that I learned to put it aside and say, okay, I thought about that enough for the moment or I felt it enough. It's becoming uncomfortable. I'm going to package that aside and come back to it when I'm ready for more. So I got very good at turning that feeling off. Yeah. Right. So and you're doing you're doing a great job tying everything together. I don't have to tie together anything for you. You're doing it all by yourself. All right. So I think we have two challenges, Ethan. One is that, so you're talking, I mean, beautiful. Like, I should just jot this down and present it in peer supervision because it's all laid out, right? So you had this experience when you were five, you felt, I mean, so I, I think

there's, there's, there's a staggering amount of being left hanging by your dad. Yeah. Right. Of being, like, alone in the wind. It wasn't a supportive answer, for sure. Yeah. Did nothing to make me feel better, made me feel worse. Like, because he was my idol, right? He's my father. I'm a young kid, a boy. And here he is like, I'm like, dad, what happens when we die? And he's like, well, you cease to exist in your body, brats.

So, Ethan, what are you feeling now? Now we're getting somewhere. Now you're feeling. Now the armor is coming down. What is that? What are you feeling when you talk about your dad? When you tell that story, you become animated. I feel let down.

I feel. abandoned, right? I feel vulnerable again. I see more. I see anger. Oh, yeah. All yeah, fair. Yeah, I know. Yes, I agree with that. I, I, I, I'm going to over intellectualize. Bear with me a second. I feel like my parents did the best they knew how. And they gave me a financially secure home with a big drive for education, but emotionally they did a fairly shit job. How do you feel about that? I feel like it left me with that lifetime of work to try and put it back together that I've discussed. And I have kids myself, so I feel motivated not to inflict that on them, right, to be a different person. Ethan, if someone treated your kids the way that your parents treated you, how would you feel about...

I'd throttle them. The rage was like, yes, I would enter it. That would be like Papa Bear is coming to clear the room. Yeah. And how do you feel that no one did that for you? Bad. But no one was there. Yeah, no.

Your parents treated you the way that they did, and there was no... Papa Bear. That's right. Yeah, I feel that brings on more sadness. I feel more less anger than more just God that sucks. And so I don't want that for anyone else. So I think we've got two, two challenges with you. Okay. Only two. I'm doing well. Yeah. So one is like what all these feelings are. And I think you do a very good job of divorcing yourself from some of your feelings, right? because like I don't like I can point and I think it's clear to me that you've done a lot of reflection. I think you've come a very long way because just what you're saying is like you're give you're not giving me a rough draft. You're giving me like something very close to a final product.

So a lot of the people that I talk to they're giving me like really rough drafts and our goal is to get to where you are 15 minutes into the interview. Okay. So and I'll just say like an example of this is that you're not able to notice the anger right away. But if I pointed it, out to you, you're like, yeah, it's there. And we can get closer to it if I ask certain questions that actually do the depersonalization for you. So if I ask you how you feel, what kind of answer do I get? You get a feeling? Nope. Nope. That's not what I get. Okay. When you ask me how I feel, you get a story and a picture of what I've learned. Sure. Yeah, what you've learned. That's the operative thing, right? I get an intellectual answer. Yeah, okay. And then like,

There are moments where you have your feelings. And those moments are actually when you step outside of yourself and you look at the situation. So when you imagine how your dad, like, it's almost like you're being Papa Bear for yourself. When you talk about, like that anger that I get from you, that visceral anger is like when you're recalling how your dad treated a five-year-old, that's what gets the Papa Bear anger out. Okay. And that pop a bear anger is there. Yeah. Right?

But when you just view it from yourself, it's like hard for you to embrace that Papa Bear anger. I don't think you are letting yourself feel that. And then if I ask you about the kitten, are you getting emotional now? No, no, not at all. I'm laughing. I'm laughing at myself because you're right. And I, you know.

Yeah. So if I ask you about your kids, then the Papa Bear anger is like, that's what you feel for yourself. Right. And then you also make these kind of interesting statements, which I think you've done a lot of processing on, right? Like you kind of say, oh, my parents didn't do good enough. Right. Which is sort of an analytical statement.

But at the same time, like, that's such a watered down diet version of what your life was. Right. So, yeah, they didn't do good enough. But, like, think about what it was actually like for you to grow up in that household. Okay. Yeah, you're right. I'm reticent to whine on stream, I guess. Yeah, my child, I could tell, again, no physical abuse, really, but I could tell bad household stories.

Yeah. Yeah. So I grew up in a verbally and intellectually abusive environment. Yeah. And it hurt. Yeah, good. And I think once again, like even that, like the size. subtle thing there is you say, I don't want to whine on stream. No one's whining. There are 4,819 people

watching on my end. And I don't think a single one of them thinks you're whining. That whining is your self-judgment and your distancing of the way that you feel. Okay. That's why you use the word wine. Because you're like, fucking, Ethan, like, why are you whining about this shit? Right. Okay. That's like what your dad or mom told you the whole time. Like, I don't care about your feelings. Like, why do you feel that way? Like, Ethan, that's unproductive. Okay, fair.

Yes. So there are two things here. One is like, you know, what the source, and you've done just, once again, masterful job. Like, you know, when we talk about the void, like the void of, I forgot what, how you. Black hole. Black hole of hungering for positive reinforcement. Yeah, hunger for love.

Hunger for positive feedback. Yeah. So there's that kind of stuff, right? Which is like, generally speaking, when we talk about feelings. things like that's the epiphany that we want people to have. Right? They say, oh, I have a black hole in my heart for love. And that's what people tune in for it from a voyeuristic aspect.

I don't know. I don't know that that, I mean, I think that can be significant for you. But I think what is far more significant for you is not to try to do the things that other people here do on stream because you're not them. Like most of the people that I interview are in their 20s. Right. They haven't, they just haven't gotten their slash played when it comes to life is just way smaller than yours. Right. And you have lived a life.

of reflection, introspection, and dedication to self-improvement, which is remarkable. And so I think the thing that we need to teach you more than anything else is like, show you how you step away from just huge parts of yourself. Okay. The goal here for you is no long, is not like revelation, it's integration. Because I think you already know you just choose not to like let that be a part of you. Okay. And I have it, you know, I would think that someone in your shoes would feel angry with their parents.

Like, you have every right to be angry with your parents. I guess I. But you're not angry with your parents because what you do, you're so fucking understanding that you, when I ask you about your parents, you say, she didn't grow up in a household of love. So you give them excuses for their behavior. Okay. which is helpful, it allows you to forgive, but also should not be done to the exclusion of your feelings. Okay.

Both of those have to be there, right? You have to understand and forgive them. I disassociate. I'm like, well, yeah, I got it. I give them a pass. And so then being angry with them has no point because being angry with someone who didn't, I make excuses for them. I got it.

Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So you're doing fantastic. So now it comes to back to your job and your stress. Yeah. And when you walk into that boardroom, and I think the reason that those feelings,

because it's kind of weird, right, you're able to handle so many different things, you're able to grow in spite of so many different challenges, you're able to achieve. So why is it that, you know, armor wearing, shell owning, dissociative Ethan has trouble when he walks into that room? Because you're the one who says, if someone's yelling in your face,

you can handle that. Why is it so hard for you to do this thing and put on your armor at that point? Because there's a part of me that says, well, maybe it goes a little bit, well, what is hard. I'm afraid maybe they're right. I'm afraid maybe the attack is right. Maybe, oh, boy, if you go all the way back to it, I guess you and there's a part of me, that feels like, well, maybe I earned or maybe my parents didn't do wrong, I was the problem, right? So there's a confidence problem or a self-value. Again, those are intellectual words. The fear that the root fear is maybe they're right.

Maybe I'm not worthy. Maybe it's all of that. And so it's fear that you're not good enough, that I am not good. enough. And where did you learn that? Home? Absolutely. Right. So now we understand that like I think so part of the problem here is that you dissociate parts of yourself, but those dissociated parts don't go away. They just lie dormant. Right. And there are some situations that cause the volcano to erupt because all that magas down there. Yes. And so the solution to you no longer feeling that way is to like, you know, like drain the abscess. Do you know what an abscess is? Yeah, I do. And I can hear my wife

laughing downstairs because we talk about the volcano inside me. And she just, she just, the stream just caught up to those words. And, and she was busting out. Okay. Because it's real. Yeah. So, so. Yeah. Go ahead. Say, I can have, uh, dramatic rage outbursts. Yeah. They're, they're, they're very rare and tightly controlled. but that's like the button up armor. And if that gets out, you know,

I'm a, the gaming term, I go berserk. I'm a berser. Like when I tip over, it's all that. That's what happens, right? Like with the dissociation with the armor,

there are all of the feelings that you understand and are okay with. And then there's all the stuff that doesn't help you that cannot be intellectualized, the stuff that's a little bit irrational. And all that stuff goes, beneath the surface. And that stuff sometimes gets evoked when you walk into a particular room at work. Sure. Because it hits too close to home.

So there's some avenues. There are some tunnels to like the magma at the center of the earth that evoke that more often. And if you want to stop feeling that way, like, sure, you can go to, I mean, you can go to therapy and maybe you should. I mean, I don't know if you've seen people in the past or a lot. Yeah, I have. And you can talk about the absence of love in your life and the black hole of love. And that's such beautiful, juicy, like, it's a juicy therapy imagery. It's like, oh, my God, it just gets therapists so excited when we hear something.

It's like, oh, yeah, this is what we got into it for. But I think, oddly enough, Ethan, I think your path is actually more, not so much the path of therapy, although that can be helpful, but is the path of meditation, is the path of yoga. Is the path of understanding how your mind functions. And then once you understand how your mind functions, changing a couple of levers, so it stops doing the things that it's doing right now. And the simplest of that is to stop dissociating and start integrating. To understand that just because you're a level-headed guy doesn't mean, like, it's weird because you're a level-headed guy and you're a berserker.

Like, you got to, that's got to meet somewhere in the middle for you to be integrated. Like, that's the goal. Yeah. Yes, there was a period earlier in my life where I sought perfection and absolutely said, to your point about disassociation, people would say to me, you're only, well, you're only human and I'd say, yeah, that's a flaw. Yeah. So then there's, yeah, there's a lot of other stuff too. Like these patterns that you have about yourself and where you learned that, right?

Well, I was trying to be unemotional. In other words, because you've done a very good job. Because knowing that the emotion is volcanic and uncontrolled, the first path, is, well, just don't be that. Yeah, right? Because there's no, because it's careless to be emotional. Yeah. It's the definition of carelessness.

Uncontrolled. No coffee on the saucer, Ethan. Not allowed. No coffee on the saucer. So, but I'm very interested. I would like to be more integrated, right? I strive to be a whole person. I want to, and not to just intellectualize.

I not only strive to be it, I actually want it. I want to be at peace with myself, not in two pieces. Yeah. So beautifully said, beautifully set, right? And that's that, I don't know if you read that somewhere. Like, you read that somewhere? No, that's like, that's that's straight for me. That's like, you know, llama level.

Don't be in, be with what you, I don't even remember what you said, but we can, we can clip that. That was profound. You said something. You said something. I strive to be in. integrated. I want to be a whole person not live in two pieces. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Great. And so I think it's, yeah, so we're going to start. Do you meditate? I have a little bit, not regularly. Okay. I read Tim, I read, what is it, Dan Harris and 10% happier. You must know

this book. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to teach you one form of meditation today. I don't, I think you should just start here, although I don't think this is the right end game practice for you. This is like the preparatory practice. Okay. The other thing, just in general, that I think you need to be doing is feeling more. What emotion do you think you need to feel more of? What do you think? What are I, so emotions are mad, sad, glad, etc.

What emotion do I need to feel more of? What do you need to let yourself feel? What's the emotion? Absolutely good. I'm glad you got it. Right? Now my wife's not going to laugh. So it doesn't mean be angry.

It means feel it. Okay. Because here's the thing. When you walk into the boardroom and your performance is not as good as it's supposed to be, we've been talking about humiliation is how you feel, right? But there's another thing there. When you walk in there and your boss is saying, hey, Ethan, you didn't do X, Y, Z. Like, what's the other thing that you feel?

Pissed off that they're observing the obvious and not helping. Yes. Right? There's anger there. There's anger, anger, anger. It's bizarre because for most people, anger covers up the shame. Anger is a protected mechanism. You're so spiritually advanced that it's gotten like reverse.

Where you feel the inadequacy, you see yourself, and then like you just don't let yourself feel anger. Because the behavior that follows really feeling angry is confrontational. So that's where you have to learn. That's your barrier of growth, right? So just like, shame does not lead to tears, does it, Ethan? No. You can control that. Yeah.

So the separation between behaviors and feelings is there for you in all emotions except for one. Anger. That's completely true. And that's why that's the one you need. need to feel. That's the barrier of your growth, right? So to feel angry, to let yourself feel angry, because it's not about an adequacy, it's not about a lack of love, it's not about any of that juicy, juicy, Freudian psychological goodness, not being loved by your mother and not being loved by your father. It's about anger. It's about being pissed at the injustice of the world.

And that's what you're angry at, is the injustice of it. Yeah, okay. That it's not fair. that your parents treated you the way that they did and they shouldn't have. And it's not fucking fair. And you understand that very well as soon as I put your kids into their shoes. Yep. But you don't let yourself feel that way about yourself. Yeah, it seems disrespectful, I guess. Yep.

Sure. There are all kinds of good reasons to not feel it. Right? There are good reasons why an intellectual, introspective, reflective, and experienced person like yourself, has concluded to not feel those feelings. And you've got to feel it. Okay. Okay.

So just notice it throughout the week. And then from a very sort of like psychophysics kind of perspective, in my experience, the more that you experience those emotions throughout the week and acknowledge them when you have the opportunity to, the less blowups you're going to have. Okay. That's good. And also the less, because the problem here is that right now, the reason that anger is so tied to behavior is because the only time that anger, you, like, there's a dam and anger is like rising on the other side and then it floods over. Right.

And so no wonder it's incontrollable because it's like the only time you get wet is when it's flooding. Yes. So that's got to change, right? So you've got to start irrigating a little bit, letting it out a little bit, acknowledging a little bit on a day to day basis. I imagine you actually don't, you're like colorblind for anger in your day to day life. People probably call you for the most part a pretty level-headed, calm, collected guy. Right? Yeah, usually.

Yes. Yes. With exceptions if they've ever seen the dam break. Yeah, exactly. So the way to get the dam from breaking is to actually let the water out from time to time. You have to process your emotions as they arise and acknowledge that you're feeling them. Okay. And so look for what the feeling of anger is in your body.

And so notice like your physical sensations, kind of like we do with the pit in the stomach. That's not anger. That's something else. Yeah. And just notice your anger. I'd say that's the first step forward for you. Okay. And then I can teach you meditation.

Do you have any questions for me? No. I'm super. I mean, I have a ton about how to integrate the personality. But I want to. know more, I don't think I understand how to form a good question other than to say, yes, I'm eager to learn about that and to be able, because I don't like having the disassociated shell, right? I don't like, and I try, like, I try to share honestly who I am, but some parts of me are hard

to let out. Absolutely. Because that, too, that's adaptive. Like, I think you used a fantastic work. So, like, that was necessary for you to survive. And, and now it's starting to, you know, like most adaptations, they're, they're adaptive in one area and then, like, maladaptive. Maladaptive. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So I think at this stage in your life, you know, you've managed a lot of different emotions. You've dealt with inadequacy and shame and things like that. But oddly enough, I think, you know, the way forward is to feel a little bit more anger. And I'm going to teach you. Okay. Teach me.

I'll teach you a very simple meditation practice that if you do on a day-to-day basis, will I think help you a little bit with managing your emotions as well. Okay. So sit up straight. Sit up straight. Got it. And then can you do this? Can I do that?

Yep. Good. So with your right hand, I want you to block your right nostril and breathe in through your left. Just breathe in and then switch and then breathe out. breathe in through the same nostril. Switch. Breathe out. In through the same.

Switch. Breathe out. In. Switch. Out. In. Switch. Out.

Go ahead and close your eyes. Continue at your own pace. Remember that you inhale with the same nostril that you exhale and that you switch on a full breath. Everybody's watching at home should do this too. Go ahead and do two more breaths and let your eyes remain closed. Let your hands relax. Notice the natural slowing of your breath and just sit with the person that you are. Now put your palms together in front of you, touching.

Rub them together, feel the heat, the friction, and then cut them over your eyes. Slowly open your eyes as you exhale. let your hands come down. How you feel it? That's good. That's very relaxing. You look different. Oh, thank you.

I bet that's true. You do two for the record. Yeah, yeah. Works on me too. Yeah. Thoughts, questions before we wrap out for the day? No, I'm eager to follow up in a week. Okay.

To try it some and, and the integration questions. Do I have questions? Don't. Ethan, don't judge yourself for not having questions. No, I was just checking.

I was just checking with myself. Like, do I have a well-formed question or something? Okay. No, I wasn't, I was, I judged myself plenty, maybe, but I was not in that case. Good. Sorry for jumping to conclusions. No, no.

It's actually, when you asked me to sit with my, I generally like myself. Like that was not unpleasant. Sitting with the person I am was not a big running list of ways I need to be different. It was, okay, I am, I'm fine how I am. Maybe I can also be better, but I'm fine how I am. Yes. Right?

So that, as you cultivate that sensation more and more in meditation, walking into that room when your product isn't performing is going to get easier and easier. Okay. That makes good sense. That makes complete sense because you're, what you've said in other words is you're no longer attached to the result, right? You're not attached to what's going on in the room from a self-valuation viewpoint. Yes. You are just what you are.

Right. And that is the way that you actually exist in this world. And then keep going on this path and you'll eat. even discover what happens to you after death. Oh, really? All right. That's what they say. That's what they...

Well, eventually I'll discover one way or the other. Yeah, one way or the other. Okay, take care of it. All right. Thank you so much. Have a nice day. Bye. Well, next week, same time?

Yeah, next week, same time. Awesome. Take care. Bye. Okay. So, okay, we're going to go to... So regarding beating yourself up for carelessness,

can you explain what a healthy and productive version of scolding yourself would look like? I will temporarily beat myself up for stupid mistakes, but move on quickly. So there's a difference between reflecting and understanding that you made a mistake and beating yourself up. Those are like completely different things, right? So you can do nothing wrong and beat yourself up. You can do a lot wrong and not beat yourself up. You can do something wrong and beat yourself up. Or you can do something wrong and not beat yourself up.

Or you can do something wrong and not beat yourself up. Right? There's a two by two table. And just think about this for a second. Completely independent functions of the mind. So if I like, you know, let's say that I was, I mean, I use some examples over and over again, but I think infidelity is a good one. So if I'm unfaithful, there are lots of ways that I can do mental gymnastics and convince myself that even though I did something wrong, objectively, I won't beat myself up for it. I'll justify it.

I'll give myself excuses. Right? So you can do something wrong and not beat yourself up. Then there's like people who are highly neurotic. Um, because like they don't actually do something wrong. Like they'll walk down the street and they, I opened a door and I walked through the door and I let go of the door.

And I didn't realize someone was behind me. And that person put their hand on the door kind of at the last second and opened it and then walked out. and I didn't hold the door open for them and I'm like beating myself up because oh my God that person must think I'm a complete asshole and things like that. So even though objectively

you may not have really done much like you just walk through a door you're not responsible necessarily for holding it like sure it's nice if you hold it but you can still beat yourself up over it. Right? That's kind of like social anxiety or you know feelings of inadequacy so you can have a cognitive bias

where even though you're not doing anything wrong that you're you're still sort of beating yourself up. And then you can do something wrong and you can beat yourself up over it. Or you can do something wrong and then you cannot beat yourself up over it. So case and point of the last one,

at the beginning of the stream, if you guys were around, you saw the train wreck of the century in terms of, or not, I mean, not the century, but probably the stupidest thing that I've ever done on stream. And I completely acknowledge it was a terrible thing to do, and boy, was that a mistake.

Like, there is no question that what I did was a terrible idea. And it's like, did I beat myself up over it? No, I'm not going to do it again. I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to learn about how to do things better, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it because I acknowledge that I'm a boomer. and as we've talked about before, boomer is my armor, right?

Boomer is my excuse. I'm a boomer and I don't know how these... I don't know how the internet works. Ah, Discord. Right? And then... You know, like, that's just... I'm like, there's going to be like growing pains.

Right? There's going to be growing pains. Like, I'm going to make mistakes on stream. Like, this is new to me. Like, you know, trying to... save the internet through AOE healing is going to have a learning curve, folks. So that's going to happen from time to time. So the question is, how do you, so I think one is like reflective and one is like a sense

of beating yourself up, which has to do with like ego and sense of self. Like do you just acknowledge, so you have to acknowledge that there's a difference between incompetence and inexperience. This is where I think a lot of people get tripped up. So the question is like, are you incompetent? which is a lot of times how you feel about yourself. Like you feel like, oh, I'm dumb. Or like, I'm socially bad, right?

I'm socially incompetent. Whereas if you really stop and look at it, like if you spend 10 hours a day playing video games, your social function isn't going to be good, but that's not because you're like socially like defunct in some way. It's because you're inexperienced because you spend most of your time behind a computer screen. It's like you wouldn't blame like a first year medical student

for not doing a good job in surgery because they're just new to this. And if you spend most of your time behind a computer screen, why would you think that you're good with people? Right? So try to be a little bit compassionate towards yourself. Try to understand that there's a difference between like you sucking at life and you being inexperienced at life.

And if you guys saw like this interview was different from many of the others. And why is that? It's because Ethan has like more XP. He's like higher level. He's been doing this a while. his slash played is like way higher than your slash blade. So the way that he manages his emotions and the way that he understands himself is going to be different.

Right? Yeah. So just, so someone's saying we are noobs. Yeah, so let's remember somewhere along the way, Noob changed its meaning. Remember, Noob has its origins. I know this because I'm a boomer and I was there in the days when Noob was born. I remember, right?

So noob is a newbie, someone who's new, someone who's inexperienced. But now what no nob means, nob no longer means inexperienced. Newm means, nob means you suck. Like, not inexperienced, you suck. So what you guys have to do is remember there's a difference between incompetence and inexperience, and are you allowed to make mistakes given the situation? And chances are the answer is almost. always yes.

That like even in social situations, even in marriage and relationships, like you can have fights with your significant other and you can have challenges in your marriage. And that doesn't mean that like even though you get better at marriage, you continue having challenges. Like that's how it works. Life continues throwing new things at you, which is how life is. So you're going to continually make mistakes. So don't worry about it, man.

Relax a little bit. some fun. laugh at it. Okay. Can shaming ever be productive and healthy for self-improvement? Okay, so this is a great question. Okay. Can shaming ever be productive and healthy for self-improvement?

Okay, so the tricky thing here is the statement itself. Okay. So I'm going to do this again. Where hopefully this works. Okay. I don't know if you guys actually like this or not, but I think this is too good to pass up. Okay. All right.

let's look at this sentence can oh god shaming ever be productive and healthy for self-improvement so now we're going to do something i have faith in you chat so you guys tell me what do you think the answer to this is okay so ah i see some people are getting it okay so what do you guys think about this right can shaming ever be productive for self-improvement and then what do you guys think about this right? There you have it. Well done, Twitter chat. Beautiful. Answer the question. So now we get to like a couple of things. So a lot of times when we are asking ourselves questions or we have conceptions of the world, we tie things together. Like this is going to sound kind of weird and abstract. But a lot of your growth is going to come when you take the things that

your mind automatically spits out. So this is important to understand. This person just spat out that sentence. Right? So something in their mind, they think that like, okay, productive, because they acknowledge that shaming can be productive, but they know that you're not supposed to do that. So they're confused about, like, how do you move forward? Right. So like, separate out what is going on in your mind. And like, actually look at it, actually look at your thoughts, and you'll be amazed at what you can discover. When you apply your analytical power, which is what gamers are really good at, So I could give you, like this is a person, this is a question that someone asked me because I'm an expert, right? I'm super smart.

Harvard Andy here. Yoga Andy, meditation Andy, 70 years in India starting to become a monk Andy, all of the Andes. And you can come to the answer just that easily. You can do it. You can do it. All you have to do is analyze it. You all are brilliant. You just have to know how to analyze it.

You just have to give yourself the chance to reflect upon your thoughts. Right? you have to like this is important it's hard to study everything in your mind so put it out on something and then leverage your full analytical capability on it you'll be amazed at what you're able to accomplish what you will understand about yourself so can shaming ever be productive and healthy for self-improvement both of those things i don't think so i think shame can definitely drive productivity for self-improvement for sure, right? That absolutely. Is it going to be healthy for self-improvement? I don't think so. So shame can be like sort of healthy in the sense that

shame is a regular part of life and we should experience it. But if you're using shame to fuel self-improvement, I don't think that's usually healthy, right? Maybe, but generally speaking, no. So I think the rub is that how can you find self-improvement? How can you motivate yourself towards self-improvement without a negative emotion driving it, which kind of goes back to the thing about anger. Okay. Regarding a sense of inadequacy fueling personal growth, what does a relentless pursuit of personal growth look like when it's fueled in a healthy way instead of fueled by inadequacy?

Okay. Okay. This is going to be fun. All right. We're going to do this again. Okay? You guys ready? This one's harder.

Okay. So you guys have to give yourself some slack. You can't do it. But okay. Okay. Regarding sense of inadequacy, fueling personal growth. What does relentless pursuit for personal growth look like when it's fueled in a healthy way? Okay.

So, Twitter chat, now this is going to be hard. okay maybe because it's going to be a little bit read my mind I'm going to tell you guys that for healthy personal growth there is one word

in this question which is wrong that's just lead speak there we go okay so fuel is misspelled but Twitch chat figured it out look at that that's it

beautiful beautiful you guys see that like you see how Oh shit There we go Like Like this person You can see this person's

Psychology in terms of this You did it You did it You did it you fix it That's healthy Ready Unhealthy Healthy

Unhealthy Healthy Unhealthy Unhealthy Healthy Good job Good job dude Good job

Twitter chat I wish I could donate to Twitch chat. I'd sub. I'd sub. If Twitch chat was streaming, I would sub right there. Well done, team. But you guys see that? So inadequacy is about, like, the relentless pursuit.

Like, why do you need to be relentless if you're adequate? Like, you don't need to be relentless if you're adequate. Like, you're fine. You don't need to do anything. Just chill, man. And, like, grow and approve when you feel like it. and when life demands it of you. And like, that's it.

So it's the relentlessness. That's the problem. Because relentless, oh, serious up, thanks for gifting. Relentlessness is like, that's from inadequacy, right? Because you're never good enough. So you have to be relentless. The relentless pursuit. So anytime people are like relentlessly pursuing self-growth, like I'm like, dude, why do you need to grow?

Like, what's wrong with you that you need to grow? Why can't you just be good enough the way you are? that's healthy. And then you can grow like when, you know, there are times that, I mean, I generally have a pretty good opinion of myself. And there are times that, like, I need to learn and grow. Like, hey, Dr. Kay, don't just hop on Discord when you're live on stream and let the internet just say whatever it wants to. Because that's just, it's just too good to pass up for some of those people out there. It's just too good.

You just can't, they just can't pass it up. Right? And come on. Can we really like, is that my mistake? or is that their mistake? Like, let's be honest. That's probably on me because, you know, it's just too good to pass up.

Okay. What do I think about Ethan's level of self-consciousness? So, I think Ethan, I don't know what you mean by self-consciousness, but, I mean, I think Ethan is highly self-aware of all of the parts that he's self-aware of, and that he's unaware of something relatively large

in his psychology, which is usually how it works. So Carl Jung talked about something called the shadow, which is like the part of our mind that we sort of don't acknowledge. And he also said that most of the growth comes from exploring our shadows, which sort of makes sense because if you were aware of it, you would have worked on it and reflected and fixed it anyway. So the role of like an analyst, a psychoanalyst, is to like help people explore their shadows because that's the part that they don't understand. And I think that sort of makes sense.

But it's not like any sort of drastic, you know, deep psychological concept. Oh, the shadow. It's just like if your house, you know, if you have a leaky faucet, you're not going to fix it unless you know it's leaking. So the things that you're unaware of are where your kind of barrier of growth is or where your opportunity of growth is. I think overall he's like quite reflective and you guys could see that like most of the correlations that I draw for people on stream he was saying on his own right and sometimes he had to be pushed and prodded like he said oh I have a black hole of relentless something he's some lack of positive reinforcement or something he said something weird some weird

you know corporate speak about love and he's like I'm like what is that and he's like oh it's love so he's like pretty good at at pushing the envelope but then there's some areas where he has trouble, right? Because we have to kind of get to him in different ways. We can't ask him about himself. Because if we ask him, hey, Ethan, what's going on in your head? He's going to give us an answer that's going to be like all correct and like no flavor. It's going to be like intellectually brilliant and no. And I don't know if you guys saw, but like there was a couple of times during the interview where like he became animated and that's what we're looking for. That's what he's missing. Okay. When it comes to,

comes to Dharma and Sumskar, is there a day when something just clicks or is it something you notice over time slowly and only realize it's getting better after reflecting on it? Okay. Want to try Discord again? Your mods have set up a better system. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to answer both of those questions at the same time. But I'm going to get to this last question real quick, okay? And then we're going to move to Discord. We're going to try this again. So how do I get rid of my sense of inadequacy? You have to figure out where it comes from. Right? So where did you learn that you were inadequate? The second thing that you can do is meditate. Because when you meditate, I don't know if you guys saw this, but you know, when you meditate, you don't feel inadequate anymore, right? Like you just feel like yourself. You're like you're just you. There's no adequacy. There's no inadequacy. You're just like neutral. Adequacy and inadequacy don't really apply. Like that's just not a thing. And so that's what happens when you meditate a lot. So like even though I made a catastrophic mistake at the beginning of stream, like, Like what buffers me against that is just like that meditative sense, which is like, oh, that's just something that happens in life. Sometimes you get on stream and you, you know, shoot yourself in the foot. And other times you get on stream and they're like 15,000 people watching. Just what it is. Like you just sit there and you just be yourself and let the rest of the world like revolve around you however the fuck it wants to.

That's fine. No big deal. Okay. Okay. We're going to try Discord again. Okay. Okay.