HealthyGamerGG - Why Gifted Kids Are Actually Special Needs

Episode Date: April 25, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explores the "burden of potential" and why being labeled a gifted child often leads to a cycle of burnout, perfectionism, and deep-seated shame. He argues that gifted children are actually "special needs" because their developmental requirements are fundamentally different from the average child, yet they are often forced into school systems that prioritize raw results over the vital study habits needed for long-term success. What to expect in this episode: The Trap of Raw Intellect: Why gifted kids often fail later in life because they "skip levels" of habit-building in early school years, leaving them without the skills to handle a "wall" where intelligence alone isn't enough. Mansion vs. Shack: A deep dive into why achieving high potential actually requires more work, not less, and how society’s expectation that things should be "easier" for smart people sets them up for failure. The Shame Gap: Understanding how shame lives in the discrepancy between your lofty internal expectations and your actual accomplishments, leading to chronic avoidance and the "smart kid" ego. The "Scenic Route" in Life: Dr. K shares his personal journey from a 2.5 GPA in college to becoming Harvard faculty, illustrating how letting go of ego and comparison is essential for true progress. The "Surprise Me" Practice: A practical Nyani Yoga exercise for retraining your brain to embrace acceptance and let go of paralyzing expectations in everyday life. Matching the Pace of the Child: Why gifted kids are naturally drawn to video games, which perfectly match their challenge level, while traditional school often moves at a "snail's pace". Advice for Parents and Mentors: Why slowing down for a struggling gifted child is a mistake and why they often need more challenge, not less, to rediscover their motivation. Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is coming May 2026! Pre-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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Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Ganger Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-O. Knoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. So, oh boy, I sure do love being perceived as a gifted child. I hope I don't end up as being a perfectionist burnout with,

burnt out, I suppose, with depression, anxiety, unfulfilled expectations, and no real interests or goals. So this is something that someone cross-posted to our subreddit. You know, it's a meme. We've had a couple of streams about burnout and gifted kids. So today what I'd like to talk to you all a little bit about is the pathway from gifted child to burnt out perfectionist, as well as sort of the way that society actually sets gifted children up to kind of fail. So I know it's kind of interesting, but when we think about a gifted child,

we think about, we perceive gifted as an advantage. But in my experience working with a lot of gifted children, it's not always an advantage. advantage. And in fact, oftentimes it can be a burden. And so I've seen this a lot in our community. I've worked with a lot of people who kind of fall into this category. I suppose I sort of fall into it as well, where I grew up kind of gifted, right? So like school was easy for me. I was told from a very young age that I was smart. I was also kind of held accountable for like not studying, right? They were like, I'd kind of like not study very much and maybe get a B plus or an A minus. And my teachers would tell my parents the same thing, every single parent teacher conference. They'd always say,

well, if all just applied himself, he would be the best student in the class. If he only just like studied more, he'd be the best student in the class, right? They were like, he's super smart. He has a lot of potential, right? So they use these words, like they talk about how smart I am. They talk about all the potential I have. And if I just applied myself, I'd be, you know, I'd be such a, I'd be the best student. So it's kind of interesting because we perceive giftedness as an advantage. But as one of my teachers once told me, we'll kind of get to this towards the end, they once explained to me that this is not in medical school, but when I was training to become a psychiatrist, I had a supervisor who once told me that gifted children or special needs children.

And what that literally means is that like the needs of a child who's gifted are actually different from the average child. And the parents who recognize that and recognize that this child is going to need like a slightly different structure, a different curriculum, or a different way of being raised are the ones that end up sort of doing a really good job. And oddly enough, in her clinical experience, she found that much like any other special needs children, you know, kids that were not treated appropriately despite their gifts were the ones that kind of struggled. So this statement when I first heard it, I thought was like absolutely ridiculous, kind of blew my mind a little bit. But I respected the supervisor a lot and I started thinking about it.

So what I'd like to share with you all today is sort of the pathway that, a gifted child takes, how a society treats them, how parents treat them, the kind of struggles they face or the influences that they have, let's not even call it a struggle, because it may not be a struggle, and then sort of how they end up. So I'd like to kind of share that with you all today, okay? So the first thing that tends to happen is when a child is gifted, school tends to be easy, right? So if you kind of think about it developmentally, there are a lot of different things that happen in school. So let's talk about school. So school is a place where you get you socialize, right? So you get socialization skills. It's a place that you learn and people think

that school is primarily about learning and it is primarily about learning, but it's just not about learning the subject material. So sure, we learn like arithmetic and mathematics and all that kind of stuff. We learn history and science and all that good stuff. But really school, if you kind of look at it developmentally, is a wonderful opportunity to learn certain key things. Socialization is a really important piece. The other thing is like habits and how to study. And this is the first sort of disadvantage that I think gifted children sort of face is that, you know, if you're young and you're gifted, school is so easy that you sort of get by without the luxury of studying. And so we kind of perceive this as an advantage, right? Like if you have to, if you go through school and you don't study,

like, that's easy. Like it's easy, easy clap, right? And so it is. And that sort of makes sense. but the interesting thing that I found is that oftentimes being intelligent, especially when you're super young as a kid, actually sets you up for failure down the road because you never need to learn the habituated study like technique that you kind of need to, that you need to succeed later on. So for a normal kid, what tends to happen is like they don't have to study like in first grade, but maybe like second grade, third grade. They have to learn how to study like once a week. Maybe they like learn how to study the night before the test because it doesn't come easily to them. And then fourth grade, fifth grade, now you're doing homework a couple days a week. You know, you're studying two or three days before the test. Then you kind of hit middle school where maybe you're studying like four days before the test. And so there's this very

graduated sense of increasing responsibility as you go further and further in school. And it's sort of designed that way, right? We're not like no teacher has a sixth, sixth year old that they're like giving 14 hours of homework a week to. It's just absurd. And then at the top end of the spectrum in terms of study habits and what we demand of students. You have something like, let's say, law school or medical school or things like that, where people are regular studying like 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week in medical school because, you know, people have grown up and have built enough of a study habit where they can actually handle that pace of studying. So what happens with the gifted kid? So the gifted kid, you know, when you sort of level up your skill to level one,

like in the first grade, and then you level up your studying skill to level two in the second grade and level three in the third grade. So the gifted kid never actually has to like grind that XP for levels like one through five of studying habits. And so they sort of managed to get B's or A's without really minimal with minimal studying or no studying at all. And then seventh grade rolls around, eighth grade rolls around. They start to struggle a little bit. Maybe they get B's. They're still not learning how to study because they sort of skipped that part of the, you know, the skill building. And we'll kind of get to that later. And then what tends to happen with gifted kids is that they don't need to study, don't need to study, don't need to study, and then they hit a wall.

They finally get into some kind of situation where their raw intellect is no longer sufficient to handle the schoolwork that they're supposed to handle. But they've trained themselves at that point. They've accustomed themselves at that point to managing school with raw intellect. And so when that kind of falls short, they really kind of really hit a wall. It's a very, very hard cliff to overconfidence. come. And so this is kind of the first thing that sort of shoots gifted kids in the foot. And this also leads to kind of this idea of perfectionism and burnout because then they like,

you know, then they struggle a lot. They don't understand why they can't do it. They try. They know they're smart. Everyone's talking to them about potential. They start to feel really bad about themselves. So the first kind of interesting thing that gifted kids run into is the fact that they sort of don't develop the proper study habits because, you know, as a six year old, and it's kind of not your fault because like you're not mature enough as a six-year-old to realize like, oh, I need, you know, to have good study habits. So even though the teacher said this last Tuesday and I understand that I don't need to study, I'm going to sit down and like practice my study habits. It doesn't make any sense. It's like completely artificial. So that's the first thing that happens

is that they kind of hit this wall of, you know, not being able to study. The second thing to consider is the expectation. So another thing that really leads gifted kids kind of down the wrong path is the burden of expectation that's placed upon them. So from a very young age, they're told, oh, you're gifted, you're smart, you're special, you have so much potential. And so what that starts to do is it constructs like a very, very lofty goal in their minds. Right. So I'm going to use kind of an analogy, which is kind of like, you know, if I think about an amazing home, like I think about a mansion, it can have a beautiful blueprint. And I can buy a gigantic piece of land. And I can look at that and I can say like, oh, like this, this home or this,

this blueprint has so much potential. And sometimes we kind of forget that, like, you can have, like, you can have a blueprint for a mansion, but that's going to actually take way more work to achieve than, like, building a shack. So the other really interesting thing that we sort of kind of get wrong societally is that we assume that when someone is gifted, things are actually going to be easier for them, that they need to work less to accomplish the same amount. but in my experience, living up to a gifted child's potential involves more work. It's sort of like, you know, it's just like building a shack versus building a mansion.

Like, sure, the mansion is capable of so much more than the shack is capable of. But let's not forget for a moment that the amount of effort that it goes into building a mansion is actually way more than what's required to build a shack. And this is the second place that gifted kids kind of get tripped up because everyone around is looking at them and they're sort of saying, oh, like, this is an amazing mansion. Like you could build such an amazing mansion. And we all kind of forget for a moment that like actually living up to that potential is very, very difficult and requires a lot more of an investment than building a shack. And so this gap between what people expect of you and also the idea that things should be easier for you kind of compound on themselves and sort of end up with gifted kids kind of feeling like they're failing at everything, right? because they have all this potential,

and they're just not living up to it. So the other thing that we'll see in gifted kids is that what tends to happen is that they will put in some amount of work, but they're expecting a mansion when all they've really put in is as much as building a shack. I may have lost y'all a little bit there, but let me just explain. So, you know, what a gifted kid will do is they'll look at their peers, right? And they'll say, like, oh, like, this person did this and they're able to accomplish this.

So, like, I should be able to do that too. And so if you look at your neighbors who are building a shack and they're like, lo, they went to Home Depot and they got like 100 pounds of wood and they built their shack over a weekend. And then, like, you go and get your 100 pounds of wood from Home Depot and you start like, brought to you by Home Depot, I suppose. And you start building your mansion. Like, I know it sounds kind of weird, but, you know, 100 pounds of wood may be enough

to build a shack, but it's nowhere near enough to build a mansion. And then what gifted kids will do is they'll look at the like the foundation that they've laid with 100 pounds of wood, and they'll be like, where is the, I don't even have a shack. Like, you know, it's like, they look at what they've accomplished when they put in the same amount of energy as someone else. And they get really confused because this person has a complete shack over here. And like, I have like barely the beginnings of a mansion. And so then that sort of negatively impacts them. They start to like feel like they're actually inferior to these other people because they've been told, oh, you're smarter than the kid next door. Like, why the hell is the kid next door

getting into college and like you're not even getting into college? And so it all sort of, sort of, sort of, sort of compounds, right? Because even for the gifted kid, they're not trying to build a shack because they've been told they're gifted their entire life. So it's not enough to be average if you're gifted. So what you have to do is you try to, you know, build a mansion because that's what you've been told that you're capable of. That's the expectation you set for yourself. And then you're left kind of scratching your head and wondering like why you don't even have a shack yet. Even though you studied for a month and they studied for a month, you're not getting as much as that they're getting. And it's kind of super bizarre, right? Because we just don't think about it that way. We think that if you're gifted, that means that everything should be easier for you. That it not only, they may need 100 pounds of wood to build a shack, but you should be able to build a shack and 50 pounds of wood. It should be easier for you. But it turns out paradoxically being harder. And then we sort of end up with kind of the final state of a gifted kid, which if we kind of think about it internally, is a state of like really shame and low self-esteem. So all this stuff kind of compounds, right? Like you're

told you're smart. So you set this expectation of what you're capable of, like way up here. And then like, you know, first grade goes by and you're up here. Second grade goes by and you're up here. Third grade goes by and you're up here. Boom, boom, boom. Fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade. 10th grade, 11th grade. And then you kind of tank, right? And as you go to college, suddenly like you don't have the study skills involved and now in the gap between what you're capable of and what you actually accomplish, this gap is where shame comes from. This is the shame gap that gifted kids inevitably fall into, which is when they fall short of what their expectations are. And this could be once again, due to the fact that you're, you know, you're setting out to

build a mansion and you ended up not even building a shack, right? So all of these discrepancies between your expectations and your accomplishments in that gap. And the bigger the gap is, the more it's filled with shame. So then what happens is kids are ashamed, right? Because they should be doing more. They should be doing better. And then like the shame then further compounds and makes it hard to find motivation. And this is where you kind of get burnout. So then like you have these gifted kids and you're like, hey man, just like go to a community college.

You don't have to go to an Ivy League school. You don't have to go to like Harvard or Stanford or MIT. Just like go to your local community college. And in that comes a bunch of shame because you've been told your entire life that you're better than that. Right. And so you start to develop this ego of being a super smart kid. And then this leads to avoidance of things because all your life.

left with is the identity of a smart kid. So you can never even bring yourself to go to community college because smart kids don't go to community college. In your mind, that's where the stupid kids go. And if you go to community college, then suddenly you've lived your entire life for 20 years being told you're a smart kid. It's the only, that's your biggest strength. It's the one that everyone keeps talking about. And now, like, suddenly you have to relegate yourself to being a stupid kid. And in that gap is where the shame lives. In that gap is where the ego lives. Okay. So it's really, really hard, right? Because you're set up with these expectations. People don't really acknowledge that because you're capable of a lot, it's actually going to take like a lot of

work to take that potential and bring it to fruition. Right? And that's like, that's the biggest thing is people just lose sight of the fact that building a mansion actually takes more work than building a shack. And your entire life, people have told you like you should build this mansion because that's what you're capable of. Hey, all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. How does experience shape us as human beings? 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. And so then we kind of get to, all right, so like, what do we do about it, right? So if you're a gifted kid who's kind of perfectionistic and burnt out and like society is sort of set you up this way, I'm not saying that you're not individually responsible as well, but I do think that there's a whole reason. So when we have like a generation of burnt out gifted kids, I think we have to be fair and be

a little bit scientific and kind of acknowledge that this may not be like an individual problem, right? When we've got a generation of kids like this, like maybe there's something societal going on. And I think paradoxically, we sort of set these kids up to struggle. And so then the question becomes, okay, like what do we do about it? So the first thing you should do if you're a gifted kid is to stop comparison, right? Like comparison is the foundation of getting out of this problem. Because as long as you are comparing yourself, and this is part of the issue, is that if you think about the word gifted,

what does the word gifted imply? It is a word that has no meaning outside of a comparative framework. You guys get that? The only way you can be gifted is if there are other people who are not. gifted. And so essentially what happens is like the whole idea of a gifted kid only exists in relationship to another kid. And so what we find in the minds of gifted kids is that they're comparing themselves all the time. Oh, I don't want to go to community college. That's where the stupid people go. Oh, I don't know why I can't do what my friend is capable of. Like he's able

to do so much. Why am I not able to do so much? I have an older sibling who did fantastic. And now I have big shoes to fill. Right? There's so much comparison. all of the expectations that gifted kids have don't come from themselves, right? Because if you actually based your expectations on what you're capable of, you'd be capable of a B, C, D, or F. That would be a realistic expectation. But instead, you create these artificial expectations that are based on comparison. And why do gifted kids do that? Because it starts with their parents. It starts with their teachers. We're all told that we're gifted, which is by definition, a comparison to all of the other kids. And so then what happens is you're looking over

at the shack and you've got this blueprint for a mansion and they give you some wood and then you try to build the mansion and like you don't even have a roof when this person has a completely built shack. And then you kind of look at yourself and like, man, I must be like a super idiot, right? And it's just, it's so bizarre that when we set up this kind of, when we start with this framework of a comparison, we sort of doom ourselves to failure because there's like we're just, it's just, it's never going to work because you can't ever base the expectations of your life and what you're capable of based on what someone else is doing. If someone else is happy studying chemical engineering, it doesn't mean that you're going to be happy studying chemical engineering. If somebody else is

happy dating someone of the opposite sex, it doesn't mean that you're going to be happy dating someone of the opposite sex. The whole point is as humans, we're individuals. And if you're a gifted kid, the first thing you've got to do is let go of all comparison. So next thing, is to recognize that your road is going to be a rough one. Right? So, like, when someone sets out to build a mansion, they know in their mind that, like, this is going to take a while, right? You can't expect to build a mansion in the same amount of time.

It would take someone to build a shack. And so if you're a gifted kid and you expect a lot from yourself, okay? Recognize that this is going to be a long road. And the greater your potential is, the longer it's going to take for you to get there. And this is something that I can understand in hindsight. So I grew up as a gifted kid and was like in, you know, the special classes or whatever. I actually still remember when I was in eighth grade, my grades started a dip. And when I went to high school, I didn't qualify for based on my grades.

Like my high school was like, yeah, he needs to be in like regular English. He can't be in like advanced English or he doesn't meet the criteria for advanced English. And so my parents were really, really not happy with that because they have such a smart boy. He's so smart. He just needs to apply himself. So they went to the school and I remember having a meeting with the honors English teacher or whatever. And then he's like, do you want to be in this class? And I was like, yeah, I want to be in the class. And my parents were like, yeah, he should be. He belongs. He belongs. He belongs. Right. And so the teacher was like, okay, fine. Because, you know, I mean, you're not going to, you know, there's some parents that could potentially be annoying. So you're like, whatever. And so I ended up being in the class that I really didn't belong. And I really didn't do very well. Right? Because I didn't have the work ethic. But it propagates sort of this. idea of like, you can handle it. So like I started off, you know, going on the wrong track, kind of like in high school. It took me, took me five years to graduate from college, right, with a 2.5 GPA. It took me another three or four years to even get into medical school. And so like my road has been long. And like that's just sometimes what it takes if you're a gifted

kid, right? You take the scenic route in life. So oftentimes people would ask me, you know, like, about stuff. I remember when I was going to, when I started medical school and I saw friends of mine, right, who I was in high school with, they're already fully trained doctors and, you know, flying around and all that good stuff. And I'm just like starting medical school. And I was like, yeah, I took the scenic ramp in life. And so recognize that if you're a gifted kid, like, it's a long road. Like, you're not going to do things faster. You're not going to build a mansion as fast as someone else is going to build a shack. The other thing to recognize about it being a long road, if you're a gifted kid, is don't expect to see the form of your mansion for a long time.

When other people have built their shacks, you will still just have the foundation of the mansion. It's not going to have a roof for a long time. It's not going to have windows for a long time. So this is the other problem that gifted kids run into is as they put in an equal amount of effort compared to their colleagues, they actually see less return on their investment. and that in turn shatters their motivation and makes them want to give up, right? Because I'm putting in all this effort and I'm still not seeing anything yet. So it's a long road, be patient with yourself and try your best not to compare to other people. The last thing to kind of consider is that is the shame. So gifted kids oftentimes struggle a lot with self-esteem and shame. And that once again is because their expectations are up here and their performance is down here, right? And so in that gap is where your shame is going to live. And so as long as there is a gap in what you expect from yourself with what you accomplish, you will have shame. And the solution to that, oddly enough, is one of two ways, right?

One is you can actually live up to the expectations that you have, right? So you can actually shoot up here and land up here. So you can go to an Ivy League school or whatever, right? You can go, you can start, you can do a tech startup or whatever. Like, you can like do everything that everyone has always known you're capable of doing. So you can actually. hit all of those metrics. That's one option. Then the shame will go away. Or what you can do is let go of your expectations and bring yourself down here because the shame exists in the gap. So even if you accept yourself as being like sort of a failure, oddly enough, the shame will go away. And as you accept yourself as you are, which is not wasted potential, but like in the present, like you are

everything that you're capable of. Everything that you've ever been capable of is exactly what you've achieved. And once you sort of take that attitude, bring your expectations down to here, you will be amazed at like what happens to your motivation and what you are truly capable of. But you can't achieve it as long as there is that shame gap, right? Like in terms of performance. So, questions. Anyway, so let me just kind of summarize. So I think that like, you know, we see this a lot where a lot of people are gifted and we think of that as an advantage. But like I was saying earlier, I think that, you know, sometimes being gifted comes with its own set of needs. And by properly addressing those needs, we can avoid some of these things like gifted kids,

you know, feeling ashamed of themselves, gifted kids, you know, not like comparing themselves to like all the other normal kids and finding themselves lacking. And also that we have to kind of acknowledge that our school system is sort of set up in a particular way, that oftentimes causes gifted kids to stumble. And through understanding like how a gifted kid, you know, a child who is gifted becomes an adult who's perfectionistic and burnt out, we have to understand that whole life cycle

in order to sort of start taking steps to change it. Okay. So I'm sure you've been asked this question before and I've answered before, so feel free to tell me where I can find the answer this question. How are you able to get accepted to Harvard Medical School, let alone medical school loan with such a low GPA? when that is such a critical deciding factor. How did I stand out?

So that's a great question. So the short answer is, so I did some amount of graduate education, so I did a master's degree to boost my GPA. The second thing that I did, I didn't go to Harvard for medical school. I went to Tufts for medical school, and then I did my psychiatry training at Harvard,

at Mass General McLean Hospital. And so the short answer of like how I wound up there is like one step at a time. So you have to do, you know, in each of those things, involved like a reality check or some degree of humility in terms of like thinking like I actually don't belong at Harvard. Like I'm never going to wind up there. I had to accept that, right? Let alone get into medical school. And the more that I accepted like I did a lot of things that were,

you know, humbling to say the least. I wouldn't quite say undignified. But I had to really let go of a lot of ego and like take one step at a time. It also took perseverance. I mean, I applied to 120 medical schools before I got into a single one. And that was the break that I needed. And then, like, understanding, having all that failure behind me, I really worked hard in medical school and really tried to excel. And then I actually did an away rotation, for those of you don't know what that is, or for those of you do know what that is. So I basically did an audition rotation at Harvard, which is, like, super competitive. You show up there with a bunch of other people who want to go there.

And it's basically like a test. It's like a month-long test of what you're capable of. And I did really well. So thankfully, I had set up, you know, a lot of good stuff over the last eight years in terms of being myself and like owning the person that I was and not being ashamed of the fact that I failed and, you know, recognizing that most of the students, most of the other students who were auditioning were four years younger than I was, that I was actually older than some of the residents there, despite the fact that like they were evaluating me, right? So like, there's someone two years younger who's like giving me a grade. So navigating all that stuff was difficult, but I did a good job at it and stayed focused, and that's how I wound up at Harvard. So I trained there for four years, and that's where I'm faculty now. Right. But it's all about like letting go of the ego. How do you lower expectations? You lower expectations by accepting what you're capable of, like actually acceptance. So expectation and acceptance are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Okay. So practicing acceptance.

is how you lower expectations. So let me give you guys an example. So the theme today is Nya Yog, right? So like, let me think about a Nyani Yog exercise to let go of expectations. Let me just think about this for a second. So here's a good example of a Niani Yog exercise. Actually, I don't know if there's a good example.

This is one of the ones that I feel less confident. This is maybe a bad example of a Niani Yogi exercise. So for the next month or two months, when you go to a restaurant and someone asks you what you want to what you want to order, just tell the waiter to surprise you. Just tell them, surprise me. And then pay attention to your enjoyment or lack of enjoyment of the food. Right.

So when we go to restaurants, we have expectations. And if we think about the least, the worst experience that you can have at a restaurant is not actually to have bad food. it's to expect really good food and get bad food. That's actually worse than getting bad food. If you know a restaurant is crap and you go there and you order something, the food that you get is crap, like, what were you expecting? It's totally fine, actually. Right? We do that every day.

Like, if you go to a fast food, like McDonald's or Taco Bell or whatever. Like, you're not expecting, you know, like a gourmet meal. You're just expecting some like mediocre, arguably incredibly tasty, depending on whether you're getting a Mexican pizza or not. But you can't get anymore because they're out of sad. But so. like a lot of, if you guys want to really understand, so this is the way that Niani Yo works, if you really want to understand expectation and acceptance, you have to put yourself in situations

that are like free from expectation. And you can't put yourself in a situation because the expectation doesn't come from the situation, right? It's even, that's, even what I said was kind of wrong. You have to practice messing with your expectation. So go to restaurant and just say, surprise me. Or you can ask if that, you can ask if They don't know, like, if they're taking it back. You can say, what's good here? Okay, I'll take that. Right?

If you've got dietary restrictions, tell them about the dietary restrictions. And just like, and then you're like, but what if I don't like the food that I get? Well, yeah, I mean, that's the point, right? So, like, just eat what you get and see what happens. And you're like, but I don't like it. And it's like, yes. So, like, pay attention to that and be like, how hard is it for you to order food that you're not going to like or you order without expectations? What's it like to go to a restaurant and accept?

that you're going to just get some random pile of food that could be amazing and could be something that you really dislike. That's how you gain acceptance. That's how you let go of expectations by literally going to a restaurant and like actively letting them go. That is the Niani Yog. And then you may discover all kinds of cool things, right? You may even discover, for example, that if you go to the restaurant and you expect crap, if you're like, this is going to be an absolute train wreck, I'm going to have to go home and like have a bowl of cereal. after the meal. It'll be really interesting how much you enjoy your meal. It'll be really

interesting because in that moment, what you're doing is letting go of the expectation. And then like suddenly, even if you get crap, it's not a big deal. And if you get something delicious, it's like such a huge win. And that's what it means to let go of expectation. The more you let go of expectation, the more you start to enjoy life and the better life gets. It's kind of bizarre. So literally if you guys wanted Nyan Yog practice to let go of expectations and earn acceptance And you can't just do this once, right? So you can't like wuss out of it You have to do it for a month Presuming you're going to go out to eat you know and you can afford that and all that good stuff

Otherwise like make it three months like you know do it for a while like commit yourself This is my life now. Gigi get wrecked nubes so try it You guys want to learn Yan Yorg? Try it Okay, so someone else is asking, how should a parent, teacher, or manager support the special needs of gifted people if what's happening now is bad? That's a great question.

So I'll give you an example. So, sometimes I get parents that come into my office that have a kid who's addicted to video games. Why is a kid addicted to video games? Really simple. Because video games match the pace of the child, right? That's why gifted kids, in a nutshell, the reason that gifted kids get addicted to video games

is one very, very, very simple reason. Can all be reduced to this. Games match the pace of the child and school doesn't. So you've got a kid. Goes to school. Gets a worksheet. Does the worksheet. I still remember, I had this experience.

I skipped the first grade. So this is what happened. I went to a school where, you know, I'd do a worksheet and then, like, they'd give me another one. And so in my first day of first grade, I moved schools. I gave them, you know, I got a worksheet. I did the worksheet. I gave it back to them.

And I said, can I have the next one? And she's like, what do you mean the next one? It's like the next, whatever's next. Like, I'm done with this. We've got class for another 45 minutes. I'm done with this. Can I have the next one? She's like, there is no next one.

I'm like, what? And then it didn't take long where like, you know, she gave me the, then she evaluated me and I got moved up a grade, but same problem there. And then eventually, like, what heck is, like, school moves at the pace of, like, the slowest person. Now, here's the really addictive thing about a video game. Now, imagine you're just bored at school because it's moving at a snail's pace, right? Because there's, like, other six-year-olds and, like, you're a six-year-old, too,

and maybe you're a little smarter than the other six-year-olds. Now, enter a video game. What happens when you don't beat level one? You replay level one. And what happens when you beat level one? You go straight to level two. And if you beat level two, you go straight to level three. You beat level three, you go straight to level four.

So games perfectly match the challenge that a human being is capable of. Right? If you get stuck on a boss in Dark Souls, like, you don't get to move past the boss because your parents make a phone call to from software and they're like, hey, my son is really good at video games. Can you please advance him past this boss and stick him to the next boss?

It's like, you can't do that in Dark Souls. Like, Dark Souls doesn't give a shit. Right? So, like, kids get addicted to video games because they perfectly match what you're capable of, which is exactly what kids like. There's this whole thing called intent to mastery.

We teach all this stuff to parents and things like that. So what do you do if you've got a kid who's gifted, you challenge them. And you don't rely on school to do it for you. So when parents come to me and they're like, I have a kid who's addicted to video games, he's 16. He thinks school is, I ask him, okay, what do you think about school? It's like, school is like, school is like, school is like, you know, I make a couple of phone calls and I'm like, we're going to like, you so we were, this was back when I was in Boston, there's a lot of cool startups in Boston. So what'll do is we'll make some phone calls. We'll stick them in an internship somewhere. Like we'll

take some college level internship at some kind of startup. So like we'll look around at like incubators from like MIT or whatever, like Harvard, we'll be like, hey, like, there's a kid. Do you guys have any internship opportunities available? And we'll stick him there. And he'll work there for the summer. And it like turns the kid right around. No more video games.

Because he's actually like learning. So I stuck one kid in this startup that was, that there was an app. You take a picture of a mole on your body and it tells you the percentage chance that the mole is cancerous. Right? So we stick the kid there.

We're like, go help them. And then like sometimes the kid is like, What am I supposed to do? Like, you start by getting them coffee. And then maybe you'll learn something. And then it's actually fantastic. Like, they do really well. You challenge them, right?

And because the cool thing is that a lot of the startup folks, they sort of recognize because some of them are like misfits too. So they're like, okay, there's like a kid here. Like, let's put them to work. Because they recognize that, okay, you're 16. So you know how to like manage SQL databases? And the kid is like, no. They're like, Google it and learn.

And then you're going to manage our SQL database next week. And the kid is like, what? And they're like, yeah. And then suddenly the kid is like goes home. He's not playing video games. He's like reading about SQL databases or whatever. Right? Just just stick them. Stick them into it and challenge them. So as a parent or a teacher, like I'd say like ask them. So here's the biggest mistake that parents and teachers make with gifted children is that when a gifted child fails, what we tend to do is slow down. Instead, what you need to do is speed up. It's absolutely terrifying. So if a gifted child is fail, what they need more than anything else is a bigger challenge, not like an easier environment. Now, you have to make sure for a couple of other things, like you need to make sure there's not ADHD going on, depression going on,

learning disabilities or other things like that going on. But in the absence of all of those things, challenge them more, not less. Ask them to do more. Put them in positions of leadership, right? And just push them. Because like it's so fulfilling when you're, take a kid in that situation.

and you're like, you're going to need to do this thing. And they're like, I can't do that thing. And you're like, okay, so then fail. But try. If you fail, like no big deal. But I'm not going to expect less of you. I know it's kind of paradoxical, but we just talked about letting go of expectation.

But it's not really expectations. It's really having faith in them. It's a subtle difference. But be like, I have faith in you. I think you can handle it. So like, give it your best shot. That's what you do. You challenge them.

Respect them instead of expect things from them. 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.