HealthyGamerGG - You Can’t Live Your Life To The Fullest

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about how to actually live life to the fullest. He covers being ready to do so, avoidance of pain, facing adversity, and more! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And so then what happens is my mind is unsatisfied with a B, unsatisfied with a C, unsatisfied with a D. The only thing it'll look for is an A and a guaranteed A at that. Because if I don't get an A and it winds up being a B, then I'm screwed and I've fallen further behind and I had this opportunity to make things up and I can't make it up. So what does that readiness mean? Readiness means a guarantee of an A. So if you're afraid of death and you need to make up and you want to live life to the fullest, what readiness means is knowing that you. you will live life to the fullest. I want to live life to the fullest, but I don't know how. Bit of background. 23 and from the UK fell into major depression, anxiety rut after leaving high school,

and have been piecing together my life the last two or three years. The rut started because of a realization of death. Interesting. It sent me into a panic mode and instantly, and it was always on my mind every single day for at least a year. Wow, that sounds terrible. I'd have constant panic attacks which led to agoraphobia and nowadays social anxiety. Thankfully, the fear of death is subsided, but it's left a feeling of wanting more out of life. It's almost given me pressure to go out and do things I want to do because life is so short. I've been playing catch-up the last few years, seeing my past friends go to university and graduate whilst I was homebound was honestly soul-crushing. I never thought I would have been in that position.

I'd speak to peers online and have to make up lies about my situation because I was so embarrassed to tell them my story. At one point, I couldn't walk outside my house. It was that bad, and it was even more hurtful seeing people I knew having the time of their lives whilst I was stuck in helpless. At times it felt like the world had moved on, and I was left behind with no direction or path. It still does feel like that sometimes. I'm in a position now where I see friends moving on, family members moving on with their lives,

etc. I feel ready to move on and pursue the life that I've always wanted to live, but for some reason, I'm scared. My anxiety has lessened, but I still don't go out much. I'm still anxious around people and still insecure with who I am. I've accepted my anxiety and have made massive progress, but I still feel left behind. How do I even begin to just go my own way? Throughout those years where my mental health was at its worst. I couldn't do what I wanted to do. But now that I feel okay, I still don't feel ready to just go out there and do it. How do I overcome this? I have dreams of becoming a tattooist. I'm drawing every day, but I don't feel ready yet. I've wanted to start going to the gym and get some gains, but I don't feel ready. I want to connect with old friends and have a good

time, but I don't feel prepared enough. I'm too anxious. What if they ask me how I've been doing these last few years. Every single thing I want to do has an excuse of not feeling ready. But why am I like this when I have this fear of death pressuring me to just go out and live life to the fullest because we're all going to go someday? I feel like if I don't address this now, I will regret it the older I get. I don't want to look back on my life and I feel ashamed. I want to feel proud of who I became and what I did. So part of the reason we're sharing this, is that this is a story of someone who had anxiety, had depression, you know, fell behind, right? So it sounds like maybe they dropped out of school for a little bit or something like that.

We're not entirely sure. And now they've made progress, right? So their anxiety is a lot better. They still sometimes feel that way. You know, they've accepted their anxiety. They're like starting to get better. And so the tricky thing is like when we have sort of a clinical diagnosis like depression or anxiety, and we're not.

not able to do stuff. We've got an excuse, right? And this is one of the problems I think with mental health today is that we'll treat the depression and anxiety, and then we enter this sort of like intermediate period where like my anxiety is better. Maybe I'm not as agoraphobic. Maybe the panic attacks have gotten better. The fear of death has gotten better. But I still can't do what I want to do. I don't feel ready. I've fallen behind. And so it's almost like, like, you know, in physical injuries, we have this idea of rehab. So you have the stroke, and then you have the stroke care, right? Maybe you'll do a TPA or like whatever. You do some kind of procedure. And then there's this sort of assumption that like after you have a big physical injury,

let's say you break a bone. With physical medicine, we're really, really good at sort of saying, like, okay, we're going to give you medical care, right? You're going to have the surgeon who's going to come and fix your leg. They're going to put nails in it or whatever. and then you're going to go see a physical therapist for six months and get back to where you are. So in physical medicine, we have a good injury control, rehabilitation to back to where you are. Okay? When it comes to mental health care, this is missing.

Right? So like, we'll have treatments for anxiety. We'll have treatments for depression. But what do you do afterward? right? So like now you're 23, your friends are all way ahead of you. Like, how do you deal with that? And so there's a big part of this. So what we're going to do is kind of approach this in a couple of different ways. One thing is I'm not going to go too much into the concept of falling behind because there's a whole video about that on Dr. Kay's guide in the depression module. There's a somskaid

or fallen behind where that comes from, things like that, how to deal with that. We're still going to talk about it some. But if you guys are really interested in that, that resonates with you, to we already have that there. So we're going to focus on other things today. So then what happens is like you've kind of fallen behind, right? You've missed out on some years. So when I've missed out on something, I need to make up for it, right? So now like you have this fear of death, you've missed out on a couple years. You want to live life to the fullest. But you're paralyzed. You're not ready. So what's going on there? What does it mean to be not ready? Why do we need to be ready? What are we looking for. So the first thing to understand is that if the number one reason why we don't do

things when we want to do things, I mean, I don't know if it's the number one reason, is not being ready. This concept of writing this is something that's very, very dangerous. It's very, very sneaky. And it keeps us very paralyzed. So one thing, let's try to dig into this a little bit. okay? So what is readiness? When I feel ready, how do I feel? Right? Because this is like, I don't feel ready. What do we think of? What are we shooting for when we want to feel ready? We feel confident. We feel prepared. So what does readiness sort of mean? It means that I can handle what comes. I'm not 100% sure about what's coming, but I can handle it. Right? That's what it means to be ready. So like, I'm ready for this test. So whatever the test sends me, I can handle it. So the first thing to

understand is that if we've fallen behind and we lack confidence in ourselves, what is that going to do to our sense of readiness? Now, what I mean by that is like, feeling ready and being ready are two entirely different things. And the problem is that if you feel insecure, if you lack confidence, if you've fallen behind, as long as you believe that, you will never be ready. because you can prepare and prepare and prepare, but as long as you lack the confidence, you'll never feel ready. You can be ready. Like, what do you need to be ready to go to the gym?

Maybe a bottle of water, that's it. Right? Like, what else do you need? You don't need anything. The whole point is you do the work there. So readiness is tricky because readiness is a problem that is born of our insecurity, which appears to have an external solution.

And that's what gets us stuck. Because we go on thinking, okay, let me get these workout clothes, let me get this water bottle, let me start exercising at home. We look at all of these internal solutions, but the source of unrightiness is right here. And it keeps on spewing a feeling of unrightiness. And so we go on like trying to fix our life, trying to fix our life, trying to fix our life. And we never make any progress, even though we're making progress. And so then we don't act. okay so the other thing that i kind of want to point out is that like sometimes when we feel insecure

let's like just look at the social example for a second our mind will start to project okay so i'm still anxious around people and still insecure with who i am i've accepted my anxiety and have made massive progress but i still feel left behind i want to reconnect with my old friends and have a good time but i don't feel prepared enough i'm too anxious what if they ask me how I've been doing these last few years. And we can see this too, where the person kind of says, I never thought I would have been in that position. I'd speak to peers online and make up lies about my situation.

So in terms of social readiness, I want to reconnect with people. I lie about my situation. What's going on there? So what's wrong with saying, you know, last two or three years have been rough. The pandemic hit me hard. I actually got like hit with really bad anxiety and depression and it really threw me off.

And like honestly it took years to just get over the anxiety. And now I'm putting my life back together. What's wrong with saying that? Right. So then people will say, well, like, what will people think? They'll think I'm pathetic. Now let's understand. Be careful.

Let's understand. If you think that sharing your life will make other people think you're pathetic. where does that idea come from? Why does your mind conclude that someone else will think you're pathetic? Right? So, like, I mean, this has been my experience that when you share with someone that you're struggling and you're making progress and stuff like that, as long as, like, you don't monopolize the conversation about it and mention it at every turn and you actually hang out and have a good time, I actually think most people will respect you for that. And it's not like the last two or three years have been easy on most people, right?

Let's be honest. Like the pandemic has accelerated how bad rental health is. Everyone's been on the struggle bus. People who say, like, I've been on the struggle bus oftentimes will open the door for a connection. Because everyone else has been struggling, but no one wants to say it. So we all lie to each other that everything is okay. And then we don't engage with each other and we become further isolated because we don't want to share how much we're struggling. So where does it come from?

It comes from here. Because what we do, this is like human nature, we insert into the minds of other people the way that we think ourselves. So it's the person who has the affair that is paranoid that their partner is cheating on them. It's the person who trusts other human beings who gets taken advantage of, right, until they learn. So we assume that other people will come to the same conclusions. Yeah, that's just how the mind works. It's how our empathic circuitry works. So since you feel like you're pathetic, if people knew that, if they saw you, they would come to the same conclusion.

Whereas, like, that's not actually usually the case. Right? Usually, like, when people think someone is pathetic, it's not because they're actually struggling. It's because of the way in which they advertise their patheticness. So there's something to be learned there for sure. But generally speaking, the reason that you think everyone's going to think this way is because you feel that way about yourself. So I'll give you like another example. Eating disorders.

Someone can be, have a BMI of 14 and think they're overweight and they'll be embarrassed to wear a swimsuit because everyone else is going to think I'm so fat. I'm so fat. I'm so disgusting. Everyone else is going to think that way too. I use that as an example because hopefully I'll understand some about eating disorders and you can see how that's just like that's not how other people are going to think, right? You can have someone who's got an eating disorder and other people will be telling them you're underweight, you're underweight, you need to gain weight, you need to gain weight. And the person with the eating disorder, if they've got it in their head that they're overweight, no amount of like stuff is going to change that. So that's when it rises to the clinical level where like they're very impervious to feedback and stuff like that.

But even, remember that clinical pathology oftentimes is an amplification of what actually exists within us. So everyone can feel sad when it rises to a certain level, we call it depression. Everyone worries about the future. When it rises to a certain level, we call it anxiety. Everyone is worried about what people think. When it rises to a particular level, we call it social anxiety. And eating disorders, the opinions of others, projecting our judgments onto how other people are going to perceive us. this is human nature. That's how we work. That's the nature of empathy. Right? So I can understand

what that person is thinking because I can think it myself. There are all kinds of other little things. Like so gift giving is a good example of this. Where for some people giving gifts is like a huge, huge show of like a particular, it means something in a relationship. For other people, gift giving is more casual. Right. So like when I don't get a gift, I interpret that as my partner does not love me and does not care about me because that's what it means to me. It may mean something completely different to him. Or the flip side is I didn't get my partner a gift and I'm torn up with guilt because gifts are very important to me, but my partner really doesn't care that much. They're totally fine with it. They don't, you know, not that big of a deal. So we project

our own judgments onto other people. Okay. So the key thing to understand here is when you don't feel ready, there's being ready and there's feeling ready. And feeling ready comes from you. some amount of preparation can help for sure. Right? So, like, I don't feel ready for a test. I may not actually be ready for a test. Maybe I'll study. Hopefully, it'll help.

So I'm not saying don't prepare at all. But then there's kind of another angle to this, which is a little bit more almost spiritual in nature. So this is a person who's afraid of death and is missed out on something. So why is writing this important? Because you have to make up for it. And if you have to make up for it,

it has to be perfect. Right? if I have an F on my transcript, I can't afford to get a B because I'm already behind. I absolutely need an A or even an A plus and extra credit. And so then what happens is my mind is unsatisfied with a B, unsatisfied with a C, unsatisfied with a D. The only thing it'll look for is an A and a guaranteed A at that. Because if I don't get an A and it winds up being a B, then I'm screwed and I've fallen further behind and I had this opportunity to make things up and I can't make it up.

So what does that readiness mean? Readiness means a guarantee of an A. So if you're afraid of death and you need to make up and you want to live life to the fullest, what readiness means is knowing that you will live life to the fullest. But that's never going to happen. So then you get stuck. And so some people may think,

I want to live life to the fullest. Why can't I fucking do anything? And it's because you want to live life to the fullest that you can't do anything. Because the only thing you're willing to do is when you know you can live life to the fullest. So paradoxically, it's not like these two things are at odds. They're one and the same.

Because how can you go to a party if it doesn't go perfectly? How can you go to a party? You've missed out on so many parties. So this party that I have to go to, I need to be confident, I need to have a good time, I need to have an answer, I need to say something I'm going to be proud of. Because if I can't say something I'm going to be proud of, I'm not going to have a good time, I'm going to miss out,

and then it's just like it's all over again. I've been traumatized by this once. I don't want to do it again. Never again, never again, never again. I need to be ready. This party needs to be hype. I need to have the best time of my life because I'm 23 years old

and I've missed two or three years of my life. I need to make up for it. So I want to be ready. So how do you deal with this? This is where we lean on spirituality. So the first thing to understand is that when we think about readiness, we want things to be good,

we want things to be perfect, we don't want things to be painful. So this is the other thing about readiness. readiness is the avoidance of pain at its essence because when I'm ready, I can handle it. And bad things don't have to happen and I can avoid the pain. When I can hold my head up high and they ask me, what have you been up to? I can answer freely and speak with pride. I don't have to lie.

Even if I lie, I feel guilty on the inside. Oh, my God. And if I speak the truth, it's so shaming. So do you see, I have a choice. Once I'm ready, I don't have to experience. that shame, I don't have to experience that guilt. Readiness is an antidote to those things. It's the avoidance of those things. Because when I'm ready, like, I have nothing to worry about. I won't feel any anxiety. I won't feel any shame. I won't feel any guilt once I'm ready.

When am I ready to go to the gym when I'm ripped? Then I don't have to feel like I'm out of shape. I don't have to feel like other people are judging me. I don't have to be ashamed of myself. I don't have to be pathetic when the person at the gym swipes me in and then 15 minutes later I leave and they're thinking, this guy's not cut out for it. They're not thinking about you, but it doesn't matter, right? That's what you think.

Like if I was working at a gym, I saw someone come for a little while and then leave, it's like, hey, at least they made it. I've been there. There are too many days where I have chosen not to go for 15 minutes and just stayed at home instead. And the next day, I wish I had gone for 15 minutes. the 15 minutes is a sea. We can't have

seas because we're so far behind. So readiness is the avoidance of pain. So what do you do with this? The first is on a fundamental spiritual level. If you want to wipe this away, root and stem and leaf and flower, all of it, understand that life is a totality. That part of the experience of life is pain. That's the nature of things. Like, if you want to become healthy, you're going to be huffing and puffing for a while. Like, that's just how

it is. Right? If I want to get good at a video game, I'm going to go in and, like, get owned. Like, I tried PVPing for the first time, like, a week ago in Lost Ark and, like, got absolutely demolished. And that's just the price of life. That's what happens. Like, life is going to be a totality. Life is not perfect. Right? Life is not all positive. Now, the problem is that society has developed in such a way where it deludes us into thinking it's all positive. it deludes us into thinking that like pure happiness is possible. How did this happen? Because of things like social media.

Oh my God. Look at all these people out there being so happy. So if I log into Facebook or Instagram and I see all these posts of people having a great time, I think this is what life is. Right? Even when we talk about depression, you know what posts get upvoted the most on Reddit when people talk about depression? They're the ones that are like, I kicked my depression's ass. 40,000 upvotes. I finally stopped

letting depression take advantage of me and I clean my room. Here's before and here's after. Even the people struggling with depression are absolute chads. There's the way that

the good people handle depression, absolute chad, and then there's me. I can't even clean. Like, I wish I was like, man, I wish I had that kind of depression. Because like their depression is like turning them into a good person.

It's like, look at how much they're growing is a human. I can't even clean my fucking sink. Think about that. The triumph of the human spirit is how we represent adversity. It's not the failure of the human spirit. The truth is, most of the time, it's failure of the human spirit. There's a reason why that one post gets upvoted, and we have a thousand posts about depression is kicking my ass,

and one post about, I conquered my depression. Right? That's why there's stories. That's why they're stories. propagate because they're the exception. So readiness is the avoidance of pain. Readiness is your mind's way of telling you, hey, if you get ready, it doesn't have to hurt. You don't have to lie anymore. Well, you don't have to lie now. It's just the only thing is you're going to have to deal with a little bit of shame. So I understand that life is both. And the big, big, big irony, this is why readiness is so fucking paralyzing.

The big, big irony is it's the person who looks for readiness to be the avoidance of pain that never winds up doing anything and is never ready. The person who is actually ready is doing the opposite. They're the one who's saying, you know what? Is the best I'm going to do? I'm never going to be ready. I might as well go. And that's readiness.

It's the acceptance of pain. That life is a totality. It's not just like one way. And you can't escape from that other piece. Right? That's the other big thing that we just like all need to understand. It's like you just can't escape. There's no way to escape.

from the suffering that is life. That's what Buddha said when he talked about Luke. He's like, there's no pass. You can use drugs for a while if you want to, not going to fix the problem. It'll delude you into thinking it. You can pretend it doesn't exist by spending time on the internet.

You can look at other people who triumph and say, oh, I want to get to that point, but what they don't understand, like you don't see the thousand other days before my clean kitchen where I struggled. We don't advertise the nasty parts. We don't advertise the boring part. give ourselves a false perception. So accept life in its totality. Except that it's going to suck.

Accept that this is the price you pay. You fell behind. You were cursed with depression. Bad R&G. This is the consequence. That has nothing to do with you. Right? You can maybe take some actions here or there. You spawned with fear of death, depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia. Right? You're now 23. and like you're behind. So be it. Once you accept that life is a totality, then like readiness is no longer necessary and you can act

because you don't have to get an A. You can get a B. A B is still going to improve your average. Right? And then you can maybe get an A next time. So you want to live life to the fullest, but it's your desire to live life to the fullest that keeps you living life.

Why don't you just start fucking living life and then you'll get to fullest eventually. But you're never going to find it ahead of time. That's the essence of it, right? It's like, I want to live life to the fullest. Like, why don't you just start living? Start living halfway, bro, or girl. Start living halfway. But that's not enough. So be it. It's never going to be enough. What is fullest? How do you live life to the fullest? What does that mean? Like, think about what is this thing that you're chasing? I want to live life to the fullest. Like, tell me, what is that? It's not a thing. Does it mean going to a party with 15 people? Does it mean

going to 15 parties a week? Does it mean going to a single party? It's an unsolvable problem. Stop trying to live life to the fullest and just start living life, whatever it has to offer. When you start living life, whatever it has to the offer, that's when you get the fullness of life. Because the fullness of life is not just positive. The fullness of life is pain and pleasure. This is why our literature is the way that it is. It's not, you know, we don't have movies about I was born rich and every day of my life has been easy and good. And in the end, I win. That's not the movie.

The movie is pain and pleasure together. Triumph over adversity. Except both. That's how you live life to the fullest. Shooting for just the pleasure, that's not life to the fullest. That's half of life. You're afraid of living half of life and that causes you to live half of life. You're afraid you want to live life to the fullest and you're living half a life.

Instead, live half the life and you'll live a life of fullness. Whatever it has to offer. Take it. That's like literally, that's life. So I'm going to leave y'all with kind of a spiritual scripture. This is, I guess you could call it a, it's called a prayer. It's not really a prayer. So the concept of prayer is like a Western thing.

Well, it's not just a Western thing, but it's not really a prayer. So this is a segment. It's a set of sutras from one of the Upanishads of the Hindu tradition. And people turned it into a prayer. But really, it's like an explanation of things. It's like science more than spirituality. You're not asking for anything. You're not beseeching anyone. So it's not like that. But people use it as a prayer. But it's really like it's a nugget of wisdom that people will chant and will meditate on. Om Purnamada, Purnamidam. Purnat, Purnat, Purnasthay, Purnasth, Purnasth. There is a hole.

Like, not H-O-L-E, like the whole, W-H-O-L-E. You can take a piece out of the hole, and the hole still remains whole. Interestingly enough, the whole is still represented within the piece. The hole is not diminished by removing a piece from it. So you guys don't need to chant that thing. but I want y'all to really think about the next time you meditate. So as you do a formal meditation practice, think a little bit about the totality of life.

What is life? Just look around and observe. Use the full of your focus to observe and ask yourself, what the is this? You're so afraid of death. Like, forget about death. Like, start figuring out life. Why are you so concerned about death?

Like, forget about death. What you need to figure out is what you're doing here. So what is the totality? of life. Think about it. What does life have to offer? And hopefully you'll understand that in life, there's just it. And any kind of positive you try to create out of it will create a negative on the flip side. Any try to a kind of negative that you experience will also have a positive. That's just how it works. If I split a neutron, I don't just get a proton or I don't just get an electron. I get a proton and an electron.

Right? If I break a cookie in half, I'm going to get two equal pieces. Like, there's just no way that you can get one plus one equals three. It's just not possible. And life is the same way.

All pain has pleasure associated with it. All pleasure has pain associated with it. And if you disagree with that, you could disagree with that logically if you want to, whatever, but experience it. Right? And people will say, but all I experience is pain.

I don't experience pleasure. Well, that's because you're not there yet. that's been my experience anyway so i've come to understand the wisdom of of the sutra and it's like it's staggering and will be transformative if you ever get it question okay this is a great question what does it mean to not be there yet what it means to be not there yet is a false understanding of how things work because there is no yet and there is no there. Those are both conceptions of the mind. All that exists is what is, and all that exists is here. So you will never, I will, I'm not there yet is not something to

even think about it in its true as sense. I realize I just said that. But that's the honest answer. So if you understand, Om Purnamida, Purnamidah, Purnat, Purna, Purnat, Chete, Purnasya, Purna, she shit there. If you understand that, what you'll realize is there's no there and there's no yet. There's only what you do today. Right? There's only where you are now. Are you at the gym? No. Okay. So go there. Right. Be here. Do the thing. That's life. Do that over and over and over and over again. Then you will be living life to the fullest. That's simple. It's hard, but it's simple. Does this lesson sort of relate to just Yolo through life? Sort of. right? What is Yolo? Yola is Carpe Diem. So like I don't think so I think the problem here is that sometimes remember how we were saying that the mind will infuse itself into whatever it perceives. Right. So if I'm anorexic and I think I'm overweight, I'm going to assume that other people think I look fat. The challenge with the Yolo Carpe Diem crowd is that oftentimes there is some kind of like subtle. emotional or physical need, that they will then use this philosophy to be an asshole.

Right? So, like, I don't want to feel guilty. I don't want to care about other people, so I'm just going to yolo it. I don't want to prepare, so I'm going to yolo. Yolo has become synonymous for forget about consequences. But most people who yolo are not, like, don't behave the same way as enlightened folks. It's, in fact, oftentimes they're very opposite. I don't know if that kind of makes sense to y'all, but it's like, it's a very important distinction. So there's a difference between yoloing and like acting yolo, and in acting yolo, suppressing all of the negativity that you have. That's a false yolo. Right? So generally, like, sometimes they can look similar. You got to be really careful about what's on the inside.

Right? Does that make sense? Don't do the yolo, be the yolo. Yeah. Right? So sometimes, because like, let's think about you only live once. So what's that for, right? That's an excuse to get away with crap. Do you all see that? It's like such a subtle excuse for the slippery-ass mind. You only live once. Guess I might as well not do that project. You only live once. I don't need to text this person back. You only live once. Guess I'm going to eat pizza seven days a week. Right? Like that's not And by the way, you know, for the record, the meditative tradition does not believe that you only live once. Right? So, I mean, like in general, I think that sees the day is a good idea, right?

That's some of the sentiment behind YOLO. That's good. Like, enjoy every day to its fullest. That I agree with. But don't try to maximize the fullness, like the enjoyment of every day. That's what a lot of YOLO people do. And in doing so, they actually live a life of hedonism. Is this similar to the performance mode gifted kids usually rely on?

Sort of. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of overlap. So I think falling behind and needing to be ready, you know, being unable to not get an A, all of those things are relevant to gifted kids, for sure.