HealthyGamerGG - You're Not Doing Enough

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about the idea of should I be doing more, I'm never doing enough, toxic productivity, 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

This cognitive strategy leads to good material outcomes at the cost of suffering. So this is a min-max strategy to improve your outward life at the cost of your inner life. It's the person who feels like they're inadequate. So I see this a lot when I work with medical students, where no amount of work that they do is enough. We also see this a lot in content creators. So if you all have watched a lot of our interviews and stuff with content creators, you'll see that a lot of content creators never feel satisfied. And so if you have like self-loathing is your fuel, it's like a dirty fuel, right?

It's not like this green, clean energy. It's like some, you know, scuffed like coal, like dirty pollution generating. But oh man, it's like so sweet and it's so easy and it keeps you going, right? Why is it that I always feel like I'm not doing enough and I'm not getting enough? Like no matter what or how much I have, I don't feel satisfied and I want more. to the point I start hating myself for not trying harder or doing more. This is tricky. So sometimes we feel like we're not doing enough and we're not getting enough.

And so we don't feel satisfied and we want more, right? This is a really common experience. So why does this happen? And what are the consequences of it? Okay. So we're going to get to like where this comes from in a second. but let's start by understanding that this cognitive strategy leads to good material outcomes at the cost of suffering. So this is a min-max strategy to improve your outward life at the cost of your inner life, right?

Like, do you all see that? So it's the person who feels like they're inadequate. So I see this a lot when I work with medical students where no amount of work that they do is enough. and so they have to like grind and do more. They just never feel satisfied in themselves. There's always someone who's smarter. There's always someone who's studying more. There's always someone who's getting better grades.

There's always someone out there who's doing more. We also see this a lot in content creators. So if you all have watched a lot of our interviews and stuff with content creators, you'll see that a lot of content creators never feel satisfied. And so oftentimes these are very successful content creators. And so if you look at this mindset, right, which is all, almost like the high conscientiousness, high neuroticism from a five-factor model, which is, which, by the way, is the temperament of people who are in, of medical students.

What you sort of find is that like, it's successful, right? So why does this happen? From an evolutionary standpoint, the reason it happens is because it's successful. We actually select for success through this kind of stuff. Because if you're never satisfied, it's going to cause you to work harder. And like, to the point I start hating myself for not trying hard. harder or doing more. And so if you have like self-loathing as your fuel, it's like a dirty fuel, right? It's not like this green, clean energy. It's like some, you know, scuffed like coal, like

dirty pollution generating. But oh man, it's like so sweet and it's so easy and it keeps you going, right? Like you can burn down entire forest, but like you can just destroy all that nature, but boy, it keeps you going. So it's like this dirty fuel that's easily accessible. And the cool thing is if you kind of like think about it for a second, this is a never-ending source of fuel. Because if you're never satisfied with your work, no matter how much you work, you're never going to be satisfied. So you're always going to work harder. And so it's like, it's like this never-ending source of like toxic fuel. The problem is when you burn it, it like pollutes the hell out of your life and your mind. But you're going to be successful, right? You're going to be successful.

And for a lot of people, that's what we care about. That's what we're condition to care about. That's all we want, is to be successful, because then we'll have the respect and we'll have money and we'll have comfort and we'll have all these kinds of things. So the first thing to understand is that this mindset is not a problem. It's a solution. It's a certain way of fueling your productivity and ideally, like, results in success. Now, the problem with this is that, in my experience, this does not actually lead to the best outcomes. This leads to good outcomes, but if you want to go from like 75% productivity to like 100% productivity, you can't have this attitude. So this attitude is contrary to the flow state.

You can't attain the flow state if you're beating yourself up. Because the flow state is one where you're like kind of peaceful and like focused on your task and you're doing it for, you know, it's just a different state of consciousness, which if you're beating yourself up, you're never going to attain. So the next question is, okay, where does this come from? So first, let's understand that this is adaptive. Second thing is that oftentimes this too has some kind of psychological root. So when did you start feeling like you were not good enough? Right?

So that's like really, really important. Like when did this start? Where is the origin of this feeling that I'm not good enough? And sometimes like, you know, I don't know what the ethnicity of this person is or, you know, anything like that. But like we see this a lot, not just. I mean, I'm going to use a particular diaspora because that's common in the U.S. But, you know, people from all over the world experience this.

We're like, you'll have a set of parents who are not really happy with what you do. They'll not really be happy in your accomplishments. All they really care about is that you outperform everyone else. So unless you're number one in the class, like, that's not really that important. Like, why can't you be like so-and-so's kid who plays the violin and has an A in math? and so you'll have parents who are very unsatisfied with you. The other really damaging thing about this, which I think is even more insidious, which I don't hear a lot of people talk about,

is when you do achieve, what do you get from your parents? What you get is externally facing pride. And what do I mean by that? When you get an A-plus and you're the first chair in violin or whatever, right? And you're like president of the math club. What does your parent do? do they say, good job. I'm so proud of you.

You did so good. This weekend, we can do whatever you want to. You're such a hardworking kid. You make me so proud. No, that's not what they do. What they do is they talk to their social circle about that. Right? They don't even like reward you.

It's just like, now I have bragging rights. So when they go and they meet their friends at whatever, like at some party, right? Now it's like, now you're the easiest kid to brag about. And so even the reinforcement that you get, even when you accomplish. things, like, you don't get satisfied. You get that? Like, your parents aren't, like, good job. I'm so proud of you.

Right? It's like the positive, you're working so hard for this positivity. And you don't even get it from them. You get, like, a little bit. And instead, what they do is they turn their pride to the external world. And they post about it and they tell their sister, who they've always had a competitive relationship with my boy soon number 999 is a plus in math club president violin thing right that's where they actually put all their pride they don't put it back into you and so then you're left

feeling unsatisfied and then like this is like a core sort of thing where like you're conditioned to think that the way to be satisfied is to be number one but even when you become number one or you get close to number one or chances are you're not number one because you're not number one because it's really hard to be number one all the time, you sort of feel emotionally like unsatisfied. And then you carry that emotional dissatisfaction with you, and that emotional dissatisfaction which you carry with you, because it's a wound from a prior, like, emotional experience.

You can try to go fix it in the world today, but it's never going to get fixed because it's not, the wound is from before, right? The hunger is from before. And I don't want to say this, but like, to be blunt, half the problems that we get into is because we're trying to fix things from our past in our present. Like we see this all the time in terms of relationships where it's like, you know, we'll say so-and-so has daddy issues or mommy issues. Like we even understand that like colloquially.

Like we get this. And what does that even mean? It means that my relationship with my parents, my dad, or my mom is somehow something I'm trying to fix in this relationship. And then it sabotages this relationship because this relationship has its own problems. has nothing to do with mom and dad. And then why do we call it daddy issues or mommy issues? We don't say daddy issues or mommy issues in successful relationships. We say them in unsuccessful relationships.

Why didn't the relationship work out? Oh, he had daddy issues. Or he had mommy issues or she had daddy issues. That's why the relationship didn't work out. And why didn't it work out? It's because they're carrying stuff from the past which they project onto their current relationship. And so as long as you're trying to fix the past in the present, it ain't going to work.

and what you'll end up is like this, which is not feeling satisfied and always wanting more. There's going to be a fundamental sense of dissatisfaction because you can't fix the past in the present. Just not possible due to physics. Does that make sense? So understand where your dissatisfaction comes from. The dissatisfaction clearly does not correlate with your actual performance.

Does that make sense? Because if dissatisfaction correlated with your performance, if your performance increased, then your dissatisfaction should decrease. The two are completely independent variables. So then the question is, what the hell does this dissatisfaction correlate with? The dissatisfaction correlates with a sense of lack of self-worth, a lack of forgiveness, a lack of accepting yourself for where you are. Right?

It comes from striving, being conditioned to strive, and always wanting to do better. So it's challenging. But very common and very adaptive. right even if you think about if you're like an immigrant like I am or like come from an immigrant family this is the attitude that we grew up with and why did we grow up with this attitude there's a selection bias so even if you look at evolution there's something called the founder effect which explains a lack of genetic diversity so when you have a group of people that when you have a thousand people and a hundred of them go to an island and they hang out there and they you know

populate, and then when that population goes to 1,000, what you'll see is like an uneven amount of particular genetic alleles. And why is that? It's because you're kind of populating this with a certain set of traits. And so if you're, you're in, come from an immigrant family, why is this common in immigrants? It's because the immigrants who are dissatisfied with their situation and beat it, beated and beat themselves up were the ones who successfully left the country. They're the ones who became doctors and engineers and software developers and business people and things like that. Right? And then they successfully moved.

And then we see it. And now we have a whole culture that's like this. Because you have 10 successful people who are dissatisfied with themselves moving. And then since they're dissatisfied, they're always competing each other, and they all have kids. And then they pass that competition on to you. And then we end up like this.