HealthyGamerGG - I’ve Fallen Too Far Behind

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Dr. K talks about being expected to catch up, how life isn't a race; but it IS a competition, the advantage you have as a gamer, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can't be short without someone else being tall. You can't be tall without someone else being short. You can't be smart without someone else being stupid. You can't be stupid without someone else being smart. So I didn't do enough in adolescence. How do I catch up? So, hey, I'm a 19-year-old male from Europe. I recently graduated high school and am now finding it hard to deal with the fact that I'm no longer in the stage of life, where I have a ton of free time to explore new things while not having to worry about the consequences. the future or my own welfare while being surrounded by peers with the same circumstances. I know that no one likes their life figured out, no one has their life figured out at my age. But what I do know is that my friends were spending much of their time out there trying new hobbies,

learning useful skills for their future lives and careers, and finding romantic partners and friends who weren't just classmates and in general having more experiences. Don't get me wrong. I did most of these two, but to a much lesser extent, to a much less than extent since I've been addicted to video games and social media for my entire youth. I've been worried about this for the last three years or so, which is pretty much my whole time spent in high school. I discovered Dr. Kay's content sometime at the end of last year and have gradually becoming aware of my own issues since then, but I haven't been successful in making big changes in my life. The fact that I've become aware of my problems is a good thing,

but that brings me back to the first paragraph and the fact that I feel that. too old to properly fix things. By the way, the title is a reference to this viewer interview, which resonates with me a lot. I guess that I still have a chance if some people are out there reaching the same realizations at a much older age. Anyways, if you have anything to say about what I wrote, then please answer. So this is a common issue in our community, as the person kind of mentioned. You know, we've even done interviews with people sort of surrounding this issue. so let's try to understand what's going on. So sometimes we're young in life, maybe a little bit older, and we kind of hit this stage

where we're kind of concerned that we've fallen behind. That during a period of, let's say, adolescence or maybe young adulthood, we haven't done enough. And so we look at our friends, it's not like we've completely wasted all of our time, or maybe you have, but we've done some things, but what we sort of notice is that especially things like video games and technology will start to chip away. at what we can accomplish in life. And we'll look at friends, peers, maybe people that we know who have done more than we have,

right? So we did some of it. Maybe we learned how to socialize a little bit. Maybe we had one relationship. But then we recognize that there are people who are our same age who have done a lot more than we've done. And so then it starts to feel like it's too late, right? Because life is this sort of game where like the earlier you start, the better off it is. There's kind of a snowball effect to life.

So I recently read about someone who is 14 years old when they graduated from medical school. And it's like that person is going to have a head start on life. And so at the age of 20, they'll have six years of experience under their belt, whereas many people may be starting medical school around that age or even a few years later. And so life sometimes feels like a race, right? We sort of have kids who start school early. We have people who were an entrepreneur at the age of 21. And it sort of feels like life is a race.

And the tricky thing there is that, you know, when we sort of start to feel behind, what actually happens is that a lot of people will tell us, oh, no, no, no, you can start late. Like, you can start at any time, right? Don't give up hope. Like, even if you're behind, like, you can work hard and catch up and, you know, even I say that. So that's a big part of kind of what we share, right? So I share my story of starting medical school at the age of 27 or 28. You know, and like most of my colleagues that I went to high school with had already

finished medical school just when I was starting. So I felt super behind and it's not too late. So you'll have people who will sort of share with you, maybe their parents, maybe they're random people on the internet like myself, who will say, hey, it's never too late. But I think that that's a little bit tricky. Because sometimes what they'll say is they'll say, okay, here's a plan to catch up, right? So even if you're a little bit behind, you can catch up at this point. Like, here's what you can do. But I think that we have to take a step back for a second and really try to understand what's going on here. Because once you feel like you've fallen behind, catching up doesn't actually seem so easy. Right? Just because someone else caught up and someone is

telling you, hey, it's not too late to catch up, there's like a couple of interesting thoughts that we actually don't acknowledge. The first, and this is what's really important, is that the person who's expected to catch up is the person who fell behind in the first place. Right. So if I'm riding a bicycle and someone else is driving a sports car and after an hour, they're way ahead of me, and then someone comes to me and says, hey, like, you can actually catch up to the person in the sports car. What we sort of, like, lose track of is the fact that there's a reason why we're behind in the first place. And even if I were to lay out a plan, okay, here's how you catch up. Here's how you do A, B, C, D, EFG. We have to consider for a

moment that you're behind in the first place because maybe you're addicted to video games, because you're maybe addicted to social media. Right? So, like, sometimes when people sort of tell you, hey, it's like super easy, it's never too late, you know, by all means, like get started, which we're going to say in a second. We have to start with what's really hard about this idea of catching up is that like there's a reason that we're behind in the first place. And until we kind of account for that, it's going to be really, really hard to catch up. So if someone fails a class, you may turn to them and you may say, hey, even though you got an

F, next time around you can get an A. And then that way anyone who looks at your application sees that you've actually mastered the material that you've grown and, you know, you've deceased. discovered a new passion for studying and all this kind of good stuff. You can correct past mistakes, right? That's what people will say if you get an F. The challenge, though, is that you got an F the first time around. So if you take the class again, like, do you think you're going to magically get an A? Like, what about all the study habits? What about all the things that led you to get an F in the first place? Have those actually changed? So that's what's really hard about feeling left behind,

feeling like you've fallen behind is because the person who fell behind is the same person who has to catch up. And this is where if we kind of look at this post, there are a couple of really, really important things to consider. The first is that they sort of feel like they've kind of fallen behind and they're kind of afraid that they may not be able to catch up. They feel like it's too late for them.

And where does that idea come from? It comes from the idea of how fast you've already been going. Right? So it's not that a 19-year-old can, catch up. It's that if you've fallen this far behind at the age of 19, you know, what's going to happen over the next two or three years? Because at your current velocity, like, you're falling behind. So how does that magically change? So that's a very valid fear that we really have to think about. The next thing to consider is that sometimes, you know, people will give us advice

like they'll say that life isn't a race, right? It's not a race to the finish line. What? You're going to retire at 16 instead of 65? Is that actually like a, you know, is that useful? No, no, no, no. It's not a race. Go at your own pace. Take the scenic route. Everyone's life is different. So we'll get this kind of like advice, right? The challenge is that life may not be a race, but it certainly is a competition, right? If we really look at it, right, we're competing. So if my friend at the age of 19 has done a lot more than I have at the age of 19 and we apply for the same job, what people will see is that there's like one resume. that has more stuff in one resume that has less stuff.

And so sometimes, like, even though life isn't a race, and I completely agree with that statement, we do still have to acknowledge that life is a competition. And that if you aren't as competitive as other people, you may actually be a little bit behind. And this is where, thankfully, there's a lot to consider here, which we don't really acknowledge. So the first is that even though life is a competition, it's not necessarily a professional competition. There are a lot of things that you can do to get ahead. in life that involve things like self-awareness and kind of growing as a person and things like that. When we fall behind in life, what we think is that the only way to catch up is to do internships

or go out and make friends or start dating a bunch of people. We look at the ways in which we're behind and we assume that the only way to catch up is to do those kinds of things. And so the tricky thing is that if we're behind on internships, let's say, and I tell you, okay, why don't you try to understand yourself, gain awareness of yourself? You'll kind of like think about that for a second. You'll say, but that doesn't actually help me catch up, right? All I'm doing is gaining awareness of myself.

And gaining awareness of myself isn't something that I can put on a resume. Like, you know, like I can work on myself for a year, but if I haven't finished an internship by that point, I'm still going to be behind everyone else. So let's take a step back. I want to share a story with y'all. It's a completely valid point. So when I was in residency, we had a lot of very competitive candidates who would rotate with us. So in residency, you're like working in the hospital.

You're still technically, you know, doing training, not technically. You really are training. But you're very competent. So by the end of residency, for example, you're not only like basically a fully functional doctor, but you're also supervising junior doctors. Okay. So psychiatry residency in the United States is a four-year process. So sometimes, you know, I went to a program that was kind of.

competitive. So a lot of people want to go there. So we would get people who would rotate with us. So this is something called an audition rotation. So these are students, medical students, that would come and work in the hospital for a period of one month. And based on their work in the hospital, like, you know, you kind of get to know them and things like that. And then when they apply for residency, you kind of like, if they can kind of show how good they are as a medical student, the idea is that there's a good chance that they'll, you know, match in that, in that program. So it's kind of like an audition where you go and work there for a month, and if you do a good job, you know, you knock it out of the park, then you'll be high up on the list of people that the program will accept. So just to give you all some context, so the program that I went to gets well over 1,000 applications for about 14, 16 spots.

They may get somewhere between 2 and 5,000 applications. I'm not entirely sure. Nowadays what the numbers are. So it's quite competitive. You know, the acceptance rate is somewhere around 1%. So people would come and audition. And this is the kind of thing where, like, we had one candidate who was amazing. So an MD PhD had tons of publications, had done a lot of research, very good board scores and things like that.

And they came and worked with us for a month. And so on paper, this person is way ahead of all of their colleagues, probably in the top 1% of applicants that we got in terms of like what they've accomplished on their resume. The problem is working with them were, they were annoying. Like, every time we were trying to get worked on, they have to share what they know. They have to kind of show off their knowledge. They're like, you know, they're confident in themselves because they've done a really, really good job of like building a resume. They've done a lot of research in a particular area.

So like any opportunity they could get, they would share with everyone what this research that they've done is. And like sometimes that would actually interfere with. like clinical care, right? So I'm seeing a patient with this person. And it's like, okay, we've got 16 patients that are waiting to be seen, right? We're working in the emergency room. And so we're seeing this person and then like, okay, we're going to see them. I'm going to let the medical student do the interview. Then I'm going to kind of finish up the interview. Then we're going to kind of go back. We present. And it's like time to figure out, okay, what are we going to do

with this person? And then this particular rotating student would sort of share about, oh, I did research on this thing and this is what I discovered. And I think like this is an interesting option. It's like, it's cool that you did that, but this is like clinical care. And it turned out that this person was actually like kind of annoying, right? So they were sort of full of themselves. They had a very strong application. And we had other students who rotated as well, who were maybe not as good on paper. One of them, for example, had a very poor board score, but were actually like a pleasure to work with and we're like compassionate human beings and we're humble and dedicated to the work that they were doing. They may not have been as smart as the first person, but we ended up

ranking the second person way higher. And actually, like, our experience with this other person was so negative, you know, we were sort of not really a huge fan of them. And they didn't end up matching at our program. My point is that when we sort of think about life as a competition, there's a lot more to the competition than what's on your resume. Right. There are like factors where like if you're an aware human being, if you know what you're feeling, if you know how to be compassionate towards others, if you know how to, like, interact with other human beings, if you're kind of working on yourself, that can actually be a huge part of the competition of life. Right? Now, I want y'all to just think about this for a second. If you had to pick a colleague to work with, who would you

pick? Or even think about the games that you play, if y'all are gamers. Do you play with the most high-skilled assholes you can find? No, of course not. Or maybe you do. Who knows? Right? I've been a part of those kinds of guilds as well, where people are like, it's all about skill and like no interpersonal skills whatsoever, toxic gamers through and through. And that's not actually like who most people play with, right? And life is actually the same way, where if you think about, you know, who do you want to work with? Do you want to work with the person that has the best standardized test score? Or do you want to work with the person who's actually easy and fun to work with is dedicated and is willing to learn? And so life is absolutely a competition. And so life is absolutely a

It isn't a race, but it is a competition. The good news is that working on yourself actually advances your ability to win in that competition. That being a good human being who's aware of, you know, what triggers you, what sort of gets you to lock down, understanding that you're, like, you're non-confrontational, all of these kinds of things will actually help you in the game of life. So this is where if you're 19 years old and you're feeling like you've fallen behind and you're in the process of learning about yourself and becoming aware, that's actually totally fine. In fact, I think that is going to end up helping you way more long-term than an internship. And this is what I've seen, because I've worked with a lot of people at this point, where there are a lot of people who will crush it on a professional level. And they'll be so oblivious to themselves and to the people around them

that there's a wake of destruction. Anywhere do they go. People quit. They get into interpersonal conflict, they have trouble in relationships, because all they're doing is grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, success, success, success, success, and there's no time for like self-awareness. So if you're 19 and you've fallen behind, take a step back. It's okay. There is time to quote-unquote catch up, right? And this is where like, let's kind of think through a couple of the things that we've already said. So how can I say that it's okay that you've fallen behind? The first is to acknowledge that part of the reason why falling behind is so terrifying is because if you've already fallen behind, that's the vehicle that you're driving to try to catch up.

Right? So if you've been addicted to video games and social media, how are you going to catch up? It's not like you can magically wake up one day and be like not addicted to those things. And then you can start catching up. It's so tricky, right? Because if you've been driving a slow car and you're falling behind in the race, how are you going to catch up to the sports car who's all? already so far ahead of you. And so that's important to acknowledge, and that's a reasonable thing

to be concerned about. And that's actually where the awareness and stuff comes in, because how do you speed up your car? How do you start to be more motivated, be more discipline, start to, you know, cut back on social media usage or video games or things like that. You have to focus on awareness. You have to focus on yourself. And then there's a part of you that's not going to want to do that because it's saying if I spend a year of my life just working on myself, then I'm going to be one year further behind. And sometimes you've got to take a pit stop, right? Like if you're driving with a broke flat tire, you got to pull over on the road and someone is going to get further and further ahead of you.

And that's actually totally fine because we got to get you, we got to change your tire. Got to let you be able to drive. And the good news is that when you actually spend time working on yourself, some learning about yourself, becoming more disciplined, then you can actually start the process of quote-unquote catching up, becoming competitive. That's what I would really call. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you are a gamer and you've spent a lot of time playing video games, I know it sounds kind of weird, but that actually offers you some advantages, and there's actually research to support this. So, for example, I recently saw,

this was more publicized, but this study is quite old, that surgeons who play video games have fewer errors than surgeons who don't. We also are starting to understand there's some studies that we've cited before on fluid IQ and problem-solving and things like that, where I've seen the cool thing about playing video games is playing video games actually entrains you to learn new skills quickly. So if you think about, like, if you're a gamer, like every six months, you're playing a new game. There's a new rule set. There's a new meta.

And so actually, one of the cool things that I've seen working with a lot of gamers is that they may be behind, but their ability to adapt and learn in new circumstances is actually really, really good. So I've even taken, you know, interesting problems that I've had like when I was, problems is in like cases that I was studying. So back when I was in residency, I took a class at Harvard Business School. And part of that was like doing cases. So cases are, it's like a learning format where they give you like 30 pages of documents

and they start asking questions about a particular case. And the cool thing is when I like shared those cases with my gamer buddies, like they were able to work through it and actually come up with really solid answers. And so I used their help and sort of presented that to the professor, and the professor was, you know, I got the quote-unquote right answers and things like that. So it's actually really amazing. Just because you're a gamer doesn't mean that it's a complete waste of time. And in fact, part of the problem is that most of the research on video games focuses on the negative aspects of video games. So we're not even studying the positive aspects of video games.

We have some people that are sort of doing this, but they're in the minority. Right? You have groups like AIM labs that are actually using video games to have. help people who have strokes recover from that sort of thing. There is now, for example, like a particular video game that is in, I think, clinical trials for improving ADHD and attention and things like that. I recently also saw a study about Pokemon Go fostering social relationships. That's pretty cool, right? So just because you've been a gamer for some amount of time and you feel like you're behind, it's not a complete loss. And in fact, in my experience,

when gamers put their mind to something because the big challenge of being a gamer is, I can grind in the video game, why can't I grind in real life? And the good news is that having worked with a bunch of gamers and having had a bunch of gamers like even in our coaching program

and things like that, we've seen consistent change. We've seen that people, once they are able to work through some of this stuff, really become more aware of what they're doing, they actually can grind and start crushing it in real life the same way that they do in a video game. So it is possible.

So don't give up hope. The last thing that I want to mention just about sort of this idea of, okay, I've missed the boat. I'm falling behind. You know, I'm too old. Is it too late for me? So I want to share with y'all one sort of really important kind of addiction principle or neuroscience principle that has to do with this. So if you're someone who feels like, let's say I'm a 19 years old, 20 years old, 25, 26, 29, 32, and it's too late. for me. So as you have that feeling, it's too late for me. I'm too old. That negative emotion is hard to

deal with. And when we sort of start to feel that way, our brain has a very, very easy way to make that feeling go away. And that is to turn to things like video games, social media, apps, YouTube, whatever. So this is the other thing that's kind of tricky is that what we tend to see is a vicious cycle. Well, once you start to feel like you've fallen behind and that despair start setting in, you'll start to turn to technology to calm down the emotional centers of your brain. As you turn to technology to calm down the emotional centers of your brain, you tend to fall further behind, right? And if this process goes on for a long time, we'll sort of end up with someone who's got a lot of despair,

maybe someone who's kind of like, you know, we use the phrase doomers sometimes. And you kind of get stuck in the cycle where, like, you're falling behind, and you're playing video games all day, and since you despair, the only way that you know how to deal with that emotion is through technology usage. And so this is where a tricky part of this is that, you know, feeling like you're falling behind

doesn't necessarily mean that you're behind. Right? That's like tricky. Now, there are a lot of ways that your mind can convince you that you've fallen behind, right? It'll look at this person over here and say, oh, that person is my age and look at how successful they are. But notice what your mind is doing in that moment.

It's not comparing to the thousand degenerates who are worse off than you are, right? If you're 19 and it's too late for you, your mind doesn't choose to compare to people who are 25 and it's too late for them or people who are 26 and put their lives together. That's not the comparison that it makes. And so you've got to be very careful about that because sometimes the idea that it's too late for you actually comes out of a flawed cognitive thought process. Right? So you've got to be kind of careful there. So if you're feeling like you've sort of fallen behind some, it's okay. It's not like everything is going to fix itself.

There are a lot of really good concerns to have. So let's just run through these. Okay? So if you're 19 years old and you feel like it's too late for you and your friends have done more than you've done, peers have done more than you've done, all this kind of stuff, it's tricky, right? You feel like you've fallen behind. there's a lot of things to consider here.

The first is that a lot of people may give you answers. They may say, do this, do this, do this. We're guilty of that, right? We do that. We try to help people put their lives together. The tricky thing that very few people acknowledge, though, is that you can have a plan to put your life together. The problem is who's executing it?

And if some person on the internet or some self-help guru like myself or whatever, right, or your friends or your family or whatever is telling you, oh, here's the plan to put your life together. There's an important caveat there, which is that the person who fell behind in the first place is the person who has to do the catching up. So a plan constructed by someone who is not behind and has discipline and says, oh, just wake up every day and focus on this and uninstall all your apps and do this and do this, they're constructing a plan for you, but this is the person who's like fallen behind in the first

place. So are you going to be able to catch up with that kind of plan? And it's a very, very valid concern. Because if you got an F, sure, can you get an A? Yeah, just study every day, go to the library, and you'll get an A. But we got to remember that the person who's studying is the one who got the F in the first place. And that they weren't able to study. So it's a valid concern to have, and we really have to acknowledge that point,

that external answers may not immediately seem to work. Second thing to consider that you've got to be a little bit careful about is that people will tell you it's never too late. Life isn't a race. And I'm one of them. I don't think it's too late. I don't think life is a race. But what I will acknowledge is that life is a competition. And when you've fallen behind, it can feel like you're not able to compete because there are certain things that you've missed the opportunity to put on your resume.

Whereas as someone, like even if you look at our coaches, like our coaches come from all over the place. Like, you know, one of them was a personal trainer. One of them was a teacher. They're all people who are making career shifts later in life. some of them are like fresh out of high school or college and like this is their first job like we get all kinds of people and it's not too late to make changes and this is where if your mind is telling you because this is the important thing that oh like I'm not going to be competitive I'm not going to be competitive because the tricky thing here is that if you fall in behind

because you're undisciplined and don't really understand what you feel and like are kind of emotionally a little bit unaware and can't control some of your behaviors you may think I can't afford the time to work on myself. Because if I work on myself, I'm going to fall further behind. And so you can spend a year like this person, like the person in our post who's like, okay, after one year, I have a lot more awareness into my thought process. But awareness in my thought process doesn't translate into like having completed an internship. Not yet. So this is where I'd like to reassure you all a little bit. As someone who's interviewed a bunch of people and worked with a bunch of people, I can tell you that working on yourself as a

human being absolutely adds to your, you know, the value of you in a competitive market. Because at the end of the day, you can have the most brilliant person who knows everything. And there may be some companies that like that kind of person, right? Like, so there are many companies that like that kind of person. But is that the kind of company that you want to work at for? Is that the kind of company that you want to work at? Or do you want to work at a company where people are like more interested in, you know, being supportive and decent human beings?

And like the work gets done. like we're going to focus on the work, we're going to be dedicated to doing the work, but we're not going to tear everything else down for the sake of the work. So even if you work on yourself, like that's going to help you in the interview process. It's going to help you during times for promotion. You may get promoted faster instead of getting fired because you're so narcissistically clueless that you have no idea what impact you're having on other people. So it's a competition, but spending time working on yourself absolutely helps.

Another thing to keep in mind is that even if you feel like you've fallen behind, because of video games and things like that, we're not saying that you haven't, but there are going to be some silver linings there. No matter what you've spent your time doing, it's going to have some advantages. And so some of you all may say, but that's ridiculous.

How can being addicted to video games be an advantage in any kind of professional capacity? Well, as someone who was addicted to video games and it kind of wrecked my life, I think it's helped me a lot professionally. Right? But in that moment, you don't actually see that. So just trust me that time that you spent doing something is going to have some advantages.

And as we do more research on things like video games, we're starting to discover that there are actually some measurable, scientifically valid advantages that gamers have over the rest of the population. The last thing to consider is that we have to be kind of careful because if we've fallen into video games and social media and technology and things like that, the feeling of having fallen behind, the feeling that it's too late for me, that emotional damage requires a coping mechanism. And this is what can really get people stuck is because the way that we end up coping is by actually like turning more to technology. So you've got to be super careful about that vicious cycle. And what do you do about it? This is where something like the awareness comes in, right?

This is where you have to like gain insight into, okay, why am I reaching for this? What is so intolerable about the way that I feel? Because at the end of the day, if you feel like it's too late for you, where does that really come from? Is it really too late for you if you're 19 years old? I'm sure if we polled the audience right now and we asked, is this person screwed? They're 19. They just started college and they haven't socialized as much as their friends have. I'd say that most people who are listening to this would say that a 19-year-old still has time.

Right? That's what most of us would say. At the same time, if you're the 19-year-old, it doesn't feel like you've gotten time, right? And if you're watching this and you're a little bit older, you have to be careful. about what your mind will say, because you'll say, oh, a 19-year-old has plenty of time, but I'm 24, and I don't have enough time. And then if we ask a 29-year-old, hey, does a 24-year-old have enough time? The 29-year-old will say, yes, absolutely. A 24-year-old has enough time, but I'm 29, and it's too late for me. This is the ego. Right? So you've got to be kind of careful, because what happens, once you feel

like it's too late for you is you're very, very attached to that feeling. You don't actually want to contradict it. And if you're not careful, that feeling will actually drive the behaviors further and further and further. Let's see what chat says. Okay, so 91%, 92% of people say that, are you screwed if you're behind at the age of 19? Ninety two percent of people say no. Right? So 8% of people say, yes, you're screwed. So some people may believe it, right? That's okay. But the vast majority of people don't. Does that make it right? Not necessarily. It's just opinion. Opinion is not fact. And at the same time, there's still a lot of time left. So if you feel like you've fallen behind, it makes a lot of sense, right? If you're kind of concerned,

because life is a competition and you're a little bit behind. And the more time you spend on yourself, the less time you're actually catching up. And there's a bunch of different emotions involved there. And that's why, like, it's important to, like, think through this stuff, right? It's important to acknowledge that even if people are out there saying, hey, you can actually fix it, there are a lot of caveats that. There are a lot of reasons why it's hard to fix if you've fallen behind. And the number one reason is because you fell behind in the first place. So how are you supposed to catch up if you're the kind of person who fell behind? And so one of the cool things is like we help people like this all the time in our coaching

program. It's like literally what we try to do, right? So it's not something that's a particular diagnosis. We're not talking about depression or anxiety or schizophrenia or. or even things like ADHD or stuff like that. It's really about understanding yourself, helping you get organized, prioritized, build good habits,

start to set up a plan so that you can start catching up. And what we really try to help people do is use that awareness, leverage that awareness for behavioral change. So if that's something that's interesting to you, by all means, you know, sign up for coaching, check it out. We also have Ask a Coach of a Coach of, and things like that that you can sort of hear from our coaches directly about questions that you have to see if it's kind of right for you. But at the end of the day, I don't think you're screwed

if you're 19 years old and you feel like it's too late. You're not screwed. Should you be concerned? 100%. Is it going to require some sophistication to catch up? 100%. But if you're a gamer, I have faith that you'll be able to figure it out because that's one thing that we're good at. Right? If you think about gamers, right, we'll do level one runs. Right? No level. no level runs. Like you'll see that in Final Fantasy. You'll see it in like, you know, Eldon Ring, things like that. Like, we're really good at playing from behind. In fact, we thrive at playing from behind. It's something that we learn the game so incredibly well that we're able to play from behind. We handicap things to make things hard for ourselves. And carmically, that's what we're doing in

real life. We're basically doing a low-level run of life. And the good news is that when you get a little bit of help, when you start to recognize that the game isn't over, that you can actually do a level one run through the whole game. You can start to put together your life. You can start to catch up. No big deal. Questions. You all get that?

We're good at that kind of stuff. So how do I deal with trying to join others when I have fallen behind? I work on myself, but been with others unintentionally makes me compare myself. And even if I know it's flawed thought process, how do you avoid comparison? So this is really important to understand. So you can't feel behind until you compare. You all get that? You can't be short without someone else being tall.

You can't be tall without someone else being short. You can't be smart without someone else being stupid. You can't be stupid without someone else being smart, right? You can't be a smurf unless someone else is a noob. And you can't be a noob unless someone else is a smurf. So comparison is activated by this part of our mind called the ego, according to the Vedic system or the yogic system of psychology. So this isn't sort of like Freudian or Western.

This is Eastern. Anytime we compare, it involves our ego. And why is that? That's because our ego is our identity. Right? So if I am tall, that is part of the I. It's a part of my identity. So how do you avoid comparison?

It starts with actually paying attention to your ego. And oftentimes, this is the key thing about ego. Ego is a defense mechanism against negative emotions. So I know this sounds kind of weird because if I feel short, like if I feel like, oh my God, I'm so short, I'm so short. And that causes me suffering. How is that a defense mechanism? Like, because it's causing me pain.

And that's what's really tricky about the ego, is that the ego leads to suffering even as it protects us from other things. So, for example, and at the end of it, usually there's some kind of negative emotion. So, let's just use this example of I'm too short. As I've worked with people who have felt this way in the past, oftentimes what's underneath is a fear of being alone for the rest of their lives. And so if I'm afraid that I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life, my mind helps me cope by dooming me due to shortness.

Oh, it's not your fault. it's kind of comforting, right? Oh, like, don't just let go of happiness. It's never going to happen for you. The human brain and also the mammalian brain, brains have this capacity to induce despair. So this is really interesting if you look at research of Catatonia. One of the theories around Catatonia, which is when we go into a state where we're kind of like non-reactive to the outside world, we're kind of stuck in our own head.

So animals, for example, will play dead when they're confronted with overwhelming circumstances. Animals will start to despair. And it's kind of interesting because despair in an overwhelming circumstance is actually in like energy saving mechanism. Right. Think about it. If there's no chance for me to survive, it's make my time. Right? Then like, I'm just going to chill because there's no point in fighting.

It feels futile. And so oddly enough, some of the ways that our identity causes us suffering is actually to protect us from something that's even more emotionally dangerous. And if I tell myself, oh, I'm never going to be successful because I'm short, then imagine all the pain that I actually avoid by saying that. I'm never going to ask anyone out on a date. I'm not going to apply for promotion. I'm just going to hang out online all the time. I'm not going to go to the gym. saves me from embarrassment, saves me from rejection, saves me from all kinds of stuff.

So if you find yourself comparing, that comparison comes out of the ego, when does the ego activate when there's some kind of negative emotion that it's trying to protect against? So you have to get to the source of that negative emotion. So this is actually like, if you guys check out the ADHD guide that's coming out soon, we talk about this. Because there are five very common motivational, traps that our mind falls into to protect us from ourselves. So for example, it'll say that may work for other people, but it won't work for me because I'm

different. And your mind uses that as an excuse to not try. Do you all see that? If someone's like, oh, you should go to the gym, oh, no, like that doesn't work for me. Like, I'm different. So our mind uses this phrase, I'm different as an excuse to avoid all kinds of stuff. And it's not that you aren't different, right? Everyone is different. Like, factually, it's true. But it's how is the mind using that to manipulate your behavior? How is that your mind using that to actually protect you? What people don't realize about the ego is that that kind of thought, even though it damages your motivation, is actually protective. Because when you get, when you say, I'm different, that won't work for me. What do you get to avoid? What are the advantages

of that strategy. You get to avoid effort. You get to avoid rejection. You get to avoid failure. That sounds like a pretty good strategy. Hmm. Let's avoid rejection, failure, and feeling bad about ourselves. That sounds great. So arises the ego and says, don't bother because I'm different. It's not going to work for me. So how do you avoid comparison? You've got to get to what is underneath the comparison from the monas, from the emotion. What is the ego trying to protect you from? And as you sort of grapple with that, you'll start to move forward. Great question.

Other thing is that we've got a lot of stuff around ego, right? So in various places. So you all can watch, you know, videos or streams that we've done around ego, lectures we've done around ego. Once again, our coaches are all taught this Vedic psychology model, which is more of like an Eastern model of the mind. So it's not really a clinical model. It's like what the yogis developed. so it's a part of meditation and the yogic perspective on the mind.

So check out all that stuff. There's also Shunya meditations are really good for this kind of stuff because that helps dissolve the ego. And as the ego starts to dissolve, then, you know, it's going to be easier to act. Okay. Is it true that the more you fall behind, you lower the ceiling of your highest potential in life? I don't think so. So this is the kind of thing where it's like, what is the highest potential of your life?

Like you can construct a situation in which that statement is true. But I think it's kind of like a weird, like these are all constructions of the mind. Right. Like I don't know how else to say that. But so once again, just like the best example I can think of is kind of myself where someone, if anyone told me that, hey, being addicted to video games for a few years of your life and like almost failing out of college is going to just damage your potential. right? Like, that's a reasonable statement to make. And at the same time, it made me the person that I am. And if that had not happened to me, I would not be streaming today. So the question that I have for you, if you kind of think about that, is like, what would be my quote unquote highest potential? If I was four years younger, working in a clinic, you know, just seeing patients all day long versus me being a few years older and streaming, which one is my highest potential? I don't know. I think that that concept is a little bit flawed. It's a great question because we operate that way, right?

But I think this is where, if you kind of take a more spiritual approach, like everything that we do makes us who we are. And so who we are, it's not like one thing is better or worse. I mean, sort of it is. But generally speaking, I think that being who you are is really, really important. And in fact, most of the people that I've worked with who live, successful and fulfilling lives are the ones who play to their strengths, accept who they are, instead of trying to live up to some kind of potential, right?

It's kind of like play the hand that you're dealt instead of like the hand that you could have. And once you sort of move down that road, it'll lead to a lot more happiness and success, generally, right? But then that gets into all kinds of questions like, what is your definition of success? What is your definition of potential? is it raw earnings potential? Because if that's your measure, then I would have made a lot more money

if I just stayed in medicine. Right? So what do you consider a potential? Yeah, absolutely. Is Lollaroni saying, play the hand that you're dealt? The problem is that... So if you think about playing the hand that you're dealt,

oftentimes why we get stuck in life is we look at other people who are playing the game successfully with a particular set of cards. And then we try to copy their strategy with our set of cards. And as long as we're copying their strategy, we're actually like unlikely to win.

Whereas we can actually beat them, even if they've got a better hand, if we play the cards that were dealt. And I remember this, like, when I was first learning to play Dota, I liked playing support, but I learned that everyone who built these huge damage items with crit,

like, you know, with Critical Strike were the ones that I was losing to. So I started building carry items because I was like, man, these items are broken. It's so OP. Like, who needs support items when you could just build damage on any hero? Because look at this win rate. Like every game that I lose, this person is like critting me for like 10,000 damage. So I'm going to build a crit too and I'm going to own them. But that's how you lose Dota.

It's also how you lose life, right? You got to play the hand that you're dealt. All right. I see there's some Dota enjoyers here. Dazzledatelus build, C.M. Deso, 100%, man. I got to play some League of Legends so I can like, analogize to other mobas.