HealthyGamerGG - What Nobody Tells You About Your 30's

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Dr. K breaks down why so many people feel like they “peaked” in their 20s and quietly stall out in their late 20s and 30s. He explains how early life is driven by external expectations, achievement checklists, and making other people proud, and why that motivational system collapses once you are out of school, into a job, or stuck in a life that looks fine on paper but feels empty inside. Instead of more productivity hacks, Dr. K walks through how identity actually forms, why some people get trapped in paths they never truly chose, and how to rebuild real internal drive using evidence based principles. This episode is a practical roadmap for anyone who feels lost, plateaued, or terrified they already lived the “best” part of their life. Topics include: Feeling like you peaked in your 20s and why motivation fades in your 30s External validation, people pleasing, and the “noiseless” identity crisis Exploration vs commitment and how foreclosure keeps you stuck Letting go of sunk costs and the fear of starting over Self determination theory: autonomy, competence, and relatedness How to choose for yourself instead of chasing “right” and “wrong” paths Building competence by stretching your limits, not just performing well Why your relationships feel hollow when you do not know who you are Using feedback from others to solidify a more authentic identity Why the solution is not optimization supplements but discovering who you are HG Coaching : ⁠https://bit.ly/46bIkdo⁠ Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: ⁠https://bit.ly/44z3Szt⁠ HG Memberships : ⁠https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf⁠ Products & Services : ⁠https://bit.ly/44kz7x0⁠ HealthyGamer.GG: ⁠https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use if we want to build the life that we want to. So check out the link in the bio and start. your journey today. Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Alo Canoja, 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 right, chat, today we're going to talk about what to do

if you've peaked in your 20s. So a lot of us will work really hard when we're young, but then early 20s roll around, mid-20s roll around. Some of us start to feel a little bit burnt out, but many of us feel like that drive, that sort of grit that we used to have in our early 20s, starts to disappear by our late 20s or early 30s. Then it feels like we really peaked. And we look around us and we see that there are some people who still have that drive in grit. They seem to be really focused on developing themselves personally, professionally. And we kind of look at them and we're like, I just don't have. have that anymore. And so then you can sort of fall into this like world of podcast bro optimization, which is not bad by any means. But those productivity hacks don't solve the root of the problem. So if you look at someone else who is wakes up every day, has passion, has drive, they know what they want to do in life. And that's what's missing for you. So in order for you to have that passion and drive about what you want to do in your life, that actually starts with the concept of you. Because there's a really important transition that we have to make usually

in our 20s, which is moving from sort of external motivations, trying to make other people happy, to discovering who we are. Once I know who I am, a lot of that intrinsic motivation and drive comes from that sense of me. So I'll explain just a little bit more, right? So if I say like, okay, hi, I'm Dr. Kay, and I have a purpose in life. My purpose is to help the digital generation with their mental health. But in order to like have that kind of purpose, there has to be a me. Does that make sense? Like the purpose of my life connects fundamentally to who I am. And unless you know who you are, your experience of life is going to be, you're going to get a lot of these signals from the outside. Like, oh, like, maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do this.

This looks pretty exciting. This looks pretty exciting. And then you kind of get into it a little bit, but that drive isn't there. You do it for a couple months. And then you're like, maybe I should do this. So I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but if you don't know who you are, you are constantly going to be changing your mind about what you need to do to fix yourself, to improve yourself, to find some degree of peace.

So let's start with sort of understanding this motivational structure. So when we're young, our motivational structure in what gives us drive is actually other people. So if you have a young kid, right, like we're getting socialized to behave in the right way, say please and thank you,

you know, make sure you wipe your mouth before you get up, make sure you wash your hands, make sure you share with the other kids. So the earliest phase of our life is about socialization and like conditioning, where what we are supposed to do is what other people tell us. So oftentimes people will get exposed to like particular hobbies or opportunities that are based on chance. Maybe you have some early like talents that start to emerge. People say, oh, you're smart. You should play So it's kind of this RNG sort of thing where like our early motivational system, and this is literally how our brain develops, right? This is why kids are so good at learning languages because they are sort of responding to their

environment. So a child may have like some degree of like a want or a desire, but they don't have a sense of identity. You can't ask a five-year-old or a six-year-old like, who are you? They're not going to be able to answer that question. So early on, our motivational structure when our brain is, when our brain is, you know, we're is a little bit more primitive and appropriately developed, but like we have a six-year-old brain, that motivational structure is designed to make other people happy. So this is what starts to happen

in our teenage years is like we start to develop some sense of identity, right? Like, teenagers like kind of think they know who they are, but they really actually have no clues. So they have lots of problems with confidence. There's a lot of peer pressure. There's a lot of conformism. So then what happens is we enter our early 20s, we still have this externally oriented motivational system where the reason we grind, we don't really know what we want, but we've set a target for ourselves and the rest of the world is providing structure for us, right? So you have to study for this test, get A's on the exam, get a good internship. Once you have a good internship, turn it into a good job. It's like this next step, next step, next step, grind, grind, grind, grind, make the rest

of the world happy. Once we transition into our mid-20s, late 20s, once our brain sort of fully develops, that old motivational system of making other people happy doesn't work anymore. more. If you rely on that system and I have plenty of patients who do to try to make other people happy, even in their 20s or 30s, they lose their sense of identity. These are people who sort of like, you know, start to live for other people. So who are you? Well, I'm like this person's husband. I'm this person's wife. I take care of my parents. I'm the, I'm the friend that everyone calls. Their identity is not independent of their relationships. These people usually feel incredibly out of control. They usually feel like they're not happy in life, and they usually feel less than the people

around them. They sort of gravitate towards big personality. So you may have a friend or someone in your family who takes up a lot of space in the room. And since they take up a lot of space in the room, you take up very little. They start to become almost devoid of personality. And these people go through an identity crisis that Eric Erickson called a noiseless crisis. These people are internally desperate, but from the outside, their life seems to be going okay. And that could be you too. Where, like, on paper, things seem to be going okay. You've got a decent job. Maybe you've got a decent relationship. But internally, there's like this silent desperation of like, like, even though everything on paper is okay, I don't feel good about my life. So how do you

navigate this? How do you bridge the gap from this sort of noiseless identity crisis of making other people happy to someone who is self-directed, to someone who knows who they are. And once you know who you are, you can connect with the world, right? Because here's me, here's the world. And the way that those two things connect, that's what my purpose is. So in my case, I'm trying to help you all with mental health, whatever, right? But you have a unique set of attributes. There's something that only that you can provide that when we connect that to the world will give you a sense of purpose. And once you know what that is, your internal drive and your internal fire, will return. Changing your life isn't easy. When I was flunking out of college, I had to travel

all the way to an ashram in India to begin a seven-year journey to put my life back together. Unfortunately, that option isn't available to everyone. That's why I've taken most of what I've learned, distilled it into the most important points, not just from India, but also my years of training as a psychiatrist, into our coaching program. Coaches will help you set appropriate goals, maintain motivation, and hold you accountable. Thousands of people from all over the world have tried HG coaching and have seen sustained improvements in purpose and direction in life, and even reductions in feelings of depression and anxiety. So if you're interested in putting your life together,

but don't have seven years to wander around India, definitely check out HG coaching. So how do you discover who you are? It involves two major dimensions. One is exploration and the other is commitment. So generally speaking, people who explore their options and then make an intentional commitment to one, or at least one, will sort of achieve identity formation. So the way that this looks like in my case, right, so I spent seven years studying to

become a monk, I kind of explored that. When I was in college, I like was top 100 on the Warcraft three ladder in North America. So I tried to kind of go pro as a gamer. That really didn't work out. I started a company when I was like 24 that went defunct. So I like tried a bunch of stuff. And none of it really felt right. So even though I spent seven years studying to become a monk, I decided not to become a monk. Something about that didn't really work out. And I still remember like the moment I walked away from that and the moment that I decided to become a doctor. And it's so honestly like pathetic. So I was like talking to my girlfriend, I was like madly in love and she was like I want to be married to a doctor. And I was like, all right, guess I'm giving up the monk life and

I guess I'm going to medical school. It's such a like vapid sort of thing, right? Like it's like, oh my God, you just made this decision. But honestly, that's how it was. And it worked out. This is not me making her happy. This is a subtle thing to understand. It's like, I chose. I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

Like, I really want to marry this woman. This is what I want. So I'm going to do this. And it's totally fine. Like, there's nothing wrong with being a doctor. Being a doctor is great anyway. So I sort of like made this commitment. So this is a good example of when we have exploration followed by commitment.

That's when we end up with a well-formed identity. Now, how can we get? tripped up with this. So a really, really common problem is something called moratorium. So this is when people are exploring a lot, but they refuse to make a commitment or they're unable to make a commitment. And a lot of people are stuck in this sort of situation where they're like exploring this, exploring this, I don't know what to do. Like, should I do this? Should I do this? They kind of get super caught up about the costs of making a commitment, right? So if I choose to major in this thing or if I marry this person, this means I won't get to explore this means I won't get to

explore this. So oftentimes these people are really afraid of commitment because of how it actually narrows the potential of their life. Because once I commit to this thing, that means that I can't do everything else. And that terrifies them. So they're sort of stuck in this limbo of continuous exploration. That can happen with people who peak in their 20s where they're sort of constantly exploring. But the more common situation for people in their 20s is when they have commitment without exploration. This is something that we call foreclosure. So, you know, when I was finishing up med school and starting psychiatry residency, there was someone who's about a decade younger from my social circle, and I was asking, and they were going to college, and I was like, oh, you know, what are you majoring in?

They're like, I'm majoring in investment banking pre-med. This is a 17-year-old kid who's about to go to college, and I'm like, what the fuck is that even mean? He's like, yeah, either I'm going to be an investment banker or I'm going to be a doctor, I'm not sure which one. So as I talked to this guy a little bit more, years later, you know, he's a wonderful person. And I was like, man, this kid has no idea what they're doing. And they're really like signing up for a lot. So foreclosure happens when oftentimes there are environmental influences that tell you you should do this. Major become an engineer because you'll have an easy life. Doctors too much work. You're going to be in school for 10 years. Or in my case, there was a ton of foreclosure. When I was 15 years old, I was like, what are you going to be

when you go up? I was like, I'm going to be doctor. Because my grandmother told me when I was like six, you'll be a wonderful doctor. Once a month, you tell me how great of a doctor I'm going to be, great of a doctor, I'm going to be great of a doctor I'm going to be. I remember, I told my, you know, I got interested in art and the environment and things like that. I told my dad one day when I was in the seventh grade, like, hey, I want to be an environmentalist. I want to like understand how the world works and things like that. He's like, that's a waste of time. I look, don't do that. So this is what foreclosure looks like. When you have no exploration and you commit to something. Now, foreclosure sort of works for a while because while your brain is

externally motivated while your brain is designed to make the people around you happy, like in your young years, teenage years, or early adulthood, you can get enough external feedback. And this is what people with foreclosure look like, where if the world demands that you work, you're able to work. If there's a deadline, if your boss wants to do something, then you're able to put forth your best effort. Sort of last minute panic and external pressures are what bring out your best work ethic. But if you're someone like this, you feel incredibly out of control. And the worst thing that people can do is start to structure a life where there are external

inputs. I'm externally motivated. So let me start to create all these inputs. Let me sign up for a high pressure job where like people are forcing me to do things. Since I can't motivate myself, I'm going to structure my environment to continuously motivate me. Now, that works from a sense of forcing yourself into productivity, but there's no direction. The external world determines what you end up doing, when you end up doing it. So you can be productive, but you'll be out of control.

What we're shooting for is something called achievement. An achievement is when we have plenty of exploration. We do intentional exploration of lots of different options, and we end up making a commitment. So if you're someone who's stuck in moratorium where you're continuing, The main thing that you need to do is commit to something. We'll talk about that a little bit down the road. And if you're someone who has gone through foreclosure, which is way more common if you peaked in your 20s, what you probably need to do is go back and explore your options a little bit more. Now, this is what's going to be really scary. When I tell you about that, you're going to have all kinds of thoughts in your head.

You're going to have thoughts like, oh my God, like, how much time will that take? I've invested so much energy in this. Like, do I have to start over? I don't want to start over. You're going to have all these kinds of thoughts. And I want you to really pay attention to those thoughts, because those are the thoughts that got you here in the first place. You're so afraid to waste time. You don't want to lose the investment that you've made. And as long as you're trying to optimize the investment that you've made already, you're trying to optimize this particular path.

You will never achieve internal motivation. You will be stuck in this forcing yourself to grind, trying to find productivity hacks because there's no natural passion left, right? You're about optimization, not about passion. Passion is about doing things that are not optimal. Passion is about doing stupid things because you love something. And over time, you'll figure out how to make it work. I started a Healthy Gamer when I was like 36, right?

That's when I started something new. I left my faculty position at Harvard Medical School, which I had worked so hard to get to, to start this random-ass thing where I'm talking to randos on the internet, and it's the best decision I ever made. A big part of what I've learned about developing internal motivation and discovering who you are and not plateauing is that you oftentimes have to walk away from great things. So I was on track to become a monk, walked away, was on track to become an academic psychiatrist walked away, right? So you sometimes have to walk away from things to really discover who you are. If you're someone who's plateaued in your 20s and you're looking for that,

internal drive, and that internal drive depends on who you are. How do you discover who you are? How do you know who you are? And this is what's really beautiful. A lot of people think, like, oh, the way to discover who you are is to journal. No, it doesn't involve any of that stuff. We're talking about neuroscientific mechanisms that give you a sense of identity. And the funny thing is they have nothing to do with identity. They have nothing to do with our common understanding of identity. No journaling. You don't need to go to therapy. You don't need to go hiking in the wilderness. You don't need to meditate for a lot of time. Actually, it doesn't need any of that stuff. is a beautiful thing called self-determination theory that basically figured out how human beings develop identity. The first thing they need is autonomy. So this is where you have to self-regulate the direction of your life. That will give you a sense of identity. This is what confuses people. A lot of people think, once I know who I am, then I will self-regulate, right? I will develop autonomy.

Once I know who I am, I will then be autonomous in life. it actually works the other way around. So remember that most things in the body and the mind have homeostatic mechanisms that, like, feed each other, right? So if my heart rate goes up, maybe my blood pressure goes down. Once I start to hyperventilate, I will automatically hypoventilate after I'm done. If I have a period of hypoventilation, I'll hyperventilate after that. So our body automatically creates balance.

Our temperature is 98.6. So if we get too hot, we're going to sweat. If we get too cold, we're going to shiver. This is a beautiful thing. more autonomous you become in your life, the more your identity will develop. On its own, autonomy means self-directed action. So what this basically means is pick one thing. I don't care what it is, one thing that you decide to do and go ahead and do it. That's it. So if you say, hey, I'm going to read a book, I'm going to go for a hike, I'm going to take, I'm going to go backpacking through the wilderness.

And this is what's so interesting. When I tell people this and they're people who peaked in their 20s, what my patients will say, they'll come back at me with a particular argument. They'll say, but like, what if that's the wrong thing? How do I know that's going to work? They're thinking about, I don't know how to explain this, but they're thinking about this old frame of things that are right and things that are wrong. So things that are right and things that are wrong

are about making other people happy. Getting an A is right, getting an F is wrong. Majoring in this thing is correct. Majoring in this thing is stupid. So this concept of right and wrong has nothing to do with autonomy. Do you all see what I mean? Autonomy is not about right or wrong. It's not about doing things that will make the world happy or make the world unhappy.

It is you choosing. That's the important part. I don't care what you choose. What you choose is actually immaterial because the science of self-determination theories show us that when you express autonomy, when you say, I am going to do something and then that thing happens, the main thing is the I is what levels up. The second thing that we're going to talk about is competence. So if you want to develop your sense of identity, if you want to find that internal, drive, you require competence. Now, this is the really crazy thing. Competence does not mean being good at something. I know. That's what you think it means. That's not what it means, not from a true

psychological standpoint. Competence means stretching your capabilities and hopefully succeeding. That's how we really know internally we're competent. So this is where a big problem, once again, for people who peak in their 20s, is y'all may be good at something. But we both know you're not really pushing yourself. You may be above average IQ, you may be gifted at engineering, but you're kind of like trying to make other people happy, right? You know you could be doing more. You may have an idea for a startup based on chemical engineering. You may have some idea or something like that, but you're not pushing yourself. So then what happens is you're not really understanding how competent you are. You're not really stressing yourself. But to know who you are requires knowing your limits.

So this also is going to get a little bit abstract, but bear with me. How do I know who I am? I'm capable of some things and I'm not capable of other things. There's a barrier to my identity. This is who I am. This is what I'm capable. This is what I'm not capable of. The important thing is like this is where we got caught up in productivity and improving and stuff like.

That doesn't matter. The important thing is to know where the line is. That's how you know who you are. So with competence, the main thing that you need to do, and once again, it doesn't really matter what you pick is to pick a dimension and stretch yourself in that dimension. If you're used to working out for one hour a day, three times a week, push yourself to 75 minutes. Just push yourself in whatever direction. Doesn't matter.

If you're someone who, you know, loves to read fantasy, push yourself, start to write a little bit of fantasy. The main thing is that you push yourself, you stretch your limits. Now, something cool happens. When you stretch your limits, what'll usually happen is you'll end up succeeding. And then that'll help you feel really good. You'll start to get a sense of who you are and what you are capable of. Once you know what you are capable of, the you will be better defined. The last thing I think is the hardest one, and this is relatedness.

This is for other people to see and appreciate who the real you is. Now, relatedness is the third aspect of individuation, which is really hard to do in today's world for two reasons. The first is that if you're someone who peaked in your 20s, chances are you don't know who you are. and if you don't know who you are, you can't be who you are. And if you can't be who you are, other people can't see who you are. Make sense? So if you've got no clue, this is what can also feel really empty about a lot of your relationships because, like, you can't be your authentic self because you don't know who your authentic self is.

So then what ends up happening is people relate to the mask that you put on. So you're like this, like, you know, 27-year-old chemical engineer who's like kind of into video games kind of into this. You're sort of like this, like kind of like an empty personality. You have like features of personalities. You're into this. You're into this. You're into this. But you're not really like a wholly formed human being. You're like snippets of a human being that are sort of stitched together. And this makes it really hard for other people to connect to the real you. Now, the other reason that this becomes really hard is because relatedness requires other people. So in the world that we live in today where everyone's on Discord and everyone's like you're doing

online dating and everyone's spending time on their phone, the ability to find other people to connect to is objectively the hardest that it's ever been. The last thing that's really tricky about this is that if we look at our sense of identity, my sense of identity is partially determined by what other people see in me. So when I look at myself in the mirror and I say like, okay, I'll look is, let's say a good dad. How do I know I'm a good dad? Because of the way that my children treat me, right, if they tell me. I mean, I don't know if I'm a good dad or not. They seem to be pretty happy with it. I think it's a lot of fun. Whatever. The key thing, though, is that this is the third part where, unfortunately, figuring out who you are, moving past peaking in your 20s, requires other people.

It's that feedback that we get from other people who see the real you that helps us solidify our sense of ourselves. if you're someone who's trapped by requiring external motivation to push you, if you used to grind and had a lot of passion, and it was enough to try to make other people happy, it was enough to try to sort of have this goal that was determined by other people. But now you're sort of stalling on that motivation. You can't really dig deep if you're looking around and seeing your friends or other colleagues who are like,

seem to be driven and they can wake up on a Saturday morning and work on a project, and you're like, man, I wish I could do that. The answer isn't B12 supplements. the answer is figuring out who you are. 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.

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