HealthyGamerGG - What Happens When You Use Hate As Motivation

Episode Date: June 13, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explores the "alchemy of hate," breaking down how negative energy can be repurposed as a tool for growth and why the most successful people are often the most targeted. He delves into the neurobiology of the gifted mind, the hidden costs of a high IQ, and provides a clinical breakdown of common ADHD symptoms—from time blindness to the "freeze" response triggered by high-stakes pressure. What to expect in this episode: Hate vs. Anger: Understanding that while anger is a general emotion, hate is a personal relationship based on identification and ego that requires a "me" and a "you". The Success Trigger: Why people often hate you not because they think you will fail, but because they are afraid you will succeed, which mirrors their own unfulfilled potential. The High IQ Burden: An analysis of why high intelligence is a risk factor for anxiety, as a powerful mind can predict 100 problems while a human only has the capacity to solve 10. The EQ Buffer: How emotional intelligence can compensate for lower cognitive scores in professional settings and why it is essential for high IQ individuals to manage their "undisciplined" minds. The ADHD "Lockdown": Why high stakes, which motivate neurotypical people, often cause individuals with ADHD to freeze or "lock down" due to emotional dysregulation. The Right-Brain Bridge: Why articulating emotions into words is a neurological necessity to stop suppressed feelings from subconsciously sabotaging your logical calculations. Time Blindness Mechanics: A look at how ADHD impairs the internal biological clock, preventing the brain from gathering accurate data on how long tasks actually take. The "Left-Handed Path": A comparison between the Sith/Jedi dynamic and the Tantric disciplines of devotion versus engaging with "darker" forces for the accumulation of energy. Impulsivity and Follow-Through: Why the secret to finishing a project is often learning not to start based on a temporary impulse, as the same brain circuit handles both. The Alchemist's Perspective: Reframing hate and roadblocks as a "spiritual handicap" provided by the universe to help you "level up" and reveal your true power. Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is here! Order now: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VHG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Let's get started. Welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Al-O. Kanoja. Just a reminder that although I'm a medical doctor, Nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. If you'll have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. Hello, everyone.

Yeah, welcome, everybody. Yeah, how's everybody doing today? Let me see if I can pull up. Hold on. I'm having trouble pulling up chat. And then I am. I'm going to pull up a couple of things. Hold on a second chat.

Okay, hello. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. Looks like we're, oh, loved yesterday's stream. Good. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I really liked it, too.

I think it's a challenging topic. But it was, I really enjoyed it too. I was very excited about yesterday's stream. What's the topic today? Great question. Teach you how to be a Jedi. That's not the topic today. No, I mean, I don't know if I know how to be a Jedi.

I'm not a Jedi. But I do have some Jedi mind tricks now that I think about it. Yeah, but so maybe I'll try to do that later. But what's the topic of today's stream? So we're going to talk a little bit about hate. And can you use hate to fuel you? and then we're going to talk a little bit about ADHD. We're going to talk a little bit about the diagnosis of autism.

We're going to talk a little bit about how to balance self-love with criticism. I use hate as motivation. Yeah, we're going to talk about that today. You want to learn the dark magic? Well, I mean, the last person who talked about learning the dark magic, right? And I used the dark magic on them. I think they had, they were, I think they're at HGI. So we started HGI, helped the Healthy Gamer Institute, where we teach people the dark magic.

So what Dr. King is saying that we should take constructive criticism better, hell not, dude. I don't think so. No, I've not seen the finale of attack on Titan. And I was talking to someone on our team a couple days ago, and they were like, you really need to watch the end of attack on Titan. And then, you know, welcome to discontinued tier. Okay. Yeah, there's some changes to the YouTube membership system coming. Who's winning the World Cup?

I don't know. Who do you all think is winning the World Cup? do Jedi's do Jedi's you know what would be interesting is to to think a little bit about Jedi's and mental health so you know it's kind of interesting because like yeah maybe we should think I have to think about this but like you know the Jedi's or Jedi's mentally healthy well like sort of right so the really interesting thing about Jedi's is if you look at the Sith and the Jedi this is very similar to right and left-handed tantra. So in tantra, you have these two disciplines.

So there's dachina-marg, which is the right-handed path. And there is Vama-Marg, which is the left-handed path. So the right-handed path of tantra is about devotion. It's about, you know, surrender and cultivating, like, positive feelings and, like, using... Tantra is about the accumulation of energy, which is neither good nor bad. And in Dakshinamarg, we're like, we only practice white tantra and white tantras for, like, it's for, you know, good things, manifesting positive. But then there is the left-handed path, Vamamarg, which is about engaging with the dark forces.

So there's like the five Ms, which are like alcohol, meat, fish, drugs, and, and, and, and, sex, which are part of the left-handed path. So it's very like Sith Jedi oriented. How have you never mentioned this? Yeah, it's been a while. I was thinking about, you know what I realized recently is that there's a lot of stuff I used to talk about in the first two years of streaming that I sort of like kind of stopped talking about because I kind of assumed that everybody had learned it.

They're like, oh, this is getting old. So I stopped talking about some of this stuff. And then like as we grew, I realized that our audience is so much bigger. and most people actually have never heard the stuff that I used to talk about, that I need to like revisit. Is hate the same as anger in this discussion? Absolutely not. No.

Okay? So let's understand. What we're going to be talking about today is hate directed towards you? Anger is an emotion, but I think that sometimes hate is more than anger. Right? You could argue that hate is a degree of anger, but I think it's, it has a different quality to it. Right. So like, you know, I can, oh, there we go.

Back. Yeah. So, yeah, so, so, so it's kind of interesting, right? So like, I don't know. I mean, there's like, there's like a persistence to hate. There's an identification with hate. Does that kind of make sense? like if I stub my toe on, so here's the difference between hate and anger. Anger is an emotion.

If I stub my toe, I am angry at the step, but I don't hate the step. Hate has to do with ego or identity. Hate is about identification. I hate you specifically because you arguably did something to me. So hate is a personalized relationship. Anger is not. Anger is just an emotion. So crocodiles are capable of experiencing anger. It's not clear to me that crocodiles can experience hate. So a cat too can experience anger, but a cat can experience hate.

You guys know what I mean? Right? So hate is when there's an identification. So I guess let's just, let's dive in. Let me just make sure. Okay, perfect. Okay, so let's dive in. Let's talk about it, chat.

I was going to like vibe for a hot second, but, okay, so I saw this clip, and I thought it was really interesting. So this is also going to be fun that I'm about to leak my suggested YouTube videos. and so you guys can see what I've been up to recently in my suggested YouTube videos. But I want to show you guys this clip. Oh, hold on. Oh, wait.

So we are currently designing in Italy, 600-year-old villa, where everything is a little bit older. But I want to show you guys the power to embrace hate. Embracing hate that has to find ways to weaponize it. You guys see this clip? I used to struggle with, like, caring about what people thought.

So, I got a hate wall of all the hate that I received to motivate me even more. Embrace my flaws and found ways. Interesting, he talks about embracing his flaws. Make amazing things. They don't believe until you make it cool. It is currently February 3rd. I mean, February 12 at 340. Okay.

So I've been playing some total war. But I want to talk to you all about this because I think this is really interesting, okay? What is a true... And it looks like it auto played the Zerkovich video. Okay. So, I watch this in the... First thing is that... you know, we try on stream not to react to too many like streamers or clips or whatever, right?

So we try to have conversations with people instead of talking about people. So if this is perceived in kind of the wrong, not the wrong way, if this is harmful in a way that is, yeah, I don't intend to harm someone with what I'm about to say. But I think it's a really interesting, as someone saying, so Kai has a point here, alchemize negative emotions into positive action, to heal is to repurpose. So that's a great thought. So what I really love about this is to understand what hate is and to understand how, what are the possible ways that you can deal with hate.

Okay? So first thing to understand is hate is when someone, it's not anger, right? Anger is like diffuse. anger is like, I can be angry at the rain, but I don't hate the rain. If I develop a hatred for the rain, that requires a personification of it, right? The rain is not a force of nature. It is like a thing that is in my life that is actively trying to harm me. So the first thing to understand is like the difference between anger and hate is anger

is an emotion activated in the amygdala. Hate is personal. hate requires a me and hate requires a you right this particular person is doing this particular thing to me and when someone sends hate our way there are a lot of different ways we can deal with it a really common one that i deal with as a psychiatrist is people internalize it you're at school i certainly did you're at school people call you a loser and if people call you a loser that means i'm a loser Right? You get bullied at school. Maybe your parents are like, oh, yeah, you're like not. Like there's golden boy, golden child, and black sheep. You're not like your older brother. You're not like your

older sister. There's so much smarter than you, so much better than you. It's terrible, but sometimes parents play favorites. So the first thing that we can do is receive the hate. Like, hey, bring it in. You hate me? Okay. This becomes my truth. And we're not stupid for doing this. This is how we've evolved, right? So human beings have evolved to be sensitive to the opinions of others because we're a communal species. And unless you pay attention to what people think and you can adjust that in some way, you'll get kicked out of the tribe and you can't survive as a human on your own. First thing we do is internalize it. And now someone said, but we can use it as fuel. Right?

But that too, hate can be used by us in a couple of different ways. So in sort of this like narcissistic picture, when someone sends negativity your way, they become the victim. And they use their victimhood for their benefit. Oh my God, this person hates me. Oh, I'm such a victim in this scenario. They're trying to take me down. And there's the good side and the bad side. There's a Jedi and the Sith.

And the Sith hate the Jedi. And that means like it's like I'm part of the force of good. Hate becomes a representation of evil. We're not going to take what they say seriously, by the way, right, if we're being narcissistic about it. Criticism, if they're criticizing me, that means they are bad. They are expressing words to me in an angry or hateful way. That means they are wrong.

Second thing we can do is kind of play victim. Third thing that we can do is have it galvanize us, right? These people, and this is sort of, I think, what Kai is sort of alluding to, is that he embraces the hate, right? He's going to prove these people wrong. All these people are sending anger his way, hate is his way, and he's like, I'm going to prove him wrong, right? I'm a show them. I use this as motivation. How? Like, think about it for a second, right? Because sometimes, like, it causes us to fall apart. And other times, like, he goes into that room and he looks at that and think about what emotions does that evoke. Does he feel bad about himself?

right so this is what's really important i we don't know exactly what's going on with kai but i think it's a it's a good principle so i i want you all to think about this for a second right so when i when i when i am when i evoke not embrace when i evoke the feelings of hate i'm going to make a wall of all the people that dislike me okay and when i make that wall i'm going to go and i'm going to look at it every day and i want you to think what does this do to you Why would you do this? And this is where we get to that component of hate is personal. So they are persons and I am a person.

I'm over here. They're over here. So we can use that hatred of like, okay, the way that we respond to it, I'm going to prove them wrong. This still becomes about my ego, though. I'm going to prove them wrong. Right? Like they are wrong. I am right.

And I'm going to show them that. But I think that, and that can be useful, right? It can galvanize us into action. As someone said, we're going to repurpose hate as motivation, also based in the ego. But I think there's one way that is even better than that, even healthier than that, and that is to understand what hate truly is. So this is what I want y'all to think about. Kai right now, I think he's trying to start a clothing line.

I don't know the details or whatever, right? And I think he's taking a step back from streaming. So what is it about him that people hate? Why does this particular thing result in this response, right? So if we really want to understand hate and if you guys want to be able to utilize hate, control hate, channel it even more. Because using your ego, engaging in the ego is a problem because then it becomes about me and you. I'm going to prove them wrong. But then you're opening yourself up to a very dangerous game because now it's me against you.

And what if it doesn't go well? then they win and you lose. Right? And then if you win, they lose, and then you feel really good. But you're kind of creating this conflict. So if you guys really want to understand hate, if you want to master hate, what we got to do is look at the comments themselves. And let's see if y'all can figure out, like, why this?

So this is the first thing to understand about like hate, right? So it's not always triggered by everything, even by certain people. If somebody hates you, there's something. something about you that triggers them. And that is very important information. What people don't ask is, why does this person hate me? What is it about me that this person truly hates? And if we look at the comments, we can get an insight into that. And then we'll understand something very interesting about hate. So let's take a look. Okay? Okay. Hard to watch. He's trying too hard. Okay. Another quick cash grab, put some holes in sweaters, and stitch some trash leather together and sell it to a bunch of kids.

Wait two weeks after drop, you'll find it cheaper online. Doesn't someone dress him up? The stuff that y'all throw on him, make it, make y'all close y'all's eyes and call it style, what you yourself is wearing is ugly. You want to do baggy-do early 2000s. This is ugly. corny, bro. Ignore the supporters, bro. Performative.

Right? So here's what I want you all to think about for a second. Why? Why are these people bothered by this? What difference does it make to them? He's trying too hard. What is their criticism? What is the criticism here?

Literally spelled out, he's trying to. hard. Why on earth would someone trying too hard result in somebody else hating you? Have you guys thought about this ever? Right? What do you all think? Okay, someone saying they're jealous. Jealous of what? What are they jealous of? Fine, it's envy. We detect that, right? They feel it's unfair, threatens their own sense of self. Very good. Okay. So this is beautiful. I love this You guys are so good. So this is the really interesting thing that I think people don't realize about hate. The number one reason that people will hate you, and I really believe this, okay?

This is not a hyperbole, is that they see in you a capability that you are fulfilling that they are failing to fulfill. Because what they, so let's just think about this for a second. So Kai is a very successful streamer. I'm sure he has plenty of money. And what is he doing? Is he retiring to a yacht? and playing video games all day and getting high or like what is he doing what is he doing he's stepping away from his career entering an entirely new field that he has no experience in i don't know too much

about kai so some of these statements could be wrong i don't really know and he's like hey i'm going to try to do this thing because i'm passionate about it i'm stepping outside of my comfort zone i'm leaving all of my success behind i'm forging into new territory and i'm going to give something a shot. And oh my God, do people hate him for that? And so I once had a patient who was literally morbidly obese. This is a medical diagnosis. BMI of like 36 to 38 somewhere is where she started. So this was back when I was working at Mass General Hospital in kind of a community health center. So low socioeconomic status, poor, lived in Boston. So one of these like, you know, Irish Catholic people who had been in Boston for years, a lot of alcoholism in the family,

a lot of obesity in the family, a lot of abuse in the family. Diagnosis of PTSD comes to me. And I try to help her lose weight because she were like working on her confidence. And so then what she starts to do is like, she goes home and she says, you know, I'd like to start trying to eat a little bit healthier. And her parents are like, that's wonderful. And then she starts to do it. and they hate her for it.

I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but like when you make healthy food choices, have you guys ever noticed that there's some people in your life that really try to sabotage you? Like, they really hate you for it. They're like, why are you doing that? Like, you can have a sweet. It's okay.

Like, you eat healthy all the time. You eat so healthy. Eat the brownie. You can afford to eat the brownie. Like, what are you worried about? You look great. Eat the brownie. Why don't you eat the brownie?

I'm okay, not eating the brownie. It's okay. Like, yeah, I know I eat healthy, but like, I'm okay without it. Eat the brownie. It, like, triggers people so hard. Someone in my life recently decided to become vegan for health reasons. And boy, does it trigger the F out of the people around. Right?

It's almost like they try to sabotage you. And that's what happened with my patient. People tried to sabotage her. It got to the point where when there was healthy food, she would buy a bag of literally baby carrots. A five-pound bag of baby carrots. baby carrots or something like that. She came in one day and she's like, look, they threw out the baby carrots. And I was like, where did the baby carrots go? And they're like, oh, they looked like they were spoiled. They had a weird smell. Mom threw out the baby carrots. Why? So this is the

key thing to understand. If people hate you, there are a couple of things that you can under, you're like, oh my God, I used to care what people think. Now I use it to fuel me. There's something. There's a layer even beyond that, in my opinion. Understand that they are seeing something in you that they are reacting to. The reason they hate you is not because they think you can fail. They hate you because they think you can succeed. They're worried that you're going to succeed. And it's fine. Like they can rationalize outright. Like, oh, my God, this person is a successful influencer. They have so much money. They're so successful. That's why they have a car and I don't have a car. There's something really interesting because remember hate is about identification, personification. It's

the relationship. And this is what they do, is they other influencers, right? They're like, the influencer is not a person. They have all these advantages that I would never have. Therefore, I don't feel like we're comparable. But the moment that you step outside of your comfort zone, the moment that you walk away from your advantages, now suddenly he's trying too hard. And when we see somebody else trying too hard, we look, when they see him doing this

kind of stuff, they think about all of the ideas that they had, all of the ideas subconsciously, that they chose not to pursue, all of the dreams that they had that they walked away from because they said, I can't do it, it's not going to work, or what if it fails? What if people don't like it? Right? And then when you do it, it really bothers them. Hatred and jealousy doesn't apply to people that you don't identify with. It applies with the people that you identify.

identify with the most. And even with influencers, that's the basic problem, right? Is we're human. So people will continue to identify with us as they should because we are human. And when you start to do something that they know that they could have done, the reason people will hate you the most is when y'all both have a shared potential, but you live up to it. And they do not.

This is very difficult. to experience. And this is where you guys may be on the hating side, right? What is it like, and I see this with people who are critical of me, and I don't know exactly what's in their head, but sometimes, like, I can really feel the identification in the hate. And they're really bothered by, like, what I have done because they could have done it, too. They just didn't. And you may have felt that, too.

And I want you guys to think about if you feel this hate towards someone else, right? Why do you hate this thing about this person? And ask yourself, I'm not saying I'm 100% correct here, but ask yourself, is there an element of this where I am looking at them and I know if I made different choices, if I woke up earlier in the morning, if I did, I know these are the things that I've always wanted to do, but I don't do them. And it shines a light on your weakness. And that is not something that you can tolerate.

And then what is the ultimate thing that you can do? you can watch them get torn down because suddenly if they got torn down then you are righteous you are justified oh thank god i didn't try because that dumb ass tried and he failed and so it was a smart move thank god i did not try because the one thing that would be really hard to live with is to realize that i should have tried and to make to make me face that mistake oh my God is so hard for me to manage. So another thing to understand, people hate you, not because of your capacity to fail, but because of your capacity to succeed.

And so people will say, you know, if somebody's pissed at me, I must be doing something right. So the other thing to understand is this is where I try to help people understand this, right? So if you internalize other people's criticism, you internalize their anger, internalize their hatred. The other thing to understand is the reason they hate you is because they believe in you. If they didn't believe in you, no one's hating on a 90-year-old grandma living in a nursing home

for like trying to make a gold medal in the Olympics win a gold medal, right? No one believes she's capable of that, so no one is going to get jealous of her for that. No one can be jealous of you, no one can hate you unless they think something is possible. And if you guys have been bullied, you kind of know what I'm talking about, right? And this is in every sort of like teenage rom-com with ugly girl with glasses and her hair done in a bad way.

And why do the pretty girls hate the ugly girl? Why do they keep her down? Because she's really beautiful. And they know it and she doesn't. So they try to push her down, push her down. At the end of the movie, she has her hair done, gets contact. lenses shows up, right? And then, oh my God, ugly duckling has transformed. If people are hating you and you believe you're an ugly duckling, you're not an ugly duckling, you're a swan.

That's why they hate you. So understand that that hatred is them being afraid of you living up to your potential and how that reflects on them because they see you, they identify with you. They're like you and you made it and they did it. Oh, really hard to handle. If you're experiencing hate towards other people, that's the other thing you should think about as well. Why this person? There's one other thing. This is a bit different. So as I started understanding things in this way, teaching things in this way, there's another kind of element to this. There's another kind of motivation that I think you can get from this hatred. So one is to be galvanized, engage in the ego relationship. They want me to fail. I'm going to prove them wrong. There's still an eye.

and there's still a them. One of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. That is fundamentally an ego-based relationship. I don't think it's, it can really help you succeed. Don't get me wrong.

Right? I've worked with many of people who are incredibly ego-driven and they will rise to the heights of success net worths of like $40 billion, like whatever,

because I want to be number one. Very good for motivation. Don't think it's healthy. I wouldn't advocate for it. But if you want maximum material success to be ego driven is a pretty good way to do it. And all you have to do is look around at the world.

Look at the people who are the most successful in the world and ask yourself, is this person contented? Is this person peaceful? Are they egotistical? Are they threatened by the success of others? How much of their climb to the top is because they can't fathom. They can't handle somebody else climbing to the top because they want to be number one. They need to be number one.

And will that get you to the top of the mountain? Sure. Right. I can't make a strong argument against it. But I don't think it's the right thing to do. But if that's what you want, if you want to be number one, go for it. You know, sometimes when clients come to me, I'll tell them kind of straight up. Look, if your goal is to make a billion dollars, you should probably go to somebody else.

If your goal is to make between $10 and $100 million and you want to be relatively happy, contentful, and peaceful doing it, then I'm the right person. like entrepreneurs that I work with. So I'll be really straight with them. It's like if you want to be number one, like go to somebody else. If you want to be happy, content, and be very successful, then I'm the person. So this other element that I want to talk to you all about is a little bit strange. But when I sort of got a lot of hate, I started to realize that this is the mountain that I have to climb. and sometimes when people send hate your way,

this is sort of like the spiritual work that you have to do. So for my patient who is trying to lose weight, when you're moving in the right direction, what's really scary is the world doesn't show up to make it easy for you. In fact, the better you do, the greater the challenges the universe will place in front of you. It's hard enough to have a BMI of 38.1 and decide, I want to try to eat healthy. It's hard enough to try to conquer your own desires, be raised in a household where soda is available, three meals a day, consume three meals a day.

It's hard to be in a household and make all of these changes on your own. And when you decide to put your life together, the universe is like, eh, you know what? We're going to make it harder. We're going to make your parents throw out your healthy food. And this is where a lot of people despair. And understandably so. Like, it's hard enough to do this. And now you're going to throw this against me?

There's another angle to this that I'm trying to find the words for. But, like, this is your spiritual challenge. This is where you will truly understand. This is the universe giving you the opportunity to really understand how incredibly powerful you are. That is hard for regular people to do. This is damn near impossible, but you are absolutely capable. And you must be forged in the fires, right? The heat of the fire is what determines the purity of the metal. And so as difficulties arise, as you start to walk a path that is spiritually harmonious, as you start to become the person that you know you were capable

of being, truly living up to your potential. The world will help you in some ways, but it'll also increase the handicap. And we understand this in video games, right? You beat level one that has the final boss is level 10. You go to the second zone, final boss is level 20. Third zone, final boss is level 30. Last boss in the game is level 60. As you get better in life, it's kind of weird, it's hard to describe.

you will notice that there are more and more roadblocks that get put in front of you just when things are going right. If this is happening in your life, do not despair. Understand that this is the universe forcing you to become what you are truly capable of. Right? And this is what's kind of weird. Once you understand that, once you understand, okay, this is the handicap, so be it. I'm not going to give up. And that's kind of the interesting thing.

That's the step you have to take, right? Like, let the world, like, let it come. Like, come at me, bro. I may fail, and that's okay. But I'm not going to give up. Things are getting harder and harder and harder. So be it. Am I going to give up?

No. That's where you become who you truly are. Right? That's how you develop power and confidence. In Sanskrit, we call this word shakti. Energy. that's when you start to channel your most divine self when the world is arrayed against you and all hope is lost.

Right? That's when you really rise to the best. So one time I played in his last story. One time I played at a charity tournament for Dota 2. And I suck at Dota. And it is a charity tournament. So there were a bunch of retired pros. Okay, who were like playing, not retired.

Some of them were like top streamers and things like that. Some of them were retired pros, right? And some of the best players in their day, they were the best players in the world. And, like, it's a charity tournament. I'm the lowest player there by several thousand MMR. And I played the best goddamn dota of my life. There's one moment, apparently, where I jukeed a T.I. winner in the trees and, like, chat was going insane.

Right? But, like, I can only play my best. You can't play your best if you're smurfing. What you're truly capable of is only, revealed with the depth of hardship that you're facing. And so if people are hating on you and you feel like the world is moving against you, no, my friend. Well, actually, yes, it is moving against you, but it doesn't matter because you can

handle it. All you need to do is become that which you know you are deep inside you. There's a voice that tells you, oh my God, like, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this, right? I want to, actually, it doesn't tell you I can do it. It tells you this needs to be done. It's a calling that is deep within you. So when people come at your way with hate, realize this is the universe, telling you to level up, telling you to become what you are meant to be.

And then remove, and when I go through that process and I try to help people go through that process, it also removes ego from the equation, right? It's like, they hate us. We don't need to teach them a lesson. Like, why? That's a gratification of the ego. What I tell my clients that I work with is leave them in the dust. Don't, why, play whack-a-mole with haters on the internet? Just leave them in the dust.

Right? The best revenge is living a good life. And really, that's true. They're going to be back there raging and hoping your next endeavor fails while you are doing something that is wonderful, engaging, testing yourself, right? And if you guys have played video games or you've competed, you know that the most satisfaction win, most satisfying win, the most satisfying achievement comes because of the challenge, in spite of the challenge.

Because the world teaches us that we are nothing. And when it tries really hard to teach us that lesson and when we refuse to learn it, when we become what we are truly meant to be, that is what when we know who we are. So the universe is sending you, you hate signals because it wants you to grow up. questions, right? So yeah, this is great. Who are we when our backs are against the wall? So this is what's cool about this question. See, when your back is against the wall, you've got nothing left but you, right? That's when it's just you. All your territory has been taken away. How do you know when to quit? Very good question. So the reason that quitting becomes hard is because our ego gets

tied up into it. The reason it becomes hard to quit is because quitting says something about you. See, the reason it's hard to quit is because if you quit, you become a quitter. Very easy to quit if you don't identify with a quitter, right? So there was an interesting thing, interesting weird psychology when I was training at Harvard and there's the sort of attitude there, not by everybody, but I think most people would agree that there's a sort of of attitude of academic superiority. And we'll call this like, you know, people will talk about academia and ivory tower. I think academia is wonderful.

I think there's a lot of amazing people there who are making a lot of amazing contributions. But there is this element. There is this element. If you go to like PhD programs, right? The best and the brightest and the purest stay in academia. And the more greedy people who can't cut it in the world of academic publishing, they go develop patents and start billion dollar companies and, ugh, they go into industry. They're not pure.

So there's this weird thing that goes on in academia where it's like, we're the best. And sometimes they are. I mean, sometimes it's the best and brightest people who stay in academia. But this is where you've got to be careful. Because like, and I was sort of experiencing this, right? So I felt like a failure. I felt like I was giving something up when I decided. I just start Healthy Gamer.

Because I was walking away from academia. Oh, I couldn't cut it there. So I quit. And then for a little while, I felt like a quitter. But then I was like, you know what? That's not actually what. Do I want to spend my days filling out grant applications? Like, is that literally how I went?

What I, today is, it's Friday at noon. And in what world, would I rather be filling out a 62, page application that's going to go through six rounds of revision as opposed to talk to chat. So when do you know when to quit? First remove your ego from the equation. Because your ego is what makes it hard to quit. Once your ego is removed from the equation, then you will be able to see things clearly. And then what's really interesting is when you remove your ego from the equation, oftentimes the question of quitting actually disappears. I don't know if this makes sense. Quitting is binary, but life is not. So I'll give you all an example, right? So I was dating

someone, I mean, not dating someone. I was really not dating someone. I had a patient who was dating someone. And they had invested a lot in this relationship. And they were like, I don't know if I should quit or not, my boyfriend is, fiance, is getting into online gambling. And I've invested a lot in this relationship. We have an 18-month-old together. I don't know if I should leave or not leave, quit, or not quit. And that's a binary thing. And I don't think that was the right answer. Let's remove the ego from the equation because then she's like, oh, my God, like, that means that I've given up on someone and I'm a quitter and, like, you know, my dad did that and I don't want to be like that. There was a bunch of psychotherapy involved. But what it really came down to is,

remove quitter from the equation. What is the best thing for you to do? And what we came to is really helpful. So if you're wondering, should you quit or not, strongly recommend you consider this. Give it a fixed amount of time where you need to see a fixed amount of progress. So go have a conversation with the fiancé, say,

look, this is not working. I'm going to give it six months. If I don't see significant progress, I'm done with the relationship. Be super crystal clear. It's not quit or not quit. What does this say about me? What does this not say about me? Am I leaving this person behind?

Am I giving up on them? I don't want to give up on them. Gambling is an addiction. An addiction is a mental illness. Do I want to break up with someone because they're mentally ill? No. Look, this is the reality of the situation. In six months, this is the time frame that I have in order to see progress.

I'm happy to try to work with you in this. those six months. But if things are not figured out by that point, I can't make any promises about stank. And it's not like you have to make that commitment and then stick to it. You can reevaluate. But I find this is so helpful with patients and coaching people that I work with. It's like, we don't, we always like, what do I do right now? It's like, hold on a second. Let's try something for X amount of time and then you will know. in medicine we have this this phrase of things will declare themselves is it an autoimmune disease or is it an infection both of them have inflammation in the lungs plural effusions but is it infectious or is it autoimmune

in one case it is our immune system not doing the work and in the other case it is our immune system in overdrive damaging our body which which one is it we don't know what to do should we give them steroids or not give them steroids? I don't know. Steroids in some ways can weaken the immune system. And that's why we give antibiotics and then we wait 24 hours. The answer will declare itself. If it is an infection in 24 hours, your IV-Sephtriaxone will improve. We'll see the white count come down. Their fevers will start to break. Hopefully we'll see some changes in the political fusion. That takes longer than 24 hours.

It will declare itself. So should you quit your job? should you break up with your partner give it some amount of time and be clear about what you are looking for in that time because it's so hard to quit when you think cross-sectionally what is cross-sectionally it's one point in time it's way easier to know what the right thing to do is when you add the dimension of time should i leave should i quit being a teacher well how are things eight years ago, how are things seven years ago, how are things six years ago, five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, one year ago. Well, I know there are some places that, like, there are brain-rodded kids that cause all kinds of problems, but there are some places

where that doesn't happen. There are some still good schools out there. Okay. So how much time do you want to give yourself before you leave teaching forever? I'll give it two years. Fine. What are you going to do in those two years? I'm going to try to get to one of those good schools. What are you going to do after those two years? I don't know. Okay, so now we've got two goals. Over the next two years, you're going to try to go to like a nice prep academy that pays well and has teachers that are engaged, right?

That's your goal. That's a very clear target. And then we're also, over the next six months, we're going to figure out what your backup plan is when you leave. That's what we try to do when we work with people in coaching and stuff like that. Should you quit? It's not a yes or no. Focus on the how to quit. What's the best way to quit?

When is the right time to quit? And it makes it so much easier. Because that doesn't make you a quitter. Make you a quitter is only cross-sectionally. If I quit today, I'm a quitter. If I don't quit today, I'm not a quitter. Someone who I spent two years trying to make this work turns out teaching is an absolute dumpster fire. Not sure.

Someone can call you a quitter. And then if you guys have been paying attention, who's going to call you a quitter? your fellow teachers that choose to stay. Because they want to quit too. But they don't know what they're going to do. And they haven't figured it out yet. And now they get mad at you. Right?

Yeah. So Michael Jordan used hate and spite to fuel all those practice hours. Like I said, you can use it to galvanize you and play into the ego relationship. Right? There's the famous meme of Michael Jordan saying, and I took that personally. Exactly. Playing the ego game is dangerous. because that is a game that 99.99% of us will lose.

You may win if you're Michael Jordan. You may win if you're Kaysenat. But there are a thousand people who played that game. Literally, a thousand people who got insulted when they were playing college basketball, and they took it personally too. They didn't end up like Jordan. So if you want to end up like Jordan, by all means, lean into the ego.

recognize the odds are against you and that's okay too how is this related to when you identify with someone and you want to help them as in i helped him because he reminds me of myself oh beautiful okay so there's another way that this identification happens which is which kQ mentioned right really highlighted this is very very very smart so sometimes when i see myself in somebody else that can result in jealousy. Sometimes when I see myself and somebody else, that can result in sacrifice. Right? I wasn't able to make it. But you can. Let me help you. I haven't been able to save myself, but I can save you. So you will notice that some of the biggest fixers on the planet are broken.

the more broken you are, the easier it is to become a fixer. And this is something that's been well studied in medicine. It's really interesting. There's this concept of the wounded healer. So many medical doctors, even before psychiatry. And like 100 years ago, people were, you know, there were like physicians who were writing about the wounded healer. And there's something really powerful about that.

I would even argue that the best healers are wounded. And the reason for that is because you can study medicine as much. much as you want. But when you have suffered, you have an understanding of suffering that you cannot get without going through it. So I really do think that my failing out of college makes me as good contributes just as much to my ability to help other people as my medical training does. Right? Having struggled with addiction, having struggled with probably depression, And even today in my mind, I tell myself, man, I was just a pussy, though, TV age. That one real depression.

That's just me being a wuss. Me being a fuck up. So I still have that internal dialogue of self-criticism. I think it's, I don't think it's wrong. So this is the other weird thing. I think at some point, we started assuming that the critical thoughts in our head that are nasty or by, by definition wrong. That's not really what you are, man.

No, you're a wonderful person. And that's where like, honestly, I believe for myself and for many people too, but we're not really allowed to say this, if you have a self-critical thought on your head where like you think you're a piece of trash in some ways, you could be right. There's a reason that voice is there. Now, there's a differential diagnosis here. Okay, so like this is where that voice is wrong if you grew up. in a household of abuse or neglect.

That voice is somewhat wrong if you were bullied heavily. I'm not saying it's always right, but I'm also saying it's not always wrong. And this is the important thing, as long as you don't identify with it. I'm not a loser, but I have been a wuss. I could have done better in those moments. To de-identify with it is the real, real correct thing, in my opinion. because there's a voice in you that may be harsh, may be critical, and doesn't have to be that harsh.

But if you can sort of take a step back and be like, you know what, that voice has an element of truth to it. I could have done things better. And that's the tricky thing, because if you're clinically ill, have trauma, abuse, neglect, then I think you shouldn't trust that voice. Because that is not actually your voice. It is the voice that was implanted within you. Right?

So it's nuanced there. but does that kind of make sense? I just think it's what if it's both? Yeah, not what if it's both there is a very good chance that it is both.

So I was bullied a lot growing up in school. Right? So there is an element of toxicity to it. I also did this other thing that you guys may have heard of. I played games on the internet. You guys heard of this?

Playing games on the internet? And playing games on the internet is also where you will encounter a lot of toxic things being said about you. And so try as I might to attain spiritual purity. I'm still a degenerate game. Like there's a corner of my mind that is a degenerate toxic gamer, dude. Oh my God, it's so bad. And it's both, right?

But, and that's okay. So, like, it's okay. Like, there's an element to it. And that's why, like, I don't, like, let it tell me truth. I don't, like, let it dictate. things 100%. But it's like, okay, if it says that, if it says I was like kind of a wist, like let's examine that critically. Okay. I know it's internet. Yeah. So the internet, I know this is confusing for all the gen alpha kids. So you know when you open up like

TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, it's kind of weird, but those apps on your phone are all like connected in ways that you can't see by this thing called the internet. And the internet is the most direct way to access the internet. Actually, I don't even think that's true right now. So the internet used to be accessed primarily through the app like Chrome or Firefox. Like you know how those apps have these things called websites? That was the main way that they interacted with each other. But the internet is all of the connections. The internet is what when you DM someone on Snapchat, the internet is what allows you to send that message to them. It's really confusing. Hey, y'all, just a reminder that in addition to these

awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description. below and back to the video. Okay. I want to show you all. We're going to open up the gram. Did you guys hear that? Lars, but there were a lot of people who, when you were kids, we were classified as gifted and all to say, you know what? You're autistic. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but no. It's true, right?

So I took the testimony because I've always thought, why do I act this way and da-da-da, but then you flip it, also your superpower. That's why you could stand on stage and make up these worlds and do these things. So it's crazy. I had to realize all those things being on the spectrum and thinking the way that I do. I really haven't spoken about this at large. But... Okay, so we're going to talk for a second about gifted or on the spectrum. Oh, actually, I've been told that you guys like it when I play something twice. So we're going to listen to it again. There were a lot of people who, when you were kids, we were classified as gifted and all this thing, you know what? You're autistic. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh. I know. It's true, right? So I took the test because I've always thought,

why do I act this way and da-da-da-da, but then you flip it and it was also your superpower. That's where you could stand on stage and make up these worlds and do these things. So it's crazy. I had to realize all those things being on the spectrum and thinking the way that I do. I really haven't. Okay. So you all relate to this? at all. I need to play a choice for special chat. Yeah, gifted and on the spectrum. Why not both? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are, we're in the right, we're in the right vein, chat. Let me just pull up. Give me a second. Okay. I can't find something. I want to pull up a paper real quick.

Okay. So, I thought this is really interesting. I wanted to pull up some research. Give me a second. It's coming. I'm going to pull up some papers, chat. Give me a second. I had to restart my PC, so I have to, like, do all this stuff over again. Okay, okay. Almost done, chat.

Almost done. Got it. Okay, let me just make sure that these are all working. All right, so we're going to, let me just take a quick look, okay? My side bias, this is good. Emotional intelligence, cognitive intelligence, job. Yeah, here we go. No, not this one.

Cognitive, not this one. Yeah, this is good. Intimate relationships and intellectually gifted. This is the one I'm looking for. High intelligence, a risk factor for psychological and physiological over-excidabilities, motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Okay. So you guys identify with this?

Like you get called gifted, Discover, you're autistic? Okay. Giftedness versus special. Which are you? So I have an interesting question for y'all that I asked myself some time ago. Why is it that everyone isn't a genius? You guys ever wondered this? Like, why isn't that everybody is a genius?

No, no, no, no, no, you guys are not because it's relative. What I mean is literally, why is the average IQ of human beings, not 200? Why do you all think that is? Right? So sure, it's relative. But why is the average IQ like 100 instead of 200? Okay. High IQ is also a liability.

So the other question that you can ask is what? Okay, we've got, I gave a kidney transplant. Now I've only got one kidney left. Why don't I have three kidneys? Why don't I have two hearts? Why don't I have three eyes? Why do I have two eyes? Why not just one eye?

Why not one ocular organ? I have one nose. Why two eyes? One mouth, two ears. Why? Okay. So it is a metric. Y'all are right.

So you could average it. IQ is a scaled score. So fair enough. But why is the average human being? Why is there computational power where it is instead of being way higher? And people say evolution. That's correct. But evolution selected for this level of IQ.

Not a little bit more. a little bit less. This is the average. Right? And maybe there's a neuronal gap. Like maybe there's a certain, there's like a, there's a hardware issue, right? We've only got so much RAM in the brain. There's only so much computation we can do.

But for those of y'all who are saying there's a cost that is exactly right. So we see this with gifted kids. Gifted kids don't necessarily perform better. We also see this with autistic sex. where we know that in the autistic brain, some of these people are capable of incredible things, but that capability comes at a terrible cost. So I don't know if you guys know this, but this is now old news.

So now, I can't believe it's 20 years ago. In 2007 and 2008, there was something called the subprime mortgage crisis where basically what happened, they're like economy crashed, okay? And basically the reason it crashed is because people were doing something really interesting. They were giving out loans to people who could not afford them. Then what they were doing is packaging all of those loans and selling them to somebody else. So I am going to loan you a hundred bucks chance that you'll default is 10%. And I'm going to do that 100 times.

And so some of these loans are going to go bad. I'm going to lose a lot of money. But then I'm going to package them all up and I'm going to sell them to somebody else. And then with the money that I get from that sale, I'm going to go out and do it to another 100 people. Because now I've got all this money, right, in my bank. So I can be like, okay, now I'm going to give it to you.

So people were doing this. There were some shenanigans going on, basically was creating a huge risk of default. And there was a guy who was a radiologist who got into finance, who was on the spectrum. If you guys have read or seen the big short, like this is the, I don't know if he was, I don't know if in the movie he's is central, I don't know, but there were books written about this. And he's basically the one who figured it out. So the rest of the world was like, oh my God, this is the way to make money, this is the way to make money, this is the way to make money.

This guy was like, hold on a second. This is, there's something shady going on and he basically figured out. So he's on the spectrum. And we'll see this time and again, I'm not sure exactly who this person. was, but, you know, in the clip, someone who's incredibly gifted happens to be autistic. Now, there's severe autism as well where, like, there's no positive tradeoff, people who are nonverbal, people who engage in self-injurious behavior, you know, who have a lot, like, there's, there's some versions of being on the spectrum that don't confer any advantage in my

mind, like I haven't seen. I've seen cases like this. Many of the patients that I've worked with will have some advantage. advantages, but on balance, it's like doesn't make their life easier. You know, what you get when you trade the autism for the savant is not worth it because it causes so many problems and relationships and things like that. But the main thing to understand is that intelligence comes at a cost. So, for example, if we look at this paper over here, this is really fascinating.

So high intelligence, a risk factor for psychological and physiological over excitabilities. Okay. So what this, so let's just look at, um, implicates high IQ as being a potential risk factor for affective disorders, ADHD, and for increased incidence of disease related to immune dysregulation. Okay. So it's really fascinating, but I want to explain to you all how this works. So if you have a high IQ, your cognitive ability is better. If your cognitive ability is better, you are able to perform more calculations. If you can perform more calculations, you can develop a stronger predictive model of the future. And as your ability to make robust models for the future increases, your anxiety increases directly in proportion to that.

So people with high IQ have higher anxiety. Because when they go into a situation, they are able to see all of the things that could go wrong. And if we think about what is anxiety, anxiety is looking into the future and being able to predict problems. I'm worried that I could fail the test. I'm worried that I could get stuck in traffic on the way home. Anxiety is literally the ability to predict problems. There's a problem, though, with anxiety and giftedness, which is that normally the way that the number of problems that we want to predict needs to be in proportion with our ability to do something about it, right? Why do we get anxious?

So we can predict a problem and do something. Oh, my goodness, I could fail my test. Oh, to avoid that, let me study. right so prediction of problem implementation of solution one to one and at a hundred IQ the problems that most human beings predict are solvable but IQ has a big problem which is that if I'm capable if I only have two hands and I only have 24 hours in a day but I can predict a hundred problems I can't solve all of those problems Like literally, there is, I want you all to understand this. There is a gap between my ability to detect problems and for me to be able to implement

solutions because I am bounded by time, space, and reality. But my mind can make predictive models. This is why people who are gifted struggle with anxiety. And then this creates another problem, right, which is now I'm making 100 predictions. can only do 10 solutions. And then I'm able to predict the consequence of 90 problems that have no solutions. Oh my God, I need to do so much. Where do I start?

It's too much to do. How do I know it's going to work? Overwhelm. Okay? You guys get me? So that then fuels the fire, which is why we see these papers. that show that high IQ results in a risk of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, things like that. Next thing to understand, just this is another interesting point, is that people who have high IQ are more likely to ruminate.

They're more likely to get stuck in their head thinking the same thoughts over and over and over again, right? Because if there are 100 problems to solve and my hands can only solve 10, if I only have 24 hours in a day, what is the smart person going to do? are going to lean into their strengths. Let me see if I can perform a calculation to reduce 100 problems to 99. How can I figure out this situation so that I have to do less? Because the only way this works, I can only do 10 things, and there's 90 left. So let me see if I can perform some calculations to reduce 100 to 90, and 90 to 80, and 80 to 70, and 60 to 50, 50 to 40, 40 to 40, 40 to 40, down to 20, and then eventually 10. and then I can work.

They're literally more prone to rumination and thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking to solve problems. And then they end up getting stuck. Because now what's happening is instead of solving those 10 because those 10 isn't enough, then what? They spend their energy in reducing 100 to 90. They spend all of their time trying to whittle down their problem to something solvable

instead of solving, instead of working. They focus on compressing the problem. How do I go to a party and be confident? How do I go to a party and not feel anxious? How do I figure out which major is going to be right? so that I stay engaged with it, I don't get bored, and has good job opportunities by the time I graduate. They're always trying to shape, mold the problem into something solvable instead of take one step forward. Because that is their solution strategy, right?

The brain learns how to do this, and they learn how to do this at a very young age. That's why they're called gifted. So early on, this works. Oh, I want to play video games all day. I don't want to study for my math test. How do I solve this problem? Oh, I know. I'll just pay attention in school so that I don't have to study.

And if I pay attention in school, then I can come home and I never have to study. They figure out problems. I mean, they figure out solutions. And this is the problem is that they develop a strategy that only works at low rank. Right? I'm going to rapid expand every game. Just going to wrap it expand because people, people at my rank never use rush strats.

So they start to develop bad habits. Why do they develop bad habits? Because they can get away with it. People who have a high basic metabolic rate, a fast metabolism, oftentimes have terrible eating habits. Because whether they eat twinkies or whether they eat salad, they stay thin. So they're not given the opportunity to, this is what's so tricky about life. so many of the people that I work with,

the higher the capability is, the harder it is to live up to your potential. Because you're saddling all of these bad habits that there was never any like corrective evolutionary pressure for. Right? And that's why we get to some of these really interesting statistics. Let me see if I can find them for y'all. Nope.

I don't want online speech recognition. Windows. Not right now, my friend. Okay, so this is what's really weird. Let me find this. This is from the Stanovich paper. You guys can look with me. Where's the Stanovich paper? Dexter, Karpinski, Kahan, Stanovich.

Now, to think rationally. Wait, does Stanovich have more than one paper? Ah, I knew it. I was like, no, this is the Sandovic paper. Okay. That sneaky Sandovich. To think rationally means to adopt appropriate goals. Take appropriate action given one's goals and beliefs

and hold beliefs that are commensurate with available evidence. Intelligence tests measure many important things about thinking, but they do not directly assess the degree of rationality of thought. thus it is perhaps not surprising that intelligence is quite weakly related to at least some aspects of rational thought. Okay? This I know sounds weird. But basically, if we look at intelligence, this is what's kind of hard to understand. So I think about high IQ is a very strong beast that you're trying to leash.

So high IQ is prone to rumination. So what happens with people who are really intelligent, right, is like they'll come into my office and they'll say like, oh, I have anxiety. And the problem, and they're like, I know it's anxiety, but I can't get it to stop. So the animal at the end of their leash is so much stronger than they are. When it starts to think in a particular way, they have an undisciplined mind. in an undisciplined mind that is really, really strong, if I have a 200 pound or 800 pound tiger at the end of a leash, it's going to be harder to control than like a 60 pound golden retriever.

This is the problem that people with intelligence face. And in this paper, they talk about rationality, which is like the ability to regulate your thinking. And we know this, right? Because if we're smart, we sort of realize that our. thinking is kind of like we don't think of it as irrational, but it is irrational. That's not the word that we would use. We think we're hyper-rational.

And in this way, they're defining rational as being able to set appropriate goals and follow them through, which is like rational, right? But we're like, and we know we have trouble with that, but we think we're thinking rationally. But when our IQ is kind of too strong for us to control, it becomes undisciplined. That I think is a better word to use. And then it gets out of our control. And then we struggle with it.

We have trouble restricting it. And so this is what's really interesting. If you look at income, I've talked about this. I have videos on this that I made before. But if you look at IQ, the top 2% of IQ people in the world earn less money than the top 10%. Earn less money. the higher you go on the IQ scale at some point it's kind of like you know income increases with IQ linear like maybe like something like this and then at some point it goes like this it craters really hard

at the upper levels of IQ now the interesting thing sometimes people will post and they say like oh dr kay you always talk about gifted kids but i'm not gifted i'm actually like 80 IQ or 70 IQ what do i do then what do I do if I am literally I have a low IQ and I've worked with those people as well. So here's what's really interesting. If you have low IQ, EQ or emotional capability is able to buffer that gap. Okay, so I'm going to show you guys a quick paper. We'll just do it quick aside. You guys want to do this aside?

I'm going to ask y'all. You guys want to understand this about how to succeed with if you have low IQ? Okay, some people are saying yes and some people are saying not really. Let me find this. Okay, I have to find this, though. Here we go. Found it. Okay, this is in the coat paper.

Let's go to the coat paper. Okay. And then let's find this. It's not... Okay. So job performance that is not attained. There. So job performance that is not attained through cognitive intelligence may be attained through emotional

intelligence via multiple complementary mechanisms. The first mechanism concerns expertise at identifying and understanding the emotions of other individuals. So what does this mean? This means that even if you can't do the job, understanding anger, sadness, things like that, understanding the emotions of your colleagues is a huge way for you to succeed at your job, right? Helping your team members, even if you are incapable of doing the work, correlates with improved

job performance. In most, if not all jobs, organization members interact with supervisors, coworkers, support staff, outsiders, such as customers, clients, or patients. So basically, this information may in turn be converted into high task performance by individuals with high emotional intelligence and low cognitive intelligence. So even if I'm not quite as good at the technical side of customer support, if I'm good at dealing with people, that'll work. A second mechanism by which emotional intelligence may enhance the job performance of individuals

with low cognitive intelligence concerns how regulating emotional influences, regulating emotion influences the quality of social relationships. Okay. So this is another really important piece. Oftentimes people that I work with who are very high IQ, we talked about how they predisposed to anxiety, ADHD, even depression. There are lots of papers about that that I've done a whole lecture's on. So being able to regulate your emotions becomes harder, the higher you climb in IQ. And so if you can manage your own emotions even at low IQ, that will improve job performance. And then, hold on a second.

I saw a comment that I want to. Okay. Third mechanism by which emotional intelligence may enhance job performance of individuals with low cognitive intelligence concerns the effects of emotions on how people think and act. So emotionally intelligent individuals with low cognitive intelligence may achieve high levels of task performance in most, if not all, jobs by managing their emotions in ways that enhance their motivation and the quality of their

decisions. A manager who understands that anger tends to lead people to underestimate the degree of risk in situations may suppress anger before making an important financial decision and in turn exhibit good task performance. Right? So it's, if you improve your EQ, you will understand the impact of your emotions on your decision-making. And oftentimes when I work with people who are high IQ, what I will try to do is teach them this step. Okay? So in Dr. K's Guide to Meditation,

we talk about the relationship between Manas and Muddi. Manas is your emotional mind. Muddi is your analytical mind. And this is what's really interesting. You know, a lot of people who are highly intelligent do not appreciate or are not aware of the impact of their emotions on their thought process. So if I am angry, that makes me less like, that makes me more likely to underestimate risk. if I'm anxious, that makes me more likely to overestimate risk. And then I make my decisions based on that calculation, because I trust my calculations.

What I don't understand is that my emotions are in the background adjusting my calculations. And how do you know? And this is what's so tricky is because your emotions, for people who have high IQ, they tend to use emotional suppression as a tactic quite a bit. Right? They become hyper rational. But when you suppress your emotions, they don't turn off. They just start working behind the scenes.

So what you're doing when you literally suppress your emotions is you are not shutting off the emotional circuitry of the brain. You are simply suppressing its ability to enter into your conscious awareness and take part of the conscious equation. So there's this part of your brain called the amygdala, which is where you experience anxiety. And the amygdala connects

to your, let's say, anterior cingulate cortex and frontal lobes. This is the decision-making apparatus of the brain. So lots of different things enter this portion of the brain.

It's kind of like the counsel where amygdala comes in and says we're anxious about this. Nucleus accumbens, dopamine-ergic circuitry comes in and says, but yeah, but we really want it. And then they fight.

And then your frontal lobes are sitting there. The head of the council is thinking they're okay. Let me hear the arguments for responding to this text because for my ex. Nucleus to come and says, bra, don't you remember how good your ex is at giving head? That's what we want today. And the amygdala is like, don't you remember how terrible your ex is? they're crazy, bro. They're crazy.

This is going to go wrong and this is good, but the nucleus is cummins. Like, we'll deal with that later. Like, this is what we want right now. And the council member is like, hmm, okay, we're going to go with the nucleus accumbents. That's literally what happens in your brain.

Now, when we suppress an emotion, the anxious portion of our brain doesn't shut off. We just don't let it into the council chamber. But then that anxious portion of our brain still connects to other parts of the brain, including the nucleus accompanence. And so that that anxious portion

will affect your calculations that are subconscious. And so it still shapes you but without your knowledge. So if I'm working with someone with high IQ who is failing to live up to their potential, the solution isn't that you need to be smarter,

you're plenty good at that. The solution is that you need to be more in touch with your emotions. colloquially. What that literally means is emotional awareness and emotional regulation. See, what people with high IQ try to do is account for their emotion in their calculation. They'll say, okay, if anger increases decreases risk assessment by 20%, let me amplify whatever risk assessment I have by 20%, and then it'll balance out. That's what they try to do. It doesn't work. Instead, what you need to do is deal with the anger. And then you're,

mind will think clearly. Your monas and your buddi, your intellect and your emotions go to war with each other. And you need to work with both of them. You cannot, this is, there's a really famous saying in psychiatry that you have to do right brain work with the right brain. You can't logic your way out of emotions. You can't logically process a trauma. You have to emotionally process a trauma. There are arguments against that as well. There's lots of cognitive stuff that you can do, there's a good way to think about it. So, you know, giftedness absolutely comes at a price. And if y'all are struggling with it, like, really try to understand what your emotions are,

first and foremost. Secondly, understand that dealing with your emotions directly is absolutely necessary. I mean, maybe not absolutely, but I'm going to go ahead and say it is. Because if I tell you guys, oh, like, there are other ways around it, what are you all thinking? Like, tell me. You're thinking, oh, how do I do it without doing that? how do I calculate my way out of it? That's why I'm being so blatant or hyperbolic in my statements.

Okay. Yeah. So, you know, someone's talking about being an EQ doesn't work being a doctor in India. So I think I respectfully disagree. So India is so interesting. So I spent some time with a psychiatrist in India a few months ago, really eye-opening experience. So India is so interesting because, you know, you know what the problem in India is? The best thing about India is that they have respect for their elders.

Right? That's like a big part of Indian culture. Like have respect. Respect for elder, respect. Elder says something, do something. I think the biggest problem in India is that they have respect for their elders. Because in India, if you are junior, that means you know less. than someone who is senior.

And here's what's really scary about this. I need to pull up another paper, so give me a second chat. I'm going to find this for you all. Association between physical life, how people learn. Yeah. The relationship between clinical experience

and quality of health care. Overall, 52% of evaluations reported decreasing performance with increasing years of practice for all outcomes assessed. This is insane. Okay. This is a huge problem. This is why India is held back so much.

I don't know if you guys are from India or what, but, you know, I had an interesting question at some point, which is like, why aren't there more Indian mega companies? We have these like absolute mammoths coming out of China, Europe, and the United States. Right? We've got like, you know, Pfizer, and we've got like Sinoffi, and we've got like Tencent, and we have Alibaba, we have like Tesla, we have Google, we have Netflix, right? So U.S. is number one for just earth-shattering corporations. half of their CEOs are Indian. China's like probably number two in terms of like just, you know, gross GDP of like companies and things like that.

But like India doesn't have much on the board at all. And there's like a 1.4 billion people there. Indians are so smart. Come on. Why? I think it has to do with this business of respect for elders. Like it's wonderful that we respect our elders. But if you look at the data, especially in medicine, literally.

we just saw a paper that says the more years you're in practice, the more your performance declines. So in India, one of the biggest problems is if you were a young, brilliant person, you won't get anywhere. I mean, you will now. There's like some people I've spent time with that have done that, right? There's a lot of Indian entrepreneurs and people like, you know, started like, what is it, Blinket or whatever. There are all these like rapid delivery services. So you absolutely have a bunch of entrepreneurs that are very,

successfully of people like Runvir and Raj Shemani and all these guys. So it's like they're there, but it is disproportionate to what the other continents are capable of or other countries are capable of. And especially in medicine, there's a lot of this, I'm older, therefore I know better. There's no room for young shoots to sprout out of the ground because these older trees are like overcoming them. There's this idea of superiority with. age when even if you look at sort of the Hindu tradition, I don't know if you guys have heard of this guy named Adi Shankaracharya, but he was sort of like, kind of like the Pope in the Hindu religion, like closest thing, but he's not really. He was like a kid who wandered around India, the age of like 14 or 16, and started schooling noobs right, left, and center. So even if you look at the old way that India used to be, merit mattered more than age. The problem with India today, isn't that EQ doesn't have any benefit, actually quite the opposite. EQ has a ton of benefit in India.

The problem in India is that egos are through the roof. The problem with India is that we assume that if you've been in the business for 30 years, you know better. But actually, if you look at chess players, really good example, all of the best chess players, their age has been decreasing. If you look at expertise, age doesn't. mean expert anymore, especially in clinical medicine, which is what's really scary. So I think that, you know, EQ doesn't matter in India in the sense that people don't have awareness of emotions. They don't talk about emotions.

They don't care about emotions. That all agree with. I'm generalizing, right? So maybe I'm wrong. I don't live in India. I spent, you know, I used to spend a lot of time there, but I spent one month there in the last 15 years, which was a few months ago. And so actually, I think that in India, if you're very, very good with EQ, if you look at Indian like systems and Indian like households and stuff like that, you'll notice, so my mom once told me this story.

I know this is a random aside, but we'll get back to the main point. My mom once told me something when I was 15 years old. She said, if you want to live a good life, live like Ram. Ram is one of the avatars of Vishnu. He's supposed to be the ideal man. She says, if you want to live a happy life, live like Krishna. Krishna is also an avatar of Vishnu, but he's sneaky. Ram is, Krishna's ends justifies the means.

Ram is, ends does not justify the means. You can do what is right or you can do what is clever. And both are acceptable. And if you look at Ram and Krishna, what you'll, find is that Ram, Krishna had a super high EQ. EQ was through the roof. He was a sneaky mf. And in Indian society today, you'll notice this because we have all these family businesses, we have all these like joint households. The people who are emotionally savvy are the ones who do well. The people who are able to read emotions, predict emotional behavior, manage other people's

emotions, manage other people's ego, manage their own ego, not getting into stupid pissing contest because you're right and your professor is wrong. When you can look at that and say, my professor is wrong, there's no point in proving him wrong. I know what's right. I'm not going to stick my head up above the trench to get sniped by the professor. So you're right that there is not an awareness of these emotional things. in general Indian society today.

But I actually think EQ is probably the thing that if you train yourself the most, will probably have the biggest impact on your trajectory of success and happiness within India. Navigating mother-in-law, daughter-in-law dynamics, what do you need? You need EQ, not IQ. Navigating the fact that your mom doesn't like your girlfriend because she's from a different cast. If you want to navigate that, you need EQ, not IQ. All these, like, stupid, petty things that happen in, like, Indian households, that's all EQ, not IQ. And what we, it's kind of interesting because what we laud, what we applaud, is IQ.

Are my alok went to IIT. IAT. Harvard. That's a good job. He has three BHK, six BHK, whatever. Right? That's what we applaud. But what matters is EQ. What matters is slithering. Because India is a country where you have to slither. You can't just walk and you certainly can't climb. You got to slither. And if you know what I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about. There's also a chance that I'm wrong. But like if y'all are Indian, like, I think I'm right. I've talked to enough of y'all. And I've seen it myself. Okay. Do you have recommendations for getting? better at EQ. So I think our content does a lot of it. So just as a quick aside, question number one, if you have an IQ, can it be improved? Not very much. If you have a low

EQ, can it be improved? Actually, yes. Results showed a moderate positive effect for training. Okay? Regardless of design. So what's really interesting about this is that there's lots of different training apparatuses for EQ, and it's not like one way of learning it is better than the other. Okay? And what we tried to do so that, like, the elements, I can tell you guys kind of a quick rundown for what EQ involves. So EQ can be subdivided into a couple of domains. Emotional awareness, emotional regulation, being able to read other people's emotions, Okay, so the first thing that you need to be able to do is put your emotions into words.

This is how you get better at EQ. And you may wonder, well, like, why is that? And so this is what's really fascinating. I'm going to try to explain this. So if you want to do something in life, you're like trying to figure out a strategy, right? Like, you're trying to figure out, how do I solve this problem? And as you try to solve that problem, let's say that I feel lonely and I want to have a fulfilling romantic relationship. Okay.

If I feel lonely and want to have a fulfilling romantic relationship, there is a strategy to do that. I have to make a profile on hinge. I have to go to speed dating events. I have to join a hobby group. I have to do this. I have to do this. I have to do some looks maxing. I have to get into shape.

I need to do this. I need to do this. You have all these things. Now, as you go try to do those things, emotions will arise. I'm lonely, but when I leave the house, I feel socially anxious. I feel anxious leaving the house. I don't have confidence when I leave the house. Then what happens is the IQ person takes that and they try to solve that intellectually.

How do I develop confidence? Let me watch Dr. K video on building confidence. Then I will be confident. Yay. Right? Then I solve this problem. And then I solve this problem. And then I solve this problem.

But this is the wrong problem to solve. So I'm lonely. I need to socialize. But I am anxious. Solution to anxious is build confidence. How do I build confidence? Okay. The right thing to do is to actually increase awareness of the emotions that you're feeling.

I feel anxious. You are feeling so much more than anxious. You are feeling ashamed because you're behind. You're feeling sad because you maybe should have done this a long time ago. You're feeling, let's call it regret. You're feeling regret because you should have started this process five years ago. You're feeling angry at yourself for not starting this process five years ago. You're feeling angry towards other people who used to be nerds just like you, but then they put their lives together.

You're feeling envy for those people. You're feeling jealousy of those people. you're feeling angry at the person that you're attracted to because they haven't noticed you yet, even though you're attracted to them. But it's illogical to feel angry towards the person that you're attracted to because why would they notice you? You're not worth noticing. All of this crap is going on in your head subconsciously. If I laid it out for you now and you're like, oh, that tracks.

Maybe you are aware consciously. So something really interesting happens when you, put emotions into words. In order for that to happen, your left brain communicates with your right brain. And your right brain is just feeling lots of stuff. And we don't even know what we're feeling. We just feel bad. What do we say? We say we're frustrated. Umbrella emotion. Number one emotion in Alexothymia, which is colorblindness to your emotions. I don't know what I feel is people say they feel frustrated. Frustration is an umbrella emotion is an emotion that covers all kinds of other emotions down here. So in order for you to articulate, in order for Broca's area, especially more so

than Wernicke's, Broca's area to articulate what you're feeling, it has to communicate. It has to send signals over here. Hold on. Stop going, what are you feeling? And then you force your right brain to calm down, and then your left brain makes sense of it. And then you can articulate in that process, when you do that process neurologically, those emotions in the way that they affect your calculation automatically changes. When you articulate your emotions, you are forcing the analytical part of your brain to understand exactly what your right brain is trying to say. And in that understanding, the rest of your left brain also gets that understanding. It's amazing.

So when people are like, what's the point of going to therapy and talking about my feelings? The point is right now your feelings are influencing all kinds of decisions that you're not even aware of. And simply articulating it gives access to the data set that the right brain is using to influence your decisions, gives access to of that data set to the left brain. That is why you want to articulate. Right. And we just showed some research about the improvements that happen when you have high EQ. That's number one. Become aware of your emotions.

And that means articulate them. Number two, regulate your emotions. Allow yourself to feel. Deal with the emotion directly. Don't suppress it. Don't distract yourself. Don't use drugs. Let yourself feel.

And then the emotion will start to calm down. You can use other forms of emotional regulation. like deep breathing or whatever, but you have to let the emotion be and let it calm down on its own. You can also regulate it in more active ways. Sometimes, you know, when people are having a panic attack, something that will be like,

we're going to go 60 second sprint down Commonwealth Avenue in the lawn if you guys have ever been to Boston. A lot of lovely green space downtown where my office used to be. We're just going to run for 60 seconds. I'm going to come with you. We're huffing and puffing.

That can regulate your emotions. Other ways of regulating your emotions. emotions. Grabbing a piece of ice will help. Dunking your face in an ice bath will help in severe cases. What we do inpatient. Bucket of ice. Just dunk your face.

Activates the mammalian diving reflex. Activates your parasympathetic nervous system. Works wonders. The other core component that I'll leave you all with today is to be able to cultivate additional emotions. So if you look at people who suck at EQ, what happens in their life, they make bad decisions. Why do they make bad decisions? Because they feel emotion. I'm in love.

Let me move across the country for this person. I'm anxious. Let me stay at home. Those emotions are real. What you need to learn how to do is cultivate additional emotions. When you feel in love, can you cultivate anxiety? Oh, I've done this a couple of. at times.

Not such a great idea. It's a core EQ skill. Okay? When you're feeling sad and you're feeling ashamed about yourself, can you cultivate pride? The more one-dimensional your emotions are, the greater the likelihood that your EQ is. Sorry, the greater likelihood that you have low EQ. Now, there are times where even people with high EQ will feel such an intensity of emotion at a funeral or breakup or whatever. right? And when you get better at EQ, this is the impact it has. I want you all to think about how hard life is when you are intensely angry. If you're just like, you know these people on online video games who are just like raging because you lost your lane? Oh my God. You're like, how can you be so bad? They're sitting there at home, arguably entertaining themselves, arguably having fun, and they're busy raging at you on the internet. Maybe you're the rager.

So when we experience life with just an intensity of emotion that we cannot control, life becomes a mess, intense sadness, even intense joy becomes a mess. These are the three core skills. Now, there are two other things that I would encourage you all to do. One is over on the membership side, we have a deep dive into most of the major emotions and deep dives into things like emotional processing. There's one very good video just on the main channel that's available for everybody. but if you guys really want to master your emotions, memberships is a good place to do it.

Second thing is, as emotions relate to particular things, so, for example, there's a video in Dr. Kay's Guide to Love Sex and Relationships that is all, not a video, there's several pieces in there that are related specifically to emotionality and relating to another human being. Right? So if you want to learn more about your emotions, the question is, do you just want to learn about them within yourself or do you want to understand how they impact your relationships? Because it's not either or, it's just what are you interested in? Okay?

Yes, someone is saying yoga chitra vrutrinarodhah. Absolutely. Yoga is the cessation of fluctuations in the mind. That's what that means. Right? So peace and tranquility is when our mind no longer has fluctuations, when it is stable. A tranquil setting is not active. Okay.

Oh, this is an interesting thought. Can you gift memberships like subs? I also have gained a lot from memberships. Yeah, I don't think so. So, you know, I saw something else just a quick heads up. Someone was like, hey, Dr. Kay did that like React stream to the Manosphere documentary. Where is that? So we're working on that.

There should be a cut that is uploaded to YouTube very soon. But part of the reason that we built memberships externally is because we run into some problems with YouTube. So since Manosphere is a copyrighted thing, if we just upload the straight Vod, we'll get taken down. Right. And we're not like we're not uploading the whole movie. Like we wouldn't do that even on our platform. We're definitely within the realm of fair use. Right.

So it's like less than 30%. Most of it is my commentary and things like that. We're not showing the thing on the membership platform. But so like we have to play by YouTube's rules, which is like there's nothing wrong with that. But some of the things that we want to do, like that, by the way, watch stream was great. And we just can't do that on it. Like we literally cannot do that on YouTube. Even though it's legal, we just, it's a violation of TOS.

That and there's all kinds of other functionality like discussion threads, right, as opposed to comments within a video that are topically based, which we can do over on on our. platform, which is why we built it. There's lots of stuff that we wanted to do. Turns out YouTube is not like a community platform. It is a video watching platform. So anything else about like building a profile or anything like that, it can't do. Yeah, 10 out of 10 stream. I loved it too.

That's like one of those things where like sometimes I wonder about doing things like that because I don't know how helpful it is. Right. So in my mind, today we talked about three EQ techniques to help you if you've got low IQ to improve your performance at your job. That sounds to me like something that can literally alter the trajectory of someone's life, fingers crossed and hopefully. So it's like hard for me to do things like the Manosphere documentary because it feels indulgent because it's so fun. And look at me, now I need to get better in touch with my emotions. And you see how my emotions are affecting my calculations?

Okay. Do streams always have to be helpful or is community good enough? I don't think they, it's a great question. I was about to answer, but why don't you all tell me? What do you all think? Can you do more meditations? Yes. I'm going to start doing a lot more meditation at some point relatively soon, probably within the next year is my guess. Thanks for the gifted subs.

Balance both, right? That's what we kind of try to do. and people like gaming Dota stream when, I don't know, in an hour? Right, so like right now I have an opportunity cost where I can like play Dota, but it's like what are we here to do, right? Are we here to play Dota? And speaking of opportunity costs, there's something I want to show you guys. So when we, okay, so I don't know if you guys know this or not,

but a couple of things. So last month was Mental Health Awareness Month. During Mental Health Awareness Month, we launched Dr. K's Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships. And our stretch goal was 8,000, which we hit, okay? And we're super clear about, like, or we try to be super clear about what we're doing with the money. So there's a pilot of a new secret show, which I would like to show y'all. Now, so for those of you all that bought the guide, thank you guys so much. I mean, the bars.

We are aware that you guys. So what are we doing with that? We're going to show you. Thank you for supporting us. Here's what y'all get. I mean, the bar is in hell. If I was texting you, let's say hypothetically, I have no idea what right looks like and what wrong looks like. I went into that marriage thinking like anything you can do, I can do better.

Welcome to Love Maxing with Dr. Kay, the show where we talk to real people about their real dating struggles. I'm Dr. Kay, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and today we're going to be meeting Mirabelle. Mirabelle is a single mother who is laser-focused on her career and is dedicated to self-improvement. What's scary about today's interview is that we're going to discover how you can do everything right and still struggle. I think that I've just always been career-driven, and I think that we were just running at a different pace. After a while, I kind of was like, I need a break. This is exhausting. I don't think that I'm meant to do this alone.

We spend the first half of the interview really getting to know Mirabelle. And it seems like she's doing everything right. And that's when we stumble into her blind spots. I know. There's a ton to be, no. I get it. Wait. But it's easier something done.

It's so not, it's just not. Respectfully, I don't think you do. Okay. I know. Call me an asshole. No, no, no. But I think if you're scared, there's a damn good reason. I think this is the problem.

There are certain things that you get. You get some information. And you're doing it right here. Sorry if I'm getting excited. No, no, no, it's okay. So now you're making a narrative about your own fear. And you're saying there's nothing to be afraid of, but it's a really profound fear. And then we unpack this idea of there's only so much you can control.

And the really scary part is that sometimes... No, we're lagging. I do this thing where I guess I just hadn't... done it in this aspect, but when I think of something that is terrifying, I compare it to something else that maybe I've already lived through. That was... Sound familiar, chat? And I think, well, if I could make it through that, then I can make it through this. This is no big deal. And we've made resources to help people with dating, like Dr. Kay's Guide to Love Sex and

Relationships. But what I really love about this interview is it shows how hard it is to see your own blind spots. So I hope you all enjoy. Okay. So I don't know why it started... Lacking so much. Oh, my God. I think it's something with...

I wonder if it's that scene. No, I'm lagging, dude. I'm lagging like a... Okay. Yeah, I don't know what's going on. But there is no lag. Okay. So...

Thank you guys very much. And interviews are back. Okay? So this is where like, we had to change the way that we did interviews. And, and, yeah, it was, I think we're fine now. So, so one of the big things that we, you know, were careful about is like sometimes people would come on stream. And I would say less than 1% of people would be, like, concerned about what they displayed on a live stream. So especially when it comes to love, sex, and relationships.

we wanted to give people the chance to say, hey, cut this out. Right? So, like, for this topic especially, like different when it's like, you know, talking with a streamer about whatever, but like for this topic specifically, we wanted to be careful

and give people the chance to say, hey, I don't want this shown. So, yeah. So thank you guys very much. much for supporting us. This is coming down the pipeline. I don't know exactly when it's coming out, but it's soon. The interview's done. I was there. I finished it. And then depending on how it goes, we'll either do more, we'll do less. So keep us posted on what you guys like, what you guys don't like. Yeah. There's a bunch of questions about Anakin and Jedi's and stuff. I guess that's

what everyone's interested in. They'll be on YouTube. Did I close the Space Citizen game properly? I hope so. Yeah, we can interview a Porn and Star Couple. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Can you give me a summary of today's session?

That's going to be hard because it's not just about one thing. But what I can do, let's do, you guys want to do one more? You don't need a summary. We are going to do another clip. This one I thought was pretty interesting. So we're going to do you the solid of just, let me close all these studies. This is one that I just want to show you all before I close it. This is really interesting.

Do psychotherapists improve with time and experience? A longitudinal analysis of outcomes in a clinical setting. However, a very small but statistically significant change in outcome was detected indicating that on the whole, therapists, patient pre-posts, tended to diminish as experience or time increases. Okay. So I think this basically suggests that there's very little change. And showing therapist improvement despite the overall tendency for outcomes to decline.

Okay. So basically what this study found is that by a small amount, the longer you're in practice, the worse your outcomes get. But the really interesting thing is that there's a high degree of variability in this data set. So even though on average it's a very slight decline, some people continue to improve and some people fall off. So on average, it's a slight net loss, but there's high degree of individual practice variability, which I think you all understand, right? which explains why so many people have amazing experiences in therapy, and so many people have terrible experiences in therapy,

and why sometimes working with a less experienced psychiatrist or psychotherapist, you may get way more help than working with someone who's more experienced. More experience doesn't actually mean better. Thanks for buying the guide. V. Fitton. Yeah, do I have speculation for what accounts for the variability? Yes, I do. It's not speculation.

I have data. So the number one thing, so when I was doing my intern orientation, we had the chief of anesthesia come and give us a lecture. So all the incoming interns, okay? Chief of anesthesia said, it showed us some really interesting data. And he said that the quartile of your. skill as a doctor. So whether you're in the top 25%, second 25%, bottom half, bottom quarter, whether you're at the top or at the bottom, does not correlate with experience. Within the first

two to five years of clinical practice, the doctors will separate themselves out. So basically, you'll get calibrated to your rank just like in video games. And just like in video games, most people's rank does not improve with number of games played. So in video games, you have people who are at bronze rank and have 5,000 hours. They don't get better. Doctors are the same way. You either enter the top quartile, second, third, or fourth, and you basically stay there over the course of your career. So what is responsible for it?

It is your method of learning. So the people who are active learners During medical school, after medical school, And continue to be active learners 20 years in Versus the people who are like, I've been doing this for 20 years, I know. Versus I've been doing this for 20 years. Man, there's so much I need to learn.

Okay. Case in point, like today I've showed you guys like nine papers, 10 papers. These are the papers that I read over the last week. Right, and a bunch of others. So I think the number one thing is your attitude towards learning and whether you think you know it all. And just like the people who are in your bronze ranked games or silver rank games, they know it all. They're just in the trench and they're there because their teammates suck. Same basic psychology.

Right? So if you're hard stuck on gold on Marvel rivals, you need to change the way that you learn. Do you think burnout or strategies to prevent that account for a close second? or third? I don't understand the question, Dakutur. Is there any profession in which there is a positive correlation with mastery and age? I have not found one. Doesn't mean that there isn't. I don't read manga. I want to. So here's one thing that I think is, yeah, so burnout. Okay, so this is kind of interesting. Okay, let me ask you guys a question. Do you guys want to talk about burnout in performance and this quartile business? Or,

Or do you, I'm going to show you all a clip. And then you guys tell me whether you want to want me to explain the clip. Or you want me to talk about burnout and the performance of excellence. Your choice, chat. Oh, muted. Yeah, sorry, there was like a ton of traps. No, muted again. You were 45 minutes late.

Yeah, sorry, there was like a ton of traps. I forgot it was today. That's okay. Let's review your answers to the questionnaire I sent over. Didn't do it. Mm-mm. Okay. Let's just dive in then.

Question one. Where are your sunglasses? I don't know. And when was the last time you did know? 2017. Okay. Are you thirsty? Yes.

Do you have water? Got it. Will you drink it? Nope. What was that noise? A reminder. For you to... Wish my best friend a happy birthday.

Today? Two months ago. And you forgot. For the... Seventh year in a row. And how many times have they forgotten yours? Zero. Which makes you feel like...

A terrible friend. Even though your... Friends are super important to me. And when was the last time you started... started a new hobby this morning pottery or pizza making pottery same more so that i can make custom plates on which to put my homemade pizza and your pizza oven has been outside for three years filled with cobwebs and you are too afraid to clean it have you ever kept a plant alive no how many amazing ideas do you have on a given day uh between one in three hundred thousand and how many of them do you

execute pass and finally if you were the star of an action movie where the fate of humanity hinged on your ability to send a thank you card it would end with everybody dead perfect score i'm here for my ADHD assessment. You're 45 minutes late. Yeah, sorry, there was like a ton of... You guys tell me, do you all want to talk about performance and quartiles, or do you all want to talk about what's going on here? Okay, can we get a poll?

Mods? Everybody wants it all, dude, both. Everybody wants it all. Let me see... See, this is what's so hard about it. It's like there's no end. Okay. Yeah, so this is what's interesting.

I like this. Okay, let me, let me see if I, I guess I got to do it. See if I can do it. Let me do, I'm going to try to do this. No. No. Manage poll. Oh, no, okay.

Thanks, mods. Okay, I don't know if there's a poll on YouTube. Is there a poll on YouTube? Oh, that's so interesting. Wait, are you guys trying to 50-50 at Brock? Come on, guys. No, you guys see, see, remember earlier when I said, there's a difference between Twitch chat and YouTube chat, right?

It's like, I'm asking for your help. I'm asking you for help. And you guys, you guys just, no polls on YouTube. I know. I bet I would have gotten a straight answer on YouTube if YouTube could do polls. What the heck are quartiles? There we go. Yeah, I agree.

Both are interesting. All right. Let's talk about the clip. Okay? So, and for those of you guys that want quartiles, we'll do something about that. I have not forgotten. Okay? Doesn't mean that we're not going to address it in any way.

So let's just see how long this one takes. if I go on a rant then it may take a little while and if I don't go on a rant then maybe we'll have time for two okay let me just make sure that I don't need to be anywhere first yes

I have no job after this okay this is what we're going to do we're going to watch this clip again so this is an ADHD assessment okay I'm going to take some notes. Then we're going to understand what is going on here and what to do about it. Okay. I forgot it was today. That's okay. Let's review your answers to the questionnaire I sent over.

Didn't do it? Okay. Let's just dive in then. Question one, where are your sunglasses? I don't know. And when was the last time you did know? 2017. Okay. Are you thirsty? Yes. Do you have water? Got it. Will you drink it? Nope. What was that noise? A reminder. For you to? wish my best friend a happy birthday today two months ago and you forgot for the seventh year in a row and how many times have they forgotten yours zero which makes you feel like a terrible friend even though your friends are super important to me and when was the last time you started a new hobby this morning pottery or pizza making pottery same more so that i can make custom plates on which to put my homemade pizza and your pizza oven has been outside for three years filled with cobwebs and you are too afraid to clean it have you ever kept a plant alive no how many amazing ideas do you have on a given day uh between one in three hundred thousand And how many of them do you execute? Pass. And finally, if you were the star of an action movie,

where the fate of humanity hinged on your ability to send a thank you card, it would end with... Everybody dead. Perfect score. I'm here for my ADHD assessment. You're 45 minutes late. Yeah, sorry, there was like a ton of... So what we're going to do is go through each of these things that they describe

and talk about how they connect to ADHD. Okay? So the first thing is that he's late. Okay? So we know that ADHD has time blindness. Okay. Second thing is the questionnaire. Did you fill out the questionnaire?

No, I forgot. This is executive function and or disorganization. The water thing I'm not quite sure about. Do you have water? Are you thirsty? I was kind of confused about that one. Maybe y'all can chime in. Is that like something that you guys really struggle with?

carrying around water and not drinking it. So next thing is birthday. This is a big one. Okay? So forgot birthday. Set reminder. Reminder is old. This is the other interesting thing. Right? Like the reminder was

from a while ago, but they still haven't turned it off. They've forgotten for seven years. Friends are important to me. And this makes me feel bad. This one is really, interesting. We're going to dig into this one some. So then I like the dichotomy between you forget to eat or drink. Okay. That's helpful. We can talk about that. Thank you, chat. Bodily signals. Okay. So adopting new hobbies, impulsivity, and then they have cobwebs,

which is lack of follow-through, right? So discipline, also executive function. Plant is dead. This, I think, is also impulsivity. This is kind of the same as number five. How many ideas do you have? This I'm going to call hyperassociation. And then the last thing is this thing where he says, if you had to write a thank you card, otherwise humanity would die, what would happen? And he's like, everyone would die. So we're going to talk about high stakes and how high stakes impedes action. Okay. So there was. an interesting paper. We're going to talk about all these mechanisms.

Okay? We're going to speed run them. There was an interesting paper that came out maybe about a year and a half to two years ago that did an analysis of ADHD short form content, I think specifically on TikTok, and found that something like 90% of it was like wrong in some way. So there's a lot of bad information. about ADHD on the internet. I actually think this one is pretty good

because each of these things we can describe, we can characterize and describe in a particular way. The first problem with this is that oftentimes when we see a piece of content like this, we're like, oh yeah, this is me. I have ADHD. This is me.

What I don't like about this is the finality of it. Right? So this is our experience. And when we hear that a million other people have our experience, what we don't hear is the million people who are able to change it. Right. So if you have an ADHD, if you have a 60 second clip about all the problems that ADHD causes, that will way outperform what actually works because that requires depth and nuance, right?

This clip, I think, has something like 800,000 views. There's no way that my reaction to it will get that. even though I too have clips in the 800,000 million, whatever, multi-million views. So that's a challenge. So let's start with timeliness. Let me see if I can find it. Okay. So clinical implications of perception of time and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or review.

Time perception in children with attention deficit disorder. This is the same paper. Time perception differences in children with and without 88. There's a whole video we have. Why don't you go to bed on time? A Daily Diary Study of the Relationship between ChronoType, self-control resources, and the phenomenon of bedtime procrastination. There's a lot of papers about this.

So I'm going to give you guys a quick overview of this stuff, okay? So what causes time blindness and ADHD and how do we fix it? So the first thing is we have an internal biological clock that measures how long things take. In people with ADHD, that basic capability is impaired, which frustrates the neurotypical people around us a lot because they're like, I told you what time to be here. Why are you always late? How long does it take you? It takes you 45 minutes to get here. Why don't you just leave at 5.15? So you can be here by 6. So the reason this is so confusing for them is they will lay it out for you so easily, right?

And that makes sense cognitively. The problem is that that theoretical thing does not translate to your frontal lobes to actually plan action. This is kind of like telling someone, okay, how do you not recognize a tree has branches and leaves and flowers? If the flowers are red, that means it's a rose. How do you not understand that this is a rose bush? And it's because you're blind. Like that middle step of, oh, this makes sense into my head, which neurotypical people have no idea that there is a process between make sense in my head,

therefore I do it. That fundamental gap has to be translated by your brain. And time blindness is a good example of this. There's another really interesting thing about time blindness, which is that, you know how people with ADHD don't know how long something takes, right? So it's hard to plan your day. Why is it hard to plan your day? Well, because I have 15 minutes of, I have to fill out this application. How long will it take?

Between 15 minutes and 15 hours. That's why it's hard to plan because you have no idea how long something will take. There's another interesting, there's a lot of neuro. neurology involved in this. There's a whole video about it. Okay. The other interesting reason why it's hard to plan for your day is because when you do a task, if you have no internal biological clock, your brain gets no data about how long that takes. Does that kind of make sense? When I sit down to do something, a neurotypical person is like, I sat down around this time, oh, how long did that take? It'll take you about half and a half and out. How long were you in line at the

DMV? I was in line for about half an hour. You have an internal biological that is measuring things. When it measures how long something it takes subconsciously and without your knowledge, you can also plan because now your brain knows, oh, go to the DMV. That is a 30-minute errand. That is missing in ADHD. So a big part of what we teach in Dr. Kay's guide to ADHD and doing stuff about doing stuff is what are the tools that you can use to overcome that. So as a simple example, people with ADHD are very, their sensory input is very, very robust. So if you see something, if you hear something, you get distracted, you start paying attention to it. What you see and what you hear sinks in, which is why the utilization of like an organized planner

or something where you measure your time in some way. So this is like, I have some ADHD style stuff. Okay. And then like, so this is what I do. I like measure things. I'm working on, I started at this time, on this day, and I worked for this many minutes. And I just happened to have what games I chose not to play, which was Monster Hunter Stories in Warhammer and Unicorn Overlord recently. So literally externally measuring things, writing things down will help your brain. Okay.

Second thing, the questionnaire. Did you forget to do the questionnaire? So, neurotypical people can remember to do things. Now, remembering to do something is actually really strange if you think about it. Okay? This is one of the weirdest things in the brain is remembering things. I'll give you all an example. I'm on my way home from work.

And I'm about to take the exit off the highway to return to my home. When I remember, I need to pick up some milk. So I'm like, oh, I was about to take the exit. I don't take the exit. I move one more exit down the highway, and then I go pick up the milk. I want you all to think about how weird that is. I forgot something, and then I remembered. Do I control the remembering?

Absolutely not. My brain, I forgot. My brain remembers, and my brain floats up to my server. the surface of my conscious thinking, that I did, I need to do this thing. So a neurotypical person takes this for granted. The fact that you can remember is bizarre.

To remember means that you forgot. And if you forgot, you don't control whether you remember or not. Right, that is the experience of remembering. Oh, sometimes I remember and sometimes I forget. So what we know about people with ADHD is that their executive function, and their inability to remember things

makes it so that organization becomes really important and particularly sensory input becomes really important. I will never remember where I put my keys. So I always put them in the same place. I know where the keys belong, but I won't remember where they are, which brings us to another really interesting thing about ADHD, which is that a lot of the problems with ADHD,

the reason we don't solve them is because we try to use a neurotypical strategy. And a neurotypical strategy won't work. Right? So if we're blind, we can't navigate with sight. We need a stick. But if you have a stick, you can manage. So this is where, like with ADHD, this is where you won't remember where you put it. That's why there must be one place where it goes. Do not, I love this phrase,

don't put it down, put it away. Put it where it belongs. So what I found working with patients, and this is going to be a big theme that we're going to focus on, is half the problems that you have are way easier to solve than you realize if you do them in a particular way. Now, building up the habit to do them in that way is not simple, but it's way easier. So like a big point, problem with ADHD is preventing certain steps of this process, which is really where the problem lies. So if I always put things where they belong, I will never lose them, right? Which a neurotypical person can afford to be lazy. We cannot. And if you really think about it, how hard is it to, in my case, you know, in our house, we have a nice little key back thing

right by the door, and that's where the keys go. And what's in a few. My deteriorating to me is, since I lose my keys a lot, I always put my keys in the same place. My wife does not have ADHD. She does not put her keys where they belong all the time, ever. So then what happens is she misplaces her copy of the key, and then she takes my copy of the key. And then I go to drive the car, and I can't find my keys. Now she's lost two sets of keys, because my keys are reliably in one spot, and her keys are who the hell knows where. So then I end up looking for keys anyway.

And then what I have to do, and by the way, this is really interesting. I'm curious about this. If you have ADHD, are you better at finding the things that your partner misplaces than what you misplace? I would bet money that the answer to that question is yes for y'all to. Now I figured out where to find the keys that she misplaces because there's a pattern or order to them. Whereas when I misplaced them, it's absolute chaos. Okay. So this is where if you forget to do questionnaires, if you forget to do things, you need to

create a system where you are prompted in a sensory way. So like questionnaires or paperwork goes in a particular place that you check on a daily basis. You don't rely on, oh, do I need to do something? Do I not know? You just go there and mechanically you look through what you need to do. Right. So a good example of this is what I'm using an electronic health record and things like that. When I go to the office, the first thing that I do is I log into my EHR and I see what my tasks for the day are.

What I do the night before I go to bed is check my calendar. When I wake up in the morning, I check my calendar. And then it goes into the calendar and it goes out of the mind. Okay. Next thing that I want to, we can talk about bodily signals. So this happens a lot. This is kind of with like hyperfocus. So oftentimes with ADHD, we get superfocus.

hyper-focused on something. This isn't just ADHD. This is going to be neurotypical people with video games, for example. When we get really hyper-focused on something,

we will oftentimes suppress our bodily signals. And then when we have a break of some kind, we realize, oh, my God, I'm so thirsty.

And so oftentimes the right move there is to, once again, structure the way that you consume food and the way that you, you know, drink water or whatever.

So this is where oftentimes what I try to do is have lunch ready when I'm done streaming. This I have a lot of help with. Thankfully, somebody else basically takes care of this for me. But when I'm done, lunch is usually ready. And if it's not ready, then I'm going to eat like crap, right? Because I'm so hungry. And the really strange thing about being really hungry, which is true people with ADHD, I think it's maybe more intense, but true of regular people as well,

neurotypical people as well. When you are really hungry, you want unhealthy food way more than you want healthy food. But healthy food will satisfy you way more than it will if you're not starving. So you're what you want, the food that you want, you want a hamburger so much. But you will be way more satisfied with a salad when you are starving. And when you are not starving, a salad will satisfy you less. A burger will be more enjoyable because it's fatty and it's delicious and it's got protein in there and it's got that umami and we're going to put that pickles and mayo and mustard or whatever.

So this is what's also really hard is oftentimes when we're really hungry, right? Like we want to eat that really unhealthy thing, but you'll notice something interesting. If you want a cookie when you're starving and you eat a piece of fruit, you will love the fruit way more as well. So usually when I work with people with ADHD or who are, just trying to eat healthy, we try to lean into this principle. Next thing, this is one that I want to spend a little bit of time with. The birthday card.

Okay? This is a reminder to do a birthday card for my friend. Okay, we talked about executive function, we talked about forgetting things, we've talked about sensory input. The biggest challenges in ADHD, in my opinion, are not the first level challenges. They're the challenges that. we layer on top. Okay?

So friends are, so this is why this goes. I forgot my birthday card. That is a problem in and of itself. That could be fixed. Then our mind does something kind of interesting. I've forgotten seven years in a row. So interesting that it remembers that. Have you guys ever noticed that?

That my mind is really good. Oh yeah, I may have forgotten where my keys are, but it's really good at keeping track of how many years I've forgotten this kind of thing. So not only do I forget my friend's birthday card, now my mind is keeping track of it and it is making me feel worse because I have a very good resolution into how bad I'm doing. And then it does something even more interesting, which is it says, oh, do you care about your friends? Yes, I value my friendship so much. And then it does something kind of interesting. I value my friendships a lot and I failed.

And since I value my friendships a lot, I feel so much worse about myself. You guys see how that works? And it happens so quickly. Forgot a birthday card. Forgot a birthday card for seven years. But I care about my friends. And they got me one. And so you kind of like beat yourself up very, very quickly.

So this is where there's also emotional reactivity in ADHD. There's an emotional dysregulation subtype, which some people are advocating to be its own classification. So there's attention deficit disorder. There's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, right? Those are two subtypes. Inattention predominant, hyperactivity predominant, or a mix of the two, the combo meal. And then they're like, okay, let's do emotional disregulation subtype. If you really look at what this is, this is dysregulation of,

your emotions. And here's how this works. Every day when you get the reminder, you are reminded that you forgot the birthday card. That reminder that you forgot the birthday card activates the emotional circuits that give you guilt. And once my guilt emotional circuitry gets hyperactivated, right? Let's think about what's precisely happening here. I hear a reminder, guilt pops to 100. Literally, the action as an alarm went off on my phone. Response is guilt goes to 100. But we don't even, we're not even aware that it's guilt. Then what happens is when the guilt circuitry activates, it manifests as thoughts.

It's been seven years. You care about your friends. Look at you caring about your friends. How pathetic. You care about your friends and you've forgotten seven years in a row. It's like bludgeoning you with these thoughts. And then there is an identification with it. I am a bad friend.

So I love to cite this paper really interesting. If you look at the comorbidity between people with ADHD and depression, 3% of people who are diagnosed with depression will grow up to have ADHD. 70% of people who are diagnosed with depression will grow up to have, I mean, 70% of people with ADHD will grow up to have depression. So treating ADHD is not just about time blindness, suppression of bodily sensations, executive function deficit, emotional dysregulation. It is also about the consequences of living with those things. I'm an idiot.

I'm unreliable. I'm this. I'm that. Right. We have the first layer of primary symptoms. And then we layer on top of that things that are hard. harder to beat. And here's the tricky thing.

If I start someone on stimulant medication, it only works on layer one. Doesn't really work on layer two. Works on layer two maybe a little bit because it regulates the amount of guilt that I feel. Reduces the activity of my guilt circuit in the brain. But it doesn't change my sense of identity, which is why I really love, and this is what really confuses people. Psychotherapy is equally effective to medication. works the same.

Effect size is the same. And when I work with patients with ADHD, I like to do psychotherapy with them as well because we have to do this identity component. You're not a bad friend. You're not a bad person. You have this problem. Okay?

We're going to actually jump to this. Number nine, high stakes. There's one thing that is very, very, very annoying about ADHD can happen in neurotypical people too. So if you look at motivation and action, as something called salience increases, salience is importance. As the importance of an action increases,

your motivation increases with it. Right? So, oh, it's not like, do I need to pick up milk? Not that big of a deal. Oh, my God, I've got a hot date tonight. I really got to pick up that bottle of wine on my way home. As something becomes more important to you, your motivation towards that thing will increase.

It's why it's hard to get patients to take blood pressure medicine. Because if you take blood pressure medicine, you don't really feel a difference. You feel the side effects, but you don't feel the difference. It doesn't feel important. So we really have to help people understand how important it is. Because high blood pressure usually doesn't have any symptoms, unless it's catastrophically high.

you run at like 160 doing damage to your body for 20 years and not feel a thing. Okay. But I've noticed in my patients with ADHD that high stakes is paralyzing, not motivating. For most people, as the stakes increase, our motivation increases. ADHD, it seems to have the opposite effect. And even in neurotypical people, there comes a point where if the stakes elevate to a certain point, we become overwhelmed and we become paralyzed. Now, one of the mechanisms for this is when we have a sympathetic nervous system response,

so when our body gets turned on, I don't mean like sexually, well, sexually too, but. So when our body is facing stress, tiger in the jungle, I'm taking my final exam, my body's like, we need to be active. So adrenaline increases, cortisol increases. And when our sympathetic nervous system activates, fight or flight is what we think about with the sympathetic nervous system. There's a third element which is freeze. Fight, flight, or freeze.

So what we know is that, you know, when an animal is being hunted, it'll run away, it'll fight, or it'll play dead. And so there's a point where even like with trauma, right, like there's a moment where we try to run, but then we freeze. when I work with patients who have been sexually assaulted, they will sometimes resist, they'll sometimes fight back, but sometimes what they'll do is dissociate and lock down and freeze. And that lockdown is triggered by a high level of sympathetic activity.

We feel overwhelmed, stuck, frozen. This seems to happen more often in patients with ADHD. And the reason for that is, remember, there's an emotional dysregulation subtype, right? So emotions skyrocket. And when emotions are very, very, very high, that is what can trigger the freeze response. I'm going to throw down with you when I'm not mildly angry when I'm absolutely pissed. Oh my God. I'm so angry. I'm not going to dead ass run away if I'm like a little bit anxious. The more fearful I am, I'm terrified. I'm just going to run. I'm going to stop thinking I'm going to run.

And when I feel overwhelmed, I'm going to lock down. This is what makes it so hard for my patience is because the more important things are, the harder it is for them to actually act. So when they want to act the most, it becomes the hardest to act. Right? So it's such a beautiful example because he's like, if the fate, can you write a thank you you card if it's not that big of a deal? Yes.

if the fate of humanity depends on it, that pressure activates us emotionally. I don't know if it activates really that dissociation mechanism. That's a different mechanism in the brain. But it really causes us to shut down, for sure. To feel locked down, to feel paralyzed. I'd say lockdown is a better subjective description from the patients that I've worked with.

They feel like they're stuck. They're paralyzed. They're like they can't do it. Okay? And so then what happens is this, aspect of high stakes, how important are friendships to you? I'm working. How important are friendships to you? The more important they are, the more that stakes increase, the more that you lock down, which then makes you feel even worse and leads to low self-esteem, leads to things like depression.

Okay? So this is what's really scary about it. Now, this is where there's an element of work, that oftentimes people with ADHD miss, which is like, how do I deal with this? Actually, the way to deal with this is to deal with the association, right? There's a chain of forgot card, forgot seven years. Relationships, oh,

relationships are important. I am bad. And so people will come in and they say, how do I have self-esteem, Dr. Kay? And they try to work on this problem, confidence, in isolation, whereas actually what we need to do is this is caused by this, this is caused by this, and this is caused by this. If we can break the chain, this melts on its own.

So notice the associations, notice the way that your mind jumps from one thing to another thing to another thing. And you will say, but Dr. Kay, all of those things are true. I'm not saying they're not true. What I'm saying is that as you lose attentional control of your mind, this is why mindfulness and meditation helps so much in ADHD. Because I want y'all to think about what is really happening in this scenario. The event, the event is an alarm goes off.

And the result is I am bad. I'm not disputing the logic of any of these. What I'm encouraging y'all to notice is just see how when an alarm goes off, I feel like crap. Like what? It's this daisy chain. This is where we have to stop the attention. We have to shift our attention away from this process. Restrain the mind.

And then when we restrain the mind, direct the mind. Make a card. Then get excited about it. make six more. Then mail one overnight. Mail one, go to the post office once, two to the three-day shipping, then regular, then media mail, right? One month, we'll get it a month later.

Just go to the post office. Right? But instead, we do this. We do this every day when the alarm goes off instead of actually fixing the problem. And this is like, this is what's so cool about working with situations like this. All of these things can get better. Now, this too is something that I think is really important. Let's talk about number five. New hobbies.

I love this example. Pottery or pizza? Pottery so I can make a plate for my homemade pizza. So good. I want to show you guys that's in another room. I'll grab it one second. So what am I working on?

Learning how to draw, writing fiction, the Eaching. It's like, what are you doing this weekend? Well, I'm playing some Warhammer 3 Chaos Dwarf campaign and I'm reading a book about writing fiction

and I'm learning how to draw. And I'm flipping through this book on the E Ching because I've never really understood what the deal with the E Ching is. Right? So new hobbies, we're impulsive. There's a lot of excitement. Oh, I want to do this.

I want to do this. It would be so cool if we did this. So cool if we did this. But then we have a problem with follow through. So one of the biggest things that I try to help people do is what people will come to me and they'll say, how do I follow through? How do I follow through? How do I develop discipline? That's not what you need to do.

the circuit in your brain that acts impulsively turns on and then turns off. When it's on, you're motivated. When it's off, you're demotivated. So order pizza oven, cobwebs for three years. Really good. Right? That's the scenario. So actually, what we need to control is not the discipline to follow through.

What we need to control is starting in the first place. if we start to separate action from impulsivity. If we act impulsively, in impulsiveness is what gets us to act, then when the impulsiveness goes away, we won't follow through. The secret to follow through is not, uh-huh, the secret to follow through is to not start.

Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. You cannot quit or abandon. If you never start. Look at the wisdom. But literally. So here's the cool thing, okay? There's going to be some weird neuroscience, but I'm like, it's legit, y'all.

Okay. So, action is motivated by all kinds of things. Nucleus accumbens. This is dopamine. Emotions. Impulsivity. Okay. So like all of these things.

things can result in action. So when I restrain my impulsivity, this is my frontal lobe, blocking this and preventing that action. This is also the same part of my brain that gives me discipline, that gives me follow through. The ability to plan and execute tasks over a long period of time is done by the frontal lobes okay so literally the same part of your brain that does follow through is the same part of your brain that does not behave impulsively that restrains your impulses it's the same part of the brain it is to act deliberately does that make sense act deliberately means act with follow through

deliberate one after the other it's the same circuit stopping the impulse is the follow through literally. Same circuit in the brain, same function. And the way that that works, another way to understand is what I said earlier, which is to dissociate, disassociate, impulsivity from action, to be able to train yourself to act out of things that are not impulsive. But as long as you are acting out of impulsivity, that circuit will not grow. Right. We are stopping one circuit. We are pruning some neurons and we're strengthening other synaptic connections. So this one is huge, right? And while I'm learning lots of things, I also have this scheduled on my calendar, right? So like, I'm using organization to be able to do it all, where you guys saw my Excel spreadsheet with the various words that I wrote,

the times that I wrote them. So I'm not just buying books on fiction. I'm actually writing. And I have a scheduled time that I go to an art class for two hours a week. And so if you schedule it, you'll do it. If you get prompted by it, you'll do it. If you have to show up, you will show up. Right? You may show up late unless you set a timer and you know where your keys are. See what I'm saying?

Keys are in one place. I have my bag ready to go. I put everything in its place and then I'm out the door on time. And I'm checking my calendar obsessively four times a day. Okay? The impulsivity is. also the ideas. How many ideas do you have? One to 300,000 a day. How many of them do you do none? This is also impulsivity. Why do you do none of them? Because you're impulsive.

If you are relying on your impulse, you'll start on a dozen and you'll finish none. If you disassociate impulsivity from action, if you start to act without impulsiveness, and you restrain yourself from acting when you get excited. And I mean literally restrain yourself, like sit and like, I'm not going to order this book on Amazon. I feel like ordering it. I'm not going to do it. And then another impulse will come up.

You check your calendar. You look at what you need to do next. It's amazing. ADHD, when I work with people, it feels like a set of dominoes. But the first one is like Stonehenge. But once one thing gets better, what's really scary about it is scary about it is all of these deficits cascade. A snowball becomes an avalanche.

And now suddenly, I am a fundamentally bad person. Because each of these statements is logically true. But it is the process that my brain literally what happened today, my alarm went off. And then I feel like crap for the rest of the day. Okay? It can get better. Yeah, so you guys say, you know, schedule reading session, like, so that's something that I have struggled with.

I struggle to schedule things on my calendar and stick with them because I'm the only one who's showing up. So if I schedule reading time for myself, it doesn't work. I haven't figured that out yet. But what I will do is capitalize on the impulse. It's like I was looking at this the other day. I wrote 2,448 words in 85 minutes at 1038 on a Saturday, I think, or Sunday. Right? So, like, this is what's really interesting is if ADHD stops messing up your life,

it's amazing, like, how much you can get done in 85 minutes. Like, do I write 500 words a day? because that's the advice that they give me in the fiction book is write 500 words every day. I can't write 500 words every day. Once a week, I can sit down and bang out 2,448 words. The other thing that I like about tracking this stuff, y'all, is like, this feels good. I was never intending to show this. But, like, it's not to seem great to y'all, which is I, like, this is the thought that's in my head.

Like, now they're going to think this. No, it's like, I feel really good. I feel so good looking at those numbers rack up. All right, y'all. My kids need me, so I need to go. But thank you guys so much for coming. Thank you all for all the support. You know, people are asking questions about,

if you guys like want more info, check out the ADHD guide. But we're going to be dropping, you know, the first interview, I think, soon. So stay tuned to that. And yeah. Oh, actually, before I go, I have one question for y'all. I have a dilemma, chat.

So I want to play Warhammer 3. And I need, I'm getting tired of the current campaign I'm playing. Okay? So I need some help before I go. So I played high elves a while ago. I really liked High Elves because I think it's like, they're kind of like straightforward, right? And then I played dwarves, love dwarfs. But I like casters.

So then I played Skaven, love Skaven. I love the complex undercity dynamic. And then I played chaos dwarfs. Absolutely love chaos dwarfs. So now I'm thinking about playing Cathay. I don't like Zinch. They were my favorite faction in the in the tabletop,

which I never really played, but I thought they were super cool. All their units just seemed weak. What are quartiles? Yeah, we'll do quartiles later, chat. I'll know. But do you guys have a... I tried Dark Elves.

I didn't really enjoy them too much. But do you guys have, like, a suggestion? If I like chaos dwarfs and I like Skaven, I try a little bit of dark elves. The lizard men feel too slow. Like the battles just take a long-ass time and they're like healing focused. Total war, Warhammer 3. Sorry, I can't help with the Warhammer thing.

No problem. Evil takes for coming. Do you guys have any help? Have you tried Deadlock? Yeah. Deadlock is an amazing game. that I think is way less fun than it could. I don't know why.

I just don't have fun playing it. It's like people are like kind of too try hard. It was fun at the beginning. They're fun. Okay, I'll try corn. I was thinking about, okay, no problem if y'all haven't played. Am I excited for Warhammer 40K? Nah.

I'm like a fantasy over sci-fi guy for the most part. Imperials is not empire, right? I want like interesting campaign mechanics, like overwold mechanics. with like, it's hard to describe, but like fun units. I'll try chaos. Which chaos faction? So I like, I kind of like the overworld, the Zich, like stealing things.

But I just don't like their army at all. It just feels like a bunch of paper. And I like spellcasting, but the spell casting is, I mean, I may circle back to it. But, okay. I'll try corn. Yes, Tomb Lords I kind of liked. Yeah. I like the chaos dwarf

resource management. I like having a really strong army that is supported by a really big economy. Oh, corn has no magic. Ooh. Okay. Maybe I'll like it. Thanks. Okay, I'll give it a shot. I'll try it. Yeah, I was thinking about Nurgle. Nergel's like on my list.

But Big Daddy Nurgle is like kind of, ugh. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Okay, thanks, chat. Take care, y'all. We'll see you all. Yeah, stay tuned. I don't know when I'm streaming again.

Maybe next week. Take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people?

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